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One of the more interesting issues raised by philosophers is that of free will. The problem often discussed is the reconciliation of freedom with necessity and the factors that determine choice. In this paper, I refer to the views of philosophers who have dealt with these issues and have extended the concept of free will beyond the mere right to choose from among several possibilities.
Let us begin with Descartes' views on the subject. He treated free will as a quality of the mind. He stated that he has absolutely free will like God; our mind is free, but our bodies are dependent on the law of nature. Hence, he concludes that our choices are limited (through the duality of the body and the soul, the body limits the will of the soul, the realization of its intentions, and its possibilities). According to Descartes, we are most free to act on the basis of knowledge acquired through reason, which Soren Kierkegaard described as an ethical choice. We are free when our mind tells us the best choice, not when we intuitively choose one of the options. Moreover, by gaining knowledge, we increase our freedom (we become like God) and become independent of the world. He believes that if we had divine knowledge, we would have no doubts about the rightness of our decisions. On the other hand, he defines freedom as power, activity, reasoning, and independence from external causes. Descartes, in his ideas, is partially convergent with Kant (the issues of limiting man by the laws of nature and the rationality of choice), but he does not address the problem of determinism in relation to freedom and responsibility for choice.
Baruch Spinoza denies the assumption that man has a freedom equal to the divine since his existence does not result from the necessity of his nature. He claims that only God is truly free. Man is a symptom of God. Through intuitive cognition, he gains knowledge of how to act. The individual should strive to free himself from external influences. Spinoza, like Descartes and Kant, is against external influences, but unlike them, he considers intuition, not reason, as the main factor of choice.
The next philosopher to tackle this problem was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who tried to reconcile freedom with God's knowledge of the future. Freedom, in his opinion, is the fact that what we do is caused by our decision. We are free because our choice is well-thought-out and the best possible. Whatever we do is eternally doomed, so our choice is only indirectly free and therefore determined. If Leibniz is right, our aim is only to fulfill the necessity. His theory inevitably leads to determinism, that is, a denial of our freedom.
David Hume was the first to develop the question of factors influencing decision-making. He distinguished external and internal causes. He stated that our actions are influenced by our feelings, desires, and passions, excluding the influence of reason on our will. According to him, reason serves to find ways to satisfy desires as effectively as possible. He believed that the cause of our hesitations was the opposite aspirations of desires, and not the conflict of reason and feelings. Which one of your desires is strong, it will determine your choice. Desires and passions, Hume refers to as reflective impressions, and they influence decisions. Desires, unlike ideas, are neither false nor true. Reason is about discovering the adequacy of beliefs. In Hume, free will is the opposite of determinism. All actions are determined by primitive properties, although we believe that we act freely in deciding our actions and are responsible for them. It assumes that an effect in nature is closely related to a cause, and that only a certain effect can arise from a given cause. So, if people are determined by the laws of nature, they are not responsible for their actions, because they could not act differently (go against the laws of nature). If human behavior is not caused by anything, it is also not responsible for them, because it is completely random. It follows from this that a person is responsible for his actions only when he consciously chooses and this choice is not influenced by external factors.
The philosopher argues that freedom can be reconciled with necessity. To act freely is to act in a necessary way. The idea of necessity comes from our observation of the uniformity of events. Our actions are related to motives (motives) in a cause-and-effect manner. The nature and motives of action are related to behavior in a predictable (not accidental) way. Inference based on experience and reasoning about human behavior is ubiquitous (we use it all the time). It can be concluded that human nature is knowable and human behavior is characterized by regularity. Our behavior is determined just like the relationship of principles in nature. The idea of a cause that we have can come from the observation of human behavior, even when we do not see constant connections between events in the material world. It follows that determinism does not require complete predictability, as evidenced by our cognitive abilities, which are limited. We cannot predict all the consequences of human will. Our knowledge of the causes of a given behavior is incomplete if the matter does not behave as we suppose, as does the behavior of the person. This means that we do not have adequate knowledge about a person's character and motives. Necessity applies to human behavior and the events of the material world.
