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Competenc
y Realize that “all actions have
consequences”
5
In the long run and on your own, you will be able to be conscious of your
actions that can offer opportunities or worse is disputes and divisions.
At the end of this module, you will be able to:
a) recognize freedom as the capacity to make important choices in life in relation to one’s
fundamental option; and
b) justify personal experience of freedom using any of the philosophies.
Initial Task: Daily Routine
Direction: Action either intentional or unintentional has corresponding effect. In this
activity, I want you to write your daily routine from Monday to Friday. (from moving
away in your slumber bed up until getting back for your beauty rest).
MONDAY TUESDAY WENDESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY
6:00 AM 6:00 AM 6:00 AM 6:00 AM 5:00 AM
I WOKE UP AND I WOKE UP IN I WOKE UP AND I WOKE UP I WOKE UP AND
GO TO DINING THE MORNING BREAKFAST, BREAKFAST, TAKE MY
AND EAT, AFTER AND GO TO OUR FEED MY DOVE FEED MY DOVE, BREAKFAST AND
I EAT,I AM GOING DINING, EAT AND AND TOOTH AND TAKE A TAKE MY
TOOSTHBRUSH TOTHBRUSH BRUSH AND BATH AND HYGENE, AND
AND TAKE A AND TAKE A TAKE A BATH, AFTER I GOING AFTER I FEED
BATH AND BATH AND GO AFTER I AM AGAIN TO MY MY DOVE AND
AFTER, I AM TO MY DOVE GOING AGAIN TO REMAINING PREPARE MY
GOING TO THE AND FEED, MY MODULES TO MODULES, TO USED CLOTHES
BASKETBALL AFTER I’LL DO CONTINUE, FINISH, AND FOR LAUNDRY,
COURT TO FEED SOMETHING TO INCLUDING ALL AFTER I FINISH AND AFTER I
THE DOVE, MY ROOM, THE TASK OF MY I’LL SPEND MY SPEND HOURS
AFTER I FEED I CLEAN LIKE TEACHERS, TIME TO MY TO FINISH I AM
AM GOING NOW THAT, AND SPEND MY TIME ROOM AND GOING TO MY
TO MY AFTER I TAKE A WITH FRIENDS AFTER TO MY ROOM AND
HOMEWOKS BREAK AND AND MY FAMILY FAMILY UNTIL IT CLEAN, THIS
( MODULES) AND SLEEP , THINK AFTER I TAKE GOINGS TO KIND OF DOING
I MAKE A ABOUT LIFE MY MODULES NIGHT AND I IT DEPENDS IF
SCHEDULE WATCHING THEN REST SLEEP. THERE IS A QUIZ
BREAK AND MOVIES, AND AFTER I EAT MY OR TASK THAT
PLAY MOBILE STUDY 30 MIN. DINNER. GIVEN FROM MY
GAMES AND UNTIL IT GOINGS TRACHER, THIS
SCROLL IN FB, TO NIGHT AND CAN BE MOVE
AFTER BREAK I FIX MY ROOM TO SATURDAY,
AM GOING OR BED AND AFTER I SPEND
AGAIN TO TOOTH BRUSH MY DAY I AM
HOMEWORKS THEN SLEEP. GOING TO MY
UNTIL IT GOINGS DINNER AND
IN THE NIGHT SLEEP.
AND AFTER I
EAT DINNER, I
WASH MY FACE
AND
TOOSTHBRUSH
AND I FIX MY
BED AND SLEEP.
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What are your realizations on this activity? How do you find
yourself? What are the possible effects of your deeds?
Maybe I found my self of being teenagers life, the life where I am
going on process of being adult and study, since were young we
must to take this opportunity to enjoy, because when we going on
being adult, our life will be busy because that’s you’re time to make
your own and build new life, this time I enjoy this life now even I
was stock on house because of the pandemic, but there is so many
ways to make our life to enjoy, I do something on house, like learn
how to cook and learn more of what parents they do to serve us,
because days are so fast so we must to take this time to learn about
being adult. Enjoy the freedom even there’s pandemic, enjoy the
peace even the world have so many problems, this can also bring
me to make my life to enjoy, express my life because I am alive ,
don’t waste time to nothing waste your time for everything.
