Paste your essay in here…Shakeh Aslanyan
Philosophy 101
Professor Parker
3 December 2017
Can We Do Whatever The Hell We Want?
As I reread my essay prompt on free will, I am left with a question of whether or not I was the one who decided to write this essay, or if there was some sort of underlying set of choices predestined for me that led me to writing it. Did I willingly sit here and write this thing? Or did the background sequence of events in my head (writing the essay in order to receive a good grade > resulting in a good grade in the class > leading to a higher GPA > and thus a higher chance of acceptance to the school I wish to transfer to) subconsciously lead me to write the essay before I even had the chance to make the choice myself? Living in America, citizens are surrounded by the principle that freedom is everywhere. There is a general stereotypical belief that we can say what we want, go where we want, and do what we want (for the most part). We have the power to choose the course we take, right? Well, when viewing this idea philosophically, the idea of free will becomes much more muddled and complex. How can we be sure that we are free at this very moment, and that every choice we have made was solely based on the idea that only we enacted on it? Furthermore, there is the question of nature versus nurture and whether or not our free will was tarnished by the environment we grew up in.
One of the main reasons we may care about whether or not we possess free will is it gives us a sense of moral responsibility. The idea that we have free will gives us a moral compass, making us feel more grounded ethically, which in turn gives us a sense of structure as a society. It would undermine ethics if all of the choices we made were already predetermined, because it would mean we weren’t the ones who made our moral decisions. Part of what sets human beings apart from other species is we have a general societal understanding of what is right or wrong. For instance, murder is frowned upon. Whoever murders receives a punishment because we have come to a consensus as people that it is morally unjust. People who are insistent that free will exists argue it would be dehumanising for our moral responsibility to be an outcome of anything other than free will.
However, the possibility of the existence of free will is not something easily accepted by some. Religion can play a massive role on the stance a person takes in the argument of free will versus determinism. For example, Christianity in particular expels the idea of free will due to their belief that God predetermines the destinies of human beings. Many Christians strongly believe people are put into the world with their purpose and timeline planned to a T. While it is difficult to evaluate how we could not be making any decisions whatsoever, it is just as difficult to do the same regarding how we would have the ability to be absolutely free.
Free will comes in degrees and these degrees can be impaired. Determinism throws this idea away because it is the “cause and effect” way of viewing our life choices. Determinism states that all of our actions are determined by causes that came before them and that these causes affect everything we do. Determinists argue there is no “chance” outcome and you could not even deliberately attempt to reach a chance outcome. If you were to flip a coin in an effort to have an undetermined choice, you would still have had to have made a determined decision to flip the coin in the first place.
There are two primary kinds of determinism: hard and soft determinism. Hard determinism is the more extreme variant and it denies both the existence of free will and moral responsibility. They believe every decision is just a small part stemmed from a much more larger-scaled, intricate butterfly effect. Soft determinism is the belief that while determinism is true, there are actions that have root causes which may be a result of free will. For example, if you went skydiving and jumped out of the plane yourself, it would be different than if you were not able to jump so someone had to push you. In both instances, you would have the same outcome which means the action was determined since you would be jumping out of the plane either way. However, in the first instance, there was an internal cause that led you to jumping out without being pushed. The problem is differentiating an internal and external cause because the internal cause could actually be considered external. Can an internal cause be called an internal cause when it could have been influenced by external factors such as your parents, friends, or society as a whole?
Nature is the claim that our actions are outside of our control while nurture is the claim that our actions can be manipulated, often by offering rewards or punishments (praise or blame). When we were little, we didn’t choose the desires we were acting on. We were shaped and molded to behave or think certain ways, and the way we interacted in response to this helped determine the kind of person we would grow up to be. Society gave us certain dispositions and habits. A major element to this is the idea of praise and blame. Human beings have a tendency of holding people accountable for their actions through praise or blame. This praise or blame is often manipulated and can even be false at times, which is how it would be a way to change behavior. For instance, if your child covered your younger child in shaving cream, you would have to scold them and place blame (even if you initially found the situation funny) because the reason behind doing so is to benefit how the child would grow up morally.
With the buffer between internal and external factors so blurred, we could conclude actions to either lean toward being more free or not quite as free. The extent of our free will is based on the amount of internal versus external factors that are affecting us in the situation. It is also based on the amount of control we have in the situation to begin with. If we get to praise or blame someone for what they do, we must take into consideration just how much control they have over their own actions. If a person said something awful while sober, it would be understandable to place blame and be angry with them. If they did the same while drunk, it would make less sense to place the same exact amount of blame on them because they had a drastically reduced sense of control over the situation. They did not have the same moral responsibility since it was warped with alcohol. While you would not feel the same level of anger toward them, you would definitely still feel some anger because they had not been completely helpless. They’d had control over the decision to get drunk.
It is no question that we can feel free. Essentially, the more control you have, the more free you feel; but feeling free and being free are two different things. True freedom would mean having options other than the one we originally chose. The way our choice could be considered free is if there would have been a plausible alternate decision we could have chosen if we wanted to. However, it is extremely difficult to disregard this gut feeling where we believe we had truly been the only component into making our decision, that we had acted on a basis of free will. Our actions are typically made up of a combination of our belief, desire, and temperament. For instance, my belief is if I write this essay, it will be beneficial to my future as it will contribute to the steps I wish to take in order to attend the university I want to transfer to. My desire is to have a career in the field I study. Finally, I have a temperament that predisposes me to want to achieve my goals. All of these add up in order to produce an action, which in this case would be the action of writing this essay. If one of these factors were changed in the slightest, the resulting action would be completely different. This dissects the idea of decisions into formulas that add up in a certain way, which is what gives us the illusion of free will. These combinations of factors make us feel more in-control of what we do, when even these factors were impacted by external forces and ideas, touching onto the aforementioned nature versus nurture discussion.
It is challenging to attempt to refute the ideals of determinism, especially when it is such a human trait to want to be a free-thinking individual. I intend to conclude this essay and it is either because I made the choice to do so or because writing many paragraphs predestined the need for a conclusion. Either way, while this essay will meet a conclusion, the discussion of free will versus determinism will not.