Free Will Essay

"Definitionally" Free: What does it mean to have "Free Will?”

Humans, naturally, have an ingrained, intuitive sense of autonomy which they term their own “free will.” What exactly constitutes this “free will”, however, has been one of the longest, most convoluted, and widely disputed controversies in the history of philosophy and human thought. For the sake of an example, one could take the choice one has between various flavors of ice cream. After pausing to contemplate one’s choices with conscious deliberation one finally arrives at strawberry ice cream. Why, as in this case, was strawberry chosen over the other flavors? Could the deliberator in question have chosen chocolate and vanilla with equal probability, or were there factors which proverbially “tipped” the scales in strawberry’s flavor which could be said to be completely beyond the choosing, rationally deliberating agent’s control? In response to this, four main positions on the existence of free will have arisen: libertarianism, compatibilism, hard determinism, and hard incompatibilism. This essay assumes the compatibilist position, and will seek to systematically demonstrate why our intuitive sense of self-control and autonomy is “compatible” with the possibility of all our actions and thoughts being determined by prior causation.

The compatibilist redefines free will in a way such that in the strawberry ice-cream example previously given that even if the person’s choice was predetermined, it was still voluntary and therefore free in a “psychological” sense. The most common rebuttal hurled against those who deny the existence of free will in the idealistic, classical, libertarian sense is that it is clearly obvious that humans have the ability to do what they want, ...

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...ch and infamous determinist—when speaking of free will chose to quote the compatibilist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in the tersest, yet most succinct expression of compatibilism, “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills” (Schopenhauer, 2006).

References:

Clarke, Randolph and Capes, Justin, "Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free

Will", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)

Hume, D. (1993). An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Hackett

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Pink, T. (2004). Free Will: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Press.

Schopenhauer, A., & Kolenda, K. (2006). Essay on the Freedom of the Will . New York: Dover

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Strawson, G. (2011, April 11). Free Will: Compatabilism . . Retrieved July 11, 2014, from

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