The Neural Basis Of Free Will : Criterial Causation Essay

Responsibility is a huge task to do in life, especially when you become an adult. Life is not always about having someone holding your hand and guiding you to the right path. Mistakes are meant to happen in life to learn and gain experience from them. In the article, “The Neurology of Free Will,” Angie Bachmann had a difficult life as a mother. Bachmann did not receive any attention from her family, so she felt very lonely. She was dealing with having to pay for the rent, feeding her children, and having to take care of her parents, almost like a single mother, because her husband was never around. I believe these factors did contradict with Angie Bachmann having an addiction with poker, but it was definitely her responsibility in

In this paper I will present an argument against free will and then I will defend a response to that argument. Free will is defined as having the ability to make our own choices. Some will argue that all of our decisions have already been dictated by our desires therefore we never actually truly make our own choices. The purpose of this paper is to defend the argument that we have free will by attacking the premise that states we have no control over what we desire. I will defeat this premise by showing how one does have control over his/her desires through the idea of self-control. I will then defend my argument against likely rebuttals that state that there is still no way to control our desires proving that we do have free will.

Angie Bachmann married young, a typical wife and mother of three, develops a devastating addiction to gambling, leading to the family’s bankruptcy. She was a bored housewife and a stay-at-home mom who one day decided to go gambling which led to her addiction until she lost everything in gambling at Harrah’s Casino. This book, The Neurology of Free Will written by Charles Duhigg, illustrates the challenging case of Angie Bachmann who gambled away every penny she inherited after her parents’ death, and then another $125,000 she borrowed from the casino. Harrah’s casino sued Bachmann then for the money she borrowed and held responsible for her actions. Bachmann, on the other hand, countersued defending her case. She claimed that even though

For example, if I should happen to walk down the street to get food, the mere action of my movement can be explained by the fact that my being hungry has caused me to walk down the street and move my legs, and to keep moving my legs at all I need food. Thus, the body is in need of nourishment, and from laws of nature and laws discovered by science the body does in fact need food as a consumable source of cellular energy to promote life in a system such as the human body. It is then to be deduced that if a definite law of nature caused my acting, then I must be in accordance with scientific laws, and no other alternative except that law has to be the one that I shall act on. If this is so, one cannot do otherwise than obey the law. Thus, our freedom of will is absent due to the compelling laws of nature and their innate causal behavior. Now that Holbach has clarified this, he moves on to say something on the nature of the human mind’s will, or more specifically its acts of willing. Holbach states that the will is a modification of the brain (Holbach 462). And it is from the brain, which makes one act in accordance with certain desires or impulses that act on the brain or mind that are outside of one’s control. A stronger desire, or motive as Holbach calls it, may suspend a former desire, so that you are in fact always acting on your strongest desire due to the fact that you want to be content or happy with your choice, and this desire determines your will. For

Between the 1920s and the 1950s the behaviourist approach was often primarily used. Behaviourists thought that psychology should be viewed as scientific, therefore theories within the approach consisted of controlled observations and measurements of behaviour which resulted in quantitative data, sometimes through the process of experiments. Within this perspective there is no room for free will, as all behaviour and thoughts are determined by the environment (Don, K. 2015), this is also the case from the biological aspect as they

Although free will has been defined in multiple, conflicting ways, the present approach analyzes it as a psychological capacity including self-control, choices, planning, and the ability to assess and initiate things independently. These capabilities are useful for making human social life and culture possible, but they depend on a limited resource and therefore often fall short of optimal levels. Religion may be helpful to individuals and society in part because it supports both the exercise of free will and the belief in it.

There are many of factors influencing your decision making process either in a positive or a negative way. In addition to what is already determined by your genes, according to various sources the following biological and psychological factors play an important role.

The first matter to be noted is that this view is in no way in contradiction to science. Free will is a natural phenomenon, something that emerged in nature with the emergence of human beings, with their

He explains how neurologists have proven that all activity within the brain is conducted through the interdependence of different parts of a large biological network (Eagleman, 2011). This means that the brain has no area where it is not connected and influenced by this large network, suggesting that the brain has no independence and, therefore, not free. Despite this growing disapproval for free will, Eagleman chooses to continue to argue under the context that we do have free will because (1) we simply “feel” like we’re free, (2) legal systems assume we are practical reasoners who use conscious deliberation when taking actions, and, most importantly, (3) automatism. Dr. Wayne Renke, a professor of law, defines the term automatism as, “unconscious, involuntary behaviour” and as a defence to a criminal that his actions must be proved to be voluntary, the product of choice or will (Renke, 2007). Eagleman uses this concept to propose what he calls the “principle of sufficient automatism”. This principle states that free will may still exists, but it plays a very small role in comparison to the biological processes within humans that are

Edward Wilson writes in his excerpt on the essay “On Free Will”, that most scientists tend to leave the subject to the philosophers. He says,

Currently, the idea that we do not have free will and that it is just an illusion has become a popular theory, especially among many neuroscientists. The author Fyodor Dostoevsky raises this topic in his novel Notes from Underground, and makes several interesting points. The underground man from Dostoevsky’s novel is troubled by the idealized or scientific point of view because it has the potential to end the progress of mankind, and give us nothing to look forward to by

Free will defines the role we play in our own lives. Whether we have it or not maybe the key in linking our world to forces and dimensions beyond what we can see. But, if we do really have free will, it may leave us a solitary species. A scary thought in the realm of the 46 billion lightyear universe in which we are left to make choices on our tiny speck of dirt planet.

Some people believe that no matter what a person does in their life, it will ultimately have no effect on the outcome ofa it. Existentialists find this to be true because they believe that no matter what they ever do, they will always die. Existentialists link the inevitability of death to the idea that there is no higher power. Additionally, existentialists hold the belief that no one should allow society to control how they live their life. Writer Albert Camus uses many existentialist themes his works like The Stranger and “The Guest”. The protagonists in both stories demonstrate existentialist beliefs in their actions. As a result, many existentialist ideas can be seen throughout out both novels. Camus uses the paradox of free will in order to illustrate the inevitability of death for everyone as well as the idea that in order to obtain free will, a person must reject society and face exile.

Casual determinism put simply, is the theory that all things happen for a particular reason and everything is predetermined. It is the idea all the events in one’s life can be explained, and each event has a particular reason for being. If everything is predetermined, then this therefore suggests that the future is fixed which further suggests that we can possibly predict the behavior of things. The theory of determinism ultimately suggests that we don’t the capacity to have free will because all future events are destined to occur, and furthermore we do not posses the knowledge to figure out whether it can be proved true or false (Hoefer). There has been three positions that have developed concerning the theory of causal determinism: hard determinist, compatibilist or soft determinist, and compatibilist.

Since the beginning of time man has questioned life in repose of if they are free, why and because. The question of whether there is a clash between causal necessity and human freedom was taken up by many philosophers put their own spin on the idea. Through this short text we will discuss the own theories of Hobbes, Laplace, Sartre, and Freud.