Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The importance of Personal freedom
Responsibility and freedom
Personal freedom
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The importance of Personal freedom
The basic premise of Harry G. Frankfurt’s, Alternate Possibilities and Morality argues against the idea of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, which states, that a person is only morally responsible for his or her said action if they could have done otherwise. Although many can agree that this constitutes for an astounding contradiction to the development of morality and choice, I do not believe that Frankfurt’s response constitutes as a genuine counterexample to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. According to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities the issues that arise is whether there is a presence of freewill and the effect that freewill plays on morality. This idea of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities complements the definition because according to Webster’s dictionary the definition states, ‘freewill is the freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention.’ According to this definition and the Principle of Alternate Possibilities it is agreed upon that freewill is a factor that must be taken into consideration when discussing the value of the actions committed by the individual. Human actions are the primary motives for wanting this concept of free will, and determining its validity as part of the issue of values and the morality of the individual. These motives are the all-important questions of life's meaning and of personal responsibility. Without freewill, we ultimately have no control over our individual goals and choices. If all of our actions were simply the inevitable operation of forces outside of ourselves and freewill is some kind of illusion then to many of us life would seem bleak. However, formulating the concept and proving its validity a...
... middle of paper ...
...-than reliable conclusion to his own opinions on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. Last in his argument he reject the presence of freewill. Freewill is a powerful internal idea that can prove to lead us as individuals in different direction. And when we are forced into doing an action that we cannot otherwise choose differently I believe that a person should not be morally held responsible to that said action. It is important to not only weigh the value of the action but also the mind of the individual preforming the act. If they are forced into doing an act that they genuine did not act upon then he or she should not be held responsible. Ultimately, although his conclusion to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities can be viable in some case, it does not manage to completely shadow the idea of morality state in the Principle and is thus rendered false.
... from previous experiences and bases future decisions on what they have experienced. When a person makes a decision that isn’t justified, they unknowingly change how they view future problems. If the decision has not been based in truth, it allows them a certain amount of unearned freedom to make wrong decisions, as opposed to when one make a proper decisions. It is crucial that every decision made is justified in order to keep their moral compass steady and to make the proper decisions when the choice is hard.
He concludes this from three premises: 1) Humans behave the way they do because of the way they are 2) If you’re going to be responsible for the things However, as mentioned above, society makes the words illegal and immoral synonymous. For instance, in a very traditional, albeit outdated, tribe in Africa, cannibalism exists and isn’t frowned upon. Since this is how the tribe has lived for centuries and thus the way they are, they cannot be held responsible for their actions according to Strawson. While I believe that to be true, society still views the actions of this tribe immoral, and regardless of who they are or how they were raised, they would still be held accountable.
Rossian Pluralism claims that there are multiple things that we have basic, intrinsic moral reason to do, which he names as the prima facie duties. These duties are not real, obligatory duties that one must follow under all circumstances, but are “conditional duties” (Ross 754) that one should decide to follow or reject upon reflection of their circumstances. This moral theory has faced criticisms, most strongly in the form of the problem of trade-offs. However, I will demonstrate that the problem of trade-offs is an issue that can be neglected as a valid objection to Rossian Pluralism because it is applicable to other theories as well and it is a factor that makes a moral theory more valuable than not.
It is a problem due to the assumptions that we already know the conditions presented to us in any given situation. The trend she focuses on is known as the Deep Self View. The idea of the deep self view stems from three writers, Harry Frankfurt, Gary Watson and Charles Taylor. Frankfurt believes that there is a difference between freedom of action and freedom of the will. Freedom of action is the idea that someone can do whatever they want. Freedom of the will is if someone has the will to do whatever they want. To explain it better he introduces the concept of first order desires and second order desires. First- order desires are the desires to have or do many things, second order desires are desires about what we want and the desires to put them in action. Philosopher Gary Watson’s, view is like Frankfurt’s but in his terms “an agent is responsible for an action if the desires expressed by that action are of a particular kind.” (Wolf 247) Watson introduces the differences between free action and unfree action, is that these actions must be analyzed through its sources. Taylor on the other-hand claims that responsibility depends on how we criticize, reflect and revise our selves. Their views relate in which they all agree “…that the key to responsibility lies in the fact that responsible agents are those for whom it is not just the case that their actions are within the control of their wills, but also the case that their wills are within the control of their selves in some deeper sense.” (Wolf 248). This conclusion leads her into the discussion of the deep-self view. The deep-self view explains who we are inside based on our desires, the deep-self is influenced by what we choose to desire and what we desire. This influences our thoughts and decisions which leads into our moral responsibility. She later goes on to explain the inefficiencies to the deep-self
In Roderick Chisholm’s essay Human Freedom and the Self he makes the reader aware of an interesting paradox which is not normally associated with the theory of free will. Chisholm outlines the metaphysical problem of human freedom as the fact that we claim human beings to be the responsible agents in their lives yet this directly opposes both the deterministic (that every action was caused by a previous action) and the indeterministic (that every act is not caused by anything in particular) view of human action. To hold the theory that humans are the responsible agents in regards to their actions is to discredit hundreds of years of philosophical intuition and insight.
