Essay 3 "Pass"

Free will is the ability to make a choice and no one interfering in that choice. Fate, however, is the concept that things or events happen because they are predetermined and they are supposed to happen. When looking at these two concepts you can automatically see the difference between them. In free will you always have a choice to go one way or the other. In fate you do not have a choice and your life is predetermined.
I believe that i have free will. I say this because I can always make my own choices, decide what I want to do, and how I want to do it. The problem is not finding out if free will is certain. The problem is in the decision making process in our minds. What I mean is that we do have free will, but because of our way of thinking, we tend to make the same decisions because of what we have been "programmed" to know and how to react in certain situations.
The programmed mind is something we need to understand in order to comprehend free will. If we look at the example of a child, we see how children absorb the world around them from when they are born till when they start school. Human beings are not automatically filled with all knowledge in order to understand every aspect of the outcome of every decision. We are taught to believe certain things, think a certain way and also to react according to someone else's standards. Now, this in itself does not mean that we cannot be knowledgeable in order to truly make a decision based on what we truly want. This all depends on the person.
In "The Matrix" we see how Neo lives in the matrix not knowing if it's real or not. We see how he sees the "world" as a vague and unreal world with no purpose for existence. Since he already has this view sinking in the very foundation of his mind, Morpheus is able to convince him to make decisions that lead to him being unplugged from the matrix. The essential case made here is that even though Neo had free will to choose, it was expected of him to make the decision that he made. All the events in his life led him to this one important decision and we knew what was going to be the outcome. Another way that we can look deeper into this is by the idea of Determinism.
In "The Matrix and Philosophy," Schick develops the idea of Determinism. Determinism presents the idea that everything that happens is caused by something else that pushes it into fruition. I believe that this is true, but not to the extent that Laplace claims it to be. Laplace states that nothing happens without a cause. that is understandable. My disagreement is with the idea that the same cause always produces the same effect. I disagree because the effect depends on the decision of the person in the cause. I probably wont react the same way as someone else because as i stated earlier, we are all "programmed" differently. This cannot be determined.
If free will is based on us being able to make our own decisions then we do have free will. There is no error in the concept. The reality of it is that we need to consider many possibilities. We have to consider our upbringing, knowledge, and beliefs because all these things determine the paths and choices that we will make.