We Are Predetirmined As Humans
Uploaded by kyra666 on Mar 15, 2002
In Leger Wood’s essay “Determinism: Free Will Is an Illusion” he argues that humans are determined by some cause for all of our actions. The philosophical controversy of free will versus determination has been argued, discussed, written about and studied so much that it has become over done and monotonous. However, I do agree with Wood that humans are determined by some cause. Explanations for cause may be from evidence of introspective psychology, morals, religious issues, physical science, physiology, behavioral psychology and sociology. In this essay Wood gives us the libertarians’, or free willists’, explanations for free will, refutes them and gives us other evidence that humans are actually determined.
To begin, libertarians and determinists both have strong explanations of their beliefs in introspective psychological evidence. The libertarians say our decisions are “without a sufficient and adequate natural cause.” They also believe that the human mind is always aware that it is making a decision at each chance it gets. They believe there is proof of these choices by having retrospective feelings of remorse after having made a decision they feel like they could have chosen otherwise. Saying that oneself may choose otherwise is a very big portion of the basis on which libertarians make their thesis. To them, there is a possibility of saying “I could have done otherwise than what I did.” Also, decisions are decisions no matter how important or trivial they may be. They include imagining other alternative, weighing the alternatives and then the choice of action. Here, one may have two or more equal choices so he must weigh them to decide, according to the libertarians. However, if the choices were equal, then the mind would remain suspended and one would never come to a conclusion.
It is not an inner-force making the decision, but it is by chance or from opposing forces that will eventually make one choice seem better than the other. This is a huge point to the determinists along with several other involving introspective psychology. Including that the feeling of freedom after having made a decision, as libertarians claim to feel, is only a sense of relief after having a great deal of stress, tension and indecision and actually the feeling of freedom is an illusion. Also, it is easier to say that one could choose otherwise in prospect or retrospect. For example, if one were making a decision to stop...