...Do We Have Free Will? It is Friday night and your friends have just invited you to what is supposed to be the best party of the year, but it is your little brother’s birthday. Right before the party, you sit down to weigh your options and decided to stay home to celebrate your little brother’s birthday. Did you just make a free choice, or was your decision just the result of the natural laws in the universe coming together forcing you to stay home? In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, ""Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills" . According to this, though you may believe that you have the complete freedom to choose where you wanted to go, your ultimate choice was caused by the events that occurred before this one. Although the choice of going to the party or staying home may seem to have given the illusion of free will, there was ultimately a physical law that could most likely explain why this decision was made. First off, there are three main viewpoints on the idea of free will: compatibilism, determinism, and indeterminism. Compatibilists state that it is possible for both free will and determinism to exist at the same time. Given an instance, a compatibilist will say that even though you are only really presented with one option in all situations, if this option is in accordance with the your true desires, then you have free will. Another idea some compatibilists believe is that there is always a natural law that can explain an outcome, but on...
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...Free Will; Do We Have it or Not The question of free will is one which has been hotly debated for millennia. Some people believe that humans have the capacity for free will - the ability to choose their actions without being forced to follow a certain course by either by the influence of others or by natural laws. For many theists, free will is regarded as a special gift from God. The notion of human free will is also an important premise for a lot of what happens in human society - in particular, when it comes to our legal system. Free will is necessary for the notion of personal responsibility. If people do not have free will, then it is difficult to argue that they are personally and morally responsible for their actions - and if that is the case, how can they be punished for their misdeeds? In fact, how can they be praised for the good things they do, if those actions were not also freely chosen? George Orwell did not have free will when it came to shooting the elephant. Orwell expresses his conflicting views regarding imperialism through three examples of oppression by his country, by the Burmese, and by himself on the Burmese. Thus he was not morally responsible. This made Orwell realize his role in society and has made him a stronger man. But first let’s see what led to his feeling toward the Burmese people. The building up of the feeling of pressure starts with Orwell feeling humiliated and disrespected from the Burmese and shifts to a feeling of authority...
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...Truth behind Free Will: Luther vs. Erasmus The notion of free will is one of the most complex notions to define and to understand; it is defined differently according to one’s interpretation of the scriptures, especially the Bible. Both Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, influenced by their faith and beliefs, write respectively against and for free will. Both try to adequately answer the questions: Does man have free will? If yes, why and how? If not, how? Possible answers to these questions given by both authors and some scholars who write against or for each one of these opponents’ arguments highlight, especially, the differences in the conception of man’s free will. Luther and his supporters view free will as an imaginary or impossible and dangerous thing to have; Erasmus and his supporters defend that the existence of man’s free will is irrefutable for it is in human nature itself as the Bible says it. In spite of some of Luther’s good ideas that prove man’s absence of free will and Erasmus’ excellent interpretation of the Bible, neither of them fully responds to the human yearning of knowing the concept of free will. After a thorough and wise analysis of the defense and abnegation of man’s free will of these authors, I find it impossible to fully deny or prove the existence of man’s free will. It is important to take into account Luther’s argument and Erasmus’ before making a decision about the concept of free will. First of all, we are going...
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...Are Choices an Illusion? Section 1 Do I believe that the choices we make are just mere illusions? That we do not really have our own free will in making decisions? Yes, I believe this to be true. Section 2 However, some believe that we do have free will. Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist states that we do have free will, and he says: If culture is so successful, why don’t other species use it? They can’t—because they lack the psychological innate capabilities it requires. Our ancestors evolved the ability to act in the ways necessary for culture to succeed. Free will likely will be found right there—it’s what enables humans to control their actions in precisely the ways required to build and operate complex social systems. (Baumeister). What Baumeister is saying is that based on how our ancestor has developed a sense of communication is an act of free will. They have free will because they chose how they want to develop and how it will help them evolve. Baumesiter also states how our self-control "counts as a kind of freedom because it beings with not acting on every impulse," meaning that because of our free will, we don't always act straight away when we see something. We think about it first before we trigger a response. Such as thinking about what we say before we say it, we just don't say the first thing that comes to our mind without thinking about it. Steve Zara, a writer in the Richard Dawkins discussion section of the websites states that ...
