Free Will Vs Determinism
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The most important and the oldest philosophical question is perhaps that of free will and determinism. Do people have free will, or are our actions pre-determined? Ted Honderich defined determinism as the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states of affairs. “Nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity.”
Determinism is used by philosophers to account for some of the choices and actions that cause or create the effects of causal sequences; these sequences raise questions about the freedom of the choices and actions.
Most people tend to believe that all events or occurrences have a cause instead of just simply happening, if we get up in the morning, and go out to leave for work and the car does not start, even if we are not able to determine why the car no longer starts, we do not simply accept the idea that the car simply stopped working for no reason. Whether the car wont start, the TV no longer works or the window wont close, each has a cause. This same philosophy can be said with people, every action that is said or done has a cause. An action is an event.
The ongoing argument regarding whether or not free will in fact exists is one that has implications relating to the nature of humanitys role in the universe, the suitability of praise and blame, and the notion of individual and moral responsibility, are the hard determinists, those deeming that all natural events including human actions are predestined.
Think about when we are asked a question, is the answer that we give something that we actually know to be correct, or is the answer something that has been programmed into us as being the correct answer? For as far back as I can remember I have been taught that there is a correct way to act in public, such as when we are in a restaurant, we do not raise our voices, we do not throw food, and we do not call attention to ourselves. When we are at a restaurant you use your manors say please and thank you.
Now as we teach these same standards to our children, are they behaving on their own free will, or are they acting as they do because it was pre-determined that this behavior is the only acceptable behavior.
Along those same lines, when people enter their homes on a hot day, they close the door so the cold air from the air conditioner does not go outside of the house, is the reason the cold air leaves the house simply because the door was left open? Or was it the determinism of this process, when the door was opened it caused the warm air and the cold air to mix and affecting the air in the house to become warmer.
In life I believe that we have become a product of what we are taught, we know that we are to continue to look for the reason that caused something to happen, i.e. the car