Free Will: Do Humans Have Total Control Over Their Lives? Essay

Suppose that every event or action has a sufficient cause, which brings that event about. Today, in our scientific age, this sounds like a reasonable assumption. After all, can you imagine someone seriously claiming that when it rains, or when a plane crashes, or when a business succeeds, there might be no cause for it? Surely, human behavior is caused. It doesn't just happen for no reason at all. The types of human behavior for which people are held morally accountable are usually said to be caused by the people who engaged in that behavior. People typically cause their own behavior by making choices; thus, this type of behavior might be thought to be caused by your own choice-makings. This freedom to make

The aim of this essay is to prove the reliability of and why Libertarianism is the most coherent of the three Free Will and Determinism views. It refers to the idea of human free will being true, that one is not determined, and therefore, they are morally responsible. In response to the quote on the essay, I am disagreeing with Wolf. This essay will be further strengthened with the help of such authors as C.A. Campell, R. Taylor and R.M. Chisholm. They present similar arguments, which essentially demonstrate that one could have done otherwise and one is the sole author of the volition. I will present the three most common arguments in support of Libertarianism, present an objection against Libertarianism and attempt to rebut it as well as

Fate and free will are epic subjects in life. When we cannot control something we blame it on fate, but we try to change the way things are with our free will.

An individual with “Free Will” is capable of making vital decisions and choices in life with own free consent. The individual chooses these decisions without any outside influence from a set of “alternative possibilities.” The idea of “free will” imposes a certain kind of power on an individual to make decisions of which he or she is morally responsible. This implies that “free will” would include a range of aspects such as originality, moral value, and self-governance. However, in life, individuals may not be free in making decisions. The aspect of freedom could entail remarkably a high status action and achievement in an individual’s life whose attainment could be close to impossibility. Often, people make

The purpose of this personal reflection ethical issue is to explore the ethical principles associated with looking at the principle of autonomy,

freedom of will, as presented in "Freedom of Will and the Concept of Person" and some problems that

As mortal beings, our own fate is determined by the individual choices we make over the course of our lives, mainly because these selections ultimately define who we are and what we do in life. My reasons for this being, primarily, each decision we make during a lifetime has an impact upon our lives. The next being, we pay the consequences for all of the good and bad we commit in life. Finally, we decide whether to make a good life for ourselves or relinquish our opportunities to do so. While there is a God who oversees the universe and each of our individual lives, he allows for our free will and the choice to which road we choose to take in life.

In this paper, I am going to discuss and argue about free will and determinism. What is free will, and do we have it? Free will is simply the power to act with no constraint, in other words, to act freely with no one holding us down. The controversial argument of this topic is if we have free will or not. According to physical determinism, “If our brain is in a certain state, then our next move is determined. Therefore, we do not have free will” (Holbach). According to others, we do have free will. In my paper, I will talk about the views of Holbach, Stace, and Ayer concerning free will. I will then argue that Ayer has the best view because he has a more serious sense of moral responsibility than Holbach and Stace, and that his view better fits with our normal view of free will.

Responsibility is a key component in establishing a person’s character and a vital part of human existence. Of the three definitions the Oxford Dictionary provides, the one of most relevance is; the opportunity or ability to act independently and take decisions without authorization. This definition is particularly important because the decisions a person makes without the influence of others essentially denotes a person’s character and displays who they truly are. Throughout life, numerous opportunities are brought about which require a person to take responsibility and make the appropriate choices. Students are expected to be responsible throughout their academic careers by upholding the standards established by the institution they are

William Rowe defines gratuitous evil as an instance of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.(Rowe 335) In a world with so much evil it raises the questions If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, how can he allow bad things to happen to good people? Can God even exist in a world with so such gratuitous evil? These are questions that has afflicted humanity for a very long time and has been the question to engross theologians for centuries. The existence of evil has been the most influential and powerful reason to disprove the existence of God. It is believed among many theist that God is the creator and caretaker

Fate and Destiny: Some Historical Distinctions between the Concepts Richard W. Bargdill Saint Francis University Abstract There has been a great deal of attention given to the “free will versus determinism” debate. However, little attention has been paid to the most common expressions from this controversy—people’s everyday experience of fate and destiny. In fact, fate and destiny are terms that are often used as synonyms as if there were no differences between the two words. This paper distinguishes the two concepts by reviewing some historical distinctions made by a variety of philosophers, psychologists and scientists. The paper also discusses some

Control. Who is in control of our actions and decisions and what happens as a result of them? As humans, we like to believe that we are in control of our actions and decisions and that we are in complete control of where we go and what we do in life, but is that really the case? Are there other factors besides us that help determine where we go and what we do in life? Is there a supreme being, such as God, that controls where our actions and decisions will take us and even influences our decisions, or does chance/fate and only chance/fate play a factor in decisions we make and their outcomes? Do other people have the ability to control our actions and us, or is that not possible?

Responsibility in the structural model: the model of the mind inspired by Freud in the psychoanalytic perspective is demonstrated through the battle between the Ego, the Id, and the Super Ego. In the book Personality of the Good by Richard Millard and Peter Bertocci, they assert that responsibility and choice have a direct relationship (Bertocci & Millard, 1963). They assert that responsibility can only be noticeable when is observed as a choice and the situation to a certain extent is believed to be in our control Bertocci & Millard, 1963). The structural model connects to this because of how the Id and the Ego fight each other to make decisions. The Ego is the reality principle (Carver & Scheir, 2012). It follows it and connects the Id, which is the pleasure principle, to reality whether or not the ego ignores it. Another connection is the Super Ego, which is the equivalent of the conscience that is the manifestation of the family and societal values that revolve in our mind that tell you what you can and cannot do (Carver & Scheir, 2012). In this section of the model is where the responsibility kicks in to play. It is the Super Ego that obviously influence responsibility into someone because of the influences of the societal views in the mind that says that responsibility is a noble trait. So

To a great extent, the theory of personhood rests on a breaking down and clarification of what it is to be an agent. Human rights, as understood by Griffin, are protections of our status as functional human agents, grounded in our interests in autonomy, liberty and the minimum material provision requisite to make the exercise of our agency real and possible. Griffin acknowledges that the human interests in autonomy and liberty are not the only important interests that exist, but it is the protection of these particular interests that generate a human right . In this sense, autonomy and liberty are the special, determinant grounding elements identified by Griffin as the interests required for normative agency.

Accountability is so important not only within the different theories in psychology but important in the lives of every person. Accountability is defined as an instance when a person is responsible for their actions, thoughts, or behaviors (Merriam-Webster, 2016). Accountability is also described as being willing to stand up and be held responsible for their actions, behaviors or thoughts. Accountability helps show people that there is an expectation or an assumption that they are accountable to their behavior, their