Philosophy Paper Assignment
Does Freewill exist? Explain the arguments for Hard Determinism, and the main reasons why people don’t want to believe it. Discuss the objections and replies made by Honderich relating to physical and mental determinism, moral responsibility and life hopes; then explains and critically evaluate one of the Libertarian arguments for freewill given by either Kane or Chisholm.
Freewill is the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about automatically and without doubt by outside conditions. Hard determinism sort of takes determinism to be true, but takes freedom to consist in what is incompatible with it and cannot exist with it. Honderich explains that we can have two kinds of life-hope, two kinds of confidence in knowledge, two kinds of personal feeling, and two kinds of moral feeling about people and their actions. It’s the same thing as taking actions of right and wrong and having common decisions of people not in connection with a single action. We can make two responses about determinism, disappointment and stubbornness but we as humans, we take life as it comes.
The physical determination is basically stating that we would rather not be sick or go to jail or have bodily disabilities. Our mental determination states that we feel we don’t have to think about our hopes, we reject them in apprehension. This is why determinism is a kind of satisfied inflexibility. Some of us don’t have moral responsibilities and some of us do. Some of us who have moral responsibilities tend to ignore them and some of us appreciate our responsibilities and take them very seriously.
Some of us plan our futures by logic and determinism, but some of us just don’t see the ne ...