Essay on Free Will

The argument against free will states that; what you do is always determined by what you have the strongest desire to do, but you have no control over what you desire. If what you do is always determined by something that you have no control over then you can never actually act freely. It follows from what has been said that one does not have free will.

Your geography and you beliefs determined greatly who you are as a person but no one had a choice on that during their formative years. So there are so many factors and causes that affect freewill that’s not under the individual’s control. Let’s acknowledge that. In the context of life being a canvas you can visualize your life as a specific and unique individual pathway on the canvas of life with with different choices(options) available as one moves through time. At each moment in time, different choices are available to you within said predetermined path. The pathway is already predetermined because all time exist at all time all the time, but within each moment you’re are presented with certain set of choices (different set of choices are available at different point in time). These choices range from good to evil as far as their impacts are concerned. So this is why it makes sense to say true freewill doesn’t exist but we can make choices within the predetermined path we find ourselves in. If you think about it from a believer point of view, it’s basically God created everyone differently (predetermined path), with different gifts (drives) manifested through choices available to us at each moment in time. Evil and good are natural forces in this world which

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

Journalist John Tierney, in his article, “Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s the Only Choice,” explores the notion of free will and exhibits how belief or disbelief in free will affects an individual’s life. By posing a hypothetical situation through rhetorical questions, incorporating experimental research, and using accusatory diction towards the opposing perspective, Tierney conveys his perception that a regard for free will allows for individuals to gain a greater sense of morality and ambition, even if the notion of free will is still disputed.

I am going to give four agruments on why, in my opinion free will exists. The first argument has to deal with determinism. If we are fully determined in what we think, believe and do, then of course the belief that determinism is true is also a result of this determinism. But the same is true for the belief that determinism is false. There is nothing you can do about whatever you believe—you had to believe it. There is no way to take an independent stance and consider the arguments unprejudiced because all various forces making us assimilate the evidence in the world just the way we do. One either turns out to be a determinist or not and in neither case can we appraise the issue because we are pre-determined to have a view on that matter one way or another.

Some proponents of free will argue that by choosing to do something, one causes oneself to act. One could have caused oneself to act in another manner, and therefore the act, although caused by that person, is still a free choice. However, that notion is held under scrutiny because a person who acts freely has no evidence that they have acted of his or her own accord. For all one knows, one’s actions and choices could have been causally determined, and although one thought one was acting out of free will, one is not. There is no definite proof to show that one’s choices are made freely. As A.J. Ayer stated in his essay, Freedom and Necessity, “…but from the fact that a man is unaware of the causes of his action, it does not follow that no such causes exist” (Ayer 272). Since there is no way of knowing if one exercises free will, determinism poses a serious threat to the concept of free thinking and free acting human beings.

As humans, free will is something we commonly assume we have. When evaluating what free will is, we become less certain. David Hume calls it “the most contentious question of metaphysics.” In simplistic terms, free will is having the ability to determine your own plan of action. There is a relationship between free will and freedom of action and causal determinism that must be evaluated to have a complete understanding of free will. There are compatibilist views that believe in free will and incompatibilist views that imply there is no free will. Free will is also related to both theological determinism and logical determinism.

     The topic of freewill vs. determinism has always been something that has interested me. I follow the Christian faith very strongly but my views on the subject vary almost daily. The concept of freewill and determinism is something that, as a Christian, I often struggle with. By no means do I think that I have all the answers or that I am right. I believe that in order to find the truth or what is right you have to be willing to accept that everything you believe could be false. This is a topic that I have asked about and debated with many different Christian leaders including pastors, missionaries and youth ministers, as well as other people belonging to different faiths. No

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

In this always changing world, we all possess the extraordinary power of freewill. The ability to make a wide variety of choices depending on the situation that is presented in front of us, which induces an outcome whether it may be good or bad that is reliant on the perspective. Every single choice you make based on your judgment will affect or make a difference to almost anything that exists on this world no matter how little or big it may be. Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses imagery in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" to successfully reflect his emotions about the consequences of one's actions. A wonderful example of imagery is in lines 29 through 32 " All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon."

Hi! Kamia, the case by case is what I think is the case of free will. Overall, I will agree with free will if a person was living alone in other word living independently since that is not the case we have to rely on others directly or indirectly and such conactivity and depedency that creates the situations that put us in the domain of confussion making it hard to decide if our fate is the result of our free will the other way around.

I believe that at the point from when we are born to the point when we are able to make our own decisions and understand the world our actions and life are predetermined by our social class. Thought because how will you be able to use free will if you can barely comprehend what is going on or not even old enough to have a job, a bank account, etc. But when able to make own decisions at your own risk is when I believe in free will. Free will is defined as the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. This definition says it all, the ability to act at one’s own discretion is the part that stands out the best to me. For example, myself I was born into a specific social and economic class, maybe I liked it or maybe I didn’t but there was nothing I could do to change that, being too young and especially living in my mother’s home. I had do what my mom said no if’s, and’s or buts she was the boss. But now that I’m in college I’m able to change everything I was taught and follow my own values changing my social and economic conditions if I didn’t like the morals my mom followed. Therefore I guess you could say that I am neutral to the discussion. I believe both, we are predetermined by our social class and the philosophy of free

Although we have the right of freedom and to make our own decision, are these decisions really made by us, or is there an almighty power that can control who, what, where, when, why and how something happens? We have been told our entire lives that we control our own fate and how our life pans out. But have you ever thought of a higher power that sees over all and possibly controls what and when everything happens? So in fact if there is a God or someone who oversees all does in fact know what and when something will occur to someone on Earth, that would mean that they would not be free and have no control over there actions.

Free will lies in what the person takes away from his experience and how he reacts to it. He can either choose to be closer to God or stray away from Him. Maybe this is God’s way of testing our patience. After carefully reading the Articles of Faith by Haneef, some confusions were clarified. Haneef mentions, “In human life, ease and suffering alike, and the events which produce them, equally have a purpose and meaning, and are equally a part of God’s infinitely wise plan for His creation” (Haneef 46). At times, I wondered, “Why some very pious Muslims who practice Islam devotedly don’t get what they want and face hardships in their lives, while some non-Muslims who don’t even believe in the existence of Allah are very successful?” For example, I believe in Allah and practice my religion with great zeal; however, I don’t always get what I ask Him for. On the other hand, my non-Muslim fellows seem far more satisfied with their

I have free-will because I am religious, and believe in a God that has endowed us with free-will, but that is largely irrelevant