Free will

When it comes to the question of free will, I would have to say I am a hard determinist. I once thought that we had a choice, but these choices were decided by our world. I had some understanding of this idea without searching out an answer to describe it as hard determinism. The universe has it's own natural processes that we understand through chemistry, physics, math, and other fields of study. These processes have a cause and effect relationship, so they influence our environment, which…

comforting to think that maybe it was fate all along. The play Oedipus Rex and the Broadway musical If/Then both show that fate is ultimately unalterable and how knowledge changes the way we use our free will in our lives leading up to that fate. Fate is the way life ends up, regardless of the way we use free will in all of the choices we make in between. In Oedipus Rex, both Oedipus and Laius seemingly have choices to avoid fulfilling their prophecies, whether by leaving home or killing…

In On Free Choice of the Will, Augustine addresses the issue of evil by drawing on the human capacity to make our own decisions and determine our own course of action. His main point—that evil is the result of one’s desire to obtain something that is superficial and temporal—leads the reader to conclude that true happiness is derived from doing the opposite of evil: honoring things that are ethical and ever-lasting. From this, it is clear to me that we, as humans who possess the power of will,…

became aware that many of the choices that I’ve made that I previously made, were often the result of another event or decision. That’s where the argument of whether we really have free will comes in to play. The illusion of free will was one of the first topics discussed in The Illusion of Conscious Will. Do we really have free will? What lead to me making that decision? In the first chapter of The Illusion of Conscious Will we were introduced to the terms causal agents which can be broken into…

Do we really have free will? I thought I knew, but I don’t know for sure anymore. A cursory look at our experiences lead us to believe that it seems our actions, words, and decisions just appear spontaneously, out of nowhere. So much so, in fact, that it sometimes seems to us that we are merely observing what comes out of our mouths, helplessly watching ourselves act, as if it were someone else. But isn’t this just a trick of perspective? An existential sleight of hand? Our conscious selves are…

Evangelist PHL-150 24 April 2015 Free will Free will is the ability to act using one’s own discretion. Since the beginnings of philosophical thought, philosophers have had consistent debate and discussion as to whether or not we have free will, and if we do, to what extent. Free will is a characteristic that most assume to be an innate trait of all humans. However, after further reflection of the idea, it is difficult to decipher what decisions are made based upon free will, and which are…

Fate is a topic that is suppose to explain what each individual will do in their lifetime. So, with that in mind, how do you know if you have control over your life or if you are subject to live your life directed by some force beyond your power? For the king of Thebes, forces beyond his control, have directed his life from the day he was born. His biological parents abandoned Oedipus, the king when he was a child. They did this in response to Apollo’s prophecy that Oedipus would grow to live a…

according to Sider is that free will and determinism are incompatible. And they are incompatible because of the following arguments: 1. If determinism is true, then everything happens is caused by something happened previously. 2. If everything happens is caused by something happened previously, then we could not have acted freely. 3. If determinism is true, then we could not have acted freely. To understand the argument, we must first know what “determinism” and “free will” are. According to…

Free Will and its Relation to Grace: Erasmus versus Luther In our reading on Discourse of Free Will, we develop a wholesome idea of the opinions both Erasmus and Luther had on the topic of free will and the how it correlates with God’s grace. Once we look beyond the back and forth debate of this text, we will begin to look at their theological opinions on free will separately to find a better understanding and formulate our own opinions on this commonly debated topic. As we look at the…

Com 295 – 07 In communication there are two different ways on how you can look at communication theory; one way is free will scope, the other a determinism scope. These two ways of evaluating communication theory can affect many different aspects throughout communication. Free will means that humans acts are voluntary. It also says that we are free agents who can decide to respond differently under identical sets of circumstances. This means that we as humans have freedom to respond to our…