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...Free will is not an illusion. Critically discuss. This essay defends the claim that free will is not an illusion. The first supportive argument for this claim by Aristotle is that we are all responsible for our actions (Aristotle & Taylor, C.C.W. 2006) and also we also responsible to the formation of our character. The second argument to support that free will is not an illusion, whether we like it or not we are free as stated by Sartre arguing that we are condemned to be free (Bernasconi 2007). Together with this view Augustine argue that there is a higher power but we are still free to make choices, those who are predestined to the heaven and those who are not. However this does mean we have free will but it’s a matter of clarification of how this relates to our free will. If determinism were to be right and that some of our decisions are predetermined it is true to say that our decisions are also based upon fate. In a certain aspect, by the person that we are, our gender, race, and religion and status and past experiences, we have been explained that these things do affect our decisions, and that we always have a minimum of two choices for everything we need to do. If someone at any point of time, anywhere was to make a choice that is truly free and voluntary then it can be proved that we have free will. Libertarianism argues that free will is an action involving true devised commands where human beings are free in their action as they are able reason without any physical...
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...argues in favor of a compatibilist, that free will and determinism can co-exist. Consequently it will support the concept of compatibilism and determine that it can be defended. Two basic ideas will be outlined in this argument in support of this claim. Firstly, the notion of compatibilism, that actions can be both free and causally determined (Shabo, 2012; Sober, 2009). Secondly, it will be deliberated what it means to act freely. Followed by a reply, these counter arguments will also be discussed; Incompatibilists disagree with these ideas and believe that determinism is true and that no person has free will, this is called hard determinism. In addition, a libertarian’s point of view; that we are free and our actions are not causally determined (Sober, 2009). Furthermore, the trouble with determining what freewill is. Argument 1 Compatibilism is the idea that determinism is true; every event in the world has a cause, however, freewill can still exist. The aim of a compatibilist is to show that an act can be done freely if it has been caused a certain way (Sober, 2009). This leaves room for the idea that freedom doesn’t require the absence of causality, but rather, the right kind of causality (Millican, 2010; Sober, 2009). This makes reasonable sense because it is common knowledge that the way an individual acts and thinks has been determined by their genes and past experiences. Who the person is has been affected by the way they have been brought up. Every action has been...
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...FREE WILL OR DETERMINISM 1 Free Will or Determinism Ashley Magee American InterContinental University FREE WILL OR DETERMINISM 2 Abstract This essay will discuss free will versus determinism. This will be a dialogue between an imaginary Socrates and me. A series of questions will be discussed to describe determinism and free will. FREE WILL OR DETERMINISM 3 Socrates: What is your definition of determinism? Ashley: Determinism is the thought that each event is caused by something. Since human actions could be looked at as an event then each choice is because of a cause. Socrates: So, if every event is based on a cause then we do not have free will. Ashley: I don’t believe human action is an event, I feel like we all make our own decisions and our fate is determined by our decisions. Socrates: What is your definition of free will? Ashley: Free will is to act without the confinement of fate. This is acting at one’s own concern. Socrates: Is it not true that we all have our own fate? Ashley: I believe that our fate lies in our own hands. It is up to us to decide how we live our lives. Socrates: Do you feel that every event has an explanatory cause? Ashley: I do not feel that way. Some things just can’t be explained and we will never know why some things happen. Socrates: Is it not true that everything happens for a reason? Ashley: I think that everything happens because of the decision that we made. Whether good or bad things happen...
