Submitted by: Submitted by missnikki
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Category: Philosophy and Psychology
Date Submitted: 07/13/2011 02:38 PM
Argument and Logic
Nikki Cunningham
Phi/105 Introduction to Philosophy
Axia College
6/29/2011
I chose the excerpt on Free Will Versus Determinism because it seemed to lure me into believing that both choices could be correct and I needed to make a decision regarding the possibilities. The excerpt gives a brief overview of how and why two different views could be considered to be just common sense. However, if one view holds true, then it would be impossible for the other to be true.
The two views questioned are “1)The behavior of atoms is governed entirely by physical law” and “2)Humans have free will” (UOP, 2008). The reader is then required to answer the question if they can accept both views to be true, and if a wager were to be placed would it be lost? The author then tells the reader that the wager would have been lost because the first and second descriptions previously described do not agree comfortably.
The first view is that an atom has to do what it has to do according to physical law given the circumstances. Physical laws do determine how atoms react. However, the opposing view offers that free will presumably is something that did not necessarily have to happen. A decision and a choice was made to take the action creating the actions and the atom to act so, that is fallacy.
If the thinking that free will and human choices is correct then, the theory that an atom did what was necessary, given the existing circumstances is a fallacy and is not true. Physically, it takes the human brain functions to make the body work and the atoms to exist to do the job they were designed to do which, leads to the argument that a human would not have free will without the atoms functions.
Basically, if atom A is instructed to do XYZ in certain circumstances then the atom A must do XYZ. So, which comes first? The chicken or the egg? If I were to answer the chicken, would I be incorrect? Or, take the opposite, the egg because, you have to have an egg...