Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
the influence of peer pressure
the effect of peer pressure
concept of free will
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: the influence of peer pressure
How much free will do we have? How free are your choices? This old problem about free will has been debated for many years, but why it is a problem to be solved, everyone knows what free will is. However, not everyone has the same idea about it. Some people might say free will is not existed and it is an illusion, but others could have an opposite view about it and say it is obviously that there is free will. It is clearly that human beings do have free will. In fact, all of our decisions were made by our own choices whether they are consciously or unconsciously. However, most people do not just live with themselves but in a society, and there are laws and rules within it. Choices and decisions might be limited because of those barrier, but …show more content…
It is how our everyday decisions are made. Every individual’s mind is free from making choices, but it is influenced within or without the society. Elements that effect our decisions such as the people around us, the situation we are into. For example, parent can limit their children’s options by controlling every aspect of their life. Especially Asian American children who born in a traditional Asian family have to study a “good” major, go to a good college, or get good grade in order to please their parent. Because they were born in America, “they are exposed to freedom of speech, freedom to choose and well freedom to everything,” but “they cannot exercise their freedom to their full extent” (“Asian” 2015). Other than parent, friends are also another element that shapes our will. Friends tend to do many activities together, and in order for that to happen, they need to have the same idea. If you are belong to a group of friends that most of them want to go to the beach for summer, but you want to go to the mountain, you would have to follow the decision of the majority. It does not mean that we do not have free will to make our own choices. We could choose not to study what your parents tell you to and study what you like or you could decide to go to the mountain like you want, but the responsibility we have to take on for our decisions are not always what we want. We might have a fight with our parent or our friendship could be destroyed. Circumstances play another important role in determining our will. If you are sitting on a full bus and there is a pregnant woman standing next to you, you would let her take your sit because that is what most people do. Another example of this is when you are looking to buy a house. You might want to get a big and nice house for your family, but the price of the house is based on your financial situation. Therefore, whether
Free will is something that every man/women possess that only they have control over. Every day we make choices that positively or negatively affect us. I have seen people give up their own free will, only to take off the pressure of society, encompassing them and making the “second-handers” (Rand) free will is now loosely expresses and the true definition of the terminology is long lost. But, definitions are opinions and my opinion of free will is we as humans have a choice and it is up to us to utilize what we have available, we have the free will to do what we want. It is important to be free. It is important to make your own choices. And it is most important to be different.
Do individuals have free will, or are our actions pre-determined? Humans are mindful human beings. By suggesting individuals can select different ways to respond to any situation, you are suggesting that free will is involved. However, science continues to evolve and discloses new answers on human nature. A major influence in human behavior has to do a lot with an individual’s surroundings. It is believed that a great deal of our own being is the result of an individual’s upbringing, education, culture, or ethnicity. Many of the events individuals are faced with are beyond their control.
To answer the question if human beings possess free will successfully, you have to understand what ‘free will’ actually means. Free will is having the the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate. The ability to act on one 's own desires. There are a couple different ways of answering the free will question that get broken down into three main beliefs; Compatibilism, Libertarianism, and Determinism. Libertarians believe that humans are capable of possessing free will. Determinists believe that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to will. They believe that human beings are not morally responsible
In his book Free Will, Sam Harris not only states that, “Our wills are simply not of our own making” but additionally if it where declared as fact by the scientific community it “would precipitate a culture war far more belligerent than the one that has been waged on the subject of evolution.” (Ch.1) Harris’ contention is surprising as he himself states, “…most people find these conclusions abhorrent” (Ch.1) but does it really matter whether we actually have free will or not? I maintain that the existence of actual free will is superfluous. Most of us agree that we, at the very least, experience an illusion of freedom and therefore, for the good of our civilization, we must continue to live under this assumption precisely to avoid the result Harris describes.
Free will is a problem that has been occupying the minds of many philosophers. The classical debate is whether we have free will or we are determined and therefore free will in an illusion. There are many views that philosophers have brought to the table in order to tackle this debate. Some of which are determinism, libertarianism, and compatibilism. Harry Frankfurt’s general intake on the debate is that free will is not about having the ability to do otherwise. Instead, free will is about having the ability to make judgements about our desires. The purpose of this paper is to expound and asses Harry Frankfurt’s semi-compatibilist view, his concept of a person, and how it relates to the freedom of the will.
When we discuss the free will, I always come up some questions like Are we totally “free,” or is our behavior determined by external factors out of our control? Could I have chosen a different way to do something? Am I responsible for my own actions?