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...The Cost of “Free” Will in Oedipus Rex (the King) Perhaps the Greek playwright Sophocles never had the concept of “free will” in mind when writing Oedipus Rex, but the play does allow for that interesting paradox we know today as free will. The paradox is: if Oedipus is told by the gods' oracles that he will kill his father and marry his mother, does he have any power to avoid this fate? That's a basic free will question. If Oedipus manages to avoid killing his father and marrying his mother, he will prove the gods wrong, and the oracle prediction turns out to be no prediction at all. How free can we truly be if created by an all knowing being? If God knows, even at the moment before our births, that we are already destined to ascend to Heaven or burn in Hell, can we move through life making truly free decisions? Or are we always to be viewed as puppets of destiny? Was Adam to be blamed for the fall? Or was that actually God's plan? So what is this idea of "original sin?" Shouldn't we celebrate Adam as a hero for freeing man from the state of unawareness that he lived in until he consumed the sacred pomegranate? Recall that the very first line following Adam and Eve's sin is "And they saw that they were naked." This nakedness is not so much of the body (though early Christians loved to view it that way), but rather a sense of viewing, as Joseph Campbell puts it, "duality," the basic difference between man and woman, right and wrong, and, ultimately, man...
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...view that we are not responsible for our actions When arguing whether or not we are responsible for our actions we are also always asking the question, are we free? Some people such as hard determinists believe that we are not responsible for our actions, and so are not free due to other aspects in our lives. Others, such as the libertarians, believe that we are totally free and should therefore be responsible for our actions. An assessment of these views will show that we are clearly responsible for our actions and that we therefore, have free will. According to Judeo-Christian teachings, God is omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent. For theological determinists God’s omniscience means that he has foreknowledge of everything that will happen in the future. This would mean that our paths are predestined and that we are unable to choose any other action than the one God has already seen, or planned for us. This would remove any sense of free will we have, as we could not make any choice other than the one god has already seen and chosen for us, so we could therefore not be responsible for our actions. This is very similar John Calvin’s beliefs, which sparked from his rejection of the catholic church and the idea that you could earn your way into heaven. Calvin believed that humans are predestined as to whether they go to hell or heaven. This would mean that no amount of good deeds or repentance could get you to heaven as you are predetermined and have no free will about...
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...Problems of Philosophy Essay #1 Compatibilism, the belief that one can be entirely free and wholly responsible for one’s actions regardless of the fact that those actions have been predetermined by a previous chain of events, is flawed in its definition of free will and remains contradictory with determinist views. If one is to maintain a determinist perspective, then it is logical to believe that we cannot be held morally accountable for our actions since we lack the free will to carry them out. If you are unable to exercise your free will, it does not exist. Many argue that a distinct classification of the words “free will” do not exist; thus, if the words are void of one true meaning, it is not possible to brand any definition of it as wrong or “flawed”. In response, those words may be associated with several different meanings, however, it is still possible to scrutinize each definition within its context as opposed to picking apart the general idea. For example, compatibilists classify free will as the ability to make decisions and choices that one is not coerced to make. These choices are based on desires and beliefs. This specific view supports the notion that even though every single one of our actions has already been accounted for and predetermined, the fact that you could make another choice (regardless of whether or not you do) validates the fact that free will does indeed exist. For instance, suppose that you reading this paper at this very moment was preordained...
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..."Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure." -Scott Adams. No words, thoughts or actions come from thin air. They are all forced on us from the day we were born, and will always be until the day we die. So with that being said, yes, I feel that free will is just an illusion. It's an illusion that is brought upon us so we don't ever realize the slaves we have become in our own world and society. We are formed by the people around us, people that portray themselves as being above us. We obey and follow rules that our society has brought to us. We agree and respect its values because they made us feel as if we do have the free will to vote and make the decisions they're actually making, In reality we...
