Free Will and Determinism
What is free will, according to philosophic interpretations? What is determinism -- and how is it different from free will? What do philosophers say about free will and determinism? These questions will be answered in this paper, along with issues that dovetail and provide additional clarification and understanding.
Trinity University's C. Mackenzie Brown, professor of religion, explains one definition: an action is "free" if and only if it's cause is internal to the agent, not external. But, Brown argues, a sneeze has an internal cause, but it's not a free action. So perhaps an action is free only it if is caused by the agent's beliefs and desires" (Brown, 2001). As for determinism: "everything has a sufficient cause," he succinctly states; and a "sufficient cause" is one which is sufficient to ensure that the event in question will indeed take place.
Jean Paul Sartre believed that there is "an internal relation existing between what is free and what is transcended by freedom and is not free" (Cox, 2006, p. 64). His quote here requires some deep thought: "Human reality is a perpetual surpassing towards a coincidence with itself which is never given" (Cox, 64). What does that mean? His reasoning is based on his belief that to be free will, it has to be "for-itself" and not "in-itself"; that is, each person's free will is part of a person being "towards the future," Cox explains. "Man is, before all else, something which propels itself towards a future and is aware that it is doing so" (Existentialism and Humanism, Sartre, p. 28) (quoted by Cox, 64). According to Matthew Eshleman's essay, Sartre believed because freedom has such an "unlimited nature" it is impossible to "judge individual agents or groups to be more or less free than any other (Eshleman, 2010, p. 43). So if it's impossible to know...
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