Free Will and Determinism

If we accept the determinist argument and assume human behavior as a consequence of external factors rather than of free choice, then we must realize that our explanation of human behavior leaves no room for morality. If people do not choose their actions, then they are not really responsible for them, and there is no need for praising or blaming them. If determinism were true, then there would be no basis for human effort, for why should a person make an effort if what he or she does doesn't make a difference? If what will be will be, then one has an excuse for doing nothing. Life would not be so meaningful for people on deterministic grounds. Human life, as we know it, would not make much sense without the concept of freedom. In our everyday lives, there are many times when we have to make decisions; what we

The subject of freewill and determinism has been a matter of intense debate in the philosophical community for ages with the topic of compatibilism and incompatibilism. This essay will be reviewing and critiquing the work of a very well-known philosopher Peter Van Inwagen and his article “An Argument For Incompatibilism” and what does he mean by freewill and determinism.

Taylor’s view on Libertarianism is very similar. He believes that one has inner acts and that they are the sole creator of the act (so, they could have done otherwise). He says that it is the only thing that makes sense. It is a denial of any antecedent acts, character and the similar. Furthermore, he says that all actions are caused, but unlike in determinism, they are all triggered by the sole author themselves. A sole author in this case is a human, one that is capable of being the first to cause a chain. The sole author can initiate an action through its

Many times I find myself sitting and wondering whether I am fully free or not. I wake up every single morning and do the same routine, which is eat breakfast, go to class or work, do homework, go to the gym, shower, and then go to bed. Does this truly mean I am free? There are a lot of questions that you can ask yourself while following a routine. Is this really the path I should have taken? Were my choices determined by external factors? Determinism is the thesis that an any instant there is only one physically possible future. Robert Blatchford and Walter Terence Stace, two philosophers, both agree that determinism is true, although they have two different views on whether this means that people are free or not. Blatchford believes that everything is predestined. Stace on the other hand, believes that a person chooses what they do because of free will. In this essay I am going to discuss both of the philosophers’ views more in depth and why I favor Stace’s view over Blatchford’s.

People believe that genuine freedom of choice is not always possible because our decisions and actions are determined by factors beyond our control. This view is known as Determinism. There is also an extreme form of determinism known as ‘hard determinism,’ in which they believe that every demeanor can be traced to a cause, although they may disagree about what those causes are. The idea of determinism poses a difficult issue to the concept of ‘free will’. Are we able to make free choices if all our thoughts and actions are predetermined by our own past and the physical laws of nature? Majority of us would like to believe that we have the freedom of will and are able to make decisions based on our own discretion but, I personally believe that the deterministic view holds true to a certain extent and that most of our actions are a result of a force that is beyond our comprehension. My purpose in this essay is to explain and critically analyze Baron d’Holbach’s view on determinism.

The focus of this essay will be an argument by Peter Van Inwagen known as the “Consequence Argument.” The argument’s main goal is to refute compatibilism, or the idea that free will and determinism are reconcilable. Van Inwagen’s argument can be expressed as follows:

In his essay, “An Argument for Incompatibilism,” Peter van Inwagen concludes that free will and determinism cannot be compatible. The type of argument that van Inwagen uses, the Consequence Argument, has become the maxime popularis way for incompatibilists to assert that, determinism, and free will, are in conflict. The Consequence Argument attempts to display that, if there is an assumption that determinism is true, and then there is a further assumption that for any action that has taken place, up to a specific point, the agent never had a choice about the action taken. Then the consequence is there can be no free action of the agent. Therefore, no free will.

One has absolutely no control over his actions, so if determinism is correct our actions are not up to us and we do possess free will. Either we deny the causal chain and accept that we all have free will or we say we do not have free will because everything is pre-determined. The incompatibilist argument is slightly more convincing than compatibilism, but is also flawed and can be very confusing because there are different types of incompatibilists. The first type is a hard determinist, they believe strictly on the idea that there is no free will. The second type are libertarians. It becomes confusing because incompatibilists believe one strict idea and libertarians believe that you must not only show that free will is incompatiable with determinism but they must also show how free will can be compatible with indeterminism.

There is a wide range of philosophical views about the relationship between determinism and free will. These include, hard determinism, compatibilism, and libertarianism. When comparing free will and determinism the contrasts are quite evident. Hard determinists believe that free will does not exist, because determinism is true and incompatible with free will. While compatibilists believe that determinism is true, but free will is compatible with determinism. Libertarianists believe that we have free will, and determinism is incompatible with free will, meaning determinism must be false. In the simplest form, free will is the ability to choose actions without being influenced by others or natural laws. After learning

Chances (naturally existing and somewhat determined) do not primarily cause actions, as it is the choices (individual volitions) that one has decided which permit an action to occur (Doyle). All in all, the model assumed that free will is essentially “…chance in a present time of random alternatives, leading to a choice, which grants consent to one possibility and transforms an equivocal ambiguous future into an unalterable and simple past” (Doyle, 2010, p.7).

Hard Determinism and Libertarianism are not the only options we have to deal with the problem raised by determinism. As a matter of fact, there is Soft Determinism, which is, The belief that our actions can be free even though determinism is true. This option weighs in that Determinism is true. That our actions and the events that occur in our life are causally determined. For example, If you selected Chinese food rather than Pizza for dinner, you could n’t have chosen the other option given the exact circumstances and conditions again.

The existence of free will has often been brought into question. Moral responsibility, the assumed result of free will, has been equally debated. Some philosophers posit that humans possess free will in its entirety. Others believe that, although many aspects of one’s life are predetermined, one still possesses just enough freedom to be morally responsible. However, as one will find, neither approaches are tenable explanations of human decision making. The former concept of free will ignores the constraints placed on humans from both external and internal influences, and the latter cannot logically reconcile moral responsibility with determinism. In contrast to these two fallible positions, I find that humans do not possess any free will and,

Indeterminism, as he argued, opposed suppositions of determinism (James, 1884). James did not favor the term freedom as it he called it ‘an eulogistic word’ that enabled emotional associations to be made thus allowing its meaning to be manipulated by its holder; he had preferred the word chance in replacement of freedom (James). Although James professed no external evidence for indeterminism, he argued that it was the opposite of determinism based on the following grounds: (i) determinism held that elements already present in the universe at a given time decree what the other coming elements must be without the slightest ambiguity (a fundamental cause-and-effect perspective) whereas indeterminism reasoned that elements do have loose influence in themselves, that having one element does not determine what the next element is because possibilities may be more than actualities, and things that have yet to come to our knowledge with certainty remain ambiguities. In this, indeterminism allows for chances and that the world is not understood by one unit of fact (James).

Traditionally defined as man’s ability to voluntarily and consciously choose for themselves, free will is often a central characteristic of man that separates him from nature. Philosophers and theologians have touted this ability to choose as a foundation on which society’s conception of morals, guilt, and justice rest, and, consequently, have debated whether it truly exists or whether it is simply an illusion of a predetermined outcome. Recently, with the advent of science, the discussions of free will now include the field of biology. Modern studies on the human brain have provided convincing evidence for biological determinism, the notion that the biology of each person predetermines how he or she will act. For example, the 1999 tests of Benjamin Libet and his subsequent papers on free will challenge its conventional definition, suggesting that actions begin with an unconscious initiation, that they have the ability to be consciously vetoed, and

Spinoza: “The reason you believe you make your own decisions is merely because you are conscious of what you are doing and not aware of the causes that determined your actions.”