Presence of Free Will and its Ethical Implications
It is a common truth that we as people are heavily influenced by people close to us. Nowadays, we have pushed this boundary to a global level with technological aid. On the deterministic side of the argument, our minds have been too saturated with ideals, norms and expectations through innumerable means. This resultantly influences a vast majority of our actions and choices. If we now consider how young an age this influence commences, it is hardly odd to say that many people have had no possible say in the characters they have grown to be. For example, the increasing standards of how to behave in various situations unknowingly pressure us to act in that way in order to be accepted and avoid ridicule.
These standards also define behaviour in almost every aspect of our lives, to such an extent that now we look for places where we can be ourselves, despite it being an illusion that we act independently. In reality, such places are the only ones where we are least likely to be judged. And even in such places, our behaviour is not shaped by institutions and society, but the ones close to us. We are now shaped by external forces during our childhood years when we are the most malleable. In other words, we have had no free will in choosing who we want to be and how we want to act.
On the other hand, one must acknowledge a starting point of such waves of influence. If people are always influenced by the external world, there must be an inception of such thought in order to be spread. Unless we can prove that we are subjects of some divine intervention, one of the better explanations for free will must be the fact that a thought must be born before spreading out, a human thought to be precise.
This suggests that at some point, a group of people or a single individual was responsible for having a unique thought, a result of free will and creativity, that would or will influence other behaviour. Some simple examples can be traditions, fashion and so forth. This also tells us that free will is not dependent on external influence but can formulate within ourselves.
The concept of free will has vast implications in the world of ethics. Simply put, we must question the responsibility of our actions when considering free will. If we do have it, societal institutions such as law would make sense. It would mean that it is ethical or “right” for a person to be affected in a way that would correspond to his/her actions. For example, when a person is praised for volunteering in food shelters or is punished when he steals, we are holding that person accountable for their actions through the existence of free will.
On the other hand, would it be considered ethical to hold someone responsible for their actions if free will does not exist? If we were to accept this theory, the concepts of praise and blame are most likely to become redundant, as people will have no motivation to do good and avoid bad. Consequences of such thought on a large scale can be the collapse of societal structures and generally, chaos. For example, religions, forces that have enabled a large number of people to cooperate and coexist, were endangered during the rise of science.
Due to its deterministic nature, science contradicted the simple belief of God giving us free will. As we can infer, this would not be feasible for the functioning of a society that heavily relies on belief to function. In the context of ethics, this could imply that our actions can be predicted and thus are not free or independent. As aforementioned, this kind of thought will vastly influence our incentives to function or behave in a certain way and possibly ensue chaos. Therefore, the absence of free will as a theory is a slippery slope in the context of morality.
If there is a possibility that the idea of free will isn’t true, can it also be possible that we can function without it and still live mostly ethically and avoid chaos? If we are to find a balance between these extreme theories, we have to naturally accept and condemn certain aspects of each theory. For example, instead of believing in the inevitability of external influence, we can argue that a certain individual is not influenced automatically, but makes a choice to accept certain ways of thinking, acting, or behaving. This will obviously imply the presence of free will. For example, a person with hedonistic tendencies falls under “bad influence” and he chooses to adopt certain vices for his pursuit of pleasure. In this case, although we can argue that the “bad influence” caused him to take certain decisions, it might be more sensible to say that he acted independently, given his hedonism.
To find further balance, we can also argue that the origin points of thought, as discussed in favour of free will, are nevertheless products of influence; the only difference is that such sources are indetectable to us. One can argue that they originate from sources like the subconscious, random influences etc. Thus, this would imply that certain thoughts/decisions/actions are too random and unique to point an origin to, but are nevertheless a result of some mysterious “force”. In other words, the one’s actions may be influenced by
certain sources but they are too minute or undetectable to consider in the equation.
I believe that it is futile to defend either of the two extremes of the argument. No matter how many philosophical theories we come across, many if not most of them fall on an extreme end of the spectrum, so finding a balance between the best of them is what comes and will come naturally to us. On the advantageous side, such theories tend to give us concrete rules to follow which in turn helps us avoid confusion in ambiguous situations.
Nevertheless, the balance or compromise I discuss regarding free will gives us a certain independence and responsibility but also finds ground for the inevitability of external influence which we are evidently prone to. It gives us responsibility in our actions as well as prevents probable chaos through lack of free will. Therefore, such compromises must be made in order to better understand the responsibilities of societal institutions like law as well as maintaining some sort of autonomy in everyone’s actions. This not only applies to the question of free will, but also every philosophy that we come across.
By: Atharv Rawat
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