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Ben Frazier Professor Downing Do Humans Have Free Will? October 24, 2011 Do Humans Have Free Will? Do humans really have freedom? Even in America it is a tough question. The U.S.A prides its self on the fact that every citizen of the U.S. has freedom. But do they really? Every year the U.S. passes maybe hundreds of laws telling Americans what they cannot do. Does that necessarily mean that we have had our free will taken away from us? When our parents decide that we cannot go out with our friends one night, has our free will been taken from us then? The question then becomes what is free will? How do we define free will? What makes us feel we have the freedom to do what we want? Most would say its the ability to decide how to live your life. Its just the simple ability to have a decision on what you do. Lets take the idea of laws in the U.S. for an example. You have a choice in what you do whether or not there is a law against it. You could decide to go rob a bank and then go to jail or not rob a bank and not go to jail. Is that enough of a choice? It is just a choice between one thing and the other. How many choices do we need to be free? In order to have a choice at all then all we need are two choices. Considering that then all we need in life are two choices in order to be free which agrees with the idea that U.S. citizens truly have freedom. Just because it has been proven that in the U.S. humans may have some form of free will does it really mean that the whole generalization that humans have free will is true? I personally think that it is almost impossible to have free will as anything. I believe that if I truly had free will I could choose not to eat or drink and if I didnt want to sleep I wouldnt have to. Instead I

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have to work in some way to keep living. No matter what there is always something I have to do without a choice. You could even look at it in a non-general way also. Look at how people can have some kind of expectancy for the way everyone else should act. People sometimes expect everyone to restrain from bringing up certain things when you are at the dinner table. It can be expected to dress yourself in a way that doesnt surprise people. No matter what you really have some part of your freedom taken away from you. Why not look at free will in a stoic way. A stoic would suggest to you that maybe it is not what you do in your life that you control but maybe it is just the way that you react to the things that happen. They would stress the importance of using that one thing you can control wisely. It is very important to stoics to react with a so what attitude toward the things that happen to you whether the things are bad or good. Stoics see things in the world as completely predetermined and there isnt one thing you can do about it so why fight it. Most people today would argue that the stoics ideas on life are way too pessimistic. People like to believe that no matter what you still have the freedoms to go out and control your destiny. Could we also look at free will as maybe the freedom to have the will to do something that we believe is good for ourselves? It could possibly be that it is just the simple freedom to use our minds to decide whether or not something is necessarily worth it or not. Then again free will could also just be the freedom to decide what we desire the most and then take that desire and make that into a choice. No matter how you look at it the question will always be what do you exactly consider free will? To truly decide whether the answer to our question is yes or no it would be a good idea to look at the definition of free will in some other ways that keeps any ideas from being bias. The only other way to look at this is through determinism again. Can we still have free will with a

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predetermined life? A stoic, as we already discussed, would say yes. But what would someone who does not look at everything as optimistically say? A hardcore determinist would preach that we have nothing in the case of freedom. There is not one thing in this world we can control and no matter what happens we can never change the future. But why do they look at it that way? These people might be the people that feel like things never turn out the way they want to. When you take into consideration that no matter what we do, some things never change. The seasons for example never change. It is always hot in the summer and cold in the winter. In the fall and spring it is cool and crisp. The earth always turns and the moon always revolves around the earth. No matter what we do and no matter how hard we try we will most likely never change these things. If determinism is real then how can there be free will for anyone? If everything that happens in your life or is going to happen in your life has already been decided then where is the freedom to do what you want? The puritans from colonial times believed in determinism when it came to whether or not you are saved but no matter what the people still followed the rules of the religion knowing that it couldnt change how they spent eternity. If you were predetermined to spend eternity in hell would you live by the strict rules of that religion even though it meant absolutely nothing? To answer the question of whether or not free will and determinism can last together than you have to decide what the rules are with determinism. If you look at it as if determinism means that every single thing in your entire life has already been decided and there is absolutely nothing you can do then you have to accept that there is no free will what so ever. If determinism just means that worldly things are the only things 100% predetermined then you are not only a stoic but you believe in some ability of free will. So once again the deciding factor to whether or not free will can exist with determinism is how much of life is predetermined.

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So lets take a look at what we already have decided. First we have decided that a U.S. citizen can honestly say that they have free will. This was decided because no matter what they have a choice between one thing and another. It has also been decided that even a teenager with strict parents have free will for the same reasoning. Even though there is only a choice between two things, they still have a choice in life. By proving that the U.S. has free will we can go ahead and assume countries like North Korea and China have almost all of their free will taken away from them. This proves that it can depend on where you live in the world when it comes to whether or not you have free will but if you are somewhere that does allow free will your age has nothing to do with it. No matter what you will have a choice. Now for those who define free will as the freedom to do whatever your little heart desires and act however you want then free will can never be a possibility. It is impossible to physically do whatever you want thanks to laws of physics. As long as there are people who want power then there will never be the full freedom to act how you want either. In this case there is no free will what so ever and there never will be. The last thing that has been decided is that with predestination you cannot have free will. If everything is completely decided when you are born then how is it possible to have freedom to do what you want. Thats just like saying that a scripted movie can be shot live. It is possible to combine to complete opposites like that. I have personally concluded though that humans do not necessarily have free will but they do have it as a goal. It is very possible to have the ability to do whatever we want and maybe one day mankind will reach a point where it is possible to do this and not have total chaos. In conclusion Im forced to say that there is no free will because if there was then we could control everything but in life it seems to be the opposite. We like to believe we can control everything but no matter what something unexpected will always happen.

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Works Cited Horner, Chris, and Emrys Westacott. Thinking Through Philosophy; An Introduction. Cambridge university press, 2000. Print. Kevin Timpe. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. University of San Diego, March 31, 2006. Web. October 21, 2011. Loving, Greg. Freedom Illusion or Reality? University of Cincinnati Clermont College. Snyder 262A, Eastgate, OH. 30 September 2011. Lecture.