Why Free Will is More Believable than Determinism
Free will is one of the most desired possessions humans have. The ability to choose what we do is very appealing to us. It is also reassuring to put moral responsibility on people to confirm our need to blame and praise. In order to assign moral responsibility, however, free will needs to exist. There have been multiple arguments on how free will cannot be true. One major belief that free will does not exist is determinism. Physicalist, Paul Holbach whole-heartedly believed in determinism meaning every event in the universe is caused by some prior event, including human choices. I do not agree with Holbach’s views so in this paper I will defend the idea of free will. That will include
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T. Stace is right in the middle of the free will vs. determinism spectrum with compatibilism. He is convinced that the two are compatible and our choices are free if they have the right cause. He is on the right track, but even this is still unbelievable. Stace rights about a man not eating for a week and when asked why he did that to himself freely he responded with how he had no choice and could not find food (Stace). This is an unequal argument because he had no other choice, but to go without food. Determinism always offers a choice yet says there is no option because of how we are. A better scenario would be Stace’s memory of a trial in Trenton about confessions signed due to threatening police force. He says the question would sound something along the lines of, “Did you sign by your own free will?”, and a response such as, “No, I did because the police threatened me” (Stace). This is a better argument because it still gives an option to pick. A situation like this weakens the Determinist argument because despite who the person is they are more likely to choose listening to the police over abuse. Better yet, the individual could choose to ignore the police’s threat and receive the punishment, but they were the one who chose that option. No matter what situation it is unlikely that the victim was born and raised for that type of circumstance and as a result in favor of free
The strongest objection to determinism is in my view the following: (3) Truth, i.e., accurate knowledge of the facts of a case is only possible for me when I can cognitively get involved with the subject. However, the precondition for this is that I am not determined by irrelevant constraints in connection with the subject — e.g., by physical factors or by my own biological-genetic constitution, but also not by prejudices and preconcieved notions: precisely because I could not involve myself in the subject because of such constraints. Reduced to a formula, this means: truth presupposes freedom.
The view of free will has been heavily debated in the field of philosophy. Whether humans possess free will or rather life is determined. With the aid of James Rachels ' article, The Debate over Free Will, it is clearly revealed that human lives are "both determined and free at the same time" (p.482, Rachels), thus, in line with the ideas of compatibilist responses. Human 's actions are based on certain situations that are causally determined by unexpected events, forced occurrence, and certain cases that causes one to outweigh the laws of cause and effect. The article also showcases instances where free will does exist. When human actions are being based on one 's emotions of the situation, desire, and simply that humans are creatures that are created to have intellectual reasoning. I argue, that Rachels’ article, provides helpful evidence on compatibilists responses that demonstrate free will and determinism actions come into play with each other.
...on, freedom of the will is needed to clarify that just because one’s actions are capable of being predicated, it does not follow that I am constrained to do one action or the other. If I am constrained though, my will is absent from the situation, for I really don’t want to give someone my money with a pistol to my head, and it follows my action is constrained and decided by external compulsion, rather than internal activity, or stated otherwise, that internal activity being free will, and thus free will is reconciled with determinism.
Stace’s main argument in stated in, “The dispute is merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a confusion about the meaning of words. It is now what is fashionably called a semantic problem.” Words are all we really have to explain our thoughts. We can add to words by using body language and pictures, but even these are still explained in words. Words are given meaning, according to Stace, by, “Common usage is the criterion for deciding whether a definition is correct or not.” This means that words should be used, as everyone knows them. The exception to this is slang. So to a point it is philosophers changing the words of freewill and creating their own slang definition and like Stace says, “the mistake which the deniers of freewill have made is rather subtle and difficult to detect.” Stace feels that the wrong definition of freewill is the ability to do something else.
In “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, Harry Frankfurt illustrates the concepts of freedom of will and freedom of action, but more importantly, Frankfurt has refined the compatibilism theory. Compatibilism allows the freedom of will to exist in the deterministic world. According to determinism theory, the future state of worlds is determined by some events in the distant past (E) and the laws of nature (L). More specifically, E refers to the history, such as experiences or states whereas L refers to scientific or physical law like gravity. For example, an alcoholic’s action is determined that he will not stop drinking. Here E is that he had been drinking in the past, and L is the physiological addiction effect caused by alcohol. As we can control neither E nor L, then it follows that we can never act free. The thesis of compatibilist, however, states that we may have free will, even if all of our actions are determined by forces beyond our controls.
