The Nature of Determinism and Free Will - a New Take on Free Will

We all know about the age old debate on whether we are beings of free will or subjects to some deterministic fate. While to some it may seem like an unanswerable dilemma of the human condition, I do not. It appears that there is more truth to be found out there, if one is willing to really think on the matter.

For the sake of this particular argument, I would like to posit that even with the existence of a god that this being doesn't have the capability of perfectly influencing the way our wills develop and, in that regard, does not have any standing in the debate of whether or not we make our own choices even if s/he is outside of time and can "see" all, thus is effectively irrelevant in the topic. For example, simply because we read and understand how someone acted and thought through the use of historical documentation, that in no way means that their free will was compromised during the time they lived. I feel that this analogy accurately portrays the nature of the question on whether or not god knows the future and why it cannot be applied to the debate at hand.

With that out of the way, examining both free-will and determinism in their purest forms both appear to be radical and unsound from an humanistic view. Free-will finds problems in the fact that studies have shown that people are profoundly influenced by their environment, and thus while technically they have a choice on whether or not to do something, in actuality they don't since their environment has tempered their will to act in a certain manner. An example could be the man who raped and killed a young girl, but as a child himself was abused and neglected. It would be difficult for any sane person to completely separate the two events, instead most would point out that it was the latter that lead to the former, and in some ways they're right. However, taking the same scenario, a fully deterministic view is also flawed because we find many people who grow up in abusive and destructive households who grow up stronger and better for it as well. What I would like to highlight, and what I believe to be the more true understanding of exactly how free we are, is what separated the man who decided to be influenced by the environment, and the person who decided to reject what his environment had dealt to him.

If one looks carefully, I believe that the answer becomes evident. The difference was in the development of the wills within each respective person. In that regard, we are slaves to the wills, the personalities we create for ourselves. Essentially, we are slaves to ourselves. Our free-will lies in our ability to shape our personalities to our liking, whereas our determinism is found in how we must choose the choice that our will has constructed as the "right" choice.

Initially though, we must prove that we have the ability to shape our own wills and that that the first action toward the creation of our will is something completely non-deterministic. I believe that this is not only possible, but the only explanation that exists given the nature of humanity as we find it. We need look no further than the complete individuality found within every human being for proof of the creation of a will through something higher and more mysterious than just a bundle of early experiences. A soul if you will. While the basic inputs are the building blocks for what a will might look like, they are in no way sufficient enough to explain the sometimes haphazard combination and interpretation of experiences evidenced in the uniqueness of each individual. There is something more, something intrinsic and fundamental that is special to each of us. In what could be a moment, awareness is born and created in and of itself. Will is born, but, it is also appears to have been created by something that cannot be explained by experiential input alone. I suggest that it is our choice on how the will is created, and from their, we steer our will in the directions we see fit.

If this is the case, our freedom lies in the creation and continued restoration of our will within our reality. We are, as Satre would say, "condemned to be free" within ourselves, and the choices we make inside ourselves dictate ultimately how our actions are made in reality. Imagine for a moment, a professor who carries a gun in his car. Now while he's driving one day, he is cut off by another vehicle, and he hates getting cut off. He technically has the choice at that moment to pull out the gun and shoot the guy who cut him off while he's driving, but he doesn't. Why? It's not because he's weighing the pros and cons of shooting the guy at the time, although he might be thinking that. It's not because some cosmic roulette wheel was spinning in his head and happened to land on the "don't shoot" square. No, it's because it's not in his nature to do that. Over all his life he hasn't killed a single person. He knows that he won't do it because that's just who he is. Our freedom exists not in what we do then, but who we are. Our determinism exists not in who we are, but what we do.

On closer examination, one might notice a causal relationship here. Our freedom is what leads to the determinism people experience. Therefore, it seems clear that free will is ultimately the final say in the matter. "We are condemned to be free", and within that freedom, we must bear the weight of how we shape our will for the rest of our lives, as it will determine the actions we make later on. There is the very real possibility of condemning oneself to a series of choices that lead to destruction. But, in the end, it was our choice to decide that would be our will.