There are several opposing points of view on the problem of human independence in his own life. Someone believes that everything is predetermined from the beginning of life to its end, that any of our decisions are determined by something that can influence our fate. Such people are called fatalists, and their point of view has the right to life, because each of us partly becomes a fatalist when he pronounces the beloved phrase by many that "what is not done is all for the better." Other people are sure that their fate is at their full disposal. After reading this article, you will learn what determinism is and how it manifests itself in deterministic relationships, thanks to which a significant part of our life is built.
Free will and determinism
Philosophers of all times and peoples were worried about the problem of the correlation of human ideas about free will and how the world works and how determining factors are able to influence us. The issue of the causal relationship of our lives has always remained exciting. People tend to believe that the events that happen to them at a given moment in time are determinable - which means that they are predetermined by events of the past. An endless chain of events, thus, takes us to the very beginning - at the time of the Big Bang. On the other hand, it seems as if we can influence the current course of events, change the space surrounding us by one or another personally adopted decision. There is a third position, which states that these determinable events can be successfully present, without interfering with a person performing truly free actions and influencing how his future develops.
Manipulation argument
Philosophers love to build imaginary experiments, creating a hypothetical situation in which a person has to do forced actions. A typical example of a manipulation argument is a situation in which a person is forced to do something not at his own will (at gunpoint), most often something that has negative consequences for himself. For example, at a gun point a bank employee gives robbers all the money in the safe. Deterministic in this particular case is the decision of a bank employee not to save money, but to give it to attackers. His decision predetermines actions, depriving a person of the right to choose. In this case, we do not impose liability on the person who committed the seemingly unlawful act. The American School of Philosophy claims on this occasion that a person, regardless of circumstances, always does not act freely, that is, he has only the illusion of choice, in fact, his decisions are determined, and he acts like a person who is at gunpoint.
Three situations: the crime of a professor
This position is motivated by a thought experiment in which four situations are considered. The first one is as follows:
- The professor commits a crime, but during the act it is not his own brain that directs him, but a team of agents with special equipment for manipulating people.
- At the same time, the professor’s thoughts are preoccupied with thoughts about why he wants to commit a crime, he reasonedly argues for the impending violation.
- But even these thoughts are led by agents.
- Determined by these agents, the misconduct of the professor, it seems, cannot be condemned by us in any way.
Situation 2: Programmed for Crime
The following hypothesis from philosophers is that:
- Before his birth, the professor was programmed by scientists to commit a crime in a certain year, month, day, and time (similar to what happens in the movie "Terminator").
- As in the first case, due to the fact that the professor did not have the slightest chance to influence his fate, we will assume that the professor should not bear any punishment.
Situation 3: Reality
Finally, philosophers propose to imagine a more realistic situation in which our professor commits a crime in the same way, but this time it is predetermined by natural laws and nature, the character of this professor man himself. Imagine that he grew up in an environment in which to commit crimes is a universal norm that no one condemns. In this imaginary situation, it is no longer so clear to say whether the professor is responsible for the act he committed, because it seems that he could make efforts not to commit the punishable misconduct. The "culprit" of this determinate misconduct seems to be life itself! After all, the professor did not choose the society in which he had a chance to be born.
results
Most scientists come to the conclusion that the laws of nature are a kind of objective determinants of our world, because everything on the planet Earth obeys the laws of nature. Thus, we do not impose the burden of responsibility for one's fate on nature, which to a certain extent predetermines our existence. A man stands out sharply against the background of an “inanimate" world, a man is a complexly organized creation that is responsible for his actions, if they are not predetermined by external determinants, which means that he has a certain degree of freedom in his activity.