Unlocking of Difficulties
1. Freedom- it is the quality or state of being free: such as,
the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in
choice or action.
2. Coercion- it is the act, process or power of forcing.
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3. Determinism- it is theory that all events, including moral
choices, are completely determined by previously
existing causes.
4. Indeterminism – it is the doctrine that not all events are
wholly determined by antecedent causes, it is the state
of being uncertain or undecided.
Lecturette Overview: Freedom of the
Human Person
Modern man considers freedom to be the
right to do whatever he wants, for he seeks
nothing other than himself as the purpose
and goal of his life. Man wants to be totally
independent, to be freed from any laws or
dogmas, from any “thou shalt” or “thou
https://www.google.com.ph/search
shalt not!” Man inevitably denies the
existence of God, who is for him a tyrant
infringing upon his “rights” and “freedom.” Ultimately, man denies truth and any
norm of life, for these would make demands upon his life which he would rather
avoid. But is this freedom? Is this total independence from God and ethics and law
the fount of human happiness? Does this contribute to the dignity of man and his
ultimate fulfillment?
Theologically speaking, according to Pope John Paul II stated, “Freedom consists not
in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” Man’s right to
freedom, and first of all, to freedom of religion and conscience, is based on truth,
the truth about God and the truth about man. Man was created by God and was
made for God. He is by very nature free because he is a spiritual being, endowed by
his Creator with intellect and free will. He has a spiritual, transcendent vocation to
enter into an eternal friendship with God. Created in the image and likeness of God
(Gen. 1:26 ff), he was set above the animals in that he has the capacity to freely
choose to serve his Lord and God, and entered into communion of love with Him.
Hence, his freedom does not come from the State- nor can it be taken away by the
State. It comes to him as a human person created in the image of God. As St.
Augustine discovered after having abused his human freedom for many years,
man’s very happiness consists in obeying God and the natural law in his heart, his
conscience. “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O LORD, and our hearts are restless
until they rest in Thee” (Confessions, I, 1). We are only truly free when we are free
to make decisions that orientate our lives towards fulfilling God’s will, directing all
our actions towards our true destiny in life. Eternal happiness with God.
Moreover, let us discuss this philosophically, “What is Human Freedom? According
to Harry Frankfurt (1929) wrote that, “{The criteria for being a person} are
designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane
concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and
most problematical in our lives.” In philosophy, “what is a person?” is not a question
of biology, but a question of other attributes. Harry Frankfurt say’s that one of those
attributes is the structure of the will.
Within the Free-will Debate, there are three main schools of thought: hard
Determinism, Soft Determinism and Libertarianism. These schools are divided over
two issues, Determinism vs. Indeterminism and Compatibilism vs. Incompatibilism.
In the terms of the free will debate, determinism is the view that the decisions-
making parts of the human brain are not fundamentally random, whereas
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indeterminism is the view that those decision-making parts of the brain are
fundamentally random. Compatibilism holds that humans can make free-willed
decisions even if their decision systems are not random, while incompatibilism holds
that we can only have free will if their decision processes are random.
The debate is complicated by the fact some writers use the term “determinism”
interchangeably with “hard-determinism.” Determinism is a condition of group of
object (a “system”) such that its state at time t-0 determinates its state at time t-1,
t-1 being the moment in time that comes immediately after t-0. A determinist about
free will believes that the decision making system in the human one other thing,
namely, that the fact that someone’s decisions are determined (by their desires and
so on) somehow means that they do not have free will. Thus it is important that a
person who believes in determinism is not necessarily a person who disbelieve in
free will.
Another complication stems from the fact that some writers believe that lack of
determinism (“indeterminism”) is a fundamental randomness in which the state, or
even the existence of the thing at t-1, thus making control impossible, while other
writers believe that they do at t-1, even if their brain states at t-1 have absolutely
no relationship to their immediately preceding t-0 brain states. (Writers who hold
the former view tend to be soft determinists, while libertarians seem to tend to take
the latter view. Hard determinists can take either view.)
