...Prof. Kellenberger Phil 310 Free Will When grumpy old Scrooge of the famous movie A Christmas Carol went home on Christmas eve, he had no idea what awaited him. He experienced a night of anguish and terror after three ghosts visit him. Scrooge was a grumpy mean-spirited man after the death of his sister Fan. Just to prepare him for his “life” in death, his dead partner and friend Marley, who facilitates the entire nightmare, shows him the lost lonely spirits who were mean-spirited in their earthly lives. The first ghost who visited him that night was “the ghost of Christmas past”. This ghost serves to remind him how others had been kind to him during past Christmases in his youth and how people in his past embodied the Christmas spirit. This ghost served to instill guilt and remorse. Next, “the ghost of Christmas present” appears to Scrooge and shows him how everyone is enjoying Christmas and spreading the Christmas spirit around town. It also shows how his servant Bob, despite his meager earnings enjoys Christmas with his family. It also shows Scrooge his nephew Fred enjoying Christmas with his family. The two families only show downcast moods when discussing Scrooge. However, Fred maintains hope that his uncle Scrooge can change. After that, the most dreary “ghost of Christmas yet to come” appears to Scrooge. He shows Scrooge how Bob’s son death saddens everyone and leaves them feeling a sense of loss. He then shows him a rich dead man who nobody misses and some...
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...As regards the human person, the genes that predispose an individual’s temperament interact with their personal experiences to mold their individuality. A person’s individuality encapsulates both their internal and external reactions, as every human possesses a solitary, distinctive mind that constitutes their self-identity. A person’s actions cannot be solely attributed to the interaction between genes and experience, however, because within every person there also lies a will— a will that is free to make decisions and perform the actions it so desires. As was established previously, “inherited temperament deals the cards of life, and the human person—body and soul with innate, adventitious, and fictitious ideas— plays the hand they are dealt as new objects, experiences, and relationships are thrown their way.” In other words: nature, the innate qualities a person is born with due to their genetic make-up, interacts with nurture, the personal experiences a person comes into contact with. This was earlier explained using the empirical concept behind psychology’s diathesis-stress models, which examine how an individual’s level of vulnerability to abnormal behavior or mental illness (the diathesis) interacts with environmental factors (the stress) to influence behavior and the development of mental disorders. Similarly, a person’s genetic distinctions (the diathesis) interact with environmental factors and events (the stress) to influence their own thoughts, desires, and behaviors...
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...TuThurs Prof. Smith Free Will Free will can be perceived as a quality one is born with no matter what your background is. But then again what is free will? And do we all have it? This strikes a huge argument with many outlooks on either the possibility of having free will or the possibility of not having free will. Ranging from Determinists such as Albert Einstein and Libertarians such as John Locke to everyday people such as me who truly believe that we are indeed free. We can conclude that there is a possibility for free thanks to these following premises and principles. According to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities one can choose to do one or the other. Therefore if given two possibilities it is in the power of the individual to either choose to go one way or the other. If I was given the possibility of eating a burrito or a salad I would make a choice depending on the way I felt that day. It could also be based on past habits, information about how healthy both choices are, belief, or my own eating habits. This option can be seen as being determined or free will, but in this instance we will pretend I chose whatever I chose freely. The argument above is both valid and sound. It is valid because both of my premises are true in any circumstance therefore there is no way of proving it false. The soundness is proven when we line up both premises and it gives us a conclusion. One can also conclude that there is no possibility for free will. According to...
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...“Human actions are causally determined and therefore not free” Discuss. Determinism argues that all human actions are determined as they apply to natural laws. However, to say actions are determined means that human action isn’t free and we do not have free will. Free will is the term given to the idea of human ability to do what we like whenever we like without restraint. I disagree with the claim that human action is not free and I will put forth arguments in this essay to discuss this conclusion. Firstly, libertarians would argue that we freely chose our actions as we have an overall feeling of freedom. This relates to our common experiences of choosing and deciding and when we have to make choices we are open to all other alternatives before making a decision. Surely, we only have the ability to freely choose something if we have free will to do so and if our actions were causally determined then we wouldn’t have other alternatives to decide from. Therefore this strong feeling of free will and freedom to do as we choose to would prove that human actions isn’t causally determined. However, determinists would claim that this ‘feeling’ of freedom is not sufficient evidence to say that we are free since it is possible for us to feel free even when we are not. For example, if I had a brain tumour that I didn’t know of which caused me to drink repeatedly then I am unaware that the tumour is making me do so yet I feel as if I am freely choosing to drink. It may seem as though...
