Determinism Vs Freewill

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt to you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.” – Jawaharlal Nehru. The world is split into three groups of people, those who believe in determinism, those who believe in free will, and those who believe in free will in respect to determinism. Determinism vs. Freewill has been a topic many philosophers have argued about for a long time because it is something that cannot be physically proven nor disproven. It is a matter of belief and perspective. Many individuals also rely on their religious views to guide them towards supporting determinism or freewill.

Determinism is the philosophical idea that every event or action is a consequence of a previous action and is thus predictable.

Humans have no choices and are just living in a false notion believing that they do. This leads to The Universal Theory of Causation which states that every event or phenomenon results from, or is the sequel of, some previous event or phenomenon, which being present, the other is certain to take place. This drives some to believe that the way an event turns out is determined by a prior cause and everything in our universe has been caused by something. This claim is supported by The Bing Bang Theory which further reinforces that specific particle movement resulted in the Earth being formed, which led to human life, which led to humanity, which led to evolution, which led to humans progressing, which led to societies, which led to schools, which led to me writing this paper right now. In the belief of hard determinism, everything that has happened in my life has brought me to this very moment writing this paper, which will lead me to passing or failing this midterm. Not because I had a choice to but because the choice was made for me, and just because I do not know the cause does not mean it’s not

Freewill, they tried to establish a common ground that took aspects from both sides of the arguments. This created soft determinism or as some call it compatibilism. This is the theory that human behavior and actions are completely determined by causal events, but human free will does exist when defined as the capacity to act according to one 's nature, which is shaped by external factors such as heredity, society and upbringing. Through this view point, philosophers debate that although everything is caused we should acknowledge that there are two types of causes: internal causes and external causes. Internal causes are determined by internal desire while external causes are actions that are forced by something external. When a soft determinist says that someone has freewill, they mean that someone’s actions are a result of their internal causes. Hard determinists argue with this statement by claiming that internal causes are caused by external causes. Although that is true and soft determinists would agree with that and with psychological determinism, however all internal causes are shaped by nature, environment, upbringing and society, ultimately we make the choices that follow our personal desires. David Hume explained it as “power of acting according to the determinations of the will: that is, if we choose to remain at rest we may; if we choose to move we also may.” This leads to the philosophical definition of freewill.