Incompatibilists argue that in order for a person to have free will, under all of the
same conditions, it must be the case that one would follow different courses of
action. For instance, let us imagine we go to the ice cream store wanting chocolate
ice cream. With all of our inner states and psychological states and every condition
remaining the same, it must be the case that we would order EITHER the chocolate
OR the Neapolitan, in order to have free-will. If it is the case that we love chocolate
and hate Neapolitan, we ordered chocolate because we wanted chocolate ice cream
would not be a free-willed action because it was determined by the fact we wanted
chocolate ice cream. Incompatibilists argue that we could only have free will if us
going into the ice cream store wanting chocolate and hating Neapolitan could result
in us ordering Neapolitan even though we wanted chocolate and hate Neapolitan.
Finally, in contrast, compatibilists argue that in order for a person to have free-will,
they must decide what they do without coercion. Hard Determinists accept
determinism and incompatibilism, believing that human decisions are not random,
and that this nonramdomness rules out free will. Soft Determinists accept
determinism and compatibilism, believing that human decisions are not random,
and that this nonrandomness does not rule out free will. And, Libertarians accept
indeterminism and incompatibilism, believing that human decisions are random,
that this randomness does not rule out free will, and in fact that randomness
actually allow free will.
Lecturette
Free-will and Ethics
There is a definite link between ideas of
free-will and ideas of ethics and
responsibility. Libertarians and
Determinists mostly agree that in order
for a person to be held responsible for
her/his actions, that person must have
made the decision to carry out said
action. This translates to philosophy of
law. We generally do not hold someone
https://www.google.com/search? responsible for a crime if we do not
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consider him/her to be the “owner of his actions.” For example, if a man with
schizophrenia shoots someone in a fit of hallucinogenic rage, we do not believe it
was his fault, and we consider him “not guilty by reason of insanity.” There can be
no blame, nor praise, in a world without freedom of the will.
However, some compatibilists, namely Hume, claim that people can be held
responsible for their actions only when they are not free. In his essay “Of Liberty of
Necessity”. Hume offers a disjunctive syllogism. He claims that either the actions of
humanity are predetermined (like everything else in this world), or else human
actions are random and chaotic. He goes on to say that if human action is random,
if our actions do not come from character but only from chance, then there is no
ethical responsibility. We cannot be held responsible if our actions do not come
from us. However, if everything is pre-determined, then at least our actions are
coming from our psychological and metaphysical states. At least then it can be said
that our character is causing us to act in a certain way.
Hume, for the most part, lost this battle, mostly because Richard Taylor defeated
Hume’s syllogism and offered a third alternative Agent Causation, the notion that a
person can cause an event to happen. This is arguably different from determinism
and the notion of random, chaotic action. However, even this notion can be
countered by determinists who can argue that though a person can be said to have
caused an event, the person cannot make the decision that followed naturally, or
deterministically, from past experience and genetics. If the person’s actions do not
follow directly from beliefs and desires developed from past experience and
genetics, we come full circle and must accept that the world is random and chaotic.
BIBLE VERSE:
“Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins
good morals.
1st Corinthians 15:33
Lecturette
The classic problem of free will is
to reconcile an element of freedom
with the apparent determinism in a
world of causes and effects, a world of
events in a great causal chain.
Determinists deny any such freedom.
Compatibilists redefine freedom.
Although our will is determined by
prior events in the causal chain, it is in
https://www.google.com/search
turn causing and determining our
actions. Compatibilists say that
determinism by our will allows us to take moral responsibility for our actions.
Libertarians think the will is free when a choice can be made that is not determined
or necessitated by prior events. The will is free when alternative choices could have
been made with the same pre-existing conditions.
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Freedom of the will allows us to say, "I could have chosen (and done) otherwise."
In a deterministic world, everything that happens follows ineluctably from natural or
divine laws. There is but one possible future.
