Argumentative Essay on Freewill and Determinism

Introduction

If I were suddenly 15 years old again and hadn't gone back in time, I would make the same decisions in my life. All the circumstances surrounding the choices you made are identical. This assertion is in resonance with the paradigm of determinism, which this paper supports.

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Determinism radically states that every event in the world is the outcome of previous events, or event. In this understanding, every reality is already in pre-existent or pre-determined and, thus, nothing new may come about. This closed understanding of the world and the universe holds every event to be merely an effect of other preceding results. This concept has far-reaching and radical implications for religion, morality and science. If in general, extreme, determinism holds true, then any event in the future is unalterable, just like any event in the past is unchangeable. A significant result of this is that the freedom of man is in a simple statement, an illusion (Pojman, 122).

One of the areas of contemporary discourse in the field of science relating to the concept of the freedom of humans is the conception of genetic determinism. Under this conception, the notion of determinism links in a direct way to the genes as contained in the DNA of an individual. Because it is common knowledge that an aberration in particular gene can lead to varying forms of mental or physical disease in man, it is somehow specific that genes physically determine how people are. Proponents of genetic determinists, however, extend this further, claiming that even man's behaviour a determination of his genes. In this view of thought, people are but victims of their genetic makeup. Any attempt to change their behavioural patterns or moral nature is useless. Sometimes, "puppet determinism" describes such a phenomenon, to mean that, metaphorically, people dance on the strings of their genes.

A typical description of determinism supposes that each event is causally an outcome or result of antecedent events. This essay defines determinism as a hypothetical thesis that all facts belonging to the past, coupled with the law of nature entail absolute truth regarding the future events. According to this description, if determinism is anything to believe, then, assuming the actual past, while holding constant the law of nature, there is only one possible future at any particular moment in one's lifetime. It's worthwhile noting that implications of determinism as applying to people's conduct goes that, if determinism is to believe, there is a (causal) condition for somebody's actions located in his/her remote past, before his birth, that explains each of his actions. This essay expounds this assertion from different dimensions namely physics, physiology, biology, the law of causation, science philosophy of nature, ethical perspective, theological perspective and sociological perspective.

Argument from a Physics Perspective

This argument founds itself upon the concept of physical energy conservation. According to the energy conservation hypothesis, the sum of physical energy available in the universe is a constant, but depends on how it can transform itself to different forms, such as from light to heat, but cannot either diminish or increase. It implies that any movement of anything is only explainable using real antecedent situations. The implication drawn here is that the actions of the human body derive mechanically from the past conditions of brain and body, without referring to the mind of an individual, his purposes and intents. The meaning here is that the will of humans is not a contributing cause to his/her actions; that the effects of men in all respects get physically determined. If the state of will, that is, mental, causes an act of the body, and this is physical, then by so much will the physical energy in the universe be increased, a phenomenon that negates universal hypothesis physicists uphold. Hence, to physicists, the will of human is not a vera cama when explaining any physical movement.

Biological View

The discourse of evolution in the first half of the 19th century popularised this argument. This argument premises itself upon the biological hypothesis that a good reference to the environment and heredity of any organism adequately explains or describes that organism. These two forces are the real ones, the diagonal effect whose parallelogram thoroughly explains the organisms' movements. All creatures are a compound of both capacities as well as reactions to stimulus/stimuli. The capacity they receive from heredity, the stimulus emanate from the environment of the creature (Pojman 64). The response referable to the animal's mentality is the effects of, on the one hand, inheritable tendencies and on the other hand, of the stimuli of the animal's environment. Biologists deem such sources of explanation as being adequate for the animals in the lower classification. A question then arises as to why not also for the higher animal, that is, for man

Physiological Angle

As academicians pass from physical to natural sciences, the observation that the natural sciences, that deal with the animate matter, borrow their methods of description from such physical sciences as chemistry and physics, known for dealing with inanimate stuff. Today, science tends to reject all forms of "vitalism" for making any explanation. By "vitalism" it means that, in some sense, the living principle is a cause. This understanding appears in the physiological perspective when arguing for determinism

This argument premises itself on the hypothesis by Huxley, stating that human beings are conscious automatons. No man can easily deny the reality of consciousness. However, this physiological theory denies its efficacy. Every action of man conforms to the automatic type, regardless of their complexity, and those actions come with some consciousness, which, nevertheless, is not within the chain of a causal phenomenon, but remains outside as, to use Huxley's words, an "epiphenomenon". People in their deeds are actually in a big way complex of reflex actions, and aggregates of physical forces balancing against each other. Therefore, men are intelligent machines whose acts, nonetheless, are in no way attributable to their conscious resolves.

