Free Will and Libertanianism View

Before I begin it is pertinent to note the disparate positions on the problem of human freedom. In "Human Freedom and the Self", Roderick M. Chisholm takes the libertarian stance which is contiguous with the doctrine of incompatibility. Libertarians believe in free will and recognize that freedom and determinism are incompatible. The determinist also follow the doctrine of incompatibility, and according to Chisholm's formulation, their view is that every event involved in an act is caused by some other event. Since they adhere to this type of causality, they believe that all actions are consequential and that freedom of the will is illusory. Compatiblist deny the conflict between free will and determinism. A.J. Ayer makes a

There is much debate over the issue of whether we have complete freedom of the will or if our will caused by something other than our own choosing. There are three positions adopted by philosophers regarding this dispute: determinism, libertarianism, and compatibilism. Determinists believe that freedom of the will does not exist. Since actions are events that have some predetermined cause, no actions can be chosen and thus there is no will to choose. The compatibilist argues that you can have both freedom of the will and determinism. If the causes which led to our actions were different, then we could have acted in another way which is compatible with freedom of the will. Libertarians believe that freedom of the will does exist.

Diametrically opposed to hard determinism is a philosophical viewpoint with which free will is closely compatible: libertarianism. Proponents of this position, such as philosopher William James, maintain that humans are all free and therefore, liable for their actions. When making a decision, people “choose which path to take, and (…) are as a result responsible for that choice”. With this in mind, “the testimony of our direct, lived experience” is what offers “the most compelling grounds” for this argument; according to James, evidence of free will cannot be found through scientific study. Rather, the existence of free will should be determined by the average person’s “assumption that personal freedom and responsibility are valid concepts”. In short, the argument that libertarians assert is that free will should be believed in simply because the majority of the population believes in it. The existence of freedom will most likely never be definitively proven or

There are those who think that our behavior is a result of free choice, but there are also others who believe we are servants of cosmic destiny, and that behavior is nothing but a reflex of heredity and environment. The position of determinism is that every event is the necessary outcome of a cause or set of causes, and everything is a consequence of external forces, and such forces produce all that happens. Therefore, according to this statement, man is not free.

The question of our freedom is one that many people take for granted. However, if we consider it more closely it can be questioned. The thesis of determinism is the view that every event or happening has a cause, and that causes guarantee their effects. Therefore given a cause, the event must occur and couldn’t occur in any other way than it did. Whereas, the thesis of freewill is the view that as human beings, regardless of a cause, we could have acted or willed to act differently than we did. Determinism therefore, states that the future is something that is fixed and events can only occur in one way, while freewill leaves the future open. Obviously a huge problem arises between these two theses. They cannot both be true

Do we have free will? How is free will defined? How can we prove that we have free will? Free will can be a tough subject to talk about. There are three categories of free will; hard determinists, compatibilism, and libertarianism. Compatibilism is the only correct theory of free will because hard determinism is contradictory, libertarianism is inaccurate and compatibilism solves all problems.

We have the appearance of free will. We can only do so much up to a certain point. They are predetermined events that take place in our lives. These events act as tunnels that lead us to our path in life. These events shape our personalities and change the way we think as we move forward in life. We are governed by a set of rules, moral and spiritual. Free will can only be reached once freedom is achieved. Freedom can only be achieved once responsibility no longer exists. Thus free will can never exist which makes the Libertarianism argument invalid.

When analyzing the free will/ compatibilism argument, one must choose the argument they agree with the most. In my case, I chose the compatibilist vs. Libertarian free will case, which will provide to broader cases, one with a determined outcome made by some sovereign “god” (Compatibilisim), and the opposite end of the spectrum the idea that nothing can be predetermined (Libertarian). These views contrast on arguments of free will, being that the compatibilist has free will to make decisions that are predetermined through god, where the Libertarian would disagree with that logic and say, how can someone make a choice if his actions are already determined through god.

When it comes to free will scientists fall into three different groups: metaphysical determinists, neuroscientists, and compatibilists. Metaphysical determinists believe that decisions result from molecular-based electrical impulses and chemical substances transferred from one brain cell to another. Therefore, when discussing the topic of free will, metaphysical determinists are free will deniers, known as libertarian incompatibilists. Since making decisions without these electrical and chemical impulses is impossible, all of our choices are determined for us. Neuroscientists believe that there is some sort of neurobiological gap between reason and action and that “there is an irreducible non-Humean self which makes a reason effect by acting on it” (Banja) if we are to be free. However neuroscientists have found no room in the human nervous system for this noumenal self or gap, so there is no scientific evidence of humans having free will. Compatibilists believe they are the authors of their actions and can be held responsible for their actions and decisions. Since we have the ability to control the core decisions that determine who we are-- “such as persons with chemical dependency disorders enrolling

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.

In his paper, “In Defence of Free Will,” Philosopher C. A. Campbell introduces a Libertarian conception of free will. Campbell’s view of free will consists of the ideas that a free choice is caused by the self, but not by a specific occurrence happening within the self. He describes an action as free if and only if the self is the sole cause of the action, and the agent had the choice to act differently. He admits that the first condition alone is not sufficient criterion to deem an action as free. He states “it is possible to conceive an act of which the agent is the sole cause, but which is at the same time an act necessitated by the agent's nature,” (Campbell 284) and is in part, not an action of free will. The belief which insists, and

Libertarian view on freedom is that choices are free from any persistence or pressure from human nature and free from any intentions by God. Libertarian is important to any moral responsibility. If choices were determined or created by anything, like for example someone’s desires, then it can’t be called a free choice. Libertarian is the freedom that acts on one’s nature, susceptibility, and considerable desires. The Libertarian viewer have an idea, that God make men act in a certain way, and the man has free will in acting in that way. God does put a limit on the actions that they can do, but not on their mind or their will. Some objections that come up is causality, responsibility, and God’s freedom.

When someone discusses the actions one does, they are considered as free; freedom is the concept of being responsible for the choices that you make, as well as the actions that one makes to get to that point. However, the determinist

When people think we are pre-destined, they think everything that happens right now happens because of events that had happened in the past, which also means that the future is already set in stone, that everything happens because of some other outcome. Free beings means humans are free to go ahead and make any choice they want to without being forced to do something else. In my personal opinion if we were determined human beings wouldn’t the whole approach on morality just be irrelevant? Because why would anyone care if anything is morally right or wrong because it was going to happen anyways. Just something so serious like a rape or murder wouldn’t matter, because it was already going to happen. One question I have about free will is that not every action we do, or every little thing our body does from breathing to blinking, we do not tell ourselves to do that, our body automatically does that for us. But the voluntary actions, we do have the freedom to choose what we do want to do. So in my opinion I do not think we are point black free beings or determined beings. I can see both sides in the argument. I do also believe in some aspect that things do happen for a reason, but ONLY from the decisions we make from our own free

               There are many great philosophical ideas and questions that are known and of course unknown. One of the questions that really enticed my interest was the question of whether or not we have free will. I myself was once a believer of people having free will and doing what I want was my choice and my choice alone. However, after careful consideration and lectures I have been reversed in how I believe in free will. Is there any free will though? Many people would say yes there is and of course there are some who believe that free will is a fallacy and not to be believed. Whether or not there is free will is yet to be determined but what we have to go on