Ayer Case Summary

In this paper I will present an argument against free will and then I will defend a response to that argument. Free will is defined as having the ability to make our own choices. Some will argue that all of our decisions have already been dictated by our desires therefore we never actually truly make our own choices. The purpose of this paper is to defend the argument that we have free will by attacking the premise that states we have no control over what we desire. I will defeat this premise by showing how one does have control over his/her desires through the idea of self-control. I will then defend my argument against likely rebuttals that state that there is still no way to control our desires proving that we do have free will.

No longer is this freedom vs. cause, but instead it is now viewed as caused vs. constrained. Caused is certain conditions obtain and something happens. Constrained is certain conditions obtain and something is compelled or forced to happen. Ayer uses an example of a common thief and a kleptomaniac to illustrate his point. He states that a thief makes his own decisions when stealing. The thief can stop himself from doing such crime and choose not to steal. The thief is then faced to be dealing with cause where freewill and moral responsibility apply. While a kleptomaniac suffers from such disease in which he has no choice when it comes to stealing. He is then faced to deal with constrained where freewill and moral responsibility do not apply. Both of these take place while containing determinism. So cause is part of freewill and not the opposite.

A choice issues from, and can be sufficiently explained by, an agent’s character and motives, then to be ultimately responsible for the choice, the agent must be at least in part responsible by virtue of choices or actions voluntarily performed in the past for having the character and motives he now has (295).

Losing self-control and becoming aggressive is an example that Pink provided. This because your actions are determined by your anger, not your own choices. An example that limits the possibility of free will, would be in the food industry and choosing what food to consume. Most murderers reason for killing can be traced back to events that happened in the past, usually their childhood. The choices then influenced how they behaved in the future and does not completely defend their actions. The documentary, Fed Up, also shows that our preferences are not actually our own. The food industry pays large sums of money in advertisements and other forms of media to convince consumers what to purchase. Most people would not even consider this to be a restriction of their free will, but yet they are not choosing what their eating. Children are being fed fast food from the school’s cafeteria because big chains like McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and other fattening companies pay their way in. They use flashy commercials and slogans that rope children and their parents into obtaining their products. These corporations have even forced their way into the government, putting pressure on Michelle Obama’s campaign to end childhood obesity. Where is the free will in this? Does anyone really decide

There are many definitions of what free will is, I looked up online what the actual definition of free will was. “The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion”. The book talks about the problem of free will. An example of how you did not act on your own free will. Let’s say you are kidnapped. The kidnapper makes you do some uncivilized things to other people and if you did not follow the kidnapper’s rules he would gruesomely kill you. So he makes you kill a child by pressing your finger against the trigger, then he forces you to behead a man, a father of three kids by using your hands. Not once during those instances where you acting on your own free will. You didn’t want to kill anyone. In the book Sider talks about how problem of free will is a ticking time bomb that is hidden within our most deeply held beliefs (Sider 113). With free will comes

In his arguments for compatibilism Ayer suggest that free will be contradicted with constraint to show that an action can be determined, while also being unconstrained and hence free. A specific example of a determined yet unconstrained action is when an action is determined, such as ordering a pizza. It was determined that a person would order the pizza, however if it is a voluntary action it is believed to be unconstrained and free. Also in aiding the argument of compatibility against the given argument it is said that “we lack free will unless we would have done otherwise”, Ayer argues that a person could do otherwise if they please, but that it may be determined that “they want to act as they

Former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber severed in the state house and senate before becoming governor in 1994. After serving two terms, he chose not to run again and decided to live a private life again. It was during this time that he met Cylvia Hayes, a consultant that specialized in renewable energy programs and other green initiatives. Ms. Hayes had developed contacts with local and state authorities and would work to steer contracts to companies she was aligned with. This is a common arrangement where the private and public sectors work on programs that benefit the common good.

This relates to Judy Hopps and her instinct actions to choose to become the first rabbit cop. Knowing that there could be some serious challenges along the way, she acts freely upon this and does what she thought was correct. Instead of backing out during the Zootopia Police Academy, she persevered and chose to have control over her own choices she made. Free will can be defined as the ability to consciously make one’s choices. In matters theological this means God grants us the ability to act upon our own intuition even though He might interfere at times along with the interference of others (Harman, 2015).

