free will.doc

Oh, God, we do not have free will!Its really a bonus for us that we all have more access to philosophy after entering college. More fortunately, our school has opened a course specifically for us this term that named Contemporary Western Philosophical Problems so that we can have a further understanding of philosophy. During the learning of this course, I learned the concept of free will for the first time, though I got to know later that the question whether we have free will has been discussed continously in the west and that the westerns seem to be more interested in philosophical problems like this. As far as I am concerned, we do not have free will. First, look at the definition of it: a person has free will to do something if and only if he could have done otherwise. It seems obvious that we could have done other than what we actually did. So the only problem is how to explain such a capability and in the meanwhile to be consistent with our knowledge about natural laws. As is known to all, at present, modern science hasnt mastered a technology that can help us go back to the past and prove that if be faced with the same situation ,we could do otherwise. For this reason, at least up to now, we can hardly proof the rationality of free will strongly .Second, see from the process that our genes and the environment influence our mind ,and then the mind directly leads to our actions, we can easily come up with a question that how is the free will possible? Though I am not a determinist, I still admit that the objective environment does have some limits to our determinations.We all know there are three statements that form the problem of free will:(1) All events（including human actions）are caused. (It is known as “causal determinism”) (2) Some human actions are free. (3) If any event (including any human action) is caused, it is not free. Each statement looks plausible or reasonable, but when put together, the set of the statements is inconsistent. Or it could be expressed as: “how is it possible for a causally determined action to be free?” To solve the problem, one has to reject one of the above. Hard determinism: Everything is caused and there is no free will (accepting (1) and (3) but denying (2). HD holds that (1) and (2) are incompatible; It is also known as incompatibilism. Indeterminism: Not everything is caused and some human actions are free (accepting (2) and (3) but denying (1). According to indeterminism, free actions are uncaused. Compatibilism ( soft determinism): Everything is caused and some human actions are free ( accepting (1) and（2）but denying (3). Libertarianism ( soft indeterminism): free actions are caused by an agent rather than an event or someone else. In my opinion, all these doctrines just concern whether events are caused and then make a definition whether actions are free. It is not right. I think that when we are considering the question of free will, we should and just need to take the given conditions into account and judge from the action itself. Here I will take Professor Chens affair for an example. Professor Chen says that after supper in home, he can not avoid washing dishes but can discuss the time he does the washing, and this seems to be a strong proof of free will. Yes, he does have the right to choose that he delay one or two minutes to wash the dishes, however, what can not be ignored is that finally we would choose a specific time to do that and whether we could choose another time is still a question.Next, lets have a talk about moral responsibility. Then just look at the inference: (1) If there is no free will, we should not be morally responsible for our behavior ( there would be no moral responsibility). (2) However, we should be morally responsible for our behavior. (3) Therefore, there is free will. It involves a question that how should we be responsible for our behavior. From my point of view, our common evaluations, even if the contemporary laws, are mostly made according to the results of the fact. It aims to regulate our human life. Maybe you will question that how about a mentally ill person that commit a crime? He or she is really innocence, he may be just can not control himself. Then, should the law punish him? The answer is obvious Yes, for that he actually made bad effect on the society. Certainly, there will be some special punishments for him, differing from other normal ones. Whats more, the concept of moral responsibility is also assumed that the authenticity of the personality, that is, a person, no matter what physical and mental changes he has made, is essentially the same. The widely-spread in the west of this concept is closely related to Christianity. Christian holds the view that God is not only omniscient but also all-around; the fact that some people, Christians and non Christians alike, believe that God is not only always to know the individuals will do what kind of choice, in fact, God decided choice. In other words, they believe, through his ability to predict, he knows what will affect an individuals choice, and through his all-round ability, he can control these factors influence the choice. This way of thinking among the related concept of salvation and destiny is extremely important because the two concepts are inseparable from the idea. But another faction say that, when God is the Almighty and know that individuals will do what kind of choice, he would still give the individual to do the final selection or the ability to reject everything, and this choice itself, the inner or outer the conditions are unrelated. The opinion that God is the Almighty is consistent with Determinism, but meanwhile contradicted with free will. Its just an interesting thing.“Before the body to do an action as early as in the will command, the brain has conveyed this information already . However, this fact is not known to as all! A surprising finding, and we have to re-examine the concept of free will.” This passage is extracted from Newly Discovered in December 2005. Patrick Haggard, Neurobiologist at the University of London, UK ,said that often, people believe that doing an action, such as when its cold, we stretch the arm to pick up clothes, we do this action because we want to do this. However, this idea is wrong. Want to perform an action first independently generated in a certain area of th