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Implications of free will
Essay on freedom of choice
The importance of freedom of choice
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Free will is said to be imperative because it supposedly, leads to the greater good. The reason for this is because it allows us to be praiseworthy and blameworthy for our actions. It is also said to be a greater good because it allows us to recognize and identify the evil in the world and enables the appreciation of good. Without the human evils caused by free will, we would underestimate the level of purity in the world. The reason that free will is considered such a greater good is because it allows for liberty in the event of deciphering dilemmas and the making of decisions. Having free will enables humans to have the ability to commit evil deeds as they desire, but, it also allows them to choose to commit pure acts representing the good. The idea that free will allows us to be praiseworthy is the reason it is considered such a great good. If the Divine created a world where humans were unable to pursue evil, then, we would not possess free will due to the fact that we would be controlled into pursuing only pure and good trials. …show more content…
The previous statement is, in short, the response of Jobe; he was a philosopher who essentially questioned our audacity to believe we know, or can begin to understand the plans and desires of the Divine. He suggests: the divine may have reasons above our comprehension about the betterment of the society through the implication of free will- allowing evil. Suppose the reasoning for his allowing free will is the idea that suffering leads to a greater good: that good cannot possibly exist without evil. Without evil, we could not comprehend the value of goodness, and would neglect to understand it. Thus, there would be no comparison to lead to a controversy surrounding evil, and would inhibit our ability to choose freely our course 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.
“He has finally learned to love big brother” was how George Orwell in his novel 1984 described Winston, conversion to the party are represented by big brother at the end of the novel. It is easy to believe that at this instance, after torturous reeducation that Winston has endured, he has lost free will and no longer be able to freely choose to love big brother but was forced to, against hiss will. Therefore Winston was never free to love big brother, and in fact not free at all after his “reeducation.” But if we are to accept a definition of free will that stipulates that we are able to produce and act on our own volitions we must accept that Winston has retained and has chosen to love big brother out of his own free will.
God is someone who encompasses all good things which means he must be a good God, and a good God would not want evil in our world. Humans having free will is a claim brought up by Stump to show Plantinga’s “Free will defense,” to possibly answer the problem of evil. Plantinga believes the response to the logical problem of evil is, the possibility of having free will and using it for good rather than evil, is a value that has the potential to outweigh all the evil in the world. Stump revises this claim because it leaves the existence of evil mysterious and does not fulfill the entirety of the response to the evidential problem of
Angie Bachmann choose to gamble not only once but twice until it became an addiction of hers. She was aware of the choices she made and should have took responsibility of her gambling addiction. She could have taken some steps to prevent her outcome but decided not to. The Neurology Of Free Will explains “Angie Bachmann gambled not by choice, but out of habit”(254). which clarify everybody had choices in life and had the freewill to decide what they want to do because they are conscious and know what's going on around them once you become addicted it is truly your fault for not making other choices and seeking help which became a habit to Angie to keep on doing it when it was clearly her responsibility for making good decisions and not letting an addiction get the best of her.
The cause of how people have chosen evil has been a conceptual issue for thousands of years on many different perspectives. People from a religious point of view believe that the underlining cause of evil is sin and temptation. Half of the time humans can choose good over evil in situations based off the legal system and the moral standards of society. "The interest of work in the common would not hold it together, instinctual ...
Choices that people make have a giant place in their lives. Most of us consider that we do these choices freely, that we have free will to make these choices. The point that most of us miss is free will is not simple as is it looks like. When one makes choices doesn’t he consider that what would that choices lead him to? Therefore does he make those choices for his benefits or his desires to make those choices? Does the environment push him to make those choices or does he have the free will to ignore his own environment? Philosopher and writes splits around those questions. There is different thesis, beliefs about free will. Some say that we are conditioned from birth with qualities of our personality, social standing and attitudes. That we do not have free will, our choices shapes up by the world we born in to. Some others believe that we born as a blank paper we could shape by the occasions or choices that we make freely. Marry Midgley on her article “Freedom and Heredity” defends that without certain limitations for instance our talents, capacities, natural feelings we would not need to use free will. Those limitations lead us to use free will and make choices freely. She continues without our limitations we do not need to use free will. Free will needs to be used according to our needs but when mentioning need not as our moral need as our needs to what could we bring up with our capacities. We need to use our free will without stereotypes. Furthermore free will should be shaped by the choice that would lead us good consequences.
