Term Paper on "Determinism vs. Free Will"

Term Paper 6 pages (1959 words) Sources: 3 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Free Will vs. Determinism

Free-will and determinism are issues of faith. Some people believe that each individual has unrestricted free-will to act as he or she chooses no matter the obligations or consequences of the act. While others believe that actions, events and outcomes are predetermined by a higher power and that no matter our desire to act / react or generate a different outcome it is not possible to do so. Each argument to some degree offers an explanation regarding human action and the existence or even non-existence of a higher power. Determinism vs. free will is one of the oldest philosophical questions in human history. The Catholic encyclopedia in fact associated the question of free will vs. determinism with all the essential branches of philosophy; ethics, theology, metaphysics, psychology and in modern representations of science.

The issue demonstrates an ethical dilemma that verges on either explaining or dismissing moral guidance. The determination of the responsibility one has to act in a certain way as the responsibility of another is freeing on the one hand and very troubling on the other. If one believes that he or she will always do the right thing, even while doing the wrong thing the challenge to morality is essential and core. In other words the essential idea of determinism places the responsibility for human action into the hands of another, which if one believes he or she has free will it is therefore his or her responsibility to reason and have moral control over one's actions. "Responsibility, duty, remorse, justice, and the like, will have a totally different significance for one who believes that all man's acts are in the last resort completely determines by agencies beyond his power..." than it will have over the man who believes that, "each human being possessed of reason can by his own free will determine his deliberate volitions and so exercise real command over his thoughts, his deeds and the formation of his character." ("Free Will" NP)

In turn theology questions the existence and nature of God and how he or she related to man. Within the core of theology free will and/or determinism challenge the manner in which theology is understood, and to some degree if there is or is not a an actual higher being. If free will is meted out to its core it would argue that there is no higher power, as if man is ultimately responsible for and capable of making all decisions regarding action he or she is therefore not guided by any essential higher being. Several schools of theology that are strongly influenced by the fact that, at least on the surface man would seem to have free will as an aspect of his own value but that such free will is a gift from God to Man as an expression of God's desire for man to have full abilty to learn from his actions, as apposed to believing that the outcome is predetermined. While others say that the existence of free will negates the existence of a higher power, maintaining that man's will is superior to right, wrong or even reason itself and this proves that no one is watching or guiding decisions. Determinism on the other hand explains away right as that which is determined by God and wrong as that which is allowed to be determined by God of the devil or it simply states that God is empowered to determine both good and evil as a result of needed balance. "In such a case, the ultimate responsibility for good or bad deeds, and hence responsibility for evil, would devolve to God." (Kane 35)

Kapitan a scholar of metaphysics explains determinism as a generated reality of a release from responsibility:

If determinism is true, then whatever happens is a consequence of past events and laws over which we have no control and which we are unable to prevent. But whatever is a consequence of what is beyond our control is not itself under our control. Therefore, if determinism is true, then nothing that happens is under our control, including our own actions and thoughts. Instead, everything we do and think, everything that happens to us and within us, is akin to the vibration of a piano string when struck, with the past as pianist, and could not be otherwise than it is.

Kapitan 127)

He then goes on to state that no matter what one believes regarding determinism or free will the ensuing discussion about it has merit that goes beyond finding the "truth" regarding the nature of human reason and action. He calls upon the work of Hume to express this thought.

Hume once remarked that the free will issue is "the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science" -- yet undeniably fruitful in generating more detailed examinations of ability and practical freedom. Whether we incline toward compatibilism or incompatibilism, this latter development is likely to be of lasting value.

Kapitan 127)

Having placed significant merit on the concept of simply reasoning through the inherent conflict between apparent "free will" which allows the individual to act outside of morality if he or she so desires, philosophers give much power to the idea of the strengths and weaknesses of both concepts.

Free will, if given to us by a loving God would challenge the concept of a loving God, to some degree as it gives man the right to make choices that would in turn remove him from God in the eternal sense.

Part of the concept of the theistic God is that God is wholly loving and perfectly just. But for God to grant persons eternal bliss or eternal damnation based upon their acts and convictions during earthly life is apparently unloving and unfair if nothing could ever have gone differently in each life than it did in fact go, given past determinants and the laws of nature. Consider the case of a hypothetical person who ends up damned, eternally separated from God in the afterlife.

(Ekstrom 157)

If God were to give man, out of his enduring love the free will to separate himself from God eternally then this would be a gift that came with the ultimate curse of existence, but again allowed the individual the abilty to learn and hopefully grow from the full breadth of his or her reason. Essentially the former is the greatest weakness of the argument for free will and the later is its greatest strength, depending on belief. If one is given the choice to make all his or her decisions and chooses to do the right he has been offered a gift of learning to do the right, and ultimately has won the right to free will. Yet, this does no explain the fact that so many err and that "right" is not the common denominator of the human existence.

Determinism on the other hand is often discredited by the idea that "free will" is evident in human action. Individuals are obviously capable of free will, that is unless we are to simple to see the big picture. The only way to explain the existence of apparent free will is to argue the idea that there is either an overarching controller of evil deeds or that the God that created and supposedly protects us has a much broader purpose, that encompasses the need for both good and evil acts to balance existence and the outcomes of it. Determinism argues that human nature and the human mind is simply to simple to see and understand the whole of the plan and to simple to in and of itself control the outcome of his or her own and the actions of others simultaneously. It strength on the other hand often merits the idea that man, ultimately is not responsible for his good or his evil acts and changes the face of human and deified judgment completely. Individuals who believe in determinism can rest on the idea that the big picture has a "greater purpose" that their simple everyday acts of good and evil and therefore responsibility and grief are not theirs alone to bear, but that he or she can share both with the creator. It weakness is equally simple, if man has no responsibility for actions then what compels him, beyond this world to do the right, nothing. He or she has already ultimately been assigned a fate and therefore no matter the outcome of his humanly deeds he is absolved or damned, what then drives human motivation and choice?

A if this were the only place specified for required indeterminism, then an act might be the purely causally deterministic outcome of the considerations that happen to occur to the agent and yet, on the proposal, count as free. Such an account is too weak to ground agent freedom and deep responsibility, since, given the occurrence of the particular considerations in any case, one particular act follows of physical necessity, as the completely deterministic… READ MORE

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