St. Augustine On Free Will

The incompatibility thesis states that determinism is incompatible with any significant sense of freewill. Therefore, having free will is a necessary condition for the ascription of moral responsibility. In other words, free will dictates the level of responsibility we claim for our actions. If outside forces were to be in control of the choices we make, then we cannot be held responsible for our actions. However, if we have total freedom over the choices we make, then we certainly must claim responsibility over our actions. In Paul Holbach’s essay, “The Illusion of Freewill”, Holbach presents the argument that free will is simply an illusion that the human mind has created for us. He makes the assertion that

In "Human Freedom and the Self", Roderick Chisholm has taken a libertarian approach on the issue of free will and determinism. Libertarians believe that humans have free will and make a distinction that free will and determinism are incompatible. Chisholm has the same opinion. On the problem of human freedom, Chisholm thinks that “Human beings are responsible agents; but this fact appears to conflict with a deterministic view of human action (the view that every event that is involved in an act is caused by some other event); and it also appears to conflict with an indeterministic view of human action (the view that the act, or some event that is essential to the act, is not caused at all).”(Page 3). He does not agree that determinism or indeterminism

I never think about whether I have free will or not before . Every time I made a decision, I took it for granted. I thought what I thought was right and I did not doubt my decisions. Because it was my own decisions. I was confident about my decisions, which did not mean that I did not contemplate; I thought about things outside my mind but not my ability to think freely and act freely. I In terms of free will, there is a dispute between determinists, metaphysical libertarian, and compatibilists. Determinists states that people have no free will as there is a cause and effect relationship between two event, while metaphysical libertarian argues that people do have free will because they feel free to make a decision by following their will. With

The idea of free will has been argued about by many philosophers. Do humans really have free will or are we just going through the motions of life? What is free will? Free will is the freedom to choose. Not being determined to act in a certain way. Free will includes humans acting as their own agent's and making the choice to do something or not do it. In order for humans to make a choice morality has to be involved in free will. So that a human will have the capacity to make a choice and understand what that choice means, and what effect that choice will have, whether the choice is to do good or evil. One of the objections put forth against free will is that God is omnipotent and knows and sees all. This means that God knows the future and the past. Thus human actions are predetermined, and humans are forced to act in a certain way (Determinism).

People do not possess free will but are governed by fate because in Dante's Inferno the people who were brought down to hell were brought down because they were destined to go down the wrong path and that's why they are in hell and there are special places for people whose fate was a little too heinous and they were forced to go in the middle of heaven and hell and sometimes other people are also destined to lead us to our fate such as Virgil in Dante's inferno.

This coincides with my next argument in that God has created a world that allows for both good and evil, and along with this, he gave humans the ability to make their own choices. God allows humans, who are not all-powerful and not necessarily wholly good beings to have the decision to make between being good and being evil. I am a firm believer in this hands-off approach that God may have taken during his creation because free will allows people to ultimately choose their own path in life, and while allowing the possibility for evil to occur God himself remains both wholly good and all-powerful. Without free will it would be unclear as to what makes humans unique individuals; free will allows for the understanding that humans can be themselves and choose their outcomes ultimately resulting in them deciding their lives. Unfortunately, free will along with good and evil go hand in hand. Free will is one of the ways evil is brought into the world. This moral evil is an evil that is responsible for events like the holocaust and 9/11. Individuals chose to pursue these events that resulted in evil being inflicted upon

“Life begins at conception. Therefore, an un-born baby has a right to life. This court ruling is a slap in the face of humanity” (Gordon, Tacoma,

This passage from Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, takes place on the planet of Tralfamadore, where the tralfamadorian is talking about the concept of free will, which is apparently, unique to earthlings. The passage goes on to further say that out of hundreds of planets, only on earth does the idea of free will exist.

“Determinism is 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”(Information Philosopher, 2015). It refers to the claim that, at any moment or place in time, there is only one possible future for the whole universe. However, the concept of determinism often comes into question when looking into whether human beings possess free will. Free Will can be defined as “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion” (Defence of Reason, 2014). The very definition of the terms determinism and free will appear to be conflicting however, many philosophical thinkers

He describes how science is able to somewhat prove that free will is predetermined by showing an experiment where computer readings were able to predict a monkeys actions before the monkey even began the action. Experiments like this that are able to predict the future put free will to doubt. Egginton then describes how religion may counteract free will. God supposedly created humans with free will but if God’s ability is truly limitless, then he would not just know the past and present but also the future. With an omnipotent God, that knows the future, free will is again put to

To support the very first claim that he steps on to about the influences of free will, Ridley says, “ Everyone’s fate is determined

Apply (evill is the absence of good): We can relate this to augustine's view for free will by first consider the fact evil. She can consider the evil of babies being thrown in the fire an absence of good. He can understand that ellie takes this to be evil because it impedes him from falling asleep at night. This then ties into free choice of humans because it was on Ellie to go out and stop this evil. But, instead he just watched it

According to John Locke, it is not the Will of a human being that makes him or her free. The Will is simply a faculty of freedom, insofar as a person who expresses Free Will is simply acting freely in accordance with his or her desires. For Locke, It is the person who is free; he proclaims that “free will” is a misleading phrase, whereby “freedom” and the human “will” are two separate categories which must be clearly defined in order to be properly accounted for. A Person who is free may do what he or she wills.

Moritz Schlick is a representative of logical positivism doctrine. His definition of free will, determinism and moral responsibility derives from the definition of punishment. He supposes that “Punishment is an educative measure, and as such is a means to the formation of motives, which are in part to prevent the wrongdoer from repeating the act (reformation) and in part to prevent others from committing a similar act (intimidation). Analogously, in the case of reward we are concerned with an incentive." (Schlick, p. 152). So, Schlick’s view of free will and responsibility is connected with punishment. He supposes that a person in responsible if the punishment for his action is able to change his behavior in the future. So, his determinism differs a little from that of Blatchford. In his point of view, "we are trying to discover who is ultimately responsible" (D'Angelo, p. 37). So, he thinks that moral responsibility is not derived from heredity and environment. But what is the source of free will and moral responsibility? Schlick doesn’t give any unequivocal answer to this question. I think that moral responsibility depends on the scale of free will of a person and his attitude to the actions of other persons. In other words, our behaviour is the result of both our heredity and nature, and some outside factors which depend on our relation to other persons’

He cites Ephesians 2:3 which states, we are now born deserving God’s anger, with an injured nature so that our will is unable to keep us from sin except for the grace of God. Our defective state is punishment because of Adam’s free choice that made humans sinful. Therefore, we are either unable to will or unable to know how to do the right any more. Augustine argues that we are no longer free to choose right and wrong, because we are slaves to sin. Freedom can only be re-attained through God, through Whom, by grace, we shall be free indeed. Moreover, Augustine argues, since it is “God who made human beings good, it is God, not human beings, who restores human beings so that they are good. He sets them free from the evil that they have brought upon themselves, if they will it, believe, and call upon him.” Since we have by our own will brought upon ourselves sin; we cannot be healed from our sin without the grace of