Free Will and Determinism

by dmw795 (student)

Devin Wright

Period 5

2-23-12

Believing in free will is important when it comes to understanding what determinism is. The factor of determining what acts are considered to actually be “free” is essential into determining how individuals act the way they do. Free will is saying that an individual isn’t destined to have a set cause and have one specific effect follow, but rather to say that an individual can have varying types of causes and have a varying set of effects to follow the cause. Belief in free will can also aid in the explanation in how we know something is going to happen. As human beings, it is only through explanation that we are able to understand, and it is through cause and effect that this explanation is to be done in. The impact of free will is more or less to say how much determinism sways our beliefs, and that it is actually falsifiable and say that determinism doesn’t exist. Free will is a belief that works to establish the amount of items in an individual’s lifespan that are determined.

Causation is an essential element to the debate of free will and determinism. From what we understand, an effect that doesn’t have a cause is rendered unfathomable and unable to be able to be processed by the human mind. With that being said, causation has a deep root in both sides to this debate. The whole use of causation from a deterministic perspective is to say that a certain event is to be caused by only one specific event. From a stance of free will, an event has the possibility to be caused from a certain category of causes rather than one specific cause. The role of causation affects how we understand each stance in this argument. In all reality, we can either have a set or a category of cause(s) that can change how individuals know what is going on in the natural universe

Ethical implications of this debate apply directly to humans and their direct actions. Like in the example with the man and the prostitute, there were two ways of describing the event to make it seem that he was guilty and not guilty. What I’m trying to say is that depending on your belief in determinism or free will, it can be applied to humans. In the example, a determinist would believe that he was not guilty due to possible mental imbalances that would force him to act in no other way when the situation presented itself. On ...

Ethical implications of this debate apply directly to humans and their direct actions. Like in the example with the man and the prostitute, there were two ways of describing the event to make it seem that he was guilty and not guilty. What I’m trying to say is that depending on your belief in determinism or free will, it can be applied to humans. In the example, a determinist would believe that he was not guilty due to possible mental imbalances that would force him to act in no other way when the situation presented itself. On the other hand, a believer in free will would say that the man is guilty due to his free decision to choose from his wife or the prostitute. With that being said, ethical implications could lead to arguments on whether or not an individual’s actions are just according to how much the populace believes in free will or determinism.

Compatibilism is the way of saying that freedon and determinism are not genuinely incompatible. In other words, free will and determinism can be altered to suit the individuals wants or needs. An example of this is an individual who starves himself as part of a hunger strike. Knowing that he has the ability and free will to eat, he decides not to in order to protest whatever is going on by not eating. This shows that humans can alter their free will to go against determinism in order to receive items that they want or need. Another example mentioned in the article is the young child who ceases from doing other activities in order to get their homework done. Instead of exercising their free will and freedom by doing what they desire, they alter it in order to accomplish another task. In the words of Kant, individuals make different approaches to the world depending on practical or theoretical interests

In terms of the items that influence the decisions that we make, I see the environment as a bigger and more influential factor. The environment is more influential because it has the ability to mask some of the items that characterize our inherent nature. For example, if an individual has a gene for alcoholism but is raised in an environment without the stimulant present, then the gene is rendered useless. In terms of other factors that don’t fall into either of these catagories, I see none. There is only how we as individuals are, and what environment we are raised in. There is no way that an individual would be able to have an overwhelming choice on the decision of nature or nurture because it isn’t decided by them in the first place.

In one of the articles the scenario regarding men as being more violent that women arose. It was said that a chemical imbalance in the brain with the lack of serotonin caused aggression. Additionally it was said that this chemical imbalance could be traced through the individual’s genotype and derive that this imbalance was due to a mutation in the X chromosome. With that being said, the control of human behavior in terms of the free will and determinism debate comes to a breakpoint. Most individuals would believe that if an individual does something wrong, that they automatically should be persecuted. But what these people don’t understand is the possibility that these actions were destined to happen through chemical imbalance, and an overwhelming internal force that can’t be fixed. This means that these things were absolutely destined to happen. But this is where the problem sets in. According to the article, an action that is free means that they aren’t actions determined by unusual overwhelming internal forces, actions performed in ignorance, or actions determined by outside forces. In the instance mentioned above, the action was caused by an internal force, saying that this was completely determined, and therefore means a determined behavior is suggested. In instances where no opposition is present, free will then become the ability to specify a certain category of cause, and show a specific behavior as a result.

I decided that it is important to leave little Hitler the way that he was and let the time go by. By changing something as radical and widespread as the Holocaust, there is no telling what items could result. From my understanding, there actually were some good things that came out of the Holocaust, like an increased sense of community and nationalism. Additionally, there is the overwhelming possibility that there could have resulted in more problems and a worse epidemic if Hitler ceased to exist. What I’m trying to say is that if we were to change history by cutting the head off of the snake, nobody knows if a bigger and worse snake is to come and take over. By leaving young Hitler the way he is and letting history run its path, we are keeping the world the same way it is now and preventing the possibility of a worse event occurring.