The power of acting without necessity and acting on one’s own discretions, free will still enamors debates today, as it did in the past with philosophers Nietzsche, Descartes, and Hume. There are two strong opposing views on the topic, one being determinism and the other “free will”. Determinism, or the belief a person lacks free will and all events including human actions are determined by forces outside the will of an individual contrasts the entire premise of free will. Rene Descartes formulates his philosophical work through deductive reasoning and follows his work with his system of reasoning. David Hume analyzes philosophical questions with inductive reasoning and skeptism with a strong systematic order. Neither a systematic philosopher nor a rigid thinker, Nietzsche offers his own nihilistic spin on the topic of free will. The three different approaches of free will by Nietzsche, Hume, and Descartes all obtain their strong suits as well as their pitfalls. Nietzsche insists free will is created by theologians and therefore denies its existence, while Descartes embraces free will, and Hume individualizes the meaning of free will.
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.
God is the source of evil. He created natural evil, and gave humans the ability to do moral evil by giving them a free will. However, had he not given people free will, then their actions would not be good or evil; nor could God reward or punish man for his actions since they had no choice in what to do. Therefore, by giving humans choice and free will, God allowed humanity to decide whether to reward themselves with temporary physical goods, and suffer in the long run from unhappiness, or forsake bodily pleasures for eternal happiness.
My claim that we have evil in this world because of our libertarian freedom does not fully answer the notion of “the problem of evil”. Saying we have evil in this world is just like saying we have bad decisions in this world. Bad decisions just like evil do not have a form. Every decision that God makes is a good decision therefore God cannot do evil. Human beings initiated evil. In fact, the first human beings (Adam and Eve) gave ongoing birth to evil because everyone ultimately came from them. So everyone after Adam and Eve is inherently evil. This idea is evident in our lives because every human being has committed evil. The ultimate problem is not how an all-powerful God can exist while evil exist, the ultimate dilemma is how a holy God can accept human beings that are not holy. Stephen T. Davis in “Free Will and Evil” writes, “All the moral evil that exists in the world is due to the choices of free moral agents whom God created” (Davis). Davis argues that free will is the answer to the problem of evil. This is consistent with my view that evil exists because of our libertarian freedom. Unlike Hick, Davis is consistent with my answer for evil and he is also consistent with how evil is solved in regards to heaven and hell. Davis states, “I do believe hell exists, but I do not hold that it is a place where protesting people are led against their will to be tortured vengefully. I believe that the people who will end up separated from God freely choose hell and would be unhappy in God’s presence. Having lived their lives apart from God, they will choose eternally—to go on doing so. So it is not a bad thing that they do not spend eternity in the presence of God. People who will prove to be incorrigibly evil will never come to th...
When thinking about the topic of free will I personally think it is the ability to make decisions that we WANT to make, and not being forced to do so. Susan Wolf explores the idea of our independence by looking at three different views exploring our freedom and responsibility. The first view Wolf talks about is The Real Self View (RSV) which explores the idea that, we are ultimately free when we act on our inmost values whether they are “right” or “wrong”. The next view she explores is The Autonomy View (AV), this view states that “we are free when we act on our own” (Wolf 206). The last view Wolf talks about is The Reason View
Imagine starting your day and not having a clue of what to do, but you begin to list the different options and routes you can take to eventually get from point A to point B. In choosing from that list, there coins the term “free will”. Free will is our ability to make decisions not caused by external factors or any other impediments that can stop us to do so. Being part of the human species, we would like to believe that we have “freedom from causation” because it is part of our human nature to believe that we are independent entities and our thoughts are produced from inside of us, on our own. At the other end of the spectrum, there is determinism. Determinism explains that all of our actions are already determined by certain external causes
Free will and moral responsibility has always been one of the most basic and fundamental elements of philosophy. It is undeniable that there is a connection between free will and moral responsibility. Different philosophers throughout the ages have viewed this connection in both similar and differing ways. The first connection between free will and moral responsibility can be seen by Aristotle and Epictetus through their views of the voluntary and involuntary. It can then be seen in a differing view by Frankfurt in which a person is only free if they are free to have the will they want.
A reason why some think that free will is not possible is because many believe that the only way we know about nature is from observations that we collect. Since observation can not give us a justification of free will, it is easy to think that there isn’t any such thing. Free will may not be something that we can see directly, but what best explains what we do see in human life. This may include, for example, the mistakes that human beings make in contrast to the few mistakes that other animals make. We also notice that human beings do all kinds of odd things that cannot be accounted for. We can examine a person’s background and find that some people with bad childhoods turn out to be decent, and vise versa. ...
...g they need to live, and its effects can be seen in religion, ethics, and many facets of life. In most religions, people use free will to choose good over bad so that the can be closer to whatever higher power they believe in. They also use their reason because reason, or intellect, knows there is a God, the highest good, and will chooses this good. Similarly, ethics comes from free will because human beings try to consistently choose what is in most accordance with God. People can also choose not to believe in any religion or moral code at all. David Hume, defines liberty as the, “power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will.” Aquinas similarly stated that human beings desire things, and make decisions to pursue these things. Being a human being means using free will for good and that is why free will is what human nature is.