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Humans have always question if we have free will or if we are unconsciously control by someone, and to understand or to answer the question, first we have to understand what is free will. According to the oxford dictionary, free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion. However, most philosophers have decided that there might not be one single concept for the definition of free will.
The question of free will has been around for ages and philosopher have taken sides. There are philosophers who do believe that humans have free will that we have choices, we control our lives, etc. and same as those philosophers I firmly believe that humans have free will. On the other
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First I will focus on Hard Determinism, which is the position of Determinism being incompatible with both human freedom and moral responsibility. Moreover hard determinism states all acts can be reduce to Biological, behavioral and psychological theories and those three theories are the most dominants forms of Determinism.
The first theory Behavioral Determinism, lasted until 1950 and in the present’s days has some strong followers. This theory states that our reactions, develop in us by environmental conditioning, are the reflex of our actions. Behavioral Determinism, follows to the theory of knowledge of blank slate (tabula rasa) of David Hume. Behavioral determinism says that free will is an illusion and behavior is the result of stimulus and response association. Behavioral Determinism is the Nurture side of the Nurture versus Nature discussion.
The second theory Psychological Determinism o also called Freudian Determinism, states that all mental processes are determined by unconscious mental complexes, and therefore are not spontaneous. This theory is based on the causality principle that nothing happens by accident and is one of the central concepts of
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With this one I can agree that our body has most of the answers of the questions about our actions. However, some of those causes do not have to be in our chemical makeup, there can be cases where the causes are not chemical and are just the way we are. For example there is no chemical explanation for being gay. Charles Murray in his book The Bell Curve “argues not only that intelligence is genetically heritable, but also that there are racial and ethnic differences that account for why whites are better off socioeconomically compared to blacks.” However, while intelligence might be heritable does not mean that intelligence cannot be develop, all of us are intelligence some more and some less, but is a matter on how much is developed to make a real good use of
Human beings always believe that what they want to do is ‘up to them,' and on this account, they take the assumption that they have free will. Perhaps that is the case, but people should investigate the situation and find a real case. Most of the intuitions may be correct, but still many of them can be incorrect. There are those who are sceptical and believe that free will is a false illusion and that it only exists in the back of people’s minds, but society should be able to distinguish feelings from beliefs in order to arrive at reality and truth.
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 last few weeks of class we covered several different kinds of determinism from the various handouts we received. The hard determinist believe that everything happens in a causal fashion, that there is no free will and everything is predetermined. “We remember statements about human beings being pawns of their environment, victims of conditions beyond their control, the result of causal influences stemming from parents, etc.”1 These hard determinist think that the universe works like a clock. Everything has a causal effect onto the other and there is no free will or choice, that all the tiny variables added up to you making that choice. Hospers dives into the psychology and says that every choice you make is a predetermined factor
According to this theory, if determinism is correct, based any individuals past and prior experiences there is only one future that is possible for that particular individual. There are two different types of determinism: Hard determinism and Soft determinism. Both types of determinism have the same principles; that every action that happens in an individual’s life is determined on a physical level and that all life events are determined by previous life events.
There are a lot of different things that come to mind when somebody thinks of the phrase Free Will, and there are some people who think that free will does not exists and that everything is already decided for you, but there are also people who believe in it and think that you are free to do as you please. An example that explains the problem that people have with free will is the essay by Walter T. Stace called “Is Determinism Inconsistent with Free Will?”, where Stace discusses why people, especially philosophers, think that free will does not exist.
Determinism is the theory that everything is caused by antecedent conditions, and such things cannot be other than how they are. Though no theory concerning this issue has been entirely successful, many theories present alternatives as to how it can be approached. Two of the most basic metaphysical theories concerning freedom and determinism are soft determinism and hard determinism.
