Free Will Vs. Determinism

Free will is not dead People may ask why a student would decide to start writing a paper at 11:30 at night when there must be several other optimal times. The average student would hazard the guess that the particular student put that paper off until that time the night before the paper is due. Now, what if I was to say that I started my paper at this time not the night before it was due, but rather a few days before the paper was due. This would leave the average person perplexed at why I would not try to get some sleep instead. By choosing to write this paper now instead of sleeping I am demonstrating free will. Free will is the broad topic of this paper and why I made the previous example. There are many people in the world that think that

I, thankfully, am not one of those people. That is why in this paper I will argue that free will co-exists with determinism and is not completely eliminated by it. I will first examine the viewpoints of several prominent philosophers and their stance on free will and determinism. I will then move into my view on free will and the definition that I assign the word. Lastly, I will argue against the opponents of my viewpoint. There are three prominent philosophers that will be the focus of this section. Those philosophers are Paul Holbach, W.T. Stace, and A.J. Ayer and each of them have a different view on free will and determinism and whether or not they fit together. Holbach takes the stance of incompatibility and firmly believes that free will and determinism cannot be reconciled while Stace and Ayer think to the contrary. Holbach thinks that free will is simply an illusion and that even the

The reason why compatibility is the strongest argument in the debate over whether free will exists or not is that it has qualities that people who believe in either side can agree upon. Compatibility, unlike libertarianism and hard determinism, is not simply throwing out one idea or the other in an attempt to be the correct answer. This means that compatibility has the best foundation as it is not constantly fighting with any opposite ideology. Instead, compatibility is simply reconciling the two different views that people tend to have when it comes to human decisions. That means that compatibility’s strength is derived from its ability to be flexible and open to people who predominantly think they have free will and those who think that the world is mostly determined. The biggest reason why compatibility is the best answer to the answer of why we do what we do is that there are so many different situations that there cannot be simply one reason behind all decisions. Unique situations arise where free will would not be able to cover why a decision was made and this is also true for determinism. I could have in no way have chosen to be of different economic class at birth which shows that free will cannot have been the reason behind that choice. On the other hand I make simple