Freedom of Will: Is It a Deception or Not?

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There are many arguments for and against the freedom of will. The distant causation argument seems to show that the freedom of will is a deception. Since, it states that our actions are all the product of causes that happened outside of our own control. In the essay I will be discussing how effective this argument is in showing that our freedom of will is actually an illusion. To understand the reasoning of the distant causation argument, we need to look at the premise and the conclusion that results from them. In “Core Questions in Philosophy”, Elliott Sober presents his version of the argument, which is: 1) If an agent freely performs an action, then the agent is responsible for the action. 2) Agents are not responsible for actions that are caused by factors outside their control. 3) Every action an agent performs is caused by factors (genes and early childhood environments) outside their control. Therefore, no action is preformed freely. (Sober, 269). The distant causation argument states that we could not have any free will because our actions are affected by events from the past and our own genetic make-up. The first premise of the argument states that if they perform an action of free will then they would be responsible of that action. This means that the action was performed because they chose to do it. This leads to the second premise which talks about actions that are effected by factor they cannot control themselves. An example of a factor would be the unpredictable weather. A person’s decision on what to wear is affected due to conditions outside. They cannot control what the weather would be like. Therefore, according to the premise, the action the person makes is due to the weather and they had no freedom to choo... ... middle of paper ... ... Therefore the decision to eat was determined by the body and not the free will of the mind. It seems that all actions of people are results of past event s and genes. These examples show how the premise of the argument is true in showing that there is not action that is causes by free will. Even though we think we are performing actions based on our free will, these actions were actually determined by factors outside our own control. The distant causation argument seems to be very successful in showing that the freedom of will is an illusion, because it presents premises that are valid. In addition, it shows that people who do not favour the argument, would still believe in the premise are valid, making the conclusion true. In the end, both sides agree that the premise seems to be valid so, the argument shows that actions are not the result of the freedom of will.

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