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Reconciling free will and determinism
Reconciling free will and determinism
Free Will Vs. Determinism Philosophy
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There are a lot of different things that come to mind when somebody thinks of the phrase Free Will, and there are some people who think that free will does not exists and that everything is already decided for you, but there are also people who believe in it and think that you are free to do as you please. An example that explains the problem that people have with free will is the essay by Walter T. Stace called “Is Determinism Inconsistent with Free Will?”, where Stace discusses why people, especially philosophers, think that free will does not exist. In this essay, Walter T. Stace writes about how the existence of free will is not a real problem, that a lot of people may not believe in free will because they do not have the correct definition of it, but if they …show more content…
Walter T. Stace uses different examples in his essay about people not acting in free will and people acting in free will in order to try and prove that indeterminism is not the definition of free will and try to get the correct definition. He provides examples by showing cases where the question of whether the man acted in free will is asked, one of the examples he uses to try to find the correct definition of free will is asking the man if he stole acting in free will. In one of the cases the man answers “yes, I stole the bread because I was hungry.” and in the other, the man answers “no, I stole because my employer threatened to beat me if I did not” (Barnet). Another example he uses is asking a man if he didn’t eat for a whole week out of his own free will, in one case the man answers “no, I was lost in the desert and could find no food”, and in the other case the man answers, “yes I did it because I wanted to compel the British government to give India its independence”
“Free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion” (Dictionary.com). The novel Slaughterhouse five portrays the idea of not having free will. The award winning author, Kurt Vonnegut, tells
The view of free will has been heavily debated in the field of philosophy. Whether humans possess free will or rather life is determined. With the aid of James Rachels ' article, The Debate over Free Will, it is clearly revealed that human lives are "both determined and free at the same time" (p.482, Rachels), thus, in line with the ideas of compatibilist responses. Human 's actions are based on certain situations that are causally determined by unexpected events, forced occurrence, and certain cases that causes one to outweigh the laws of cause and effect. The article also showcases instances where free will does exist. When human actions are being based on one 's emotions of the situation, desire, and simply that humans are creatures that are created to have intellectual reasoning. I argue, that Rachels’ article, provides helpful evidence on compatibilists responses that demonstrate free will and determinism actions come into play with each other.
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.
The argument of free will and determinism is a very complex argument. Some might say we have free will because we are in control; we have the ability to make our own choices. Others might say it’s in our biological nature to do the things we do; it’s beyond our control. Basically our life experiences and choices are already pre determined and there’s nothing we can do to change it. Many philosophers have made very strong arguments that support both sides.
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.
Stace’s main argument in stated in, “The dispute is merely verbal, and is due to nothing but a confusion about the meaning of words. It is now what is fashionably called a semantic problem.” Words are all we really have to explain our thoughts. We can add to words by using body language and pictures, but even these are still explained in words. Words are given meaning, according to Stace, by, “Common usage is the criterion for deciding whether a definition is correct or not.” This means that words should be used, as everyone knows them. The exception to this is slang. So to a point it is philosophers changing the words of freewill and creating their own slang definition and like Stace says, “the mistake which the deniers of freewill have made is rather subtle and difficult to detect.” Stace feels that the wrong definition of freewill is the ability to do something else.
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.
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.
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.
Ultimately, the free will problem will remain a highly debated subject due to its complicated nature. The solutions of determinism, compatibilism, and incompatibilism posed by Nagel in addition to my argument dealing with chance events are merely possibilities on how to dissect the phrase, “I could have chosen otherwise”. This concept is rooted in the subject of philosophy, since there is often no right answer. Philosophy allows us to express our opinions and come up with conclusions we believe to be true. Whether humans have free will or not will remain a mystery that we do our best in solving.
There are many great philosophical ideas and questions that are known and of course unknown. One of the questions that really enticed my interest was the question of whether or not we have free will. I myself was once a believer of people having free will and doing what I want was my choice and my choice alone. However, after careful consideration and lectures I have been reversed in how I believe in free will. Is there any free will though? Many people would say yes there is and of course there are some who believe that free will is a fallacy and not to be believed. Whether or not there is free will is yet to be determined but what we have to go on and by is from philosophers and every person who has their two cents to fill in. In this discussion of philosophy there will be points made for and against the establishment of free will and basis for judgement of free will exists or not.
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
The argument on free will has stemmed into different branches of opinions; the two main braches being compatibilism and incompatibilism. Frankfurt argues that free will is compatible with determinism because some humans are predetermined to have his definition of free will. Van Inwagen argues that free will is not compatible with determinism because if nature and the universe determine the future, the only thing that we are free to do is what we actually do and thus we are not free. I pull more to the Van Inwagen side simply because it is more logically sound. If only certain people are free or people are free only under certain conditions, then we are not actually free.
Since the foundation of philosophy, every philosopher has had some opinion on free will in some sense, from Aristotle to Kant. Free will is defined as the agent's action to do something unimpeded, with many other factors going into it Many philosophers ask the question: Do humans really have free will? Or is consciousness a myth and we have no real choice at all? Free will has many components and is fundamental in our day to day lives and it’s time to see if it is really there or not.
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).