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...In Clifford Williams’ Free Will and Determinism: A Dialogue, free will, determinism, and compatibilism are compared. Free will states that one has a choice to do anything one wants to do and has al alternatives open to him/her. Determinism states that everything one does is a result of something else that happened in the past. One has the assumption that he/she has more than one choice but in reality only one is really open. Compatibilism states that free will and determinism are compatible. To believe in compatibilism means that one believes that his/her actions are due to chance or happen because the action is chosen. The problem with this premise is that if it were due to chance than one cannot be held responsible for his/her actions because he/she did not choose to do anything. If the action was due to choice than there should be a cause as to why one chose one thing over the other. In other words, an act is only free when an outside force has not caused it, and everything one does is determined. In Peter van Inwagen’s Powers of Rational Beings: Freedom of the Will, he argues that we have free will and it is incompatible with determinism. van Inwagen argues that if determinism were true if the universe were rolled back to a previous state then the history of the world would repeat itself. No matter how many times this was to happen, the outcome would always be the same. Determinism says that out of all the possible choices we think we have only one is actually physically...
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...Critically assess the claim that all people are free to make moral decisions. (35 marks) Free will in making moral decisions is a much disputed topic. Many philosophers argue that there is no such thing as free will and everything is predetermined, while others dispute this and say that we have complete freedom to of what we wish. Doing as we wish is a key aspect of what defines free will. Hume defined liberty as ‘a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will’. This means that for a decision to be free, it must be solely of our own desires and not due to an external influence. Libertarianism is one theory that would agree with the claim that all humans are free to make moral decisions. Libertarianism is the idea that humans have complete free will. The Uncertainty principle, developed by Dr Heisenberg, discusses how the world and universe are unpredictable and indeterminable. This is used to back up libertarianism as we cannot know what is going to happen, when or where. Heisenberg also said that ‘ When we now the present precisely, we can predict the future’. However we do not know the present precisely and therefore anything could happen in the future which reinforces the idea of free will. In terms of making moral decisions, Libertarianism places moral responsibility upon the person who makes the decision. Nothing else but their own desires influences them, therefore only they can be held accountable, meaning that they must accept any blame...
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...Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman Introduction by Lawrence Lessig Edited by Joshua Gay GNU Press www.gnupress.org Free Software Foundation Boston, MA USA First printing, first edition. Copyright © 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc. ISBN 1-882114-98-1 Published by the Free Software Foundation 59 Temple Place Boston, MA Tel: 1-617-542-5942 Fax: 1-617-542-2652 Email: gnu@gnu.org Web: www.gnu.org GNU Press is an imprint of the FSF. Email: press@gnu.org Web: www.gnupress.org Please contact the GNU Press for information regarding bulk purchases for classroom or user group use, reselling, or any other questions or comments. Original artwork by Etienne Suvasa. Cover design by Jonathan Richard. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this book provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this book into another language, from the original English, with respect to the conditions on distribution of modified versions above, provided that it has been approved by the Free Software Foundation. i Short Contents Editor’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Note on Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Topic Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....
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...ARGUMENTS AGAINST DETERMINISM: MAN IS FREE, NO MORE, NO LESS INTRODUCTION The issues of Freedom and Determinism have been sensitive issues that have sparked off heated debates throughout history. The question whether man is really free has been a hard nut to crack and as a result of this, many attempts have been made by different individuals from both philosophical and theological point of view in their effort to explain and understand this concept ‘Freedom’. The line of thought that supports the notion of free will is also called libertarianism. DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS Before delving into the argument, it is worthy of note that the terms under discussion be given a definition for a better understanding of the terms. According to Advanced Learners’ Dictionary, determinism is the belief that people are not free to choose what they are like or how they behave because these things are decided by their background, surroundings and other things over which they have no control. It is simply the view that man is not free, that his actions are determined by certain causes. On another note, libertarianism according to the same source is the belief that people should have the freedom to do and think as they like. Freedom is simply man’s capacity to take hand in his own development. Concentrating more on the major object of my argument which is against determinism, the concept freedom was supported by both philosophers and theologians throughout history. On the part of the philosophers...
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