Snow White Free Will Analysis

Let us start with an example. In the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Drawfs, Hebert the huntsman was faced with two conflicting choices, which is either obey his master, the evil queen and kill Snow White or let Snow White free, alive. His final decision was not to murder Snow White and rather deceive his queen. Is Hebert’s decision determined or is it out of free will? To this question, hard determinists would answer that it is inevitable for Hebert to take mercy on Snow White and not kill her. Like Thomas Hobbes says, an action that is determined by sufficient cause in a past event cannot be done otherwise no matter what (Hobbes, 1654, p. 32). I agree with Hobbes on this because every action in the any past creates a causal link that …show more content…
Hubert goes back in time to change the causal past which may allow him power to kill Snow White in the future or 2. Hubert has free will. Both of these options are not plausible because for one, time travel is still a theory that has yet to prove its practicality and two, free will is dismissed by philosophers like B.F. Skinner and Sam Harris (reference?) to be just an ‘illusion’. An illusion that delusional people devote themselves to, in order to feel sense of control over own mind. To the hard determinists, our life is preset and there is only one future. Free will is non- existent in a deterministic world and is therefore, not compatible with determinism. However, the absence of free will give rise to threat against moral responsibility. This danger is mentioned by Peter Van Inwagen who implied that if everything is determined, we are not responsible for our actions and its consequences (Inwagen, 1983, p.16) …show more content…
The Scottish philosopher, David Hume is a compatibilist who describe the compatibilism between free will and determinism in terms of notion of necessity and notion of liberty. Hume define necessity as ‘the constant conjunction of similar objects and consequent inferences from one another’ (reference). This term is used synonym to determinism even though said definition (of necessity) does not match with actual meaning described for determinism. It is because Hume believes that empirical experiments do not prove necessity of determinism as its definition () suggests. Through this I believe Hume is attempting to isolate determinism and tread away from its intensity. However, creating a new word (necessity) to replace determinism is a failed attempt, at least to me because necessity’s definition has implication of cause and effect (how). Also Hume himself accepts causality. Now onto the notion of liberty. Liberty is defined as ‘a power of acting or not acting according to the determination of will’ (reference). To Hume, this liberty is free will which is constrained not incompatible in its relationship with determinism where a person’s liberty or free will is exercised when making a decision out of conflicting choices. Here again I will dare to disagree because I do not find any difference between Hume’s idea of free will being restrained in compatibilism and absence of free will in