Every person has wondered about something - whether it be a person, place, thing, law, or anything that someone can think about. They ask questions both rhetorical and actual to themselves, and usually make it a mission to answer these questions. Some of the biggest questions have something to do with culture and religion. One of the most major questions of all time - to what extent does an individual have control over the outcome of his or her life? There are many different opinions on this topic.
Are we, as humans, truly free or not? For me, I wake up every morning, go to class or work, go to the gym, hang out with my friends, etc., but does this mean that I am free? In order to answer this question, I believe we need to ask a few questions. For one, are the choices that I make in life free or determined by other external factors? Also, are the paths that I choose and my own actions, my own responsibility? Philosophers Baron D’Holbach and Walter Terence Stace offer two different interpretations on where humans stand with freewill. They examine nature and how other people’s own freewill play a part in our own actions and in our own fate. While both philosophers present their own intelligent opinions on the matter, I find some fault in Baron D’Holbach’s opinion and agree more with Walter Terence Stace; that humans do in fact have free will.
Schick, T & Vaughn, L. Do We Have Free Will? A Review of the Leading Theories
Free will tends to be a topic where even the most non-philosophical person will have an extreme opinion on it and understandably so. The issue of free will has an immense consequence that affects even the most basic day-to-day activities in our lives. Specifically, free will is entirely intertwined with the idea of responsibility. Two contrasting views of free will are determinism and indeterminism, both of which threaten the idea of human responsibility in their own way. Similarly to most everyone else, I experience my own decisions as choices between genuine possibilities and this undoubtedly has an effect on how I could choose to commit to an answer on whether or not we have free will.
Since the foundation of philosophy, every philosopher has had some opinion on free will in some sense, from Aristotle to Kant. Free will is defined as the agent's action to do something unimpeded, with many other factors going into it Many philosophers ask the question: Do humans really have free will? Or is consciousness a myth and we have no real choice at all? Free will has many components and is fundamental in our day to day lives and it’s time to see if it is really there or not.
Since the dawn of time, individuals have been taught that they possess an innate quality known as Free Will. This phenomenon is essentially the “freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention”(Merriam-Webster). Therefore people believe that they possess the ability to decide their fate. But do humans really have this ability to do this? Philosophists have argued this for some time now and have raised some objections towards this view. On the contrary, the theory of determinism, which is often contrasted with the theory of free will, says elsewise. This theory states that “occurrences in nature or social or psychological phenomena are causally determined by preceding events or natural laws” (Merriam-Webster). In other words, a determinist believes that for every rational decision that an individual has to make, there is a predetermined course of action. Various views
Most children, teenagers, and adults make these decisions because they think they are invincible. Most of these people think Oh, I’m tough and strong enough to take it or Nobody is going to figure out what I did, but in the long run this will hurt you in the future. One of the main factors for everyone in making decisions is that of peer pressure. When somebody’s friends are all doing something that makes you want to try it, also. More reasons to make decisions are the behaviors of other peers surrounding you. “Decision-making is often influenced by the behavior of others. For instance, people frequently make similar decisions as their friends do (e.g. teenagers may choose to wear clothing that is identical to that of their buddies), while they also often choose differently than the ones they do not like” (The Influence Of Others On Our Decisions). Another factor that causes bad decisions could be one’s home life. Abuse by parents or siblings may cause emotional issues that cause a person to rebel, steal, drink or possibly kill. The person making those kind of decisions might not even realize why they act the way they do. “I am a big believer that our moral compasses are influenced by the people we associate with as friends and the access to vices that undermine our lives” (How To Make Good Decisions That Lead to Great Success). This just proves that a lot of people’s decisions are
Nature is complicated. It includes many different sorts of things and one of these is human beings. Such beings exhibit one unique yet natural attribute that others things apparently do not—that is free will.
This world has turned into a place where people are required to take full responsibility for their actions and words. Often we do this informally, via moral judgment or if not through legal judgment. In other words we become morally responsible, deserving praise, blame, reward or punishment for an act or omission based upon one’s moral obligations, thus contradicting the concept of free will. Main viewpoints on moral responsibility interact with the following three, constructed by human action: determinism, compatibilism and libertarianism. A philosopher once said “Just as we separated the concept ‘free’ from the concept of ‘will’ in order to better understand ‘free will,’ so we need to separate ‘moral’ and responsibility."