Q3 Blog 1

In recent philosophical discussion the problems with both determinism and free will are apparent. To people who believe in free will the problem of determinism is that it does not explain consciousness and that it does not explain why we still make “choices” in everyday decisions. To people who believe in determinism the problem of free will is that seems to be a construct to help us cope with the reality of the universe and that free will does not make sense because the things which determine our thoughts (the interactions between neurons) are physical and thus follow physical rules. If I were to drop a pencil and it fell to the ground it would be because I dropped it, it would be because of the rules concerning gravity, it would be because the pencil had mass, it would be because there was nothing but air to obstruct its fall, and etc. It would be because of countless of past events that combined to make that situation occur. If all of these factors were in place there would be absolutely no possible way that the pencil could have done anything else than what it did. The problem with the theory of determinism is that when expanding this deductive example to humans the past factors which I mentioned become much more complex. The factors which shape a human being are trillions of things but all of these factors and the human beings ultimately live in the physical world and are therefore subject to physical laws. The thoughts that human beings have are the result of physical things. They are the result of the interaction between neurons and the passing of neurotransmitters through synapses. They are the result of new proteins being made to encode for memories or perhaps new dendrites growing from neurons to encode for memories. It has proven by the fMRI that our reasoning and emotions are found in the brain. We do not have a soul which is not subject to physical laws and therefore free from the grasp of determinism. We do not have free will because free will would violate the very definition of the physical laws. Of course the realization of this does come with a certain nostalgia of a time when I believed that I had a choice between white milk and chocolate milk but as a person devoted to the truth I must ignore my intuition and follow the logical conclusion which is determinism.