Whether we have free will is widely controversial. The absence of a universal definition poses a primary problem to this question. In this essay, I shall base my argument on a set of three conditions for free will: 1) that the actor is unconstraint in his action, 2) the actor could have acted otherwise and 3) the actor must be ‘ultimately responsible’ (Kane, 2005: 121) for his action. After I have explained them, I shall apply these conditions to three scenarios that cover most, if not any, circumstances that occur when taking choices. The purpose of this essay is to show that if my conditions are true, none of the scenarios is based on free will and thus we do not have free will.

In the paper, “Human Freedom and the Self” Roderick M. Chisholm offers his theory of human freedom and defends it against a couple objections. One of the objections we will talk about which is the second objection is connected to the concept of immanent causation, where causation is by an agent, he argues how the statement “the prime mover unmoved” (page 391) has been subject to difficulty. Chisholm explains immanent causation as being an agent causing the event A to happen, but although the agent is causing A to happen the agent is not moved by anything. The argument to this objection is that “there must be some event A, which is caused not by any other event but by the agent” (page 391). Well since A was not cause by another event then the agent couldn’t have produced anything either to bring A about, so “what did the agent’s causation consist of” (page 391). Also another point that was made in the objection was the question “what is the difference between A’s just happening and the agents causing A to happen” (page 391). Chisholm responds by saying that there is a difference between man causing A and an event causing A. The two are not the same because transeunt causation is connected to determinism, which makes the train of events, happen and immanent causation as he explains it is when the agent causes the event. He then sums up his answer by saying the reason “lies in the fact that, in the first case but not the second, the event was caused by the man” (pg. 391) He

Case 3 doesn’t infer Case 4. Even Case 1-3 show that in certain environment X is causally determined by some kind of natural law. If X act by himself in the last case, than it is ridiculous to say that he is causally determined by some kind of natural law. He is not causally determined some external factors, but act internal control by himself. Therefore, Case 4 is different from Case 1-3 actually.

According to Aristotle, there are three categories for when we evaluate a person’s actions – whether the actions are done voluntary, involuntary, or nonvoluntary. An action is rendered voluntary when the person knows and understands the consequences of the action, and still makes the decision to undergo such movement. An involuntary action is defined when it is done under coercion or because of inexperience. It is further characterized as involuntary only if the person acknowledges and realizes the negative retrospect of the action. However, it is considered nonvoluntary only if the person does not recognize the adverse effect of the action. Additionally, Aristotle also says that choices are voluntarily made.

(a) In Chisholm’s paper, “Human freedom and the self,” Chisholm notes that causation is a relation between events or states of affairs. For example, if the roof in my house cave in during a hurricane- this would be something that was caused by several other events such as the roof being too weak, the rain pressure being too much for the roof to hold, excessive rain, etc. With this term, Chisholm created two other narrower terms to specifically describe the different types of causations. The first causation is transeunt which is when one event or state of affairs causes other events or state of affairs. An example of Transeunt causation is if I threw a piece of paper in a recycling bin my event would be recycling but the “unknown” event cause by this event would be more oxygen in the world for people to breath in because that paper can be reused instead of having to cut more trees down and “cutting down” our oxygen. The second type of causation would be Immanent causation, which is when an agent (or person) causes an event or state of affairs. An example of Immanent causation is me recycling the paper because I’m the “agent” who recycled the piece of paper, it wasn’t done by another event.

An example that can show how choices are up to the individual is the experience a person has when standing on a cliff where he not only fears falling off it, but also dreads the possibility of throwing himself off. In this experience that "nothing is holding me back", he senses the lack of anything that predetermines him to either throw himself off or to stand still, and he experiences his own freedom.

Causation in the Law by Hart and Honoré attempts to find a middle ground between causal minimalists and causal maximalists, arguing that legal decision-making utilises causal connections beyond merely informing policy decisions, and yet not so far as to make them necessary and sufficient conditions of responsibility. However, the authors are only able to reliably discuss the role that causation plays in legal decision-making having first described a “common-sense” conception of causation, typically utilised by lawyers and historians. In Chapter 5 of The Cement of the Universe, John Mackie describes their “common-sense” conception of causation as “one of the best ordinary causal concepts”, Mackie focusing on Hart and