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Summary of freedom and determinism
A philosophical look at the relationship between determinism and freedom
Freedom and determinism
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Consider this argument: 'If the future is already determined, then it must be possible to know in advance what will happen. But, if that is so, then free will is impossible.' Do you agree? Is there any satisfactory way of acting freely if determinism is true?
The connection between free will and moral responsibility has been a heavily debated topic by early philosophers with many ancient thinkers trying to demonstrate that humans either do have ultimate control over our actions and are not made by external forces or that humans do not have control and that the trajectory of our lives is pre-determined. The most common argument and the one I will focus on in this essay suggests that free will can not be correlated with randomness and, therefore, all other possibilities are exhausted.
In this essay, I will explore the concept of free will by drawing a correlation to determinism and analyse if free will is dictated for us. I will argue that the future is
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determined, however, we can only determine it if free will is not obstructed. My argument will present several contradictions, however, they are relevant to my conclusion. I will explore the theories regarding the future and how there is a strong connection to free will. I will also relate future and time by referring to David Lewis’ ‘The Paradoxes of Time Travel and link it to Richard Taylor’s ‘Freedom, Determinism and Fate’, in order to come to the most logical conclusion possible. The idea that the future is pre-determined for humans is evident in the future itself suggesting that a chain of cause and effect will result in some form of outcome. The argument that many philosophers have presented suggesting that the future is the result of a pre-determined set of paths that cannot be reconstructed or changed by free will due to the events that occurred in the past result in what lies ahead in the future and, therefore, the future can be, fore destined. However, if there were an option to incorporate the past with the future it would be through the concept of time travel. In David Lewis’ "The Paradoxes of Time Travel", he distinguishes temporal parts and the causal order of events by creating a form of connection between time in order for this to be accomplished.
If a two-way communicator existed across time for this to be achieved the two metaphysical considerations must be met. Firstly, Lewis highlights the that “time is one dimension of four”, in the fourth-dimensional world, suggesting that time is just as perceptible as any place and potentially where the time traveller will send the message. Second, fourth-dimensional spectrum also considers causation and possible reverse causation, that is there must be awareness for earlier events to be causally dependable on the future events, and therefore how communication will take place between two different times. Lewis argues that his grandfather paradox can provide solidarity with the past, only if a time traveller was to travel to the past, they would not be able to make any changes that may potentially lead to them never
existing. As Lewis argues, if time is made up of temporal parts that cannot be changed, which allows for the possibility that if Tim was to make the smallest change to the path of events then he could potentially change the future drastically, preventing his grandfather and, therefore, himself from being conceived. Time is determined as suggested by Lewis, argues "cannot be subdivided into dissimilar temporal parts" (p. 27) and, therefore, nothing can be changed once that event has taken place. The doctrine of Fatalism implies that all events are predetermined by forces that people cant control and therefore, all future events are dictated, causing all events to happen. This idea opposes free will as we have no choice with our actions that alternativeness in our futures if our futures have already been fixed. A fatalist, therefore, believes we are unable to change the future or past as it's already been set out for us. Determinism, on the other hand, argues that events occur due to cause and effect. It disputes the claim that the future as we know it is fixed but it can be changed as a consequence of a set of causally related events. A Determinist would make no link between cause of events and the events that actually happen as they for a determinist to say that something is rendered unavoidable by its causes is to say that the causes are not determined, which is not a logically sound statement. A cause of an event is also an event itself: if I fall to my death because I have jumped off a building, my death was an event caused by the event of my jump; I could have freely decided to not jump but that event, like the whole sequence, was determined In no contrast, the past is defined as what has happened. There is no distinction between the two, especially if time is considered in the way David Lewis maintains. Lewis states that "the lives of common people" occur "at a rate of exactly one hour of time, per hour of time" (p. 26). He describes time as a plane which is made up of temporal parts; There is not a distinction between the supposed causes of events and the events themselves; for a determinist to say that something is rendered unavoidable by its causes is to say that the causes are not determined, which is not a logically sound statement. A cause of an event is also an event itself: if I fall to my death because I have jumped off a building, my death was an event caused by the event of my jump; I could have freely decided to not jump but that event, like the whole sequence, was determined. Determinism is unavoidable. This claim does not mean free will is impossible; free will is not defined as the ability to avoid future events, it is the ability to act freely and on impulse. To avoid something it must be known that it is going to occur in order to act in avoidance; decisions are made in the present for the present situation. Consider this: there is a cup of water on an empty table in front of you. In five minutes you are to walk away from this table, having drunk none, some, or all of the water from the cup. When one minute has passed you have not touched the cup because you willingly refrain from doing so. This is, firstly, an example of free will; you have the option of drinking the water but you do not. Whatever you may choose to do, free will would still be exemplified. If I was, hypothetically, to be able to determine the events of the next three minutes and I knew you would not touch the cup, in the next three minutes you would not touch the cup. You may have thought you were avoiding a determined future that involves drinking from the cup, when in actual fact your inability to foresee the future renders avoiding any such determined events impossible. Determinism of the future is a truth that will continue to plague philosophers until an unlikely way of travelling through time is uncovered. Even if such a revelation occurs, a time traveller's presence in the future will be no revelation to the future itself. Determinism cannot impede free will and the impossibility of foreseeing the future means that the freedom of activity is a constant truth, especially given our ability to consider the future.
Furthermore, free will has been closely connected to the moral responsibility, in that one acts knowing they will be res for their own actions. There should be philosophical conditions regarding responsibility such like the alternatives that one has for action and moral significance of those alternatives. Nevertheless, moral responsibility does not exhaust the implication of free will.
3. Discuss the issue between Baron d'Holbach and William James on free will and determinism?
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.
