Understanding Of Free Will And God 's Omniscience

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.

Boethius was a philosopher teaching at the end of the Roman empire, in his 40’s he was arrested for suspected conspiracy with the Eastern Roman Empire and was eventually put to death at the age of about 44/45. Whilst in prison Boethius wrote his book, ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’ where he discusses in great depth with Lady Philosophy issues with God’s omniscience. In his writings, Boethius identifies an issue with God’s foreknowledge, our personal autonomy and the impact of how we are to be judged as when we enter the life after this. He identifies that if God has foreknowledge and knows our future, He then knows what we are going to do which

An alternative problem to this theory regards God’s omnipotenence. If God is aware of our past, present and future it is then not possible for us to do anything on our own accord. Omniscience and free will are clearly incompatible. They are many resolutions to this problem; although some thinkers may believe that free will is not possible and that this is only apparent some thinkers believe that the two different states of an eternal God is a solution. Firstly, God as timeless may resolve this problem as if God is outside of time it could be interpreted that he knows what we will do but does not cause our actions as he is unchanging and outside of time. Secondly, God being everlasting may also be a solution. If God moves through time with his creation that he knows everything that is logically possible to know. God may know our actions but does not cause them. This is an important factor as one attribute of God offers

Determinism is based off this notion that all events are pre-determined, without influence by human actions. If this is true, we can imply that people do not have free will and thus are not responsible for their actions. In Oedipus the King we see that the dichotomy of fate and free will is hazed by the hyperbole of events, which can make it difficult, but possible, to determine if humans even have free will. Through Oedipus’s flaws and decisions and Sophocles use of the imagery of a crossroad it is apparent that free will can be exercised in a meaningful way.

The arguments presented by D’Holbach and Hobart contain many of the same premises and opinions regarding the human mind, but nonetheless differ in their conclusion on whether we have free will. In this paper, I will explain how their individual interpretations of the meaning of free will resulted in having contrary arguments.

Many believe that the world is largely determined but we can still act freely as our behaviour is not predictable. Thomas Aquinas disagreed with hard determinism as he believed that ‘man chooses freely, not out of necessity’. Although Aquinas and others that criticise hard determinism and disagree with the hard determinist views, would still agree with hard determinists in that free will and determinism are incompatible, but would argue that we have free will but our lives are not determined. This view that free will and determinism are incompatible but it is free will that exists, not determinism, is also supported by libertarians.

Free Will: “For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for is a feature of agency that is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their conduct.” (2)

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

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.

Throughout this section of the class we have talked about free will and the responses through different point of views. In this paper I am going to discuss the problem of free will itself and then describe the determinist, libertarian, and the compatibilist responses to the problem and talk about some benefits and drawbacks from the different positions. Finally I will give you my output on the various responses to the problem and defend why I believe in what. I will make references from the Riddles of Existence by Earl Conee and Theodore Sider and from the lectures.

4. Boethius relates the human experience of destiny/fate and the divine foreknowledge/providence by interpreting their meanings in real life. “Providence is the immovable and simple form of all things which come into being, while Fate is the moving connection and temporal order of all things which the divine simplicity has decided to bring into being” (Boethius, 92). Boethius says that providence is what happens in one second for God and fate is what happens in the course of a lifetime for human beings. He suggests that God knows the end of our lives right from the beginning but he doesn’t necessarily know each individual action or thought that it will take for a person to get there. Fate on the other hand is free will. Human beings

The juxtaposition of predestination with the exercise of free will is an age-old question. In the pagan world, prior to the upsurge of Western development and Christianity, predestination was deemed a truth; pagan gods were superlative and dictated the lives and fates of subordinate humans. Around 524 A.D., a Roman writer, Boethius, published a tract entitled The Consolation of Philosophy. Changes in medieval times were formulated around this document. By delving deeper into the possibility of chance, Boethius proclaims that, should one identify philosophically that chance is random, there is no such thing. Because “… nothing comes out of nothing” (p. 116), it is an impossibility that, with God maintaining security, there are acts of arbitrariness. Given that humans are rational creatures and cannot exist without reason, the presence of free will is a plausible assumption because philosophy acknowledges that there is freedom for cogent beings.

The question is then posed, why you reject the arguments of those who think that free will is not in any way hindered by foreknowledge” (pg. 438). This is answered with the idea that foreknowledge does exist, and that “the same freedom of will shall be left, intact and absolute” (pg. 439). They speak of foreknowledge in future tense, and come to the conclusion that, “since these things have no necessity for occurring at the moment they happen, they cannot, before they actually occur, happen with necessity in the future” (pg.

Whether we have free will is widely controversial. The absence of a universal definition poses a primary problem to this question. In this essay, I shall base my argument on a set of three conditions for free will: 1) that the actor is unconstraint in his action, 2) the actor could have acted otherwise and 3) the actor must be ‘ultimately responsible’ (Kane, 2005: 121) for his action. After I have explained them, I shall apply these conditions to three scenarios that cover most, if not any, circumstances that occur when taking choices. The purpose of this essay is to show that if my conditions are true, none of the scenarios is based on free will and thus we do not have free will.