In the more common sense view, we are free to shape our future, to be creative, to
be unpredictable.
From the ancient Epicureans to modern quantum mechanical indeterminists, some
thinkers have suggested that chance or randomness was an explanation for
freedom, an explanation for the unpredictability of a free and creative act. A truly
random event would break the causal chain and nullify determinism, providing room
for human freedom.
Freedom of human action does require the randomness of absolute unpredictability,
but if our actions are the direct consequence of a random event, we cannot
feel responsible. That would be mere indeterminism, as unsatisfactory as
determinism.
Moreover, indeterminism appears to threaten reason itself, which seems to
require certainty and causality to establish truth, knowledge, and the laws of
nature.
Most philosophers in all ages have been committed to one or more of the dogmas of
determinism, refusing to admit any indeterminism or chance. They described the
case of "indeterminism is true" as a disaster for reason. They said chance was
"obscure to human reason." They found "no medium between chance and
necessity."
Many scientists agree that science is predicated on strict causality and
predictability, without which science itself, considered as the search for causal laws,
would be impossible.
For those scientists, laws of nature would not be "laws" if they were only statistical
and probabilistic. Ironically, some laws of nature turn out to be thoroughly statistical
and our predictions merely probable, though with probabilities approaching
certainty.
Fortunately, for large objects the departure from deterministic laws is practically
unobservable. Probabilities become indistinguishable from certainties, and we can
show there is an "adequate determinism" and a "soft causality."
We then summarize the requirements for free will, and propose a working
solution based on the past and current ideas of those philosophers and scientists
who have addressed the free will problem.
Recent debate on the free will problem uses a taxonomy of positions that has
caused a great deal of confusion, partly logical but mostly linguistic. Let's take a
quick look at the terminology.
At the top level, there are two mutually exclusive
positions, Determinism and Indeterminism.
Under Determinism, two more positions
conflict, Compatibilism and Incompatibilism.
And under Indeterminism, Robert Kane in the Oxford Handbook of Free
Will distinguishes three positions recently taken by Libertarians - Non-
Causal, Agent-Causal, and Event-Causal.
Instead of directly discussing models for free will, the debate is conducted
indirectly.
Is free will compatible with determinism? Is a frequently asked question. Most
philosophers answer yes and describe themselves as compatibilists. They call
libertarians "incompatibilists."
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Is determinism true? Is another frequent question. The answer, at least in the
physical world, is now well known. Determinism is not "true." The physical world
contains quantum randomness - absolute chance.
Chance does not mean that every event is completely undetermined and
uncaused. And it does not mean that chance is the direct cause of our actions, that
our actions are random in any way.
Nevertheless, the typical argument of determinists and compatibilists is that if our
actions had random causes we could not be morally responsible.
To avoid the obvious difficulty for their position, most compatibilist philosophers
simply deny the reality of chance. They hope that something will be found to be
wrong with quantum mechanical indeterminism. Chance is unintelligible, they say,
and thus there is no intelligible account of libertarian free will. Some dismiss free
will (as many philosophers denied chance) as an illusion.
Recently, professional philosophers specializing in free will and moral responsibility
have staked out nuanced versions of the familiar positions with new jargon,
like broad and narrow incompatibilism, semicompatibilism, hard incompatibilism,
and illusionism.
Awkwardly, the incompatibilist position includes both "hard" determinists, who deny
free will, and libertarians, who deny determinism, making the category very messy.
Broad incompatibilists think both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible
with determinism. Narrow incompatibilists think free will is not compatible, but
moral responsibility is compatible with determinism.
Semi compatibilists are narrow compatibilists who are agnostic about free will and
determinism but claim moral responsibility is compatible with determinism.
Hard incompatibilists think both free will and moral responsibility are not compatible
with determinism. Illusionists are incompatibilists who say free will is an illusion.
Soft incompatibilists think both free will and moral responsibility are incompatible
with strict determinism, but both are compatible with an adequate determinism.
Soft causalists are event-causalists who accept causality but admit some
unpredictable events that are causa sui and which start new causal chains.
