Write a Essay on Free Will.Do we have it or not(Its your choice)
Minimum 400 Words
Answers
Here is your answer
1. Free will, what
At the outset, it is necessary to gt a clear understanding of what
exactly "free will" is. A being has free will if given all other
causal factors in the universe (genetic and environmental, physical and
chemical are two popular current pairings) it nevertheless possesses the
ability to choose more than one thing. The word "freedom" has many
other uses -- political freedom being the foremost among these -- but
the kind of freedom that I am talking about could be exercised even if a
person lay encased in chains, or had a gun aimed at his head. It is
the freedom of the mind from causal determination, not the freedom from
physical constraints or threats of violence.
2. The Objection from the Law of Causality
Now there are some immediate objections to the idea of free will. To
begin with, it seems to violate the law of causality: "Every effect must
have a cause; the same cause always produces the same effects." The
reply here is fairly simple: it simply denies that a free choice is an
_effect_ of anything else. Since a choice is not an effect, the law of
causality is simply irrelevant here.
Another formulation of the law of causality says that "Every _change_
must have a cause." Now this does indeed conflict with my notion of
free will. And hence I ask: why should we believe that every change has
a cause? I simply deny that this is so. I observe uncaused changes
during my every waking moment, whenever I contemplate my own choices.
Why should I discard this observation in favor of one formulation of the
law of causality, however plausible?
3. The Quantum Confusion
A further confusion identitifies free will with randomness, probabilism,
and (of course) quantum mechanics. But I say that free will and
randomness have nothing whatever to do with each other; indeed, a
probabilistic theory of choice is just as contrary to the freedom of the
will as a fully deterministic one. The argument here is extremely
simple. Imagine that my action is determined by the roll of a six-sided
die; if it comes up six, I raise my arm. Now suppose that _all six_
faces have a six on them. Now it is clear that in this case I have no
free will. But suppose we put six different faces on the die, each
one determining a different action. Am I any freer than before? On te
contrary, I am fully a puppet dangling from the proverbial strings. The
point is simply that if my actions are determined by any outside
process, then I am as fully unfree whether those processes are
deterministic or have a random element in them. To uphold free will
then, we must deny than either of these theories describes the etiology
of the mind.
4. Choices, Actions, Causality
To face a final preliminary issue -- what is the relationship between
causality and free will? To put the question more clearly: in some
sense, causality is necessary for free will, because an essential part
of free will is the idea that I _cause_ my actions. The answer is that
we must distinguish actions and choices. Actions are effects of a cause
known as the free will. Free will causes actions by making choices.
But choices are not effects.
5. What We Choose
I move now to my substantive notion of free will. I claim that we
choose a large number of things. To begin with, we choose our beliefs.
Secondly, we choose many of our bodily movements. Thirdly, we choose
many of our mental processes (by analogy, mental movements) such as
whether we will think and what we will think about. A more precise
breakdown would be difficult, but fortunately everyone already has a
pretty clear idea of the boundaries: the pumping of the heart is
involuntary, whereas speaking is; accepting a belief is voluntary, but
having an emotion is not; thinking about free will is voluntary, but
seeing what is in front of my face when my eyes are open is not. The
thoughtful reader will surely see that even these boundaries have
exceptions and irregularities: supposedly some people can control their
heart beat with training, and sometimes thoughts spring into our minds
involuntarily. Philosopher Mike Huemer hinted as a provactive
distinction: "A choice is something one _does_, whereas the involuntary
is something that _happens_ to one."
Please mark it as brainliest
Answer:
Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition. Traditionally, only actions that are freely willed are seen as deserving credit or blame. Whether free will exists, what it is and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest running debates of philosophy and religion.
Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices in which the outcome has not been determined by past events. Determinism suggests that only one course of events is possible, which is inconsistent with the existence of free will thus conceived. Ancient Greek philosophy identified this issue, which remains a major focus of philosophical debate. The view that conceives free will as incompatible with determinism is called incompatibilism and encompasses both metaphysical libertarianism and hard determinism. Incompatibilism also encompasses hard incompatibilism, which holds not only determinism but also its negation to be incompatible with free will and thus free will to be impossible whatever the case may be regarding determinism.
In contrast, compatibilists hold that free will is compatible with determinism. Some compatibilists even hold that determinism is necessary for free will, arguing that choice involves preference for one course of action over another, requiring a sense of how choices will turn out. Compatibilists thus consider the debate between libertarians and hard determinists over free will vs. determinism a false dilemma. Different compatibilists offer very different definitions of what "free will" means and consequently find different types of constraints to be relevant to the issue. Classical compatibilists considered free will nothing more than freedom of action, considering one free of will simply if, had one counterfactually wanted to do otherwise, one could have done otherwise without physical impediment. Contemporary compatibilists instead identify free will as a psychological capacity, such as to direct one's behavior in a way responsive to reason, and there are still further different conceptions of free will, each with their own concerns, sharing only the common feature of not finding the possibility of determinism a threat to the possibility of free will.
Explanation: