Do you have free will? Essay Example

Do people have the ability to act of their discretion; does your conscious self control the actions you take or are you simply along for the ride that is life? The question is an ideological battle between Determinism and Free will. Determinism, being the idea that the present’s events are preordained through the events before us; that forces beyond an individual's control affect them. While free will is the idea that an individual can choose a path for themselves; that they have self-agency. The path of determinism is the reductionist view that an individual is simply an automaton (a robot, so to speak) taking in information and spitting out an answer, learning from previous mistakes to perfect the art of living. This meshes well with the current efforts on ‘The hard problem of consciousness’ which is the problem explaining how and why individuals have a sense of “I” and how our brains turn the world into experiences and qualia. That different parts of the brain, much like how we use different parts of the brain to interpret information, are really in control of weighing the options, beyond the control of consciousness. These parts of the brain learn and develop through our lives on the nurture part of the ‘nature vs nurture’ argument, while predispositions to certain behaviour through our genetics lie on the nature side. Both working together, through time, to form the person an individual is at the moments of decision while being swept down a path because of the person they have come to be.

When you look into the mirror, what do you see? You would see a person that you think of as yourself. You would see a human being that is the culmination of six million years of evolution from apelike ancestors, billions before that from single-celled organisms, to your familiar features and necessary organs, employed for the use of keeping your brain alive. At the top of it all, underneath skin, muscle and bone, a 1.5 kilogram mass about the same size as two balled fists pushed together. Bundles and folds of incomprehensibly complex neural tissue, a constantly moving and redesigning mesh of nerves, neurons, and fluid, developed to make the smart decision in prolonging your existence. The meat computer that contains you. Transmissions of electrochemical signals through these nerves for what you are to say and do, how you walk, when you wake up, where you sit and ultimately, who you are. Collisions of collections of particles bring you to this understanding and hundreds of years of work done by scientists to just begin to understand how your brain operates. The insurmountable amount of processes in which it has to control with fine precision and care, yet the conscious part takes the responsibility of the things that would always turn out better had it not done them. Take for example, how natural it is to catch a ball, you don’t even think about raising your arm, opening your hand and closing it again when the ball hits your hand, yet at the end of your subconscious efforts to catch the ball, it was you that caught it. This extends to the nuances that make you, you-your style of writing, your walk, the way you arrange and decorate your room, those witty remarks you make on the spot or not, are all you.

Your brain’s subconscious processes that the consciousness would be b

Think of the different senses you have and how your experience and interpretation of them in your head-the ‘blueness’ of blue, or the sweetness of chocolate-this is known as qualia, your internal and subjective conscious experience. Just as how your subconscious intrinsically interprets a cat in a certain way and gives it to your consciousness, how would you be able to change the thoughts that get fed to you deciding whether or not to approach said cat? You subconsciously weigh options and their ramifications through subconscious processes and while you interpret the result as your consciousness deciding, the deliberating was done in the background. Consider the decisions you have made through your life and the places they have led you. Now consider the past before that and the things you learned and experienced, how could you have ever chosen differently? Like water travelling down a river only to be pushed down an offshoot, down a bifurcation, decided by the pulls and pushes of the other inhabitants of the river all before the moment. Through time people move and mesh together to create a sea of conscious and subconscious coalescence of humanity. Look at the Greek myth of Oedipus, where he unknowingly, out of avoidance for this very result, killed his father and married his mother. Even after the decision to avoid the prophecy Oedipus still ended up fulfilling the prophecy due to the circumstances before his decision into action. Actions by others previously put him into a position to make a decision and ‘forced’ him into fate. We see clear examples of the situation of what others have made in avoidance of what is prophesied to have a positive effect in maintaining prophecy; every action serves to maintain the flow into the future. 

The brain is delicate and easily influenced. A concussion could result in a person’s personality shifting, turning them into someone unrecognizable. Drugs impair a persons' thinking and have them saying things they would never say otherwise; do things they would never do otherwise. The effect that drugs have, hijacking the bodies natural neurotransmitters and receptors, leading to feelings of euphoria, energy, paranoia, hallucinations. We see the ability to saturate a person’s blood to make them act differently. Being exposed to lead in childhood leads you to be more aggressive. The effects of PTSD bringing someone once perfectly self-sufficient to their knees. What we see today, anxiety, depression and addiction, we see as afflictions and not the fault of the individual. As people grow and develop they are dependent on the experiences around them to learn a personal way of leading life, whether that be stolidly plodding along or a lively celebration from beginning to end.