FREE WILL
When philosophy has a controversy,It can sometimes burn for
thousands of years.The controversy surrounding free will is one of
the longest and ‘burniest’ of them all. It seems that
each philosophical ‘solution’ put forward to explain (or explain away) free will has some giant flaw
You need to know the basics of the principles of these positions:
- Hard determinism
- Soft determinism
- Libertarianism
The free will controversy is possibly one of the reasonably philosophy has a bad name.
Your average person will think :”free will ?Of course we have free will. It’s obvious idiot”
When they find out philosophers have been scrapping about this for centuries ,they may draw the conclusion that philosophy is one giant and deluded talking shop.
In a nutshell ...
Hard Determinism – if one knew the complex of causes ,one could wholly predict human behavior
Free will is an illusion ; there is no true moral responsibility
hence H.D is an incompatlibist theory,
Soft Determinism (Compatibilism)-this accepts that actions follow causes but holds that free actions proceed from causes located in one’s psyche (desires,aversion...)
there is a moral responsibility
hence S.D IS a compbatilists theory claiming that determinism and moral responsibility are compatible .
Libertarianism- this holds that some actions are not subject to prior material causes
(cf. Indeterminism)
Free-willed actions are of this kind . In rough outline ,Hard determinism (H.D) shares with soft Determinism the view what the state of the world at a given time determines the state of the world at the next moment .