Are We Free?

Are we really free to make choices? This question had come to my mind a few times in my life but I had never really given any serious thought to it. I had always just had the belief that I was choosing each and every decision that I made and that I was free to do differently if I wished. That nothing was controlling me to do a certain things and that my decisions were completely free. It wasn’t until reading and discussing this topic that I really thought about what I believed and began to question what my previous beliefs had been and what might be the actual cause to my actions. Many different philosophers have argued a wide variety of viewpoints on the topic of free will. One of these viewpoints is called determinism. Which argues that no actions are free by stating; that actions are free when they are uncaused, and that all actions are caused, therefore no actions are free. This is to say simply that every decision an individual makes is predetermined, and was directly caused by something else. And essentially that an individual’s future is completely decided and cannot be avoided. On the opposite side of this argument there is the idea that humans contain a “special sauce” or they are able to defy this idea of cause and effect and make decisions independently of any causes. This idea supports that there are transient, or natural causes, which is such that every event has a cause. And then there are immanent, or agent causes that defy natural causes and they incorporate this idea of human decisions. There are also other viewpoints in between these two extremes that include compatibilist view point that states that free will and determinism can coexist.

 After all the readings and discussion I have come to believe that this idea of compatiblism is what truly accounts for our actions. I believe that our choices are very much caused in the sense that there are circumstances that led to the decisions made. But the decision itself is very much up to the individual making the decision. The way I see it is like a pathway that at one point forks into two different paths, and the way to go is chosen by the traveler, and further along the path that they chose is another fork. The path that the traveler now decides to take was caused by the previous choice and if they had decided differently at the first fork they might not have to make this decision now. And again after they choose a second path they come to another fork and this third decision was caused by the last two, and if they had decided differently at either previous fork the decision now might be different. So our choices are cause by previous decisions in the sense that they lead us to different circumstances that would be different if we had decided differently, but each choice we make is not forced by previous causes. Take for example this blog post, the decision to write it was caused by many different things, or forks in the  path, and each of those things was caused by others, like me choosing to come to Hendrix, choosing to take this class, choosing to come to class the day the blog was talked about, my nature to do my homework. All these things caused me to write this post, and without these causes I wouldn’t be writing this post, but the actual decision is of my own free will. I could have, despite all these causes, chose to not write it and get a zero for it on my grade. Therefore I believe that we are free to choose to do what we want but the options we have to choose from are caused.