‘I was caused to write this essay.’ Discuss.
Causation and freedom is an essential part of ethics as it considers whether or not one should be held morally accountable for their actions. The three philosophical approaches to the issue of free will and determinism are hard determinism, libertarianism and soft determinism which each take different approaches to decide whether or not our actions are caused or whether we are able to act upon our own free will.
We assume that we are free when we make decisions in our everyday lives. Hard determinists believe in universal causation, which states that all events, including human choices and actions, are caused; all events are hence, in theory, predictable. They maintain that everything in the universe …show more content…
Both environmental and genetic factors cause us to act in certain ways and so rather than humans being free agents, we are in fact complicated machinery acting in a completely caused way.
It may appear to us that we have a moral choice, however this appearance is merely an illusion. We believe our choices to be free because we are simply ignorant of the causes. John Locke gave the analogy of a sleeping man locked in a room to explain this. When the man wakes up, it is unknown to him that the room is locked, he chooses to stay in the room nonetheless. Although the man believes he has chosen freely, in reality, he has no choice and it is his ignorance of this that gives him the illusion of freedom.
Baruch Spinoza too believed that we are causally determined. He believed that experience teaches us to think that we are free because we are conscious of our actions, yet we know nothing of the causes so we experience the illusion of freedom, in the same way, decision making deceives us into thinking that free will exists. Believing that we are free does not make us free. Spinoza stated that those who believe they are free ‘dream with their eyes …show more content…
Our experience tells us that we are self-directing and that we have the real choice between two or more options. However, it can be argued that this sense of freedom is merely an illusion as we are ignorant of the causes of our choices. Yet surely because we normally trust our sense experience, why should we discount it only in this instance? All the same, what about our experiences, emotions and beliefs? Common sense tells us that they all affect our choices and actions, so we should not ignore them either. Additionally, social sciences reinforce that behaviour is predictable and so if we insist on ignoring important causal factors then our actions become random and irrational. On the other hand, libertarians demonstrate that plenty of people from violent backgrounds have gone on to be good people and in addition libertarianism can be regarded as a more optimistic way of viewing
Causation and freedom is an essential part of ethics as it considers whether or not one should be held morally accountable for their actions. The three philosophical approaches to the issue of free will and determinism are hard determinism, libertarianism and soft determinism which each take different approaches to decide whether or not our actions are caused or whether we are able to act upon our own free will.
We assume that we are free when we make decisions in our everyday lives. Hard determinists believe in universal causation, which states that all events, including human choices and actions, are caused; all events are hence, in theory, predictable. They maintain that everything in the universe …show more content…
Both environmental and genetic factors cause us to act in certain ways and so rather than humans being free agents, we are in fact complicated machinery acting in a completely caused way.
It may appear to us that we have a moral choice, however this appearance is merely an illusion. We believe our choices to be free because we are simply ignorant of the causes. John Locke gave the analogy of a sleeping man locked in a room to explain this. When the man wakes up, it is unknown to him that the room is locked, he chooses to stay in the room nonetheless. Although the man believes he has chosen freely, in reality, he has no choice and it is his ignorance of this that gives him the illusion of freedom.
Baruch Spinoza too believed that we are causally determined. He believed that experience teaches us to think that we are free because we are conscious of our actions, yet we know nothing of the causes so we experience the illusion of freedom, in the same way, decision making deceives us into thinking that free will exists. Believing that we are free does not make us free. Spinoza stated that those who believe they are free ‘dream with their eyes …show more content…
Our experience tells us that we are self-directing and that we have the real choice between two or more options. However, it can be argued that this sense of freedom is merely an illusion as we are ignorant of the causes of our choices. Yet surely because we normally trust our sense experience, why should we discount it only in this instance? All the same, what about our experiences, emotions and beliefs? Common sense tells us that they all affect our choices and actions, so we should not ignore them either. Additionally, social sciences reinforce that behaviour is predictable and so if we insist on ignoring important causal factors then our actions become random and irrational. On the other hand, libertarians demonstrate that plenty of people from violent backgrounds have gone on to be good people and in addition libertarianism can be regarded as a more optimistic way of viewing