Parmenides: A Better Solution To Our Problems

The argument against free will states that; what you do is always determined by what you have the strongest desire to do, but you have no control over what you desire. If what you do is always determined by something that you have no control over then you can never actually act freely. It follows from what has been said that one does not have free will.

While it may just seem like semantics, free will and freedom differ. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines free will as a “voluntary choice or decision” or “freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention” (Free 1). Free will includes the ability to make simple, everyday choices. The definition of freedom differs from that of free will: “liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another” and “the absence of necessity, coercion or constraint in a choice or action” (Freedom 1). Someone with freedom can say, do, act, and feel however he wishes without the threat of outside forces.

There are those who think that our behavior is a result of free choice, but there are also others who believe we are servants of cosmic destiny, and that behavior is nothing but a reflex of heredity and environment. The position of determinism is that every event is the necessary outcome of a cause or set of causes, and everything is a consequence of external forces, and such forces produce all that happens. Therefore, according to this statement, man is not free.

"While we have discussed what both men see as the make up of the material world, it is equally important to take up how each man felt he could know what he knows about the universe. Mimicking a bit the structure of Parmenides? own writings, this section

It also depends on how we explain free will; free will in this case is how one acts out on their own will. Our genetics can determine how we can act. When our

As humans we want to believe we have the freedom to be in control of our beliefs, decisions and actions, however determinism makes our actions beyond our control as the causes of our actions originate from sources that lie beyond us. From the beginning of our lives our beliefs and desires have been determined by causes which we have had no control over, therefore we have no control over the outcome of the events that were determined by our very first beliefs and desires. Thus if control is what is key in freewill, indeterminism does not provide this, because it states that my actions have no causes and if my actions have no causes then how can I be in control of them? Following this we are not free whether determinism or indeterminism is true, so arguably we are not free.

Free Will is the capacity of acting without the pressures of fate and the ability to act because of one’s discretion. It is an idea that most believe in, because it means that you are in control

What does it mean to have free will when one cannot choose the environment in which they live in? Because the environment in which one lives in shapes their beliefs and practices, how is it they are morally responsible for their actions and decisions when they are not in control of the environment they live in? Causal determinism is a belief that everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. Furthermore determinism implies if the conditions under which one made a choice were precisely the same, one could not have done otherwise (Kamber). While it is difficult to argue against causal determinism there is still freedom to reflect on possible alternatives before acting. Though, the question is not whether one

The first matter to be noted is that this view is in no way in contradiction to science. Free will is a natural phenomenon, something that emerged in nature with the emergence of human beings, with their

Do I have free will, or is every action I make predetermined? This question has concerned me for a long while. It has been the topic of many family dinner conversations, a topic of research, and a question in many prayers. I believe that this question concerns many people, since finding an answer has been the source of much literature, thinking, and religion. I have, after much thought, arrived at the conclusion of Soft Determinism - the Principle of Universal Causality, that for everything that exists or happens there is a cause, is true, but this principle is compatible with the Condition of Free Action. By Condition of Free Action I mean that a person is in control of his own actions (is the source of them) and

When we look at determinism we see something like a chain of events. Each event leads us to and causes the next in the chain. From here it certainly looks like our own choices don’t matter, like free will isn’t real, but if we look closer and consider some other things we might get a clearer picture of what is going on and might find free will in this chain somewhere.

A: In comparison to Heraclitus theory of constant change in the universe Parmenides thought that there was no change only permanence. He believes that reality was changeless and that the

At the crux of Parmenides’ argument is the fundamental belief that our sensory perceptions can be deceiving, so we must rely upon reason to advance our understanding of the world. He uses the three roads as a way of reasoning that the only way to think of the world, is to follow the first road- that which is. It is only possible to conceptualise and talk of that which exists, in the form which it exists. The first road confines us to talk of the sky being blue, and the clouds being white. Once journeying down the first road, this soon confines us to believe the world to be in a continual, unchanging state. While our senses may interpret the world as this changing entity, in which things are born, they die and they move, our senses and beliefs are mistaken; and existence is both eternal, and abiding. That which takes the form of a hamster, for example, was never born or in the process of becoming a hamster, and can never have changed or died, but rather has had an infinite existence. Notions such as birth and death involve a change from one state to another, making the former state non existent, and we cannot talk of that which does not exist as we have no knowledge of the nonexistent. The world must have an infinite existence, as does the hamster in the former example, as key to Parmenidean thought is the idea that existence cannot arise from non- existence, henceforth everything has existed for an infinite amount of

Parmenides, although generally ascribed the position of a monist, offers arguments through his poem that are not so clearly of monist persuasion and at times, creates a whole host of possible meanings. His views on metaphysics and cosmology seem to differ from his predecessor Heraclitus’ doctrine of flux, believing instead that all is continuously one and unchanging, maintaining that beings are what exist and non-beings cannot exist through the acknowledgement that what is existent cannot be created into existence or have existence taken away. His argument for all things being continuously one is, upon analysis, affected in strength by more contemporary arguments of interpretation and apparent change in meaning.

The problem that I am now faced with is that how can I have free will, when everything is determined? Then if everything is determined, than how is it that I have free will? The fact remains that it is unclear if whether or not I cause my own choices to come about my own or if I determine them on my own sufficiently. Next, I must exam if determinism take away any type of power from me being able to pick one option over another, which leads me to moral responsibility.