In respect to the arguments of Ayer and Holbach, the dilemma of determinism and its compatibility with that of free will are found to be in question. Holbach makes a strong case for hard determinism in his System of Nature, in which he defines determinism to be a doctrine that everything and most importantly human actions are caused, and it follows that we are not free and therefore haven’t any moral responsibility in regard to our actions. For Ayer, a compatibilist believing that free will is compatible with determinism, it is the reconciliation and dissolution of the problem of determinism and moral responsibility with free willing that is argued. Ayer believes that this problem can be dissolved by the clarification of language usage and the clarification of what freedom is in relationship to those things that oppose freedom or restrain it. In either case, what is at stake is the free will of an agent, and whether or not that agent is morally responsible. What is to be seen from a discussion of these arguments is the applicability and validity of these two philosophies to situations where one must make a choice, and whether or not that person is acting freely and is thus responsible given his current situation. In this vein, the case of Socrates’ imprisonment and whether or not he acted freely in respect to his decision to leave or stay in prison can be evaluated by the discussion of the arguments presented in respect to the nature of free will in its reconciliation with determinism in the compatibilist vein and its absence in the causality of hard determinism.
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.
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.
.... ... middle of paper ... ... Nevertheless, as I stated earlier, for something to be determined, I believe that God is required. So, by saying that one needs to eliminate a God and other requirements to have free will, then one falsifies determinism, thus making this view incorrect.
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.
The first argument for free will is what one could call the quantum mechanics argument. This argument is about the uncertainty principle and how human nature cannot be statistically determined because atomic physics and human behavior do not follow the same laws (Bolles 1963). Another argument described by Bolles (2002) is the sense of freedom of man. Man’s awareness is the creation of free will, so that alone would rule out determinism. Another problem with predicting human behavior is that people are all different artistically and intellectually, so everyone will react differently (Bolles 2002). In Bolles w...
Although the tradition of western philosophy was once famously called a series of 'footnotes to Plato' (A.N. Whitehead), there seems to be at least one major philosophical debate that owes it s heritage neither to Plato nor to any of his ancient compatriots. The problem of free will and determinism seems not to have been a major issue directly exercising the minds of philosophers of the ancient world. There are probably two main reasons for this. First, 'the prevailing view of the universe in their day did not presuppose an omnipotent deity. The Olympians were certainly magnificently superhuman but they fell far short of total power. Even Zeus, the greatest of the gods, did not have everything his own way as many a myth testifies. However, once the Judaeo-Christian notion of the Almighty came to dominate the thinking of Europe, then doubts emerged about the scope of human freedom. For, if God is the omnipotent creator of all, then his created beings may well enquire whether they are his totally passive automata or endowed with independent choice and responsibility. Second, the Greeks lacked a deep-seated belief in scientific determinism. Scientists and non-scientists alike, we children of the modem world cannot escape strong conditioning into the belief that all physical events have physical causes, that we live in a universe governed by inexorable laws of nature. Once we apply this general principle to human behaviour we are bound to ask whether our actions are the expression of our free will or simply mechanistic reactions to stimuli. In this essay I intend to examine a central doctrine of Aristotle and in the course of this examination show that, although Ar...
Great human minds have pondered whether free will exists for millenniums. Augustine and Plato, groundbreaking philosophers of their time, had similar ideologies in regard to man’s freewill, which encompassed that knowledge can be achieved from eternal and absolute things. The paper will discuss Plato and Augustine’s ideologies about man’s free will and how they coincide with one another.
Free will is a term defining the capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action, and is what we, as humans, are naturally inclined to accepting as something that we have. In other words, there is a wide consensus among philosophers that we are free agents; we choose to act or not to act according to our own independent decision-making methods. But this is a commonly debated topic, and many questions have been posed in response to the free will and determinism debate – questions such as: are we but mere puppets to a determinative force? The libertarian standpoint argues that any necessitating causal laws do not govern human actions. Thus, humans have a real notion of responsibility and freedom. However, contrasting standpoints such as determinism argue against this, claiming that everything is determined in one way or another. For example, our actions may have been predetermined by a mysterious, transcendent force (i.e God). In this paper, I will be investigating views of libertarianism in order to ascertain to what degree it is the most convincing standpoint. In doing so, I will briefly be comparing libertarianism to its opposite: determinism. Firstly, I will discuss the views of philosophical thinker Robert Kane and how he supports libertarianism through his Garden of the Forking Paths story. This will be followed with an examination of Pierre Simon de Laplace’s deterministic arguments via Newton’s cited astronomy predictions. Finally, I will turn to Jean-Paul Sartre’s libertarianism to investigate the significance of individuality and how this supports libertarianism. This examination will show the significan...
The dilemma of determinism is an issue that has led to widespread debate over whether or not people have free will. The dilemma of determinism follows as such; (A) if determinism is true, we are not responsible, since our choices are determined by factors we can’t control, (B) Indeterminism is true, we are not responsible, since every choice happens by chance, (C) But either determinism or indeterminism is true, (D) Therefore, we are not morally responsible for what we do. Simply, the dilemma states that we cannot be free and therefore are not responsible for our choices. This dilemma has been approached by some people called compatibilists who believe that we can be responsible for our choices even though the choice was determined in advance.
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).
Free Will Analyzing our individual free will can be very intriguing and can almost reach the point of being paradoxical. Ultimately, free will determines the level of responsibility we claim for our actions. Obviously, if outside forces determine our choices, we cannot be held responsible for our actions. However, if our choices are made with total freedom than certainly we must claim responsibility for our choices and actions. The readings I chose offered two quite opposite theories on individual human freedom, determinism vs. existentialism.