This conception that humans are machines might repel people's feelings, though there are myriad reasons that render it noticeable to the scientific brains. One may object that some actions of humans are too complex to be like the ones of machines undirected by perception. Characteristically, the theory is simple, dear to both scientists and scholastic as an indication of verity. The model gives a constant principle of explaining conduct as per the reflex action theory, without an appeal to interrupting and non-physical causes. In fact, also, it is unclear how consciousness can move molecules in people's brains, though the brilliant minds are ready to affirm that they do. Further, this view agrees with the theories, generally acceptable to science, that nature is uniform, as long as interruptions from non-physical sources do not arise. If people are conscious automatons, acts of free will, whereby choices determined particular conduct, would be miraculous. However, it is against the foundation of science to agree to a miracle, concerning short-term suspension of the law of nature. Physiologically speaking, the soul does not cause. Naturally, a regular practitioner, raise on purely scientific physiology, ought to reject all types of mental healers.

The Law of Causation

This law of causation is universally undeniable as it merely asserts that every single effect has a cause. Causation, in fact, one way in which people ought to think. People did not learn through experience to believe in a causal way, but instead, by thinking causally, it helps people to establish a background. People's minds do not so much experience causes as cause experiences.

The argument for determinism upon this basis goes as in the following statement: A like effect has a similar cause, this effect is identical to the purpose, in fact, the result is the cause transformed, just like lightning is an effect of a previous electrical condition. Now actions of men are, apparently, a physical effects; hence, people should expect to have only physical causes; therefore, any non-physical or psychical reasons are from the nature of the case precluded, thus, of course, the human will effect nothing. The actions of men, dogs, trees, stones, all are due in a similar way, to preceding physical conditions, which solely as causes do determine effects.

Science's Philosophy of Nature Dimension

A philosophy of nature generally, is a theory explaining all that occurs in the natural world. Now the model of scientific justification everywhere, including in physics, physiology, chemistry, and biology is mechanical. An event does not happen because any will or anybody wants it to happen; it happens because it has to happen; it happens because it must. It is up to science to discover this necessary link between the happenings of nature. By this hypothesis, the universe, whole and in part, is under control of mechanical law action. The sovereignty of law is worldwide. Man is a small creature in a little earth, a relatively small planet within the smaller solar systems of the enormous indefinite number of solar systems partially filling the infinite universe. In the world, a physical mechanism where there is the reign of law, man is only a tiny part of such universal machine. The question of how he can do otherwise except what he does do arises. Single free-will acts would introduce chance, caprice and whim into a universe where actions get mechanically determined. Omniscient observers of the present could then predict unfailingly all futurity.

Psychological Argument

Psychology is typically a subjective science. The former five decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the invasion of psychology, previously introspective and rational, by the scientifically popular methods of observing, explanation and experimenting. Since these methods of science ignore freedom of the will ultimately, it is ordinary that nearly all scientific psychologists of today are determinists.

The psychologists who defend determinism, about the hypothesis of psychology hold that there is not a particular mental state that does not have an equivalent or corresponding brain-state. The brain-state explains the psychological state because successive mental states do not have quantitative, measurable relations. Further, the brain-state itself never gets described by reference to the mental state, instead is by reference to the previous brain-state. Therefore the series of physical causation remains unbroken; it becomes self-explanatory; and also explains the mental series. However, the psychological series in the converse explains nothing regarding the physical side. Such a working hypothesis effectually excludes the conscious will from efficacy. In support of this theory as a working basis in psychology, it is worth remarking that the modern knowledge on the localisation of inter-alia brain functions, of the insanities, of the aphasias, mostly becomes dependent upon it.

In Psychology, there is also the emphasis of people's ignorance respecting the relations of brain and mind, and the emphasis of the inability of people to imagine how attention changes a brain-state, though such an effect is attributable to focus in some conceptualisations of free will.

As a science of mind, psychology also has a presupposition respecting laws. The mental part must have its rules if one has the interest to understand it. Such practices must not have any exceptions, as free will implies. It is upon psychology to deny exceptions, as in sciences, and discover laws (Pojman 314).

An example of the law that affects the question in this pap...