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...Brett Whiting Professor Bethem PHL_160_05 25 March 2013 Free Will Stance: I believe in the idea of Free Will. Reason: The reason I believe in Free Will is because I believe that everyone has the choice in which decisions they make in life. You should believe in free will because it is what gives you the ability to make your own decisions, gives you control of your life, and gives you a sense of freedom of speech. Thesis: Free will is the idea that everyone has the choice to make their own decisions; some of the theories free will our shown through Harry Frankfurt’s organization theory, Fischer’s factors of control and Hume’s study on desires. 1. Free will based on organization A. Frankfurt on first desires B. Frankfurt says in first desires when he is undergoing a first desire that he has the ability to either eat the candy bar or refrain from eating this. This shows free will because he has the choice to refrain or go along with his desires. C. I agree with Frankfurt’s ideas and beliefs because if we desire to do or eat something then we have the choice in which we can restrain ourselves from doing it due to negative outcomes or you can accept the desire and go forward with the decision. 2. Free will based on Control A. John Martin Fischer free will through guidance and regulative control. B. Guidance Control, people show guidance control by looking over their actions and coming up with the most appropriate outcome. I feel...
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...Critically consider arguments for free-will in psychology (30 marks) One argument for free-will comes from the psychological argument, which suggests that people have a subjective sense of free-will and all people are able to make their own free choices about their behaviour. Evidence for this comes from Dr. Johnson in the 18th Century who sustained the idea that ‘we know our will is free, and there’s an end on ‘t’. (A01) However, a counterargument towards the psychological argument is that simply feeling that you are free does not mean that this is true. Skinner claimed that free will was an illusion – we think we are free, but this is because we are not aware of how our behaviour is determined by reinforcement. Freud also thought that free will was an illusion, because he felt that the causes of our behaviour is unconscious and therefore still predictable. (A02 ) In contrast, Valentine (1982) claims that this subjective sense of free will is tenable (reasonable). It is something that can be studied and thus shown to be true, e.g., attitudes towards free will have been found to increase with age and are also more common in individualistic cultures such as the USA and UK where personal responsibility receives greater emphasis. (A02 ) Another argument for free will in psychology derives from the ethical argument. This states that if an individual’s behaviour is determined by forces beyond their control, then the individual cannot be held responsible for their...
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...FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM The concept of free will plays an important part in our apportioning blame or praise , and our holding persons morally responsible for their behavior and actions . In the philosophical work devoted to free will there is no strict definition of this concept but it is widely believed to be a condition necessary for moral responsibility . Proponents of determinism , libertarianism , and compatibilism explain the importance of free will in their theories each in their particular way (Compatibilism Lecture Notes on Free Will and Determinism central hero of Stephen Robinett 's The Satyr ' story can be regarded as a staunch proponent of philosophical hard determinism . Like a true determinist , Silenus , a satyr , does not believe he is responsible for his actions and behavior because he is the creation of another person , namely Hench . He explains his enormous interest in ladies as well as his promiscuous behavior by the fact that Hench gave him the extra Y-chromosome which became a major determinant of his behavior (Robinett According to the satyr , only human beings can be held responsible for what they do . As Silenus does not consider himself a human being on the one hand , and as he was created by Hench on the other hand , it is the latter that Silenus believes is responsible for him and for anything he does . Silenus maintains that he does not know exactly why he does things and that it is Hench who made him like this , and thus it is...
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...Free Will Two eighteen year old boys killed a young man. They claimed they both had no motive for the murder of the young man. The lawyer of the two killers thought that his motive came from their memory, past experiences, and ancestors. The main question here is are we masters of our fate? Do we have free will? The theory of determinism is that everything has a cause. Everything happens for a reason. Humans try to find a reason for everything. We are humans of curiosity and we strive to find answers. Therefore, some people conclude that determinism is true because it explains that everything happens because of natural occurrences. It gives us an answer for the unexplainable actions that we take. It says that our actions are coerced by other factors around us such as our parents, experiences, and other factors in our life. It sometimes can be true; but not always. I believe that free will is when you can act upon your second-order desires. How do we have any desires if we do not have the free will to act upon those desires? To say there is no free will and that determinism is true, then how can you say that there are right and wrong choices? Every choice you make would have been caused by something. Therefore you didn’t have the free will to make that choice. In conclusion, you would not be responsible for the consequences of your choices because the choice you made was not free; it was caused. There is no way to really prove that you have free will because everything can...
