Implications of Determinism and Free Will

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Recommended: Controversy between free will and determinism

Having the free will to write an essay on the “implications of determinism for our understanding of free will” clearly shows that we have the free will to write the essay and the implication for failure of not writing is our decision. Upon reading this essay the free will to decide to write the essay was decided upon by the writer. It was already determined before embarking on this course that an essay would need to be written. Therefore, as logic would have it, it would be irrational to say that determinism and free will are not compatible. What needs to be illustrated is that an individual interpretation of this long standing philosophical argument is that there are many implications of determinism. That is , determinism does not work alone but is compatible with free will not unlike the ‘yin-yang’ theory whereby one relies upon the other. In light of this, what are the implications of determinism in the ability to understand free will? Hard Determinists believe that individuals do not have free will, which then questions moral responsibility. As opposed to this are the compatibilists and soft determinists who believe in both the compatibility of determination and free will. As the ‘yin-yan’theory that free will and determination is interdependent but interconnected as they interrelate to one another.

As William James (Doyle, n.d.) said, “The theory of Determinism, in which the will is determined or swayed to a particular course by external inducements and forced habits, so that the consciousness of freedom rests chiefly upon an oblivion of the antecedents of our choice” For the purpose of this essay, Williams James’s definition of determinism is going to be the influence of the implication of determinism and free wi...

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...essays/introducingphilosophy/13-free-will-and-determinism-r29
O'Connor, T. (2013) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/freewill/
Peak, A. (n.d.). Minority Report; Determinism and Free Will. Retrieved from http://alexpeak.com/art/films/mr/freewill/
SparkNotes Editors. (2005). SparkNote on Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Retrieved March 31, 2014, from http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kant/
Taylor, R. (1974). Fate, in Metaphysics. In. PHIL151: Introduction to Philosophy. Armidale, Australia: University of New England. Retrieved from http://moodle.une.edu.au/pluginfile.php/690547/mod_resource/content/2/Combined%20readings%20Part%201.pdf
Vargus, M. (2013). How to solve the problem of free will. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/2667182/How_to_solve_the_problem_of_free_will

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