Philosophy II

• Our wills are generally the part of us that acts based on our understanding of what is good or desirable. It is also the part of us that avoids doing things that we feel are undesirable or despicable.
• Freedom is the capacity to choose wisely and to act well as a matter of habit.
• Determinism is a belief in the inevitability of causation. Everything that happens is the only possible thing that could happen. The chains and networks of causes are so powerful and inexorable that every outcome is inevitable.
• Free will is the idea that we are able to have some choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behavior, in other words we are self determined.
• The determinist approach proposes that all behavior has a cause and is thus predictable. Free will is an illusion, and our behavior is governed by internal or external forces over which we have no control
• However, a problem with determinism is that it is inconsistent with society's ideas of responsibility and self control that form the basis of our moral and legal obligations.
• Personal agency is the humanistic term for the exercise of free will. It refers to the choices we make in life, the paths we go down, and their consequences.
• For humanistic psychologists such as Maslow (1943) and Rogers (1951) freedom is not only possible but also necessary if we are to become fully functional human beings. Both see self-actualization as a unique human need and form of motivation setting us apart from all other species. There is thus a line to be drawn between the natural and the social sciences.
• Discernment is the human capacity to reflect on one's acts of self-realization in relation to the context of the reality that invites her creative acts. In other words, it is the person's ability to think about her actions as a response to the world around her.
• The practice of discernment orients the person to reflect on their acts, what these actions serve, and what motivated these actions.
• AN UNEXAMINED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING
• Socrates believed that living a life where you live under the rules of others, in a continuous routine without examining what you actually want out of it is not worth living.
• Continuous reflection will make you a freer person
• Human beings are free. their freedom is conditioned by many things in their lives, including their bodies, their history, and their cultures. However, our capacity to think and to will what we think is the good helps us to realize a meaningful life that we create as our own project.
• Human beings are free and they experience their lives as a project to realize.
• Despite our limits, we are free to shape our lives according to our limits. The capacity to discern enriches our freedom.
• Our freedom is limited by our embodiment, our historicity, and our cultures, among other things.
• HISTORICITY refers to the fact that as we exist in time and live in time, we experience our existence as a meaningful story