Understanding Determinism and Human Freedom
Cosmological Determinism
Cosmological determinism: the destination.
The Stoics saw a need to find out what is the order of the cosmos to know how we behave in it, and it resorted to the doctrine of Heraclitus of Ephesus, who said that everything is explained for some reason, and as the number of reasons cannot be infinite, there must be a prime reason, according to them, that happiness is aware that any exterior is in the hands of fate, trying to ensure peace of mind. This begins to open a distinction between two worlds: the inner freedom that is in our hands, and the outside world, which does not depend on us.
Theological Determinism
Theological determinism, predestination.
With the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation, two new factors came to exacerbate the problem: If God knows everything, it will be because he has given all things, in their opinion, and if the cause of everything, so esra of human actions. So why do people assume responsibility for their actions and talk about sin, repentance, forgiveness, and salvation? The Protestant Reformers insisted that human beings lack free will and are predestined. Catholic theologians tried to counter the determinism, maintaining that God and man are co-authors of human acts.
Scientific Determinism
Scientific determinism.
This kind of determinism is to try to account for human behavior from the explanations we can provide a certain science. This mindset is a reductionism. Some examples are:
- Physicalist monism: it reduces the universe to matter and body movements to mechanical movements.
- Physiological determinism: for those acts which we call free are actually elaborate conditioned reflexes.
- Psychoanalytic determinism: when it understands human action as driven by the unconscious.
- Economic Determinism: Explains the various historical periods, different “modes of production” and human consciousness in turn determined by the place that each individual engages in the production process.
- Genetic determinism: see genetic endowment of each of us the causes of all our actions.
- Psychological determinism: To whom our conduct is governed by the most attractive mobile ejrece sore our will, and so our behavior is rational and not arbitrary.
Critique of Determinism
Critique of determinism.
Reductionist positions are unable to justify the following facts that are understood only if we assume that we are free: the conviction that we act to be free, the fact that we take responsibility for our actions, personal and mutually praise and condemnation of certain behaviors, the aesthetic and scientific creativity, the existence of the moral, legal, political, and religious.
Human Freedom
Human freedom.
Our freedom is conditioned by many factors and has a base which humans actually captures the medium and through his intelligence and responds by creating a world of possibilities among which to choose and justify your answer. Have to deliberate among the most appropriate means to achieve the purposes proposed, and its will is free to choose one way and another.
Freedom of Choice
Freedom of choice.
The most common understanding of freedom is as an ability to will to choose between different possibilities, after deliberation in which we weigh the advantages and disadvantages of rehash actions. A similar capacity requires:
- That our will is not already determined to act.
- That is not arbitrary.
- That we have good reasons to choose after deliberation.
Concept of Autonomy
Concept of autonomy.
Kant proposes that people can choose not only the means but also ends: somo autonomous. This wisdom we have learned about ourselves, not experience, is our own law. Kant called the law of liberty or moral law. Freedom is the property of the will to be a law unto itself. Scientifically can not explain it, but say there is. There are two perspectives:
- The external events to the will of the people, that science can try to explain as effects caused by events that precede them in time.
- The human will is capable by itself to initiate a series of effects, and it’s free. Thus we can speak of laws of freedom.