Freewill

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Freewill

Many have wondered whether free will exists or not. Some argue yes, some argue no. For now, I will say no. I will begin my argument with a scenario. Say a man has an enemy that he hates very strongly. One day this guy makes a conscious decision to kill his enemy. He calculates every move he needs to make to kill his enemy and succeeds in doing so. Clearly, this man is guilty of murder. The question is, should blame fall on this man for killing another?

Currently, all societies in the world are built around some moral basis that holds a person responsible for their actions. A determinist, however, would disagree and say that people are not free, and therefore are not at fault for their actions. Human acts are caused, and caused acts are of only one option. If there is only one option and no choices, then there is no freedom involved. Therefore, the man from the example and every other criminal that ever existed are not actually guilty of their crimes. These people had no other choices. Does that mean we should let all of these guilty people out of jail to romp around?

Definitely not, because you could use induction to figure that they will commit more crimes if they are free. Furthermore, if they are not truly guilty because of lack of free will, then society is not at fault for imprisoning them because of their lack of free will.

The determinist believes that all actions done by a human can be predicted. If we were able to calculate all the variables that compose the brain and mind at any given time, we would be able to predict human acts. To clarify with a simple analogy, in order to bake a blueberry muffin it would take certain ingredients such as sugar, eggs, and blueberries etc. Now, a human...

... middle of paper ...

...ling it produces.

It seems that no matter how you look at it, humans base their actions on desires. They do good acts because they desire to go to heaven. They take showers and wear nice clothes so that they can attract a mate. They might think they are making a choice when choosing to do these things, but perhaps they are only doing them because of the different variables acting in their minds.

One more thing to consider is where these variables come from. It would seem that they merely come from impulses in the human brain that have been caused by the environment, and even genetics. Now if these impulses are really just random impulses and do not have a basis in genetics or the environment, does that mean humans have free will? No, it just means that humans are at the mercy of randomness. Based on all this, it would seem that the determinists are right.

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