Free Will Research Paper

The idea that we have any real control over this world is a completely ridiculous idea, but still we try to claim we have control over the way in which the past happened or the way in which the future will happen. We also try to justify this belief by citing that we can accept responsibility over the actions we were destined to make. However, we live in a deterministic universe and thus the idea of free will is just an illusion, as can be seen with hard determinism.
The idea that we live in a deterministic universe and the idea of free will is just an illusion presented to us in order for us to feel as if we have some responsibility over our life is called hard determinism. Hard determinism holds that the “past controls the present and the …show more content…
“Almost daily, brain scans appear to suggest that aspects of human behavior are linked to brain abnormalities. Doesn't this suggest that some people are compelled by their biology to behave in a certain way?” (Do You Need a Soul for Free Will?) this would suggest that the reason people become alcoholic is because they possess a gene that makes them more likely to suffer from that addiction, a gene they inherited from their ancestors, or the reason I feel pain at all times is because of a condition I inherited from my ancestors in which the pain receptors in my brain do not turn off when I should not be experiencing pain. Neither of these conditions are the result of free will but rather determinism. I did not choose to be in pain every day of my life and I definitely do not get to choose when I will feel that pain. Even when attempt to decrease the pain it is actually my brain hard wiring that is doing this because it wants to survive and prosper, just as an alcoholic did not actively chose that a life addiction is strongly preferable to one without addiction. Thus the idea that I have free will over this or anything is just an illusion. This viewpoint is often held by scientist who “view free will with suspicion, because atoms are subject to physical laws that govern the Universe. Since we are merely collections of atoms, our actions today must be governed by the …show more content…
However this would be a false argument because it would then lead to argument that since it is stated that determinism is false then we could safely assert that events are not subjected to cause-and-effect, just as determinism asserts it is, which means that events in our universe must be randomly occurring which means that you would be unable to look back and understand what lead to event occurring (Libertarianism 11). If events occurred randomly or by chance then they are not under our control but rather the universe’s control, which would suggest that we do not have free will like the libertarians assert that we do. This would lead us to question the main opponent to determinism since their absurdist argument holds no grounds because they cannot seem to account for the idea of free will and if we do not have free will then it would follow that the universe is determined on some level. The only conclusion we could attain from this argument is that determinism would have to exist since it is the idea that the universe has complete control over our actions since we do not get to pick what will happen because events are randomly occurring and without concern to the actions before them. It would also follow that we do not have free will to choose what would happen because events occur

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