Free agent

“Part of the definition of libertarian free will that an action that is free in that sense cannot be caused by anything outside of the agent, not even God can cause a person to freely do what is right” (Tooley). If humans are thought to have free will, then God would have no ability to control their actions. This could result in evil being brought into the world due to negative actions being…

appetites lean towards some form of goodness. The intellectual appetite, which desires knowledge, seeking all goodness. Unlike the other appetites “intellect can act with judgment which is free” it is the only appetite that can judge what is good. Free will acts upon its own judgements, not from…

Central to Omar’s narrative are the conflicting themes of confinement and freedom. Omar, Amjad, Tarek, and Nadia, all dream of a day when they will be free from the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Freedom to the Palestinian characters means the ability to lead their lives on their own terms, without intervention from a military-police state, without fear of even minor actions being scrutinized as open aggression. But this freedom is merely a dream, something for each character to escape to in…

In the ”Impossibility of Moral Responsibility”, Galen Strawson argues that we cannot be held morally responsible for our actions, as well as stating that free will does not exist. Strawson says that if one is not responsible for anything about themselves, how could they possibly be responsible for something that they did? He also says that when we engage in S-procedures, intentional shaping procedures, we only do it because of certain features of the way that we already are. In the very…

liberties as positive rights and negative rights respectively (2). Negative rights or Liberties are the individual’s inherent rights to freedom. The sole obligation for others is not to interfere in a person’s decision when it is made by free will. A person’s right to free life, moral truth, privacy, right to stay silent during any legal interrogation, a right to vote freely and marry without being pressurized, a right to fair trial and freedom from unwarranted searches. Essentially, “Life,…

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…

Existentialism, by definition, is a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of free will. Simply stated, existentialism has a special regard to an individualist approach and the sense of free will. This is very different from nihilism which is defined as the rejection of all religious beliefs and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless. There are…

only viable position in the debate concerning free will and determinism. In doing so, I will present, explain, and critically evaluate compatibilism. I will then consider, but ultimately reject, the following two objections against compatibilism: the hard determinists’ beliefs that we have no free will due to causal determinism and the libertarians’ belief that we are not causally determined. Compatibilism is the belief that causal determinism and free will are both true. Causal determinism is…

logical problem of evil) has been satisfactorily answered by Alvin Plantinga’s Free Will Defence’, (Phillips, D, 2007). To imply that freewill is the absolute…

field, studying a subject, and maybe forming that interest into a career will impact who you meet and how life goes in any given direction. There are many relationships between determinism and free will. Compatibilism is stated as possible worlds in which determinism is true and agents can often have free will. For example, two possible worlds could be pointed in the same direction and one could be completely changed by someone changing what they want for breakfast one day. This is different…