User talk:Inawe/DTC-AP/Phil I/1
Free Will
editWhat is "Free Will" and how does it relate to the theological concept of "Predestination"?
Since the moment when humans began to perceive themselves as historical beings, creatures
with history and future, with guilt and responsibility, the question about free will and
predestination was there.
Study the Internet to get answers. Use "Google" to find relevant sites. Read also articles in "Wikipedia" about it.
Use your personal ePortfolio (for example a "talk page" or "sandbox" to make notes, and work creatively
with your notes in your virtual "study". Have a look back to the course "University Study Skills" to refresh your knowledge
about the effective reading of books, writing summaries and short essays.
What do you learn from Augustinus and Chrysostom about both concepts?
Study their lives and thoughts. Make notes.
What do you believe yourself? Study critically your own world view.
Some Material of other Students That Might Help You in Your Study of the Topic
editFree will and Determinism What is it? The ability and power to make choices. “Free will is the ability of agents to make choices unimpeded by certain prevailing factors. Such prevailing factors that have been studied in the past have included metaphysical constraints (such as logical, nomological, or theological determinism),[1] physical constraints (such as chains or imprisonment), social constraints (such as threat of punishment or censure), and mental constraints (such as compulsions or phobias, neurological disorders, or genetic predispositions).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will What is “determinism”? The term (sic) determinism is first attested in the late fourteenth century, "to come to an end," also "to settle, decide," from O.Fr. determiner (12c.), from L. determinare "set limits to," from de- "off" + terminare "to mark the end or boundary," from terminus "end, limit." Determinism is the philosophical idea that every event or state of affairs, including every human decision and action, is the inevitable and necessary consequence of antecedent states of affairs. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/determinism.html Choices Free will Desires or Needs Genes or Predisposition ??? Do we really have free will? What did philosophers of old think? a. Augustine. He believed that human beings have free will and evil in this world was the result of that. He thought that when human beings prefer earthly things to heavenly things, they do evil things. Early in his life he believed that one can avoid sin if one just wills against it. As one of the early Christian philosophers, he tried to find answers to the questions like “If God is good and controls everything, when then is there so much evil in this world?” He was sure that it was not God’s fault, so he argued that people must have free will to be able to do things that are against God. b. Anselm of Canterbury. He believed that if people did not have free will, then they would not be held responsible for their deeds. He didn’t believe that having free will meant being able to act differently. He thought God and good angels were free to do one type of deeds, that is, only good deeds. According to him, (in each case) people have to choose between justice and happiness, and if they choose justice, they might feel unhappy (and forced to give up their happiness) temporarily, but the justice they choose will bring greater happiness in the long run. He believed that “those who are confirmed in evil fail or failed to take seriously the connection between justice and genuine happiness”. c. Albert the Great. He believed in something called “liberum arbitrum”. For him it was a third power - apart from intellect and will - that made human actions possible. And he divided the production of human actions into 4 stages: i. Intellect offers options ii. Will prefers one of the options iii. Liberim arbitrum chooses either the alternative of the intellect or the alternative of the will. iv. Will carries out the choice made by liberum arbitrum.
d. Thomas Aquinas. He believed in free will and argued that the ultimate goal of human beings is happiness. Whatever they do, they do, hoping to move towards or to get this happiness. There is no action without motivation. First, they set ultimate goals in their lives by using their intellect. Then they have desires to achieve those goals and their will wants to achieve them. Finally, they engage in the activity of achieving those goals. What made him differ from Aristotle was that he believed that God and knowing him was the ultimate happiness and meaning of life. e. John Chrysostom. “Hence we learn a great doctrine, that a man’s willingness is not sufficient, unless any one receive the succor from above; and that again we shall gain nothing by the succor from above, if there be not a willingness.”
“Men, as needing the ministry of servants, keep many in that state even against their will, by the law of ownership; but God, being without wants, and not standing in need of anything of ours, but doing all only for our salvation makes us absolute [κυριος] in this matter, and therefore lays neither force nor compulsion on any of those who are unwilling. For He looks only to our advantage: and to be drawn unwilling to a service like this is the same as not serving at all.” https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/free-will-in-saint-john-chrysostom/
Chrysostom seems to have believed that human action, especially towards God and his will, is the result of both human will and God’s grace. He thought that God does not force anyone to do anything because God wants voluntary submission. If a man does not want to submit to God, God will not force him, but if a man wants to submit to God, his willingness and desire are not enough. He also needs God’s grace to be able to do so. It’s clear that Chrysostom, like early Christian philosophers, considered free will in tight connection with God and his work in human life. It seems that he did not speculate about how ordinary human actions are produced. I think we have free will for two reasons. 1. As a believer in God, I think we have free will. Otherwise God would not be able to judge us. If we make our choices not because we choose, but because we are made or forced (even unconsciously) to choose, then God would not judge or condemn us if we made wrong decision. The fact that God says that he is going to judge us shows that he holds us responsible for our actions. If we are responsible, it means we are accountable and it means we have free will to choose. But (atheists might argue) what if God is not real, or even worse, God is a malicious being that likes to force people and then hold accountable for the choices they had to make? So this hypothesis is true only if God is real. Let’s suppose the first theory is not good enough. Let’s see the second hypothesis. 2. If there is no free will and we are predestined to do whatever we do in our lives, then people cannot and should not accuse each other of breaking some kind of rules. C.S. Lewis in his book called Mere Christianity explains that there is a universal law of good and evil. We can use the same logic to prove that free will exists. Let’s say that someone slapped you. Can you blame him for that? Yes if you think he has a free will. No, if you think he was forced to do that. In fact, when an insane or mentally retarded person attacks someone, they don’t usually blame him because they know that this sick person cannot control himself, in other words does not have a power or metal ability to choose not to hit. But we all know that there is not a single person that can say to a normal person that hits him or her, “I don’t blame you. You slapped me because you were programmed to do that.” No, they hold that person accountable for that because they truly believe that people have free will to make decisions and choices. So the hypothesis “there is no free will” challenges all the laws between people. In this case, we shouldn’t put criminals to jail, be heartbroken when our loved ones leave us, (as teachers) be mad at students when they don’t study hard. They can’t help it. So the conclusion is that whether there is such a thing as free will or not, every person acts and lives as if there is such a thing.