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...The Problem Of Evil Free Will Defense In this essay I am presenting the Theodicy for the Free Will Defense as an answer to the problem of evil. I will attempt to present answers to the following questions: Why did a good God allow for the presence of evil in the world? What is “evil” and how can we recognize it in day to day life? What resources do we have for dealing with evil? Furthermore, how our ability and gift of free will applies in all areas both good and evil. We must understand that “evil” is a word with broad applications. Webster’s Dictionary defines it as: “morally bad or wrong; wicked. Harmful; injurious. Unlucky; disastrous. Wickedness; sin. And anything causing harm, pain, etc.” However, even this is truly difficult to use as a true definition. In the Bible, evil is anything that brings sorrow, distress, or calamity, including moral wrong doing, where human beings choose to do what hurts other human beings, or any part of creation. Generally, evil works against the life-giving God and to put anything in God's place. There was a time, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when optimism in human achievement was so strong that evil's existence was associated with ignorance, and its disappearance with greater knowledge. If humankind only knew more; soon would come the end of all evil in the world. Since then, two world wars, and countless smaller ones, combined with growing problems of over-population, racism, ecological...
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...Questions The point of this assignment is for you to compare and contrast your view of the philosophical issues of free will and personal identity with the philosophical theories explained by the author of your textbook. After you read each chapter, take some time to check the statement that comes closest to your view (and summarizes a philosophical theory explained by the author). Free will or determinism? When I think about the extent of my freedom to choose in life, I believe that human beings are False absolutely free to choose whatever path in life seems best to them (libertarianism) True are sometimes free, but sometimes have their choices shaped by social, cultural and psychological forces over which they have no control (soft determinism – traditional compatibilism) False are choosing freely only if what it is they say they want is something whose consequences they understand and is a goal or desire that is genuinely good for them (deep self-compatibilism) False are completely determined in all their choices by what has come before – their biology, social forces, etc. (hard determinism) Please explain in a few sentences here why you selected the option you did. Raise at least one question about the position you have taken. I have taken the position of soft determinism because while I believe we have free will- I believe that our free will is limited by probability. I do however wonder if it is possible to defy probability. Can we truly defy the...
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...ending to the movie then why waste time waiting for what you already know is going to happen. Another popular opinion is that a persons will is stronger than that of any barrier put in his way. That this thing called fate is only an obstacle that can be over passed just by the implement of a person’s mind. This breed of people believes that nothing can control all events and that the mind can resist all temptations if properly trained. I myself have different theory. That yes there is a higher power that puts fate into play. He sits there and watches how his cine will play out. Unlike others I ask myself a question wouldn’t a being of higher power want a little drama a little break from the norm. I believe that he gave us a thing called free will. The ability to put into play our own set of events. If I was a director and I didn’t have to worry about time or money, I would like to see how my movie turned out if I wrote...
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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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...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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...Since the ancient Greeks, one of the most provocative and oft-discussed questions in philosophy has been whether we have free will in determining the course of our actions, or whether our actions are determined by forces beyond our control. Before the advent of secular thought, those forces might have been identified as the whims of the gods, though the tradition of naturalism in Western thought goes back at least as far as the Milesian School of Greek Philosophy, in the 6th century B.C. In more recent times as the cognitive sciences have developed, it has seemed increasingly likely that our brains work along deterministic lines (or, if quantum effects are non-negligible, at the very least along mechanical lines). So a new debate has arisen: are the concepts of determinism (or naturalism or mechanism) when applied to the brain sciences logically compatible with free will? So some of the attention has shifted from the debate between the “determinists” and the “anti-determinists”, to that between the “compatibilists” and the “anticompatibilists”. Two declared opponents in this debate are Peter van Inwagen (author of An Essay on Free Will, Oxford University Press, 1983) and Daniel C. Dennett (author of several books including Elbow Room, MIT Press, 1984, which I will be referencing here). Each argues for his conclusion from premises he regards as antecedently plausible, with van Inwagen taking the anti-compatibilist line and Dennett the compatibilist. As van Inwagen is the more...
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...Free Will and Determinism- is it an Illusion? Determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism are three significantly different views on where unaccountability might stop and where free will and moral responsibility begin. Determinism is the strict opinion that every action and decision is the cause of an event, genetics or the environment prior to that action. Quite the opposite is libertarianism, which happens to be the genuine belief in free will as well as the denial of universal causation. Finally, deep self-compatibilism meshes both of these stand points together and introduces the idea that one’s action can be free if it stems purely out of personal, authentic desire. Since all three judgments have a backbone of convincing arguments, it is difficult to live by just one. Studying the Satyr’s justification, Hench’s ever-changing attitude toward his creation, and Michael Gorr’s point if view on the matter, one way of thinking may become more rational than the others. Silenus the Satyr is a strange creature, half man, half goat who was brought to life in a laboratory by a man named Hench. Near the end of this fiction, Silenus is sold to slavery in an environment lacking both booze and women after he acts on a desire to have sex with a woman without her consent. The Satyr repeatedly uses his hard determinist point of view to convince Hench that everything that happens has a reason, and if something is caused it cannot be free. Therefore, the Satyr has neither free will...
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