Free Will Flashcards
What is the definition of Determinism?
Everything has a cause or a set of causes and that given a set of causes, what happened had to happen
This means that our choices do not come from free will but from a series of causes that made them inevitable
What is the definition of Hard Determinism?
Every human action is the inevitable set of causes that eliminates the possibility of human free will
Most HD are materialists.
Since the material world follows inescapable laws, so too do humans.
What is a consequence of the belief in Hard Determinism?
A consequence of this belief is that it is difficult to hold people responsible for their actions
What is the definition of Soft Determinism?
The acceptance that there are many external factors influencing our decisions, but an element of freedom remains.
Choices are limited by our environment, genetics etc. They believe in free will and moral responsibility
What is the Definition of Libertarianism?
Humans are free agents
Although the world is determined by natural laws we are not
This Recognises that humans are at least partly material beings
They are limited by certain laws of nature and influenced by culture etc but maintain free will can be exercised.
What is Sartre’s idea of Bad Faith?
Bad Faith –> Inauthenticity for Sartre
He thinks of bad faith as an attempt to evade the responsibility of discovering and understanding one’s authentic self.
Bad faith is thereby an attempt to escape the freedom that Sartre believes is an inherent feature of our lives
Example’s of Sartre’s idea of Bad Faith?
Sartre gives an example of a young woman on a first date.
The young woman’s date compliments her on her physical appearance, but she ignores the obvious sexual connotations of his compliment and chooses instead to direct the compliment at herself as a conscious human being.
He then takes her hand, but she neither takes it nor rejects it.
Instead, she lets her hand rest limply and indifferently in his so as to buy time and delay having to make a choice about accepting or rejecting his advances.
Whereas she chooses to treat his compliment as being unrelated to her body, she chooses to treat her hand (which is a part of her body) as an object, implicitly acknowledging, or betraying, her freedom to make choices.
How can we be free according to Sartre?
One convinces oneself, in some sense, to be bound to act by external circumstance, in order to escape the anguish of freedom.
Sartre says that people are “condemned to be free”: whether they adopt an “objective” moral system to do this choosing for them, or follow only their pragmatic concerns, they cannot help but be aware that they are not – fundamentally – part of them.
Not part of oneself, but rather exactly what one, as consciousness, defines oneself in opposition to; along with everything else one could be conscious of
Sartre’s understanding of Human Nature?
Humans are naturally greedy –> Become enslaved –> Become Inauthentic –> Become Free
Social Determinism –> Love shouldn’t be ownership –> Nobody is ever satisfied
