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Asked by stina to Aime, Akshat, Diana, Gemma, Judith on 15 Jun 2011.
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Judith McCann answered on 15 Jun 2011:
I wasn’t sure how to answer this-if you mean like determinism (where the plans of our lives are written before we are born) then I would say no, i think you make your own decisions.
But I looked up free will and apparently its “the ability to make a decision free from constraint”, so really you may not have as much free will as you think. The choices we make are based on our experience of past decisions, the culture we were raised in, social guidelines and I think the law. How we are raised (I think) has an influence on the choices we make (or think we make), like I would never swear in my mums house, but I don’t think I ever really made that decision its just the way we behave anyway. Social guidelines are in built by how we have lived-like you wouldn’t walk around with no clothes on. I guess criminals made the decision to break the law so maybe that’s not a good example of constraint but most people follow the law… I hope!! 😉
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Akshat Rathi answered on 15 Jun 2011:
I think Judith is quite right. We certainly have free will but because human beings are social animals, we are put under constraints. And these constraints, which many times we aren’t even aware of, do reduce our free will as such.
An example is that if you are faced with a choice between an orange and an apple at a store, you may choose either if you think there is free will. And certainly you can choose either but there may be any number of known and unknown reasons which could have influenced that choice of yours. For example, it may be that no one in your housed liked orange when you were born and so while growing up you started hating oranges and that has meant that you will only choose an apple when given such a choice.
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Gemma Sharp answered on 15 Jun 2011:
Free Will vs Determinism is one of the age-old debates in psychology and philosophy. It’s been a while since I’ve debated it, so thanks for the question!
Determinism is the idea that everything that happens is fate, it’s inevitable because it has been pre-determined and there’s not much you can do to stop it. Free Will is pretty much the opposite – it’s the idea that everything you do is governed by you and you’re free to choose what you do, the future is not decided before it happens.
Personally, I believe that there is such as thing as free will. Sometimes I’ll say that things are ‘fate’ and it’s true that spooky coincidences do happen that make me question whether or not everything I do has been ‘pre-determined’ and not governed by my own decisions, but I don’t really believe that. I believe that I can steer my life where I want it to go by making the right decisions.
Obviously there are times when you don’t have *total* free will because of the things that Judith has mentioned like the law, and social constraints, how we’ve been brought up to behave etc, but I think in general Free Will wins the debate!
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