In this essay I shall argue that Paul Rée is correct in saying that free will is just an illusion. Throughout the reading entitled “The Illusion of Free Will,” Rée makes numerous great points about how we believe we have free will but we really do not. He discusses how one’s childhood upbringing determines his actions for the rest of his life, which, as a result, diminishes his freedom of will. He brings about the major issues with the common thought that since you could have acted in a different way than you actually did, you have free will. Another main argument was the proof of the reality of the law of causality, which can also be referred to as determinism.
Walter T. Stace uses different examples in his essay about people not acting in free will and people acting in free will in order to try and prove that indeterminism is not the definition of free will and try to get the correct definition. He provides examples by showing cases where the question of whether the man acted in free will is asked, one of the examples he uses to try to find the correct definition of free will is asking the man if he stole acting in free will. In one of the cases the man answers “yes, I stole the bread because I was hungry.” and in the other, the man answers “no, I stole because my employer threatened to beat me if I did not” (Barnet). Another example he uses is asking a man if he didn’t eat for a whole week out of his own free will, in one case the man answers “no, I was lost in the desert and could find no food”, and in the other case the man answers, “yes I did it because I wanted to compel the British government to give India its independence”
For centuries philosophers have debated over the presence of free will. As a result of these often-heated arguments, many factions have evolved, the two most prominent being the schools of Libertarianism and of Determinism. Within these two schools of thought lies another debate, that of compatibilism, or whether or not the two believes can co-exist. In his essay, Has the Self “Free Will”?, C.A. Campbell, a staunch non-compatiblist and libertarian, attempts to explain the Libertarian argument.
All in all, each view of the philosophy of free will and determinism has many propositions, objects and counter-objections. In this essay, I have shown the best propositions for Libertarianism, as well as one opposition for which I gave a counter-objection. Additionally, I have explained the Compatabalistic and Hard Deterministic views to which I gave objections. In the end, whether it is determinism or indeterminism, both are loaded with difficulties; however, I have provided the best explanation to free will and determinism and to an agent being morally responsible.
Free will is the ability for a person to make their own decisions without the constraints of necessity and fate, in other words, their actions are not determined. Determinism is the view that the initial conditions of the universe and all possible worlds are the same, including the laws of nature, causing all events to play out the same. Events are determined by the initial conditions. Two prominent positions advocated concerning the relation between free will and determinism are compatibilism and incompatibilism. In this essay I shall argue that compatibilism is true. Firstly, I shall explain what compatibilism is and consider possible objections and responses to the theory. I shall then examine incompatibilism and evaluate its strengths and weaknesses and argue that compatibilism is a stronger argument and, as a result, show why it is also true.
The argument of free will and determinism is a very complex argument. Some might say we have free will because we are in control; we have the ability to make our own choices. Others might say it’s in our biological nature to do the things we do; it’s beyond our control. Basically our life experiences and choices are already pre determined and there’s nothing we can do to change it. Many philosophers have made very strong arguments that support both sides.
The argument of whether humans are pre-determined to turn out how we are and act the way we do or if we are our own decision makers and have the freedom to choose our paths in life is a long-standing controversy. As a psychologist in training and based on my personal beliefs, I do not believe that we truly have this so called free will. It is because of this that I choose to believe that the work of free will by d’Holbach is the most accurate. Although the ideas that Hume and Chisolm present are each strong in their own manner, d’Holbach presents the best and most realistic argument as to how we choose our path; because every event has a cause, we cannot have free will. Not only this, but also, that since there is always an external cause, we can never justify blame. Now let’s review Hume and Chisolm’s arguments and point out why I do not think that they justly describe free will.
The problem of free will and determinism is a mystery about what human beings are able to do. The best way to describe it is to think of the alternatives taken into consideration when someone is deciding what to do, as being parts of various “alternative features” (Van-Inwagen). Robert Kane argues for a new version of libertarianism with an indeterminist element. He believes that deeper freedom is not an illusion. Derk Pereboom takes an agnostic approach about causal determinism and sees himself as a hard incompatibilist. I will argue against Kane and for Pereboom, because I believe that Kane struggles to present an argument that is compatible with the latest scientific views of the world.
In this paper, I will argue that we have free will for our actions and our moral responsibilities. Free will is a big part in life. We have free will, but there are times where there is no free will. In the world we live in today, we really don’t always have free will.
Freedom, or the concept of free will seems to be an elusive theory, yet many of us believe in it implicitly. On the opposite end of the spectrum of philosophical theories regarding freedom is determinism, which poses a direct threat to human free will. If outside forces of which I have no control over influence everything I do throughout my life, I cannot say I am a free agent and the author of my own actions. Since I have neither the power to change the laws of nature, nor to change the past, I am unable to attribute freedom of choice to myself. However, understanding the meaning of free will is necessary in order to decide whether or not it exists (Orloff, 2002).