A Discussion on Free Will, Determinism, and Compatibilism

Introduction

Man's life on the earth is unique as asserted from the philosophical perspective, in that man is not free as he seems to be. Usually, there are some aspects in the universe that help shape the conduct of man even without its conscience. According to the deterministic theory, the history of the past and the laws of nature, consciousness or right and wrong are significant in the shaping and modeling of people's life. Thus, human behavior never occurs at free will. However, we often encounter the inner feeling of freedom that we have the power of doing things according to our understanding and view. The sense of possessing the freedom to determine our human behavior is referred to as free will which seems to be often mistaken or misinterpreted. Maybe we should come out and realize that even where we delude ourselves to be free yet we have natural laws and history of the past that models the rules to modify our behavior. Compatibilism occurs when we try to understand free will and determinism where some philosophers believe that the two aspects are compatible and act mutually to support each other. From the analysis of human behavior, the compatibility of determinism and free will is logically real and true whereby a person has the freedom decide on acting in a particular manner but eventually lack the freedom to take action since there exist norms that will be used to determine people's actions as seen in the discussion of this paper.

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To begin with, we can assert that every interaction and social relationships have a price. It can either be good or bad in our present and future cooperation. Therefore, people should be sensitive and cautious on the kind of relationships and type of the interactions they make with their friends, relatives and even friends. The ghost of the present time action can haunt a person later. From the Butterfly Effect movie (2014), written by Eric Bress and Michael Almereyda, the protagonist of the tale, Treborn pays the price of the child maltreatment he encountered while making a love relationship with his fiance Kayleigh. Treborn is forced to mentally travel back to the past of his childhood life and try to model it to suit his present life. (Bress & Almereyda, 2014) However, the experience of the protagonist is quite unbearable since he is a victim of much traumatizing incidences since he is a witness of a homicide murder and sexual assault which induces high levels of stress in his life. The protagonist tries to rectify on the past to improve his interaction with the girlfriend since whenever he tries to mingle with Kayleigh the memories of the past haunt him back. From the movie, we can assert that the protagonist has the free will to interact with the friends and lover healthily, but the freedom to act is eventually hindered by his history that has modified his behavior.

Moreover, human actions are shaped with the condition or external stimulus. We never act as we intend to act so as per our understanding wants. We find out that people always work objectively and rarely do a person's action do lack an aim. However the objectives may differ among people, for example, in an organization, an employer will perform according to the employer's demands to avoid punishment or target a reward (Rachels & Rachels, n.d.). The scenario is similar in the Experimenter tale, where the group of willing participants took part in a learning experiment that was controlled with Milgram, the experimenter. The procedure of the investigation required a teacher to electrocute a student who failed the question where several tests were done. It was established that teachers electrocuted the students with more voltage that could even kill the victim compared to when another person is requested to electrocute the students. From the experimenter movie, we can conclude that ordinary people are obedient to the authority since humans are forced to obey their seniors from family, school and workplace social setting thus; it affects our actions judgmental capabilities(Almereyda, 2015). A person will get a bid to the requirements of the authority even when inner feeling understands that the move is wrong for believing that the administration is always right since it is more experienced than it and will be responsible for the actions.

Everything happening on the universe has a law of nature that can predict it. The laws of nature are vast beyond human understanding. Therefore, no man can anticipate all actions happening in the earth since he lacks the knowledge circumnavigating all natural laws. It is essential than non-believers of compatibilism do understand that some of the activities happening are as a result of the relationship of determinism factors and willingness (Zimbardo & Talbott, 2015). As seen in the Stanford Prison Experiment that simulated the real-world prison setting but premiered in the University, the behaviors of prisoners are significantly affected by the treatments they get from the prisoners. From the movie, it's evident that individuals who had stable mental capacity almost went insane in a play scenario due to the victimization they got from the prison wardens. The poor social relationship that the health mock prisoners suffered in the hands of cruel wardens resulted in severe distress disorders that led to the release of some of the participants even before the elapse of the experiment duration (Zimbardo & Talbott, 2015). On the other hand, some prisoners portrayed a strong allegiance to the wardens obeying demeaning orders without question. The cruelty of prison warden sparked a behavioral reaction of the prisoners who felt worthless and powerless creatures, or even just a second generation humans thus they had to obey the powerful wardens. From the Stanford Prison experiment, we can conclude that indeed, the results of the operations were not at the free will of the prisoners but as a result of an induced factor from the environment (Rachels & Rachels, 2012). In the situation where the prisoners would not have been exposed to the cruelty, they would have finished the experiment period and maintain the initial mental sanity.

Moreover, we can argue that people are accountable for their actions. Our mind convicts us where we may admire ourselves or be ashamed of our acts. Therefore, the memories make us responsible for the decisions that we take whereby a person will avoid that which a shames or taint its image in the society. The setting of the Stanford Prison Experiment can be an example where the anchor of the film, Zimbardo felt that he would be responsible for his actions if he let the prisoners finish the expected experimentation days. Just six days after the commencement of the tests, most of the prisoners have gone insane, and if the period would reach the ten days, then it's possible that the prisoners' mental stability would worsen (Zimbardo & Talbott, 2015). At the start of the experiment, Zimbardo had the will those participants to finish the ten-days of subjection to prison harassments while showing little signs of mental instability each time. However, after the results exceeded the expectation just after a few days, the investigator had to be responsible for the mental wellbeing of the victims by stopping the experiment. The ending of the prison test maintained the reputation of Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. In the end, it can be seen that indeed free will and determinism are compatible with the modification of human conduct.

Conclusion

In conclusion, most of the action that a person makes while interacting with others usually has some aspects of social norms that are used to determine the course of his work. A denoted from the movies; the characters are forced to act differently from their free will just because the natural laws and history of experiences made them perform so. Indeed, compatibilism is logically correct and its only lack of immense knowledge on natural laws that makes non-believers of compatibilism assume that the incompatibility of the free will and determinism.

References

Almereyda, M. (2015). Experimenter [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3726704/

Bress, E., & Almereyda, M. (2014). The Butterfly Effect [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3726704/

Rachels, J., & Rachels, S. (2012). Problems from philosophy. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Rachels, S., & Rachels, J. The right thing to do. New York: Mc-Graw Hill.

Zimbardo, P., & Talbott, T. (2015). The Stanford Prison Experiment [Video]. Retrieved from Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/80038159