Discussion on the Determination of Self

Discussion on the Determination of Self

In every day life we experience causality and order, which would

suggest that everything is ordered and caused by something outside

ourselves. However it is hard to believe that we have no free choices

when presented with a decision to be made, surely if we were unable to

make choices concerning the direction and outcome of his own life, is

a slave. However many philosophers and thinkers have pondered this

over the years, and some believe that when we believe we are presented

with choices we are being deceived, and as B.F Skinner said, ‘human

beings.. are not free, because all men are really puppets or robots.

Man is a meat machine.’ He argues that as a puppet, we have no will of

our own: our movements are entirely under the control of the

puppet-master who pulls the puppet – strings. This presents a problem

for us, because even if we were to hold that man has no real freedom

and all his actions are controlled, we need to know who it is that is

‘pulling the strings’. It has been supposed that he is God, who is

omnipotent and omniscient. These capabilities surely allow him to

control the destinies of mankind. This concept is known as theological

determinism. Both St Augustine and Calvin had a clear belief in

theological determinism. According to Calvin, God has already decided

who is going to go to Heaven and who is going to Hell. God’s power is

magnified at the cost of man’s freedom. It seems to me that by

accepting this theory of determinism, one must reject the idea of

moral responsibility. We must choose whether we believe that at the

point of decision making a person can distinguish and thu...

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...argue that the order and patterning we perceive

in the world is purely circumstantial, although it cannot be denied it

also does not necessarily lead to a strict determinism, to do this

would not be logical. As Kant has pointed out, ‘freedom’ is not

strictly the oppsite of ‘determinism’, which is completely

constrained, forced or compelled. The opposite of this would surely be

better described as ;chance’, where events would be completely

unpredictable and random. Free will by it’s definition cannot be fully

determined, yet surely it is an impossibility that we, along with our

actions, destinies, and characters are pure chance. Kant maintained

that an act of free- will cannot be fully determined nor can it be

pure chance, but somehow it is both. He said the only explanation is

to ‘comprehend the incomprehensibility.’