the existence of free will?

Question

any one ever write a philosophy paper using "Evolution and the Foundation of Ethics" by william provine and a pro free will source and either prove or disprove the existence of free will. or anything proving or disproving the existence of free will... please send it to [e-mail] thankyou

yes i know it looks like i want people to do my hw and i did do the research but a basic foundational layout would help it along much more quickly and its halloween can't anyone help a brother out

maybe i'd be able to help you out in return

Answer 1

I don't know about the essay you are referring to, but here are my thoughts on free will:

First we must figure out what free will could possibly be. After all, we seem to have some sort of essential nature, and whatever this nature is, we could not have freely chosen it. As Martin Heidegger says, we are thrown into existence without any choice in the matter. And, it seems, we didn’t choose the nature of the world either. I didn’t get to choose, say, my nationality, the year of my conception, the political affiliation of my parents, etc. So we must take as given our essential nature, which is largely constituted by the social context into which we were born, so to a significant extent we are actually constituted by the world in which we live. There is no logical room for freedom at this level of our basic nature.

This seems to leave two options: 1) We can give up on the idea of free will or, 2) We can try to make sense of the idea that free will is somehow embedded into our very nature. I’m not going to discuss option #1, but I will elaborate on #2. The fact that we are logically prohibited from choosing our own essential nature does not rule out the possibility that the essential nature we are "stuck with" is, in fact, the nature of a free being. In other words: free choice is not a metaphysical luxury, but a foundational requirement of our very existence.

The key to understanding this is temporality. While it is true that we did not choose our basic nature, it is also true that our basic nature is temporal. We are born into a temporal world and live for a span of time. Temporality is logically tied to potentiality. Temporality is the triad of what has been, what is, and what will be – aka, past, present, and future. Since temporality is a constituent of our basic nature, it follows that our future is a constituent of our basic nature. As a constituent of our essence, what "future" means is potential – the possibilities inherent in our existence.

But this does not rule out the possibility of determinism, so it is still not clear what free will actually means, or how it is possible. So let’s try this: The problem of understanding free will arises from a deep sort of confusion generated by the standard substantial subject/object view of metaphysics. As individual substantial souls metaphysically independent from the objects of the world, we are forced to search for free will either in violations of the deterministic laws of physics, or else in some sort of soul-influence that is able to take advantage of the gaps of uncertainty in quantum theory. But another approach might be to scrap the whole subject/object metaphysics in favor of a radically different interpretation of Being. Here things get deep…

I think Heidegger was on to something, but I will take his ideas in an odd direction. Heidegger said that our essence is existence. Notice there is a plural term – “our” – identified with what seems to be a non-numerical (or at most unitary) concept – “existence”. I am not a substantial being whose essence is metaphysically isolated from all other individual beings. Rather, my essence and your essence are one and the same; we share our essence, and this shared essence is existence itself. Our perspectives are different, but our essence is the same. (If this seems incomprehensible, just think of your self yesterday and today – two perspective united by a common Being, aka “yourself”. Now expand this idea to all perspectives throughout all of spacetime.) And what is this universally-shared essence composed of? Answer: Being-in-the-world (that’s Heidegger’s term). Existence has no choice but to exist, and to follow its own nature (since there is no essence beyond existence to force it to do anything against its nature). Thus existence is fundamentally free in the sense that it will only do (and can only do) what is in its own nature to do. As existence itself, each of us (individual perspectives of existence) may not always feel free because our individual perspectives at any moment are miniscule fractions of our total essence; nevertheless, despite our perspective-based limitations, we are (for better or worse) actually choosing our free path at every moment. Unfortunately we tend to fear the vast expanse of our own essence that we cannot see from our limited perspective, and we claim that it is not really ours, but it IS ours, no matter how much it might embarrass, frighten, or disgust us.

So the bottom line is that we had no choice in our basic nature, but given our fundamental nature as existence itself, we also have no choice but to be fundamentally free in the sense that nothing outside of our own nature can cause us to do anything. Everything that we do turns out to be what we CHOOSE to do in a deep sense that goes beyond the perspectives of our limited egos, and we have no choice other than to make these free choices because we are constituted by our temporality, which is to say, we are constituted by our possibilities. On the one hand this is liberating – we are fundamentally free! – but on the other hand it is deeply disturbing because there seems to be nothing to prevent us from making really bad choices. On this view, there is ultimately no external Creator/Savior to save us from ourselves. We have to choose freely, and this leaves open the possibility that we will choose a path of suffering.

Answer 2

The hindrance is how we outline loose will. I see it because the belief that we get to make a decision a few of our movements. Not they all: I cannot flap my fingers and fly to the moon, irrespective of whether or not I wish to. But we do get to make a decision a few, and the sector suffering from them is the truly international. Cause and outcome function. We ought to are living with the penalties of our choices, and the penalties of others' choices, too. John Calvin, the nice Protestant theologian, hostile the thought due to the fact that he noticed "loose will" as implying a freedom to prefer penalties, now not simply movements. He did not imply the equal factor by way of the phrases. And of direction, we do not continually get to prefer the penalties. Murphy's Law applies. Atheists by and large appear to argue utilising Calvin's standpoint: they appear to feel we will be able to prefer heaven or hell as an results, after which do some thing we wish with out it affecting that results. They write in opposition to loose will always right here in R&S from that viewpoint. Sam Harris, in "The End of Faith," has a tremendous word (a web page and a part) arguing that loose will does not exist, in spite of admire to movements and even ideas. He's now not transparent on whether or not he thinks inspiration is random or deterministic. Either method, I individually feel it is sloppy of any creator to argue that the e-book on which he's accumulating royalties used to be now not the fabricated from his choices. As on your query, you are right within the end, however I feel you could have derived it from an untenable premise. Unless you'll be able to exhibit predictable determinism with admire to human conduct--and no one's at any place nearly doing so--we aren't simply healthy robots. Of direction, a random, as an alternative than deterministic, groundwork could be more difficult to reduction, and it perhaps feasible due to the fact quantum results would possibly really potentially have an effect on inspiration. However, this kind of groundwork could even be indistinguishable, in a useful experience, from loose will.

Answer 3

all that sounds interesting...and fishy...are you trying to get someone to do your homework? you research? jsut wondering...i have done it too but you need more finesse