When we read the Bible, we can read things that are related to free will and determinism. Here are some examples.
The epistle to Romans: As introduction to this part I want to mention that in chapter 1 of this book, Paul says God’s anger is kindled against and ready to be poured upon ungodly people. Psychologists say that anger is a reaction that is shown when someone else does something against the desires, expectations and the will of that person. God is angry because people are acting against him. It means they really have free will and God seems not to be restricting that will to do his own will to some level.
According to the book of Romans, there is something that makes us do things against our will.
chapter 6
verse 12. Sin can reign in us. verse 17. Being a slave and being free from the slavery of sin. verse 20. A man can be a slave to sin and have a free will against righteousness (or justice in Anselm's terms).
chapter 7
verse 4. Sin creates passions that lead us to destruction. verses 16-17. Sin does something in us against our will. verse 23. The law of sin works against the intellect.
Chapter 8
verse 7. "The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so." (NIV)
We can conclude that this sin that is in us does things not only against us, but also against God. It does not want and cannot submit to God's will. It means we really have the will to act against God's will. But the problem is that in this case we are not the agents of our actions, but it's the sin that lives in us. And as Paul says at the end of chapter 7, there is no way out of this problem unless God himself rescues us. This free will that we have apart from God leads us to destruction.
C.S. Lewis says that God is the only food that we can eat in this universe. He means that God gives only one option.
In Romans Paul uses the illustration of pottery to tell about God's sovereignty in creating us. We know that if a potter makes a vessel, that vessel can only do the following things:
1.Submit to the purpose and will of the potter 2.Fulfill its purpose and not be able to do anything beyond that 3. Be unable to find the meaning of existence for itself
If men were created by God, it means God created them with a certain purpose. They cannot become angels or gods or something else. God gives us no other options. Even the life on this earth that seems to promise freedom from him for a while will end with death unless we submit to him completely. We have free will only to choose the only kind of life that God offers. Otherwise we will be destroyed.
Some stories in the Bible hint that whatever we do, we will end up doing what God wants. The story of Joseph can be an example. When his brothers wanted to kill him, the oldest brother rescues him and they sell it to the caravan that was going to Egypt. But when his brothers wanted to kill him, they tell each other, "Let's kill him and see what will happen to his dreams." We might wonder what would have happened if they had really killed him. But I think, and God himself says, that God's word always comes true. Nothing can go against it. The fact that Joseph’s older brother wanted to rescue him and accidental appearance of a caravan contributed to this purpose. Even later, when Joseph was tempted and blamed by the wife of Potifar and put to jail, it was so that God's will for him and through him would be fulfilled. Joseph was bound to this fate but he was free within this fate. Someone might say that not everyone is Joseph. But I believe that whether we are great or small people, anything that we do fulfills God's will. And God has only one will. That is eternal life with him. Those who don't choose that, choose death, the absence of real life.
Conclusion
We have a free will while we live on this earth both to do God's will and act against him, but the consequences of each option are settled, determined. Doing God's will voluntarily will lead to eternal life. Acting out one's own will (or doing sin's will) against God's desire will lead to destruction. Two wills should either compromise and coexist or one of them should completely give up. In the case of God and sin, God cannot coexist with sin, so His will shall destroy sin's will.
Definitions
Compatibilists accept determinism but argue that man is free as long as his own will is one of the steps in the causal chain, even if his choices are completely predetermined for physical reasons or preordained by God.
Fatalism is a special form of determinism where every event in the future is fated to happen. Fatalism does not normally require that any causal laws or higher powers are involved. Strict determinism means complete predictability (in principle, if not in practice) of events and only one possible future.
Soft causality: events are caused by prior (uncaused) events, but not determined by events earlier in the causal chain, which has been broken by the uncaused cause. [Ex: Flip of a coin].
Determinism is an emergent property. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/determinism.html
Adequate determinism focuses on the fact that, even without a full understanding of microscopic physics, we can predict the distribution of 1000 coin tosses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
Indeterminism is the concept that events (certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or not caused deterministically (cf. causality) by prior events. It is the opposite of determinism and related to chance. It is highly relevant to the philosophical problem of free will, particularly in the form of metaphysical libertarianism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminism
From the movie Hidalgo In the middle of the horse race in the desert, the Arab rider falls into a swarm and says, “It’s Allah’s will for me to die this way” (Fatalism or Determinism). Then the American rider says, “What is your will?” and rescues him from death.
Intellectualists – those who argue that freedom is primarily a function of the intellect. Voluntarists – those who argue that freedom is primarily a function of the will.