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Essay on Philosophy-2
This is a philosophy paper and explains which position do you take to be the most defensible with respect to the problem of free will and determinism? What are the strongest arguments against the position, and what are the most persuasive arguments in favor of it? It also explains why the position you choose is the most defensible.
Just about everyone has noticed the apparent conflict between free will and determinism if your actions were determined to happen billions of years ago, then how can they be up to you? Imagine that your actions are not determined by what events came before. Then your actions are, it seems, completely random. Moreover, and most importantly for Hume, they are not determined by your character your desires, your preferences, your values, etc.
How can we hold someone responsible for an action that did not result from his character? How can we hold someone responsible for an action that randomly occurred? Free will seems to require determinism, because otherwise, the agent and the action wouldn't be connected in the way required of freely chosen actions. So now, nearly everyone believes in free will, free will seems inconsistent with determinism, and free will seems to require determinism. Human behavior, like everything else, is caused, and therefore holding people responsible for their actions should focus on rewarding them or punishing them in such a way that they will try to do what is morally desirable and will try to avoid doing what is morally reprehensible.
Determinism is the view that all phenomena (including mental events) are necessitated by antecedent factors. The "self-control" we think we are exercising over our mental processes is in fact illusion. In principal, we have no more control over our minds than we do over the pigmentation of our skin. Both were predestined by antecedent factors without any options allowed. This leaves us as mere spectators of our mental contents utterly passive observers of the events we call thinking, choosing, valuing, and the like. That's a nice, standard formulation, with the standard limitations. It is correct, but falls short of the task, that of explaining the real nature of that which we pragmatically call 'freedom....................
