Difference Between Indeterminism And Free Will

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.

Determinists put forward that the past determines the future absolutely. Every action, event, happening, and “choice” that occurs in one’s life leads said person up to each new “choice” and determines for him or her beforehand what they will “choose.” This view is extremely rigid and does not allow for any other factors to be involved in what determines actions; it is simply that the past causally determines the future. The main issue with hard determinism in relation to responsibility is that it completely eradicates any and all human responsibility. If, for example,

It may be that humans do not have any amount of free will as determinism and indeterminism suggest, but this idea is hard to accept for many. A lack of free will implies a sort of meaningless existence where our “choices” don’t actually matter. Additionally, placing blame and holding people responsible in a world without free will would be complicated, but more than likely we would have to do it anyway in order for humans to survive. In order to maintain society, we have to acknowledge, at least on a practical level, the fact that we all experience life’s decisions as genuine choices and believe that that is the reality of free