Do you have free will or are you determined Essay

Do you have free will or be you determined - Essay ExampleThe paper describes two examples of philosophers (W.T. Stace and Baron dHolbach), who believe in determinism, but with qualifications. charm dHolbach represents a determinism-only view, Stace offers a view compatible with a free will, and this compatibilist thesis is more correct. Compatibilism, as represented by W.T. Stace, is the view that free will and determinism atomic number 18 compatible without being logic e precise(prenominal)y inconsistent. This allows claims about individual autonomy in actions to make good sense, whereas under the incompatabilism approach, it is logically inconsistent to speak of the coexistence of free will with determinism. An incompatabilist such(prenominal) as Baron dHolbach, rules out a kind of metaphysical free will because determinism, the view that all of our actions are the result of antecedent causes, means that no actions are truly free in the sense that the person actually chose t o do them. With this foundation, we can differentiate the views of Stace and dHolbach with respect to freedom of the will. dHolbach argues that hu homoity beings are very similar in nature to a machine, which is created with a very narrow range of functions. In his corpse of Nature, dHolbach writes, There is no such entity as a soul, but we are simply material objects in motion, having very complicated brains that lead the unreflective to believe that they are free. In fact, human beings are so complex that they actually believe their actions are free, which is the symptom of religious beliefs, according to dHolbach. Claiming that all of mans ideas and senses can be reduced to his physical characteristics, the philosopher believes that these ideas and senses are involuntary and forced upon him. This incompatabilist, hard fatalist stance is impossible to prove, which makes it difficult to accept dHolbachs arguments (Pojman 335). He argues primarily from analogy to machines and oth er human artifacts, which seems to undermine the premise that man is incapable of original, free thoughts. In addition, it is difficult to get past the zoology fact that if all of mans arguments are determined by antecedent causes, then dHolbachs claims here are determined and therefore possibly false. In contrast, W.T. Stace offers a compatibilist (or soft determinist) view that upholds the honor of morality. Stace defines an act that was produced from free will as one that is directly caused by a persons thoughts, emotions, and desires (Roberts). In other words, an act is only free if it is the result of internal mental states, not the foreign influences of other antecedent causes. For instance, fasters on hunger strikes do not consume food because it is theoretically inside their power to abstain from food, while someone who fasts because he does not have access to food is not doing so according to his free will. Stace defends compatibilism because of how he defines the notion of free will.