Monday, November 3, 2008

Free Will v.s. Determinism

In the topic of Free Will v.s. Determinism I stand in a compatibalistic state. I believe that free will and determinism can coexist while both still in a way being rationally correct. This is because in many cases the argument of free will can be used while in other cases the argument of pre-determination can be used. My prime example is of a woman in her house minding her own business and then all of a sudden a fugitive pops in her house. After suddenly seeing how attractive this woman is, the man suddenly has a new goal in mind and intends to rape her. The woman is frightened by this and tries to run away, it is most definately clear that her will is to get the f--- out of there. The man's overbearing strength however, forces her to stay and he then proceeds with the rape. This, in my opinion, disproves the theory of free will because it was impossible for the woman to exercise her free will, therefore this theory is invalid in situations such as that one. In my study of determinism, I found that this theory is also invalid in some situations. At first I had just thought it was a crazy notion in the first place that EVERYTHING in the world is layed and planned out and it is. I had no proof of this though, so I was just going off of personal belief. Now though, it has been shown to me that scientific proof has been found that denies the belief of determinism. This is having to do with quantum mechanics and such things that are too complicated to type, but by combining my personal belief and scientific proof, I have concluded that the full idea of determinism is not possible either. These concepts lead to my belief that in certain situations either can exist.