What Is Predestination? Predestination (Latin præ, destinare), taken in its widest meaning, is every Divine decree by which God, owing to His infallible prescience of the future, has appointed and ordained from eternity all events occurring in time, especially those which directly proceed from, or at least are influenced by, man’s free will. It includes all historical facts, as for...
Free Will Explained The question of free will, moral liberty, or the liberum arbitrium of the Schoolmen, ranks amongst the three or four most important philosophical problems of all time. It ramifies into ethics, theology, metaphysics, and psychology. The view adopted in response to it will determine a man’s position in regard to the most momentous issues that...
What Is Determinism? Determinism is the philosophical view that all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism) or randomness. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although...
What Is Free Will? Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation,...
Will (Philosophy) Will, generally, is that faculty of the mind which selects, at the moment of decision, the strongest desire from among the various desires present. Will does not refer to any particular desire, but rather to the mechanism for choosing from among one’s desires. Within philosophy the will is important...
Free Will Free will is the power to exercise control over one’s decisions and actions. The interest of free will in philosophy primarily lies in whether free will exists. While hard determinism denies the existence of free will, other schools such as incompatibilism, soft determinism (or compatibilism), and libertarianism recognize it in some way...