The theory of determinism simply stated is the notion that all current events and everything we experience is determined by past occurrences and we have no control or freedom of choosing what happens in the future(McLeod). It is argued that determinism states that the future can predict and everything that has already happened in the past has an explanation to it. The predictability of events, however, is the principle and we can’t actually predict everything. It follows natural science laws to determine how predictable an occurrence is. If occurrence A is often followed by occurrence B, then A follows B, therefore if A occurs, the probability of B occurring can then be predictable. Several laws and statistical factors are ignored
Determinism currently takes two related forms: hard determinism and soft determinism [1][1]. Hard determinism claims that the human personality is subject to, and a product of, natural forces. All of our choices can be accounted for by reference to environmental, social, cultural, physiological and hereditary (biological) causes. Our total character is a product of these environmental, social, cultural, physiological and hereditary forces, thus our beliefs, desires, values and habits are all outside of our control. The hard determinist, therefore, claims that our choices are determined by these factors; free will is an illusion because the choices and decisions we make are derived from our character, which is completely out of our control in creating. An example might help illustrate this point. Consider a man who has just repeatedly stabbed another man outside of a bar; the other man is dead. The hard determinist would argue that there were factors outside of the killer’s control which led him to this action. As a child, he was constantly beaten by his father and was the object of ridicule and contempt of his classmates. This trend of hard luck would continue all his life. Coupled with the fact that he has a gene that has been identified with male aggression, he could not control himself when he pulled the knife out and started stabbing the other man. All this aggression, and all this history were the determinate cause of his action.
Throughout my life I have made some decisions and choices that I considered free. What is free choice? Free choice is being able to differentiate right from wrong and make a decision from the two. My theory is if someone is doing something no one forces or commands them to do therefore that person is acting freely. An example is the way that someone chooses to dress or the kind of music someone decides to listen to. What I did not consider in this theory is the fact that even though there is nobody pointing an arm commanding you to do certain things, however there are other factors that may affect the choices we make. Philosophers of different periods have discussed the subject of free will; some of them believe that free will does not
There are many great philosophical ideas and questions that are known and of course unknown. One of the questions that really enticed my interest was the question of whether or not we have free will. I myself was once a believer of people having free will and doing what I want was my choice and my choice alone. However, after careful consideration and lectures I have been reversed in how I believe in free will. Is there any free will though? Many people would say yes there is and of course there are some who believe that free will is a fallacy and not to be believed. Whether or not there is free will is yet to be determined but what we have to go on and by is from philosophers and every person who has their two cents to fill in. In this discussion of philosophy there will be points made for and against the establishment of free will and basis for judgement of free will exists or not.
The Illusion of Free Will Derk Pereboom discusses the issue of free will in his work “Why We Have No Free Will and Can Live Without It.” He classifies this position as Hard Incompatibilism. Not only does Pereboom reject the idea of humans having free will, but he also rejects the idea of hard determinism. Hard determinism is the belief that every present event can be explained by previous events. Under this theory, all human behavior is caused by worldly phenomena and could not have occurred any differently.
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.
Is how we act predetermined by a number of factors beyond our control or are we simply able to make choices that are not determined by our dispositions or desires? This notion of freewill has been debated by theorists for centuries. Hard Determinists say that how we act is due to a combination of genetic factors and the environment around us. A similar notion is Fatalism, where how an act is performed is predetermined by a higher power. However, Compatabalists think that how we act is a combination of freewill and what environmental and genetic endowments have been bestowed on us.
I want to argue that there is indeed free will. In order to defend the position that free will means that human beings can cause some of what they do on their own; in other words, what they do is not explainable solely by references to factors that have influenced them. My thesis then, is that human beings are able to cause their own actions and they are therefore responsible for what they do. In a basic sense we are all original actors capable of making moves in the world. We are initiators of our own behavior.
If there is no room for choice or chance then everything happens without an individuals responsibility of doing something, mean that people can not be held to their actions, because individuals are not able to chose their actions no matter how virtuous or viscous they may be, as all their actions are all already predetermined. The idea of hard determinism refutes the idea of if-then statements because human choices and actions are not taken into factor because under hard determinism humans are not responsible for our actions. Hard determinism received its greatest influence from the physicist Isaac Newton, and his studies in physics and his idea of the universe as “matter in motion”. People who believe in Newton’s “matter in motion” theory who also believe in hard determinism applied the idea to everything in the universe, that everything is just matter in motion including humans, who need to obey the laws of nature just as anything else needs