The Concept of Free Will and Determinism - Essay Sample

Introduction

Free will involves man's ability to make a review of all the causations of a specific circumstance and draw an appropriate conclusion. The conclusion made could be from self-centeredness, facility, love as well as a host of other motivations. However, a free will might be constricted to one central pair of choice, i.e. the choice between accepting and rejecting the love of God. The other choices of life can be as a subject of determinism. The duality concept suggests that determinism and the free will should co-exist since good can exist without evil neither can a day exist without a night (Pleasants, 2019).

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From Daniel Dennett's philosophy, a free will as we ordinarily understand is an illusion generated by our cognitive structure... The retributivist notion of the criminal responsibility ultimately is dependent on this illusion, and if we are lucky, they will pave the way to the consequentialists ones thus radically transforming the approach to the criminal justice (Dennet 6:47). According to my opinion I sincerely oppose Dennett's concept of about man's free will. I only view this concept just as compatibilist like in Dennett's where he sees free will as perfectly consonant with a world where the physical laws predetermine all the choices and the actions of humans. Dennet derives this from Simon Laplace theory which states that " an intellect which at any given moment knew all the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that comprise it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit to its data to analysis, could simply condense into a very single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe as well as that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and hence the future just like the past would be present before its eyes" Dennet (21:45) I also view the free will concept as it is non-compatible with determinism.

I only consider people to be responsible for their actions. I do find the notion of the moral responsibility to be meaningless in a society where there are constrictions towards the choice of behaving in one way as opposed to another. The notion of free will does not exist when we are choosing to reveal human behaviors as the group of the quantum wave function or atoms. However, that doesn't have any claim that the concept nevertheless plays a crucial role when we decide to give a description of human beings as people. From the entire speech of Dennet, he doesn't indicate that the free will concept is true on a microscopic level. Many people do not believe in the idea of the free will since its evidenced that it is self-contradictory. Dennet reveals about choosing reality's description of it. It's only by legitimately choosing something for the free will in human beings to exist. Therefore, it is difficult to decide to deny free wills reality without making contradictions.

The human concept of choice does not exist. With this, it makes it difficult to talk about human beings without it. Provided that determinism proofs to be valid, then our conclusions, actions or thoughts cannot be freely derived. Hence it makes no sense for us to believe that our views remain in line with the reality (Van Inwagen, 2016). The way I think on the free will concept is that it is false not unless an otherwise concept crosses my thoughts and with free-thinking involved then I may not the truthiness of it since I have been determined to conclude the non-existence of the free will. From Dennett's speech, I have realized that "the science has nothing to do with the free will" (Dennet 41:13). I think this could be because the scientists' arguments could be semantic involving a variety of expressions concerning the free will. Just like other philosophers they don't even both to give an elaborate definition on it. This is mainly referred to as contra-causal or the dualistic free will where people can somehow digress from their choices and behaviors.

Daniel Dennet talks about determinism as being inevitable (Dennet 30:11). From this, it can be evident that man's actions can be predetermined. Predeterminism involves how all events are determined early in advance before they happen. The concept of the predetermination of man's actions is usually elaborated by tracing on the causal determinism. This implies that there exists a chain which is unbroken of the prior happenings which are infinitely stretched backward. In such a case, therefore, a chain of events of the human beings which have been predetermined cannot be interfered with by the human actions. Hence I believe that man's actions are predetermined.

If an outside force predetermines man's actions, such as Gods will or genetics, then they are NOT responsible for their actions when compelled by their external forces. Free will is a core to retributive punishment theories. Punishment imposition is mainly justified by the basis of the offender's deserts. Any offender has to be punished if and only if he could have abstained from the commitment of the crime (Van Inwagen, 2016). On the contrary, anyone who commits a crime without their fault, i.e. due to external forces under which they have no control, then the offender does not deserve the punishment. Inflicting of punishments only apply when the abuse is out of free will which God has given to man. Therefore it is highly equitable and just that one ought to be excused for the actions which are committed through compulsion and the unavoidable force.

Daniel Dennet argues that free will is directly compatible with determinism. He suggests that humans can be free even when all happening events in the universe are closely determined by the interplay of the natural forces (Dennet 58:14). However, it is arguably true that human nature are not incompatible. People who do engage in crime could have the free will which makes them responsible for their actions even if their offense can be adequately explained by the law of nature (causal law). The question that we ought to be thinking is; the philosophers have gone out of their way to try and bring together the concepts of determinism and free will, why? The main reason is that the determinism truth could be threatening to the free will unto which all our institutions of punishing and blaming are built. "Those who attempt to reconcile free will with determinism appear to believe that many of the things intrinsically important to us, including our practices of blaming, praising, and punishing, would become meaningless in a world without free will" (Pleasants, 2019) .these are the words of a particular philosopher who thinks that people without free will be difficult to co-exist. This, however, is not the case since if people had that aspect of free will, there would have been an often commitment of crimes with intending to blame the forces of nature like Gods.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important to note that there is no responsibility in a world with free will. Every responsibility rests on the human ability to make his own decisions. God would not predetermine the cause of the universe against one choice to do right or wrong. It is, however, true that God has sacrificed his omnipotence to empower humans with the ability to regulate their aspect of free will. Therefore this doesn't imply that God has lost his splendor. The ultimate control of human being is the only loss that has been sustained by God.

References

Pleasants, N. (2019). Free will, determinism and the "problem" of structure and agency in the social sciences. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 49(1), 3-30.

Van Inwagen, P. (2016). The incompatibility of free will and determinism. Philosophical Studies, 27(3), 185-199.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxup7sxIUmg