The debate over the factor of freewill or fate in the existence of humankind has been going on since before the time of Marcus Tullius Cicero (Augustine 216). In contrast to Aurelius Augustine, who argued that both freewill and fate are part of the human existence, Cicero argued solely for freewill, attacking the Stoic doctrine of unalterable fate (Augustine 216). In Thomas Nagel's essay "Free Will", he argues that, despite appearances of freewill or choice in daily decision making, human actions are basically determined ahead of time (Nagel 52). This paper will argue that humans, possessing the trait of "volition", have freewill in at least some of the choices they make and these choices are not necessarily predestined.
Nagel, in arguing that the decisions that humans make are predetermined, compares the choices that people make with universal cycles such as the earth turning on its axis or the order of the seasons (51). In his opinion, "experiences, desires and knowledge . . . hereditary constitution, the social circumstances and the nature of the choice . . . together with other factors that we many now know about, all combine to make a particular action in the circumstances inevitable" (51). This viewpoint is known as determinism, or hard determinism. This theory claims that there is such thing as an uncaused event "Determinism" 320). Since human actions have been defined as events, then there are no undetermined actions and all decisions are the product of a "causal process" ("Determinism" 320). This "causal process" is not a theory that can be proved, simply inferred from the data witnessed. For example, when water is put over a fire it disappears, hence it is assumed by observation that fire causes the water to disappear, or evaporate. Because basic causality is so ingrained into the human psyche, one of the most basic questions people ask being the "reason" for things happening, it is difficult to view an event w...