According to Hume, being free does not mean that an individual's actions do not have a cause, or do not result from motives, inclinations, or circumstances. The philosopher defines freedom as the ability to act or refrain from doing as determined by the will. We are free when we want to do something and nothing prevents us from doing it, or when we do not want to do something and nothing forces us to do it. Like Leibniz, Hume argued that freedom is compatible with necessity. Our desires determine our actions if we act freely. Only those deeds we want to do are free, not those that are forced by external factors beyond our control. Assuming that acting freely is incompatible with necessity, then some actions would have no cause. Hume's views on free will do not take into account the autonomous influence of reason on independent choice. Similarly, to most of his predecessors, he recognizes that you can reconcile freedom with necessity, but unlike others, he based his views on empiricism (that is why his judgments regarding free will place reason lower than emotion).
Based on Hume's philosophy, Immanuel Kant shaped his doctrines on freedom. He adopts from Hume the views that man, acting under the influence of the laws of nature, is not free, just as he acts following other external causes or without any cause. This extends to the thesis that free will should be able to influence itself (acting independent of the natural laws that determine our inclinations), and believes that moral law is the only law that we can impose on ourselves autonomously. It is not conditioned by our inclinations, but by a categorical imperative (an order of a specific course of action) imposed by reason. In this way, Kant supplemented Hume's judgments with the influence of reason. He claims that we have free will when we are able to determine our will according to the moral law that we autonomously impose on ourselves as rational beings. In Kant's view, freedom of the will presupposes action that is guided by moral laws, against our inclinations. Kant's attitude towards the problem of free will does not try to reconcile free will with necessity, but rather the influence of reason and desires on free will.
On the other hand, the famous Danish thinker Soren Kierkegaard, considered to be the initiator of Existentialism, took up the issue of making a choice. His intention was to find an answer to the question of how to proceed. According to him, every choice leads to fear or despair, but we are forced to make choices that lead to the next. The goal of his philosophy is moral improvement (Kierkegaard would like philosophy to serve life). It extends the issue of choice to include the choice of ideas that we believe in. Previously, the choice mainly related to the procedure. The choice is never based on objective criteria, as these do not exist. It states that what we believe is the same choice as making decisions about everyday life. Besides, we have the right to doubt whether we made the right choice. Neither choice determines us, because we could always choose otherwise. He claims that we make decisions self-consciously. By choosing one of the options, we reject all the others. There are never enough reasons behind our choice to believe that we could not have made a better choice. It suggests that autonomous choice depends on the source of our self. However, all our attempts to choose autonomously are doomed to failure. By following the aspects of the nucleus of the self, we fail because Kierkegaard believes that there is no permanent center of the self. There is a discrepancy between what we want and what we should. Moreover, each choice is arbitrary and makes us realize that we could make a different decision. In Kierkegaard, fear is associated with freedom. The solution to the problem is faith, which, although it does not free us from fear, makes us a personality (self). However, the fact remains that each choice we make reveals its groundlessness. Kierkegaard divides the types of choices into aesthetic, ethical, and religious. When making an aesthetic choice, the decision is based on our desires. By making such a choice, we reject the influence of self-reflection necessary for a correct and rational decision. Self-critical reflection is based on normative patterns, and an aesthetic choice is not guided by any rules, so it is not a free choice (Leibniz and Kant argued similarly). This possibility is contrasted with an ethical choice, referring to principles that enable self-assessment. He is guided by self-critical reflection and has a will that constitutes his principles, which is the beginning of the self. An ethical choice is a good choice.
Philosophers dealing with the issue of free will, most reconciled it with determinism, referring to our nature or contrasting it with the omniscience of God. The discrepancies mainly concerned the factors determining the choice (some of them recognized only the influence of desires, while others included the operation of reason or moral principles). The conclusions of their considerations included the statement that a man, by limiting his knowledge and cognitive abilities, cannot fully predict the results of decisions, and the fact that he has free will indirectly (its effect is eternally determined). Our formal reality (i.e. the possibility of being a cause, causing effects) is also limited by the determinate laws of nature. The problems dealt with by thinkers of earlier centuries have not lost any of their relevance to this day.
Marek Wojnicki