For those who know indeterminism is the case, at least in the microphysical world,
many deny that chance and quantum randomness can be important for free will.
Oddly, this includes agent-causalists, who postulate a non-physical origin for causes
(like reasons in the agent's mind), and non-causalists, who claim volitions and
intentions are simply uncaused.
For the "event-causal" theorists of free will, we can distinguish six increasingly
sophisticated attitudes toward the role of chance and indeterminism. "Event-causal"
theorists embrace the first two, but very few thinkers, if any, appear to have
considered all six essential requirements for chance to contribute to libertarian free
will.
1. Chance exists in the universe. Quantum mechanics is
correct. Indeterminism is true, etc.
2. Chance is important for free will. It breaks the causal chain of determinism.
3. Chance cannot directly cause our actions. We cannot be responsible for
random actions.
4. Chance can only generate random (unpredictable) alternative possibilities for
action or thought.
The choice or selection of one action must be adequately determined, so that we
can take responsibility. And once we choose, the connection between mind/brain
and motor control must be adequately determined to see that "our will be done."
5. Chance, in the form of noise, both quantum and thermal, must be ever
present. The naive model of a single random microscopic event, amplified to
affect the macroscopic brain, never made sense. Under what ad
hoc circumstances, at what time, at what place in the brain, would it occur to
affect a decision?
6. Chance must be overcome or suppressed by the adequately determined will
when it decides to act, de-liberating the prior free options that "one could
have done."
Of those thinkers who have considered most of these six aspects of chance, a small
fraction have also seen the obvious parallel with biological evolution and natural
selection, with its microscopic quantum accidents causing variations in the gene
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pool and macroscopic natural selection of fit genes by their reproductive success.
Biology affords other examples of two-stage processes, with first chance, then
adequately determined choice. For example, the immune system.
Human freedom is an ability. It is the unique ability, made possible by a first-person
perspective, to reflect on and evaluate our desires and to choose one course of
action over another. Only those with such an ability can be considered moral.
Assessment
Direction: With the presentation above, how do you understand freedom
now? Is it only a matter of doing what you want? Or doing what you ought to
do? (Write your philosophical understanding inside the box below at least
five sentences only)
According to Pope John Paul II “Freedom consist not in doing what we like,
but having the right to do what we ought”and exactly, me as human i use
freedom on what I ought, not on my own likes, because, freedom has no
value if you only use it for your likes,
Rubric for Essay and Journal Writing
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Lesson Reflection:
As an Ignacian Marian student, I learned that… we must to enjoy our life, life is
short, take the freedom as key to open your life, know who you are, because
only you can know your self, god provide a life to enjoy your soul from doing
good things to others using your freedom, all we need to do is to value it into
simple doings of help, and let your time enjoy with the people around you, just
value your life value the gift of god to you.
Criteria
Content- 20 points
Reflective notions- 10 points
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Total – 30 points
Final Task:
Journal Writing Entry # 1:
People live with God given gift of freedom. How do you give value on it? And how do
you catechize people using freedom indifferently?
For me, I always give value my freedom given by god ,because other peoples
have not experienced it before, because before there is so many law, that
you are not allowed to be happy, I will show to people how life it is, how your
soul to be happy, because god deserve this to his children to enjoy the life
and freedom, and also life can also enjoy the freedom on showing good
things, to peoples and everything, you don’t ever enjoy the freedom if you
don’t know how to be good.
Note: The same rubric in the assessment # 3 will be utilize on this
activity
References:
Gonzalvo Jr., Romeo P. (2016). Philosophy of the Human Person.
MINDSHAPERS CO.,
INC, Recoletos St., Intamuros, Manila
Private Education Assistance Comminttee (PEAC) handbook. Introduction to
the
Philosophy of the Human Person.
Prepared by:
Mariel T. Abuela, MAPM
Instructor
Checked by:
Raymond W. Dela Cuesta, LPT. MAED
SHS Academic Coordinator
Noted by:
Eleanor C. Aguillon, MAED
SHS Focal Person
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