The Concept of Free Will

Blanshard make a good point that we should not rely on human emotion to determine if we have free will or not. He makes the claim that determinist are not arguing if we are free to choose, but if we can chose our own choice. Determinist view dictates that choices are determined by antecedents, so we have the freedom to choose which choice but we never decide what those choices are. This claim is one of the most supportive to the determinist view because it explains a position on free will that is coherent with the idea that we live in a predetermined

Choices that people make have a giant place in their lives. Most of us consider that we do these choices freely, that we have free will to make these choices. The point that most of us miss is free will is not simple as is it looks like. When one makes choices doesn’t he consider that what would that choices lead him to? Therefore does he make those choices for his benefits or his desires to make those choices?

Or rather do we have freedom, yet everything is still at the same time determined? This research paper will argue for the concept of determinism and how humans should think about free will, while answering to objections from libertarianism and compatibilism. Determinism will be proven as the way by which free will should be thought as it provides

In our society we often hear that we have ultimate control over what happens to us. As humans we can choose the way we want to present ourselves to the world and the choices that we want to make regarding our lives. Our control comes from our free will, which allows us to do as we please. It seems unlikely to me that we have complete power over what occurs in our life, for instance we often see people suffering and usually they did not choose to suffer. I agree with Locke’s view on free will and how liberty and power play a role in the concept.

Human Beings as Being Genuinely Free To be able to answer this question successfully we must first understand what is meant by the term 'genuinely free.' By this do we mean to have limitless freedom where each choice is our own or rather freedom within certain boundaries? There are of course many different views which consider the extent of our freedom and what being free really means, ranging from ultimate, unlimited freedom to us having absolutely no freedom. If we are to believe that human beings are completely free we are likely to accept the Libertarian view: By liberty, then we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may (David Hume) Libertarianism suggests that we are entirely free to make a morally responsible decision. Libertarianism does consider the fact that some aspects of life are causally determined; however these determined aspects are only affected by the inner self of the moral agent which in itself is uncaused.

Since we know that the universal principle of morality is derived from a rational being’s will due to the Formula of Autonomy, we can therefore conclude freedom is the basis for the universal principle of morality. In a sense, rational beings are defined by our concept of freedom. As humans, we look at the world through the perspective of humans; what we know about the world is from observations and experiences. Therefore, we cannot know what the world is truly like. This may sound disheartening, and Kant admits that freedom is merely a concept we apply to ourselves as rational beings, and thus is something we can never be sure about.

Sartre believes that freedom, in terms of free choices, is a center and unique potentiality, which human all have in nature. We can choose to do what we want. It is the right that no one can take away from us. Freedom, in my opinion, is subjective because it exists in our mind, and only we can be aware of it. Sartre also ignores the determinism theory, which states that everything has be set up in a certain way, and that we can only follow that pathway.

Rachael states that “free actions are not random and chaotic. They are orderly and thoughtful.”(483) He also mentions, in order to have free will, determinism is a necessity. (483) Free and rational actions are attainable due to a person’s disposition and desires, which pilot us. With that being the case, if we lived in a casually determined world, wouldn’t people’s actions become predictable? Obviously people are going to have at least some predictability to them.

Existence of Free Will Existence of free will is often argued from introspection. Freedom means choice. Since I chose to write this paper and I could have chosen otherwise, I am free in writing this paper. However, to establish that I could have chosen otherwise, proving that I felt that I could have chosen otherwise is not enough: One must also prove that my choice is the original cause of my motives to write this paper. According to compatibilists, your action is free if the immediate cause of the action are your thoughts, there is no coercion, no duress (physical or mental), and your thoughts satisfy a certain condition on freedom, which varies depending on the compatibilist.

They argue that even if the actions are predetermined, people are free in other ways that are enough to consider them blameworthy for their actions. Whatever the forces that determine an action (biology, social conditions, upbringing, god whatever) does not cripple our ability to act according to our free will. The compatibilist attitude is in vogue since a long time the forces that determine the action (role of determinism) have been evolving since then but the basic idea, the fact that we do a particular thing even though we don’t really choose what we want to do, we do only as we choose to do. This is put in a better way by T.M Scanlon ‘ Even If our attitudes and actions are fully explained by genetic and environmental factors, it is till true that we have these attitudes and that our actions express them.’ According to Fried this is the ‘indigestible common core of compatibilism’ that we are blameworthy for doing what we could not help but do. Fried argues that blaming a person for doing something which one cannot help his action is indigestible.