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Tuesday, March 25, 2014

ORAL PRESENTATION: FREE WILL VS. DETERMINISM

What is free will? Free will has been defined by Wikipedia as the ability of agents to make choices unconstrained by certain factors. These factors include metaphysical constraints, physical constraints, social constraints, and mental constraints.

What is determinism? Determinism is defined as the philosophical position that for every event, including human action, exist conditions that could cause no other event.


What role does the process of evolution play in determining modern human behavior?

Why do we have routines? Why do we have sex?

Did we create our belief systems from scratch or were we conditioned over time to believe the things we do?

As we have already learned in this class, humans are creatures of creation. We create patterns random acts and seek to find order from chaos. Once upon a time, we worshiped the sun and we were suspicious of night time.

This video explores the impact of evolution on human behavior in greater depth:


Much of human behavior is predetermined by at least some four million years of evolution. Evolutionary psychologists claim that these behaviors covers mate choice, disparate standards of beauty to everyday social social exchange. Studies in the field have unearthed that regardless of what culture we are exposed to we respond similarly to a wide ranging variety of things; an aversion to spiders or a particular smell we find repugnant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mISetzhsSQ4&feature=youtu.be&t=2m41s

To what extent then do we have free will?

Maybe what we call "free will" just depends on what we have been conditioned to believe, an illusion that has long been determined by things outside of your control. We should start by redefining free will and determinism, decide to what extent they reach, and how best they compliment each other.

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