Strawson's Arguments Of Free Will

The debate about free will has been going on for years. After reading many articles, it seems that people have very different views regarding free will; two of these people are Galen Strawson and Robert Kane. Strawson believes that you cannot make yourself the way you are due to predetermined factors, while Kane believes that you can shape your own character through self-forming actions that pave the road for your decisions later on in life. Although both make very good arguments for their claim, Kane’s claim is stronger over all, therefore he is right. The main concept of Strawson’s argument is that free will does not exist due to the fact that an individual cannot be ultimately responsible because of predetermined factors. With that being …show more content…
These actions are made freely because they are determined by the person’s self-forming action which was determined by a choice that was also made freely. All in all, a person can have free will whether or not their actions are previously determined because they form their self-forming actions.
When we discuss who is right and who is wrong, we can say that Strawson made a great point, but Kane made a better one. In Strawson’s argument he claims that all of our choices are predetermined by factors we cannot control; he then goes on to conclude that because of these factors, we do not have free will. Similarly, Kane claims that some of our choices are predetermined but are still made freely. Kane’s argument is a stronger argument because like Strawson, he considers multiple factors and still manages to give us control over our choices without the assumptions made by Strawson’s …show more content…
With Kane’s argument, he is aware that there are external factors but clearly states that free will is still possible because the only determined choices that are truly made by us are the ones that were made as a result of self-forming actions. Kane is not claiming that all determined choices are free, but that only the ones determined by our self-forming actions are; with that being said, Kane acknowledges the choices that are determined out of our control while also strongly arguing that there are certain ones that our fully ours. Strawson only acknowledged his view of free will as opposed to Kane who considered both and made a well-rounded claim based on all the information. Along with that, Kane focuses on the factors that one consciously thinks about when making a choice, whereas Strawson focuses on factors that we do not consider when making everyday