Free Will vs Determinism Essay

The choices we decide to make build our path in life. If we make the right choices, then your life will be the life you want to live. I believe that we were all destined with some kind of purpose. However, the choices we make will determine whether we fulfill that purpose or not. Thus, our choices will ultimately decide our fate. Through the years, we have been taught about choices and their impact on our actions. We have free will in the sense that we can either go on one road or the other. We decide what we do on a daily basis, moment by moment, and we decide what path we want to go on. In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag was a fireman who had his life entirely changed when he met a 17 year old girl named Clarisse, and an old woman who

fate or determinism and say this was all planned out from the beginning of time knowing some things in nature happen randomly--

“Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love”. Family is supposed to be the one thing in life that offers you love and, comfort. Above all parent’s first instincts are to love their kids and do anything to protect them, but sadly that was not the case for Robert Harris. Harris was sentenced to Death Row because he murdered two teenage boys after he stole their car with the intention of committing a robbery. To make an attempt to understand what could have led Harris to commit these crimes and therefore to the death sentencing, I will give you a brief summary of his past.

Sometimes in life, we feel as though our actions and choices are predetermined by a greater force. We feel as though another being is determining our fate. But not every action is set in any book. Romeo and Juliet is a tragic love story where the two households, Montagues and Capulets, are fated to hate each other from an old feud. But the two households' children, Romeo and Juliet, decided to get married. Even when it seems all forces are pinning the children apart, they find a way to be together. One's actions and choices are not predetermined by a greater force, but are made by that person and that person alone.

In this paper, I am going to discuss and argue about free will and determinism. What is free will, and do we have it? Free will is simply the power to act with no constraint, in other words, to act freely with no one holding us down. The controversial argument of this topic is if we have free will or not. According to physical determinism, “If our brain is in a certain state, then our next move is determined. Therefore, we do not have free will” (Holbach). According to others, we do have free will. In my paper, I will talk about the views of Holbach, Stace, and Ayer concerning free will. I will then argue that Ayer has the best view because he has a more serious sense of moral responsibility than Holbach and Stace, and that his view better fits with our normal view of free will.

Fate, as described in the Oxford English Dictionary, is “The principle, power, or agency by which, according to certain philosophical and popular systems of belief, all events, or some events in particular, are unalterably predetermined from eternity.” To the western world, fate is perceived as “a sentence or doom of the gods” (Oxford). They often sought prophecies of the gods, especially from Apollo, the god of knowledge. The Greeks would seek prophecies usually when they had doubts about something, or if they were afraid or in despair. When the gods made a prophecy, the Greeks put all their faith in it and believed that it would happen. When their prophecies did come true, was it really fate that

The issue of whether freewill is realistic or determinism has long been at the heart of the debate. Free will is fundamentally and totally compatible with determinism (Schooler & Vohs, 2008; Paulhus & Carey, 2011). Free will refers to the power of acting or not acting according to the determination of the will of the individual (Schooler & Vohs, 2008). In contrast, determinism states that, due to the laws of cause and effect, all future events are predetermined, including human decisions, and that there is no such thing as free will (Baumeister & Monroe, 2014). In touching on the issue historically, there has been the philosophical and psychological threads densely tangled for unsolid reasons for the existence of free will and determinism leaving many possible sources. Human free will is an example many philosophers use as an example of a greater good. They say free will is what makes us human. Over centuries, for those who placed more weight on the existence of free will, the philosophical or religious understanding of free will has been lightened the fatigue of the road with detecting the locus of control in human behaviour (Carey & Paulhus, 2013). One of the influential behaviour psychologists, Skinner, concurred with Descartes that humans make choices, but critically stated those choices are controlled by outside influences. This notion of determinism is legitimate to the physical aspects of the world even though it is not to humanistic behaviour. (Begelman, 1978) This

Are we free? All of us have a clear sense that we are free. We believe that our decisions are wholly our own, a result of our own reasoning and analysis. According to David Hume, the question of the nature of free will is “the most contentious question of metaphysics.” If Hume is correct, understanding of free will is a complex task indeed. At best to say that an agent has free will is to say that the agent has the ability and power to choose his or her course of action without constraint.

The problem of free will and determinism is a mystery about what human beings are able to do. The best way to describe it is to think of the alternatives taken into consideration when someone is deciding what to do, as being parts of various “alternative features” (Van-Inwagen). Robert Kane argues for a new version of libertarianism with an indeterminist element. He believes that deeper freedom is not an illusion. Derk Pereboom takes an agnostic approach about causal determinism and sees himself as a hard incompatibilist. I will argue against Kane and for Pereboom, because I believe that Kane struggles to present an argument that is compatible with the latest scientific views of the world.

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.

Overall, people do not want to take responsibility for their own actions. Blaming the devil or blaming others is easier than blaming oneself. But the Bible says, “…each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. (James 1:16, New International Version).” A person is tempted by his own desire to behave in a way not forced by anyone or any circumstance, but with a choice of his own

Ever since the beginning of time one of the biggest debates of time was Free Will or Determinism. With Determinism people are looking from the outside in, and with Free Will people are looking inside out. Is the world based on everyone and everything having Free Will, or is everything that happen determined to happen? I am a determinist, I believe that everything that happens, happens for a reason, caused by events that have happen in the past. I am going to give you three examples of historical events that show Determinism is present in society, and always has been present. Major court cases in the U.S. like Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, and Brown v. Board of Education 2 caused the Civil Rights Movement. WW2 Caused The Cold War. The great depression caused The New Deal, and FDR.

Everyone is inescapably responsible to deal with the situation that they find themselves in. Baron D’holbach might have thought that free-will was doing what is objectively possible, but Sartre sees free-will as what is subjectively possible. Have you ever been standing in the edge of a cliff or a tall building and thought, ‘I could jump down if I wanted to’. You most likely didn't jump, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. But what about the people who did jump? To others it might have seen like suicide, but to the jumper, they were simply radically exercising their freedom. Sartre’s philosophy is simple, existence precedes essence. As blank slates are born, so we get to choose what we want to become. Who we are is aldo defined by what

     Before one can properly evaluate the entire debate that enshrouds the Free Will/Determinism, each term must have a meaning, but before we explore the meaning of each term, we must give a general definition. Determinism is, "Everything that happens is caused to happen. (Clifford Williams. "Free Will and Determinism: A Dialogue" pg 3). This is the position that Daniel, a character in Williams’ dialogue, chooses to believe and defend. David Hume goes a little deeper and explains in his essay, "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding of Liberty and Necessity," that determinism is this: "It is universally allowed, that matter, in all its operations, is actuated by a necessary force, and

However, the question of whether human beings have free will has actually long been a controversial question even for some of the greatest thinkers in history, with answers made based on religious notions or scientific researches from philosophy to psychology. It is very difficult to have an ultimate answer to this question as the answer can be very different depends on one’s definition of “Free Will”. For this paper to remain focus on the scope of psychology, we shall define “Free Will” here as the ability to make choices free from constraints.