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Midterm Paper: Free Will

            Free Will is the concept that we have the choice of our current and future actions, and that we have the choice between different possible courses of action unhindered. Free will is closely related to the concepts of responsibility, praise, guilt and sin. The concept of free will has been argued over the past two millennia after it was coined. The argument of its significance has been argued by some of history’s most famous philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, and many others. An example of the disagreement between some of these philosophers would be the disagreement of free will between Plato and Aristotle. Plato believed that “No one would deliberately choose a worse over a better course of action people's decisions are determined by their understanding”, while Aristotle believed, “It is obvious that there are principles and causes which are generable and destructible apart from the actual processes of generation and destruction; for if this is not true, everything will be of necessity: that is, if there must necessarily be some cause, other than accidental, of that which is generated and destroyed. Will this be, or not? Yes, if this happens; otherwise not.” In short Plato believed that people had the choice to make their decisions based on their understanding of the world and situation around them, while Aristotle believed that people will make decisions whether they understand the situation or not, and that sometimes they have no control over said situations and decisions.

Most people believe that we all have free will, we make our own decisions and choices. But what if I told you that that may not necessarily be case, what if I told you that everything you do is controlled by something else. No I’m not saying we are Sims or that we are all mind controlled, so take off your tin foil hats. There is a thesis by an 18^th century philosopher, Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, that states that scenario. His argument is that all things happen do to something else happening. This belief is called Determinism, and can be compared to the butterfly effect. This belief can be viewed in everyday life from when you get out of bed, to what you make for breakfast, to when you got to class, etc.

Determinism usually isn’t discussed as its neutral form, but instead in its extreme versions. The best way to describe determinism in an extreme way would be with Netflix original Bandersnatch, where the main character is controlled by the decisions of the viewer. The extreme side of determinism is that people actually have no choice, but instead are just puppets to what is happening around them. Determinism isn’t necessarily that, it is best explained as our choices are heavily influence by occurrences and decisions made before our current decision, instead of everything being predetermined. An example of this would be, “When you wake up to eat breakfast, and you decided to eat oatmeal.” Most people would think it was their own free will that made them eat oatmeal, which is true to an extent, but the determinism side of the argument states that because the oatmeal was in your site and other causes such as “you eating cereal all week and wanted a change,” or “it’s the only breakfast food you have at the moment.” Due to some form of external cause you decided to eat oatmeal for breakfast rather than say, eggs or cereal.