Free Will - Determinism

Free Will & Determinism Essay

Determinism challenges the idea of free will by stating "that what appears to be a free choice is not. Instead, every action we choose is no choice at all but is predetermined by brain chemistry and environment. Free choice is an illusion (Shaw). I do believe that determinism plays a part in our lives. Compatibilism is the belief that determinism and free will are compatible and that it is possible to believe in both logically. Compatibilists believe that free will is the ability to act on desires and motivations without being forced to act differently. Libertarians believe that determinism is false because they have the "philosophical position on free will that argues that we have genuine free choice in at least some of our decisions and actions" (Shaw). It argues that "for a genuine openness and self-determination to human decision-making, we have free will, not just complex reactions to external and internal stimuli, which are fully explained by deterministic chains of physical cause-and-effect. Our uncaused self-caused choices ground moral responsibility" (Shaw). Though I understand where libertarians come from, our circumstances often cause our actions. Libertarians are right in saying that free will and determinism are incompatible, and it is also stated in the textbook that “those who claim that we are free, and who reject determinism, are called libertarians” (Shaw). Often, we can be predetermined from our childhood upbringings.

For example, if one grew up in a poorer community, one would be determined not to have the advances others might. It can often make one more prone to mental health problems. Though I know this isn't always true, the statistics align with it. In the article "What are the effects of Child Poverty," it is stated that "There are millions of children in poverty. Many come through it and achieve great things. However, it's not easy. Sleeping in a cold bedroom, studying on an empty stomach, missing out on trips with mates. Young people from poor backgrounds must fight harder for their future" (The Children's Society). We are often predetermined to go down a particular path without even realizing it, and it usually starts in one's childhood.

Though I understand where libertarians come from, our circumstances often cause our actions. Do I have the free will to go outside? Yes, but was I predetermined to make that choice because growing up, I spent a lot of time outdoors, or is it a different type of free will where my action of going outside followed my decision to go outside? A Liberationist could say that prior events did not cause my decision to go outside because of a belief in dualism, where the mind is separate in some way from the physical world. A libertarian, who is also a physicalist, may believe in something like quantum indeterminism, where subatomic events do not necessarily have a cause and cannot be known with one hundred percent certainty.

A way to contradict a determinist view is to say that free choices are achieved by something supernatural or acausal. When looking at this viewpoint, there is a phrase that says you must be the cause of yourself. In doing this, one can take fundamental responsibility for how one is, leading to free will choices. From this perspective, having literal free will means making decisions entirely independently of material things. Your consciousness would then need a supernatural ability to defy material input. The existence of valid free would suggest the nature of reality and provide strong evidence that awareness, not seen as material, is fundamental. This would mean we have free will based on our conscious abilities, meaning our soul, heart, and mind. There wouldn’t be a pre-determined side. Our soul is closely related to free will; thus, a non-physical source is part of the person's soul; if we have a soul, we have free will.

Libertarians believe there is evidence that something nonphysical or acausal affects our choices. It would be unreasonable to assume that choices aren’t made with some degree of freedom. For this counterargument, it could be stated that there is no good evidence of a soul or other supernatural things that affect our decisions or that there are physical events without a cause. This would lead to the conclusion that all decisions made up to that point were caused by the chain of events proceeding back in time as far as we can tell, and free will is nothing but an illusion we hold in our minds to justify our decisions.

Compatibilism argues that free will and determinism are compatible, and this group can often be seen as “fence-sitting” because it does not pick a side. It wants to have it both ways, saying that something is predetermined while also saying that we still have free will. Some compatibilists say that even though choices are pre-determined, the choices that people make in their minds and the ability to act on those decisions should be the only things necessary to make a free choice. They change the definition of free will to win the argument, but the compatibilist definition of free will is not what people mean when they say free will, and if the world is determined, then a literal free choice cannot be made.

            In philosophy, free will is always a hot topic, with so many views that it could be hard to offer a compelling case for any of them. Compatibilism is the most popular view of free will, as it says that we can still act free even if the world is deterministic and our desires cause our actions. Determinism says people cannot have free will because everything has been predetermined.  One of the main criticisms of determinism is that it denies the ability to make moral decisions, but it does make a valid point that there are some things in life that we cannot control. Libertarianism says that we need to be able to take more than one course of action, making everything seem more based on choice. With so many ways that people can choose to see free will, the biggest question is, does free will matter? 

©️The Rosebud Writings 

Citations:

Society, The Children’s. “What Are the Effects of Child Poverty?: The Children’s Society.” Effects Of Child Poverty | The Children’s Society, 2024, www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/ending-child-poverty/effects-of-living-in-poverty#:~:text=Children%20from%20poorer%20backgrounds%20may,simply%20can’t%20afford%20it.

Shaw, Daniel G., The Philosopher’s Quest, Pressbooks. CC BY-NC 4.0 https://pressbooks.ccconline.org/introtophilosophy/. Accessed 8 March. 2024.