Our Free Will :: essays research papers fc

Our Free Will We ought then regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its previous state and the cause of the one which is to follow. An intelligence knowing at a given instant of time all the forces operating in nature, as well as the position at that instant of all things of which the universe consists, would be able to comprehend the motions of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the smallest atoms in a single formula - provided that it was sufficiently powerful to submit all these data analysis. To it nothing would be uncertain and the future would be present to its eyes as much as the past. This passage comes from P.S. de Laplace's â€Å"Philosophical Essay on Probabilities.† If such determinism is true, then everyone's every thought and action must be inevitable; that no one really has any choice about anything, because we are all helpless products of blind forces which have made us what we are. In this paper concerning the free will and determinism debate I will argue that determinism is not plausible, I shall do this by giving reasons for determining how determinism is false, give arguments for determinism, and then refute those arguments.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are those who think that our behavior is a result of free choice, but there are others who presume â€Å"we are servants of cosmic destiny or that behavior is nothing but a reflex of heredity and environment.† The position of determinism is that every event is the necessary outcome of a cause or set of causes. That everything is a consequence of external forces, and such forces produce all that happens. Man is not free. If we accept the determinist argument and assume human behavior as a consequence of external factors rather than of free choice, then we must realize that our explanation of human behavior leaves no room for morality. If people do not choose their actions, then they are not really responsible for them, and there is no need for praising or blaming them. If determinism were true, then there would be no basis for human effort, for why should a person make an effort if what he or she does doesn't make a difference? If what will be will be, then one has an excuse for doing nothing. Life would not be so meaningful for people on deterministic grounds. â€Å"The nature of human life may be such that man must understand himself as being free, for human life as we know it would not make much sense without the concept of freedom.