Determinism and the Possibility of a Free Act

Question 1 

The thought of rigidly determined existence bothers me to an extent that I question that if the brains of humans are deterministic, what leads individuals to experience emotion. When looking for a car engine, for instance, it would not be anticipated to have feelings. In the event that it had feelings, the emotions would not affect its operations without violating certain physical laws. Portraying emotions would render the engine useless, while at the same time rendering the phenomenon surprising. In my case, the major thing that disturbs me revolves around the complexity of the human brain, which would also follow a similar trend as the car engine. The major difference, nonetheless, emerges whereby a car engine is created to be as quantifiable and deterministic as possible, while it is not possible to measure and quantify the human brain fully to forecast behavior to a certain extent. In this case, I fail to support the idea that the existence of humans is rigidly determined. Additionally, when it comes to the idea that all my actions are determined, the thought disturbs me rather than reassuring me. The reason for this is that I do not believe that it is possible to predict the future choices by an individual correctly, mostly because people have the ability of changing their minds suddenly.

Question 2 

Regarding personal belief in determinism, it would affect my view of crime and punishment whereby I would argue that since decisions to commit a crime are usually deterministic, punishment as a repercussion for offence would mostly be substituted by eradicating an individual from the society. The reason for this is that such kinds of individuals are “miswired,” leading them to cause harm to other people, although the result would remain incarceration for the offence committed. In this case, challenges would still prevail in detecting the differences. The major areas that should be accorded tremendous emphasis is to gain sufficient understanding concerning behavioral mechanisms that need can facilitate in identifying bad “wiring” in the brains of individuals before they consider engaging in criminal activities. These need repairing to ensure that crime and the emergent requirement for incarceration start fading from the society’s view. In my perspective, therefore, I do not agree that individuals are responsible for the crimes they commit, but certain deterministic forces past their control lead them to engage in such acts.

Question 3 

In my perspective, I believe that every event has a cause, even though certain free actions are possible. The actions and choices that people make serve as alignments with the universe as it advances in time. For people’s brains, they give them the perception of choice, since offer evolutionary advantage, although they are not making any choices. However, this does not indicate that people lives are meaningless or that they should not care about the choices they believe to be making. Here, it is crucial to note that each event has a cause every minute, whether related to an individual or not. All things happen for reasons while people are the ones who decide to choose and think about them. However, individuals need to note everything surrounding them has certain causes, while they choose the ones that make their lives happy. Thus, I do not believe that the beliefs are compatible since certain forces influence even the decisions that individuals believe to be making freely.

Question 4 

In my case, it matters a lot whether I have free will. I would prefer to know whether I have the ability of making certain choices that are not under the influence of prior causes. I would prefer knowing that I am able to choose things freely without the influence of causes, such as feelings, preferences, and other outside forces. When looking at a kid who is beaten brutally at home for example, he/she might act in an aggressive manner at school, indicating that the source of the behavior is beyond the school environment. When subjected to a similar situation, I believe that my personality, feelings, and choices I make would be different, since I would not be the one controlling the feeling. In this case, having free will would matter since I would be able to alter my feelings and actions to make sure that they do not influence the decisions I make. Nonetheless, due to the existence of determinism I do not agree that my behavior would change since I believe that forces past my control determine all my actions.

Question 5 

Free acts cannot be regarded as those whose immediate causes serve as the psychological states in an agent. When looking at all natural occurrences, for example, they are usually caused, hence predictable. In addition, regarding human choices, they are natural occurrences, indicating that the actions they undertake are caused and hence possible to predict. In this vein, it is possible to know in advance the actions that a certain person would undertake when having sufficient information. Therefore, individuals do not choose their actions freely. Even if the events are psychological, they influence the behavior of a person although in ways that they do not understand. In this perspective, if another person were controlling the “psychological states” states secretly through hypnosis, they would not be considered as free. The reason for this is that the person controlling the individual’s psychological state would be the one influencing the actions undertaken, hence the cause, which relates to determinism as opposed to free will.