A common thought between people is that they have the free will to make any course of action at any given time. However, do we really have free will? Or is fate just actually covered by an illusion created in our minds called choice? Another possibility is that we may even have just as much as “some” control over our choices. How do we know? This is a hard question to answer, but there are arguments and cases for all these ways of thinking. Personally, I cannot accept that our actions are solely based on fate. It’s a belief that makes me feel as if I am a puppet, and the choices I make in life do not matter. Also, I cannot quite believe that we have complete free will either. To believe that at any moment I can choose my course of action without influence seems …show more content…
In my own view, the concept that makes the most sense to me is the idea that we have only some power to select. Choices are heavily influenced by forces surrounding the individual, choices are not predetermined, and choices do not solely depend on the individual.
The conditions in life that cannot be controlled governs our choices, Usually referred to as the Nature versus Nurture debate, this argument says that human choice is limited by where we were born and how we are born. There is no denying the long made correlation between heredity and behavior. For example, East Asians are known to be quite smart. To take this assertion as gospel would be ignorant and stereotypical, but to disregard it completely is false. East Asian culture is known to stress school and higher education. In result, countries like China, Japan, and Korea inhabit some of the most intelligent individuals and innovative technology in the world. Nevertheless, this draws another parallel between upbringing and behavior, but not so positive in affect. East Asian countries stress education, but
The biggest controversy in psychology today is whether genetics or one’s environment plays a role in the behavior of the individual. Psychologists have researched and developed different theories to explain the reason for the way humans think and behave. The behavior of individuals is either inherited or learned. In my opinion, I believe that nurture plays a big role in the individual’s behavior. Kendra Cherry states, “Nurture refers to all the environmental variables that impact who we are, including our early childhood experiences, how we were raised, our social relationships, and our surrounding culture” (1). People have become who there are because of the environment they were exposed to in their childhood years. The behavior of people is influenced be the environment that surrounds them and can changed many times through one’s lifetime. People have different personalities a person’s
Are we free thinking creatures? One question is usually on the minds of anybody who has ever had that thought; do we have free will or is everything determined by fate? Its my personal belief that you can't have one without the other. Your fate is determined before you are ever born,but it’s your decisions and choices that ultimately decide how you read that fate. Macbeth, The Odyssey, and Oedipus are all works that show how one’s fate is reached using free will.
Free Will is the capacity of acting without the pressures of fate and the ability to act because of one’s discretion. It is an idea that most believe in, because it means that you are in control
Do we really have free will or is it as mythical as are the gods and most just simply don’t know it yet? As I am not a philosopher I do not know for sure, but I would assume that it is a question that has been a plague to their thoughts for a while. There are many ways to talk about this topic though this will only be covering a few aspects. The inspiration for this was a combination of the popular Greek play called Oedipus by Sophocles and a paper written by Mrs. Cysewski containing instructions for a report which her class was going to write. Back to the topic at hand: do we make our own personal decisions or is that just what we think?
Fate is the belief that a greater power has planned out your life. Freewill means that humans have control of their life. Fate says that you are not responsible for your actions and anything that happens to you is by chance. Freewill is the ability to choose courses of action, and there is a logical reason for everything. Humans have control of their destiny and what they do is their responsibilities. Do we humans have control of our lives destiny or are humans controlled by outside forces meaning they are not responsible for their actions?
A different approach to this question is that our life’s destiny is predetermined for us, but based on the
Do I have free will, or is every action I make predetermined? This question has concerned me for a long while. It has been the topic of many family dinner conversations, a topic of research, and a question in many prayers. I believe that this question concerns many people, since finding an answer has been the source of much literature, thinking, and religion. I have, after much thought, arrived at the conclusion of Soft Determinism - the Principle of Universal Causality, that for everything that exists or happens there is a cause, is true, but this principle is compatible with the Condition of Free Action. By Condition of Free Action I mean that a person is in control of his own actions (is the source of them) and
It has been debated over centuries whether us humans have control over our destiny, and if we are really able to decide on our own. The controversy between free will and determinism has been argued about for years. If we look into a dictionary, free will is define as the power given to human beings to be able to make free choices that is unconstrained by external circumstances or a force such as fate or divine intervention. Determinism is defined as a philosophical doctrine that every event, act, and decision is the inescapable consequence of antecedents that are independent of the human will. Determinism states that humans have no free will to choose what they wish. Due to this fact, contemporary philosophers cannot agree whether free will does exist, let alone it be a divine influence.
Do humans have free will? Or are our fates already predetermined by a greater force? In the works MacBeth by Shakespeare, “The Guest” by Albert Camus, and “Cranes” by Huang Sun-won the authors all clearly portray the theme that people have free will and are not controlled by other forces out of their control. However, some are punished by society because of following their own thoughts. In the play MacBeth, MacBeth starts of as a person who feels remorse for his crimes, but later on he kills his friend because he sees him as a threat to his power.
My second notion of free will requires that an actor is able to decide between different possibilities of actions that lead towards different futures. Robert Kane calls this concept ‘a garden of forking paths’; every action leads to other actions that again allow for alternatives of action (Kane, 2005: 7). If an actor could not have done otherwise, he would not have had free choice. Even if he did not choose to do otherwise, he could not have done so. Free will seems to require the power to do otherwise, or our actions would
A question which still puzzles many people is do we have free will or is our every decision predetermined? I believe that our every decision is based on free will because when we make the decision to do something, we risk our lives everyday doing what we want rather than just letting things happen such as fate. I think our every decision is based on free will because we decide whether we want to go out and party on a Saturday night or if we want to stay in the house. We decide whether we want to be friends with someone or if we want to keep them as enemies. We decide whether we want to have a boyfriend/girlfriend or if we want to be single and do what we want. We make decisions ourselves, and we do not let things just happen.
Genetics play a huge part in who we are. But we also have free will. -Aidan Quinn Basically this quote is saying how we are raised in the home determines a big factory of how discipline we are however we still must take into consideration that we are still held accountable for our action regardless. Although how we were raised in the home play a major role with the choices we make in our entire lives as an individual. I do believe that morals have a strong factor in free will and determinism. Homes that teach morals and values in life have a strong factor in with their social behavior skill.
Everyone believes himself or herself to possess the freedom of will. If we do not have free will, then that suggests that we lack any power or control over anything, therefore, nothing is up to us. This would impair our view and perception of our society, community and the world. The metaphysical issue of free will is if the initial conditions are fixed and all the laws of nature are deterministic, then the resulting outcome that will happen thereafter is also fixed, because of the laws of nature as well as the initial conditions. So do we actually have free will? This question has become a paradoxical topic, with issues arising from philosophical concepts, including causal determinism and fatalism. This creates a problem for free will
Many people in this world would argue that every one has free will, that the choices they make will determine their path in life, but some would argue that everything comes down to fate. People who believe solely on fate believe that their future is already determined, and they can do nothing to change it. According to Oxford Dictionaries, fate is the development of events beyond a person 's control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power. On the other hand, the definition of free will is: The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion. In reality it comes down to a mixture of fate and free will together. People will always have choices that they will be forced to make. These choices that will determine the future, but if something is predetermined there is no stopping it.
If we were to decide whether our society is governed by fate or free will, many disagreements would occur. Fate and free will are complete opposites of eachother. If our society is governed by fate, then things pan out on their own. On the contrary, if we are governed by free will, that means we decide how our lives will happen. I believe that we are governed by free will because we each have the choice to decide how we live our lives. Relating to Romeo and Juliet, there is evidence they are governed by free will as well.