Theories On Free Will

There are many claims, presented by different theorist, regarding that deal with the philosophy of the mind, specifically when it comes to free will. Some believe that we are granted free will that every action that we take is something that we decide and no one else, and because of this there’s a certain process that we need to take when making someone take responsibility for bad actions. Others believe that we have not been given free will that everything we do is something that was meant to happen and because of this, we cannot be held accountable for something that was already meant to happen. When holding someone responsible and they behave in a way that is not acceptable, then there are also certain measures that need to be taken in order …show more content…
We may not agree completely with certain theories but we can find ourselves more drawn to one than the other. On this specific topic of free will, we will be looking at a particular philosopher whose theory we will be examining, regarding free will, praise and blame J.J.C Smart. A short history about Smart is that he is considered is that Smart is what is thought to be a “soft determinist”, which means that he believes free will and determinism are like-minded and indeed determinism is required for moral responsibility, and places his arguments to show that this is to be true. He believes that there are two main reasons as to why libertarianism is not good and that is that one it’s conflict with modern biology and psychology but does not really go into detail about this part of his argument and the other part is that it is simply not a good argument. Which is something that he brings all his focus to through out his Free Will, Praise and Blame article. Also he goes on to elaborate on how our “common attitudes” of praise and blame are based on a confused theory of free will. That we need to dissociate ourselves from this in order to better provide correct decision on someone when we are considering to “blame” them for an action. Although this may not be clear, I will elaborate on what he meant by that later on in the paper, …show more content…
Although it may be a little complicated to understand at first, Smart wants us to get rid of the judgmental feelings that we have in regards of someone’s action an instead recommends that “a clear headed” person will use the words “praise” and “blame” when the action is either held to be good or bad. So if the person does something that we did not consider being a good action then it would fall into the “blame” aspect and thus if a person commits an action that does seem to be favorable then it would fall into the “praise” category.
In Free Will, Praise and Blame, Smart argued that we have moral responsibility for the choices that we make in regard to praise and blame considering how this may affect those around us. Smart rejects the idea of libertarian free will on the claims that it is “logically incoherent”, making it clear that he does not believe that we have free will. He later goes on to mention also mentions his opinions about “chance ”