Essay On States Of Consciousness

In the unit “States of Consciousness”, we discussed the concept of conscious will, and whether our everyday actions are determined by the choosing of our own free will, or if our conscious experience in making choices is merely a delusion of grandeur. It’s difficult to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary actions, especially if we are unaware of the extent to which we have free will. The idea is that we are already in motion of preparing for action before we even realize or actively decide we want to carry out said action.

I couldn’t help but think of my Theory of Knowledge class back in high school, comparable to that of an introductory philosophy class. Similarly, we talked about free will, and to what extent we were capable of making choices based on our own consciousness. We were introduced to three different types …show more content…
According to the hard determinists, our everyday actions are not determined by our free will, as we do not have control over what caused it. Soft determinists would argue that we have free will to an extent, while libertarians would claim that we have complete choice in our decisions and subsequent actions. Hard determinists would claim that because we are stuck in a delusional state of believing we have free will, we would mistakenly think that all our actions are voluntary. Soft determinists would be more optimistic by stating it is not a delusion, but rather we are blissfully making decisions we think affects our fate, but nonetheless proves futile in the end. The idea of carrying out actions before we are even aware of it can be linked to the idea of a “life agenda”, meaning that both hard and soft determinists would claim that we cannot deviate from a predetermined plan, so we have little control over our conscious experiences. Libertarians, on the other hand, would oppose all of these