Do you have free will or are you determined Essay

Do you have free will or are you determined - Essay Example The paper describes two examples of philosophers (W.T. Stace and Baron d'Holbach), who believe in determinism, but with qualifications. While d'Holbach 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 are compatible without being logically inconsistent. This allows claims about individual autonomy in actions to make sense, whereas under the incompatabilism approach, it is logically inconsistent to speak of the coexistence of free will with determinism. An incompatabilist such as Baron d'Holbach, 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 to do them. With this foundation, we can differentiate the views of Stace and d'Holbach with respect to freedom of the will. d'Holbach argues that human beings are very similar in nature to a machine, which is created with a very narrow range of functions. In his System of Nature, d'Holbach writes, â€Å"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 d'Holbach. Claiming that all of man’s 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 determinist stance is impossible to prove, which makes it difficult to accept d'Holbach’s arguments (Pojman 335). He argues primarily from analogy to machines and other human artifacts, which seems to undermine the premise that man is incapable o f original, free thoughts. In addition, it is difficult to get past the brute fact that if all of man’s arguments are determined by antecedent causes, then d'Holbach’s claims here are determined and therefore possibly false. In contrast, W.T. Stace offers a compatibilist (or soft determinist) view that upholds the truth of morality. Stace defines an act that was produced from free will as one that is directly caused by a person’s thoughts, emotions, and desires (Roberts). In other words, an act is only free if it is the result of internal mental states, not the outside influences of other antecedent causes. For instance, fasters on hunger strikes do not consume food because it is theoretically within 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.