Hume Free Will

Can anyone be the master of his or her own destiny?

Destiny can be defined as the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future. Free will is an aspect of destiny that is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity of fate, the ability to act at one’s own discretion (O’Connor, 2002). Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free will is very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility (O’Connor, 2002). In counter argument to destiny and free will, some philosopher’s believe that everything comes down to fatalism. Fatalism is based on the assumption that everything in the world and in people's lives is predetermined by natural or supernatural forces, that there is a rational

The philosopher David Hume defines free will or the term that he uses ‘liberty’ as “a power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will” (O’Connor, 2002). This quote from Hume brings meaning to free will and put into perceptive that an agent has the capacity to choose a course of action. Free will is unique to the person that allows them to control their actions. There are two philosophical issues that can be closely related to free will; freedom of action and moral responsibility (Timpe,

An example of this, consider a women called Jane, who is contemplating a classic free action, such as whether or not to walk her dog. The thought of “I know I should walk to dog, but while I don’t really want to walk him since it’s cold outside, I think overall the best decision to make is that I should take him for a walk” (Timpe, n.d.). For Jane, the first decision that needs to be made, is to choose whether or not she should walk the dog, which is where a reason for free will is necessary for free action. Therefore if assumed that action that was taken is a result of rational capacities of humans, we then see that the possibility of free action depends on the possibility of free will: to say that an agent acted freely is simply to say that the agent was successful in carrying out a free choice (Timpe, n.d.). From the example regarding Jane and walking her dog, free will is clearly demonstrated, as choices about an action is made, and the outcome is based purely on the decision made. Although some philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes suggests that freedom consists in there being no external impediments to an agent doing what they want to do: “A free agent is he that can do as he will, and forbear as he will, and the liberty is the absence of external impediments” (Timpe, n.d.). In the quote from Hobbes, it suggests that an action will be made