Hard Determinism And Compatibilism

While there are several different viewpoints of free will in philosophy, the main theories are hard determinist, libertarians, and compatibilism. Determinism is the idea that every action you take is heavily influenced by outside forces and past events. A hard determinist has the belief that that people have no free will and therefore no one is responsible for their actions because they were predetermined. Conversely, people with libertarian views of free will believes that our choices are entirely our own and we are not bound by a determined future. Compatibilism is like determinism but with the belief that people do in fact have free will but those choices are largely influenced by past events and outside forces. According to our class
Merriam Webster defines free will as, “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free will)” According to the definition to have free will, a person’s actions should not be caused by necessity or determined by fate. In addition, a person needs to have the freedom to decide how to react to a certain situation. Even if the person is not acting on their free will, the ability to act is enough to consider them to have free will. If at any moment these conditions are met, then a person can be considered to have free will. If these conditions are always met, then a person always has free
This, however, leaves a whole world of the unconscious mind to go as it pleases. You have no freedom to control your unconscious mind, by definition. A person does not need to be in total control of everything they are doing to have the ability to do something by choice, so during waking hours we certainly have free will. When a person is sleeping, the unconscious mind takes over and we are no longer in control, so we do not have free will. But, a person’s conscious mind contains their entire identity. Although the unconscious mind may draw upon and potentially alter the same memories, it is in no way their identity because it is not the same thinking entity as the self. The self therefore does not even exist while we are sleeping or in any state of unconsciousness. This means as long as the self exists (during conscious hours) it has free will.
Free will is part of what it is to be alive. It is what separates man from robots. The strength of free will can be seen throughout time as the spectrum of mankind is so wide. Free will is what gives life its profound beauty and purpose. The world of experience is an endless set of choices and philosophy is the