Free Will Does Not Exist

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Table of Contents

God
Mind
Free will
Knowledge
Right and wrong
Works Cited

God

Whether God exists or not is a subject that elicits a debate among the philosophers and advocates of religion. The existence of God is something that receives support from a large section of the society. One thing that makes a lot of people to believe in the existence of God or a supernatural being is the existence of nature and the inability to explain the existence.

The intellectual knowledge is quite important in explaining and justifying the way certain things exist. However, even the intellectual themselves reach a level where they cannot offer further explanation of the way things happen or exist the way they do. According to Woodman (105), thinking about the existence of God promotes morality in the society.

A number of philosophers, dominant among them Karl Marx postulated that that religion and the existence of a supernatural being in only but a way of consoling human beings from the miseries that face them. However, even the mere thought of people that God or a supernatural being exists and controls their life is important as far as the embrace of morality in the society is concerned.

It cannot be imagined how the society would be is there was no thought in the minds of the people about the existence of God who oversees the actions of deeds of people in the world.

Perhaps, the world could be in a total mess with no order and the value of life and no peaceful existence. The rationale behind this observation is that even with the belief that God exists and the alignment of most people to religion, heinous acts against humanity are still highly advanced in the society (Garrett 149).

Mind

The mind is related to human consciousness and direction in human actions. Therefore, the philosophy of mind is critical in comprehending the attributes of behaviour and patterns of interaction that are exhibited by human beings in the society. The functioning of the physical human boy is facilitated by the human mind. Therefore, it is worthwhile to argue that the fulcrum of human functioning is the mind.

The mind is able to correspond to complex things that take place in the environment. Without the mind, the coordination of human beings could be a daunting thing to attain, meaning that people could be exposed to certain dangers that they could not have been exposed to.

Assuming that the mind is fictional as postulated by Hume raises questions about the cognitive abilities of people. Even the ability of people to perceive comes from the fact that the mind can sense and synthesize some things according to the already known facts that are still stored in the same mind.

Questions about the existence of certain things are best answered when the mind synthesizes information and releases conclusions that make people make sense of what exists in their surrounding (Preston para 13-15).

However, it is also important to note that the mind can be deceiving in the sense that it can synthesize information and point to certain conclusions, which can in turn put people at loggerheads.

This observation is based on the fact that the impressions and ideas that are created by the mind differ with individuals (Preston par. 15). Nonetheless, the mind is the creator of ideas, meaning that the many questions about the society can only be answered through the engagement of the mind.

Free will

Most philosophers and scientists agree with the observation that free will is merely an illusion. What most people refer to as free will is the predestination of the actions. However, in the real sense of the matter, people believe that free will exists in the sense that even amidst the forces that determine actions; people have a choice to act in a certain manner.

The most important thing to note is that free will is often linked to making choices and engaging in acts that are valuable to people. Without free will, it would be difficult to explain why people make certain choices and not others. With free will, people easily embrace moral responsibility for the course that they take part in, thereby shaping the society in a positive way (Bloom para. 6-7).

The question that comes out here is whether the actions of people are derived from within or from the external forces. According to McCall (488), the external forces play a critical role in determining the acts and actions of individuals in specific matters. McCall brings out the issue of omniscience and supernaturalism as determinants of the actions of people.

From the outside, the society can conceive the actions of an individual from the perspective of the choice of the individual to do so, which points to free will. But in essence, there are reasons or might be forces that make people act in that manner. One of them is that they are under the watch of the supernatural being.

These external pressure forces are important when it comes to putting pressure on people to do certain things, which they could have wished to do if they were doing it out of what and how they feel.

Knowledge

Philosophers have been concerned about bringing out the foundations of knowledge in the society. However, the main question by most of them is whether knowledge exists? If at all knowledge exists, then what is the real character of knowledge? These questions are the foundations of the development of the concept of epistemology, which explores the whole issue of knowledge.

According to Immanuel Kant, who is one of the philosophers who explored the concept of knowledge, the human mind conceives things that exist in the physical world, as well as things that do not exist in the physical world, but only in the minds.

According to Bruce and Barbone (65), knowledge begins with the observation of the physical world and further mental regurgitation of what human beings see through reasoning and the generating of new knowledge.

The absence of the physical constructs in the world could have resulted in the lack of generation of knowledge because knowledge itself is developmental in nature. It builds from what is seen and conceived to what has not been seen. This results in what is termed by many people as innovation and invention, which is a proof of the existence of knowledge.

The absence of knowledge would imply that the world would have remained the way it was in the first place. The emphasis on the concept of a priori knowledge is critical in explaining the diverse forms of knowledge that are generated in the world.

The natures of observations that are made by people vary with the environment, which results in the generation of different forms of knowledge. This, in turn, changes different things in life (Scherer 860). The ability of people to shape the course of life is based on the diverse way in which the minds conceive things. The absence of knowledge would imply the lack of innovation and invention and a boring life.

Right and wrong

The rationalization of actions in the society is the main source of the argument between right and wrong. The main arguments among moral philosophers revolve around the justification of actions through the exploration of the course of such actions to classify them as being either right or wrong. Most philosophers dwell on the concept of the greater good at differentiating between wrong and right actions.

Research shows that there is a lot of relativity in the classification of actions as either being right or wrong. To this extent, therefore, it can be argued that there are no moral principles that are completely objective or absolute in that matter.

The other question that comes into the minds of people when talking about right and wrong is the foundation for these two ethical issues. Here, most people bring in the issue of a supernatural being or controller, where absolutism is attained (Maudsley 294).

However, it is important to note that the principle of right and wrong in the society has helped to maintain order through the setup of standards on which the actions of individuals are classified as either being right or wrong. An example is the development and enforcement of laws in the society where the actions of individuals are controlled, even through some laws are considered to be wrong.

The absence of such control mechanisms could leave an open space for individual rationalization of actions, leading to a disorderly and disorganized society where individual actions could have harmed a lot of people (Lee 47). In this case, it would be harder to sustain a meaningful life in the society, where life would be based on competition that is based on rationalization of actions whether they harm people or not.

Works Cited

Bloom, Paul. Free Will Does Not Exist. So What? The Chronicle Review. 2012. Web.

Bruce, Michael, and Steven Barbone. Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print.

Garrett, Stephen M. Beauty As The Point Of Connection Between Theology And Ethics. European Journal Of Theology 20.2 (2011): 149-158. Print.

Lee, Daniel E. Deciding Whats Right and Wrong in an Age of Pluralism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Print.

Maudsley, Henry. Natural Causes and Supernatural Seemings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.

McCall, Storrs. Freewill And Omniscience: A Reply To Garrett. Analysis 73.3 (2013): 488-488. Print.

Preston, Aaron. David Humes Treatment of Mind. Web.

Scherer, Irmgard. Kants Theory Of A Priori Knowledge (Book). Review Of Metaphysics 55.4 (2002): 860-860. Print.

Woodman, Simon. An Alien In The Land: A Summary Of Singing The Ethos Of God By Brian Brock. European Journal Of Theology 18.2 (2009): 105-113. Print.

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