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.
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.
Frankfurtean compatibilism provides a more refined model than Humean compatibilism. Humean compatibilism has denied the deterministic notion of freedom-the ability to have chosen otherwise. Hume then provides a new definition of freedom, as “a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will” (“Of Liberty and Necessity”, 23). In Hume’s view, as long as we act according to our desires and belief, we are exercising freedom of will and freedom of action. Frankfurt adds a further distinction within our desires, and concludes that our will is free if and only if we act on a first-order desire determined by our second-order desire. An agent’s will, defined by Frankfurt, is “the notion of an effective desire-one that moves (or will or would move) a ...
He states, “A person may well be morally responsible for what he has done even though he could not have done otherwise”. Frankfurt defends the idea that one must be morally responsible in some sense rather than just blaming the past, in a rather pessimistic manner. He also suggests that you are not responsible if you could not have avoided the situation and decision that you made. In Harris’s case, Frankfurt would say that Harris could be held responsible for his actions even though there is a possibility that Harris could not have acted otherwise. In P.F. Strawson’s essay “Freedom and Resentment”, he states, “This is that the notions of moral guilt, of blame, of moral responsibility are inherently confused and that we can see this to be so if we consider the consequences either of the truth of determinism or of its falsity” (72). Whether or not you one has the ability to control their actions, they still have the freedom to express feelings and emotions subsequent to their determined actions. We experience consequences in regards to our actions and most would even say morally
A piece of evidence that he gives is that reason cannot be the motive to moral action; if reason can't motivate any action, it ultimately cannot motivate moral
The aim of this essay is to prove the reliability of and why Libertarianism is the most coherent of the three views, which refers to the idea of human free will being true, that one is not determined, and therefore, they are morally responsible. In response to the quote on the essay, I am disagreeing with Wolf. This essay will be further strengthened with the help of such authors as C.A. Campell, R. Taylor and R.M. Chisholm. They present similar arguments, which essentially demonstrate that one could have done otherwise and one is the sole author of the volition. I will present the three most common arguments in support of Libertarianism, present an objection against Libertarianism and attempt to rebut it as well as reject one main argument from the other views. As a result, this essay will prove that one is held morally responsibly for any act that was performed or chosen by them, which qualify as a human act.
of taking decisions. Yes, I think he is correct. Since he doesn’t believe on his senses he could consider
... occurs in his idea of “hypothetical certainty.” He uses this as a link to a substantial account of freedom; however, he forgets that God creates a universe where, if I were meant to leave my door open, then I will leave my door open, because that is the best possible action. It is true that the best universe could not have within it any of the other infinitely possible universes, because that would mean simultaneous, contradicting contingencies. In other words, I could not open my door and leave my door closed in the same universe. So it must be that there is only one possible action that God would “certainly” allow. If God makes certain one action in the best universe, then God must make all actions certain in the best universe. Therefore, all actions in the best universe are necessary in that God chose those actions for that specific universe and none other.
Some Philosophers believe that free will is not required in moral responsibility. John Fischer states that “human agents do not have free will, but they are still morally responsible for their choices and actions.” Fischer is basically saying that moral responsibility is not as strong as free will (Timpe).
The concept of free will has developed slowly, though ancient philosophers did address the subject when trying to reconcile intentional action with religious concerns about human and divine freedom. It wasn’t until the end of medieval times that the modern-day understanding of freedom as a completely undetermined choice between alternatives was introduced. However, it is unclear how to reconcile contemporary science that acknowledges the in...