Free Silver

essentially that everyone has a choice, and every act is a free act. When people believe they have 'no choice' but to do something, they are being deceptive towards themselves. To begin with, as humans we are born into existence…

Control is out of this world. “Compatibilism is the thesis that we are both determined and yet at the same time have the sort of freedom necessary to be morally responsible for our actions” (McKenna). Everybody has their own viewpoints on free will and hard determinism. It is often said that it can only be one or the other. The economy, the laws, and the people are only doing what is set in stone for them to be doing, or making their own choices in life. Well, I believe it’s both. Compatibilism…

ourselves but at the same time be aware of extraneous forces and the possible randomness of the universe that makes responsibility somewhat impossible. The first response is known as hard determinism, or as Paul Holbach refers to it “the illusion of free will”. Hard determinism is the idea that everything in life occurs because of universal causation. Hard determinism can be compared to a Rube Goldberg machine. A Rube Goldberg machine is an engineered series of events that completes a simple…

Are we free? On one hand most of us have the clear mindset that we are, we feel and act free, we feel like we make all sorts of decisions, good or bad that lead to both beliefs (that we are and that we’re not free) but it has yet to be proven that somebody can just decide to change his or her beliefs in any which way. But, consider knocking someone out, or, for another example, I donate wheat to a third world country on a whim, just because I feel like it. This view that humans are more than…

future is already set and no one knows what will happen until the time comes and that is called hard determinism. Hard determinism is a theory that human behavior and actions are determined by external factors, and therefore humans do not have genuine free will or ethical accountability. Hard determinism contains two powerful objections, but is capable of being on it’s own. Hard determinism argues that every event results from prior causes and because human thoughts…

Does free will exist? As humans came to enlightenment, the concept of free will concerned many philosophers’ thoughts, especially in philosophy of religion. Many came to question, whether humans have free will or they just do what needs to be done based on God’s plan. Therefore, many philosophers assume that the meaning of free will is the ability to choose to do something with one’s desire or to be free to choose. Moreover, people have different minds and different views about the idea of free…

In Greg Miller’s Wired article “Did Brain Scans Just Save a Convicted Murderer From the Death Penalty?”, John McCluskey, a prisoner escaped from an Arizona prison, carjacked a retired couple, shot them inside the camping trailer they were towing behind their truck and set the trailer on fire with their bodies still inside. Despite his reprehensible act of crime, John McCluskey’s lawyers successfully convinced the jury that the convict has several brain defects and that his action was a result…

The Importance of Sentiment in Morality In this paper, I will argue that David Hume’s argument on morality is more persuasive than Thomas Hobbes’ argument due to the nature of sentiment that everyone carries. One of the key problems of Hobbes’ argument is that it assumes that everyone is unitary. Hobbes explained the State of Nature and the way people would react to it in a way where all the actors involved would make the obvious--rational--choice, however, this is not the case. Not all…

does serve to strengthen his position. He points out that free will and predictability are compatible with an example of expecting an honourable man to act honourably and how common sense would still dictate the man is choosing to act with honour. The idea of a separation between types of freedoms of choice is a recurring theme in the three schools of thought all of which generally accept the kind of freedom which Stace refers to as free will but is generally called the freedom of…

1. Compare and contrast the views of John Searle and Rene Descartes on dualism.is composed of two substances: mind and body. One is physical and one is non-phyical. Rene Descartes views on dualism are known as substance and simple dualism. He believed that reality was composed of two substances, one being the mind which consists of inmaterial thing such as thoughts and emotions. Then the Bosy which existered in the material space. However, John Searle’s views on dualism where known as…