A Study of Free Will

As sentient beings, people believe that they are free. Over time we have learned to base everything on the principle of being free. Every choice, even to the most insignificant choice, is a representation that we as people are free willed. Since the very first tribal community, human beings have expressed this freedom. However, with choices come consequences. For every decision made, there is a consequence that follows. When a person makes a decision, they agree to the consequences whether they are good or bad. This responsibility is what runs parallel to free will. For every action there is a reaction.

Philosophers have established several different models of determining the thought processes of decision making. These ideas include hard determinism, libertarianism, indeterminism, and soft determinism. These ideologies explain the different ways that philosophers believe a person can come to a decision. They are all different, however some have similarities. Unfortunately, they all also have their problems.

Hard determinism is the idea of causality (Rauhut 89). It is based upon the idea that the past causes the future decisions. More simply, the idea of hard determinism can be defined as the cause and effect theory. An action has a cause that initiated the sequence. Out of all the ideas of free will, hard determinism is the easiest to comprehend. It is easy to imagine a cause and effect relationship simply because that is what surrounds us in life. However the harder aspect of hard determinism is applying that idea to thought. This type of theory would mean that one thought causes another thought and so on. In most cases, this connection of thoughts is not the case. A person thinks in unconnected patterns and they are very abstract. This makes hard determinism tough to believe when applied to free will.