Free Essays

Free will is a characteristic unique to persons, allowing them control of their actions. Often brought up with determinism, it is the most commonly disputed topic of metaphysics. Determinism the philosophical proposition that every action or event is determined by a perpetual chain of pre-determined events or preceding occurrences. This means that under determinism, it is not possible for any spontaneous or random events to occur. Determinism and free will go together due to the fact that they…

determinism or free will? Many would argue that every action that we do is done by our free will and others would say that human behaviors are completely determined by prior events. In my opinion, I believe that that events that we experience have already been determined by factors such as science and experiences that we’ve been through in the past. There are a few reasons why I believe that human behavior cannot be a result of free will. Firstly, some choices just can’t be made by free will.…

An integral human question entailing both the upbringings or tragic flaws of folk heroes is a person’s perspective of free will; whether or not we weave the tapestries to our own fates, or does an omnipotent deity in the sky select our lives outcome before the day we are conceived? Maybe? Maybe not? Regardless, one retelling of a theory of destiny, Oedipus Rex, puts into question this notion of preordained fate. Not unlike most other stories, Oedipus Rex opens with a prophecy: that Oedipus is to…

on what you believe in. It’s all about fate and free will. Fate believes things happen because that’s the path God intended for you to pursue. It’s almost like God wrote down your entire life when you were born and that’s supposed to be the way it goes. It’s a path you must follow, while free will is setting your future with the present. The story of Macbeth is a tragedy. It is often played that fate and free will play a huge part in Macbeth. Is free will heroic or evil or is fate heroic or…

or we can say end, while free will is the ability or discretion to choose; free choice. In the story Oedipus the King, one of Sophocles masterpiece, free will plays an important and significant role in the story. In my honest opinion, I am up the view that fate only intervenes in one instance, but on the other hand this is not the case with Free will. Free will is distributed throughout the entire story. I do have a strong belief in fate, but unfortunately I believe in free will more.…

The idea of free will as an illusion has become a hot topic in neuroscience, still even nearly twenty years after this article was penned, due to the controversy it attracts regarding morals and self-determination. Tom Wolfe argues, in a rather snarky tone consistently seen throughout the article, that the concept of a self is dead—much like Nietzsche’s preceding declaration that God is dead. However, the concept of self is not yet dead in neuroscience like Wolfe predicted. Rather, more…

Free will is definitely more noticeable in the Old Testament compare to the Greek literature we have read in class. However, talk of fate and destiny had way more of an appearance in Greek literature compare to the idea of free will. Whenever a individual felt lost and didn't know what to do next, they would look at the foretold prophecies. Being able to look at prophecies diminishes the idea of free will since it allows an individual to be able to see the future, and prophecies are supposed to…

Humans have free will in the sense that they ultimately have choice, however, external and internal forces direct them to make certain choices. To have free will, one must be able to say “I could have chosen otherwise” after making a choice. Even if the alternate choices are unwise or undesirable, if one still has choice without direct external constraints, they have free will. This is a compatibilist response to the free will question. A choice is an fork in the road where one can complete…

In Hippolytus, free will is best defined as the power to choose your own course of action. Euripides explores a portion of human autonomy where we “know what’s good and recognize it”(Euripides 2001: 380) yet struggle to “accomplish it”(Euripides 2001: 381). That is to say, a struggle between different courses of action takes place and leads to a conflicted free will. Therefore, Euripides’ quotes can help shape the argument that free will, while strained by the actions of a god, is still…

In many stories, characters are affected by fate and free will. Three stories with characters affected by fate and free will are Romeo and Juliet, a tragic love story, Pyramus and Thisbe, a story about The tragic end of two lovers, and Six of crows, a story in which a team of criminals infiltrate a prison for a large reward. I believe that free will had a larger impact on the characters in these sources. In the sources, there are many decisions made about relationships. In Romeo and Juliet,…