Free Will And Determinism Analysis

In the essay, “Free Will and Determinism,” Sider uses the concept of determinism as the “apparent fact” to argue the existence of freedom of the will. Determinism states that every event results from a set of causes. Because a human action is a type of event, from this “apparent fact,” it can be concluded that every human act is the consequence of some set of causes. The set of causes is what determines the human action and not the human themselves. This contradicts the existence of free will because every human action is then considered to be the result of some cause, therefore the human does not perform the action out of free will. An example of this is assassination of President Kennedy by Oswald. Following determinism, some prior

The first premise is that if determinism is true, then an agent cannot act otherwise than they did. The second premise states that if the agent is not able to act differently, then the agent did not act freely. From this is can be concluded that if determinism is true, then the agent does not have freedom of the will. The compatibilist, also known as a soft determinist, believes that determinism is true, but also believes that there are certain actions that if caused in the right way results in a free action. A soft determinist would reject the premise that states that if an agent could not have acted otherwise, then the agent did not act freely. The soft determinist would reject this premise because they believe in the first premise. The soft determinist does believe in the idea of determinism, but believes then an agent can act otherwise. Although the soft determinist does believe that determinism is true, she also believes that some causes are the right set of causes to make an action free. This ideology is further evaluated and evaluated Sider and Conee, who go on to revise

It is implausible because there are certain actions that are caused by a person’s desires, but are not truly free actions. These beliefs and desires can be influenced by outside sources and these actions are not free actions. Sider and Conee give the example of a hypnotized person. If the hypnotized person is forced to believe that their beliefs and desires are the ones that are being told to them, then the person has a new set of beliefs and desires. These beliefs will cause the person to perform certain actions that are not aligned with their original beliefs and desires. These actions are the consequence of the new beliefs and cannot be considered free. An example of this would be a hypnotized person who originally believed that it is right to be a vegetarian, but is hypnotized to believe that thy are no longer a vegetarian. This hypnotized person would then continue to eat meat because it aligns with their new beliefs, but this action cannot be considered free. This action cannot be considered free because the person did not freely eat the meat; they were hypnotized to believe that eating meat was what they wanted. It is plausible to consider this action, although caused by her desires, not free. This is why it is implausible for a compatibilist to believe an action is caused by a person’s