Download Ashley Williamson B4 12/15/13 You see, I do believe that humans

Ashley Williamson
B4
12/15/13
You see, I do believe that humans have the freedom to choose
whatever they feel fits their needs, but I also think that humans can have
outside influences to their decisions.
Free will is “a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity
of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various
alternatives.”- According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it is the ability to choose how
to act. Every day, we choose path A or path B, or item A or item B: we
choose a course of action. The question is, what makes us choose our
choice? Why did I choose A over B or B over A? Maybe I had been running
and I had to choose either water or coffee after my run. I would most likely
choose water in that situation because it’s the most refreshing. Now, if I
was just waking up and I needed energy fast, I would choose coffee. I
chose those because they are seen as “smarter” choices for each of those
situations. We choose certain things for usually out of necessity, but there
are those moments when we choose things out of desire. Whether it is a
certain style of clothing or restaurant you should eat at or a TV show you
should watch, you can be influenced to buy items due to advertisement on
TV or on the computer. We are usually told a list of reasons why we should
get the product or where we should go or what we should see, such as the
quality of the product. Having “free will” means we make spontaneous
decisions based on things we already know, like instinct or a sense of
independence. Since we are animals, we have a natural instinct that helps
us survive.
Yes, I do believe that humans have the ability to make decisions and
yes I do believe we have a natural instinct to survive, but as far as us
having a 100% free will with no outside influence to point the mind in a
certain direction, I do not believe humans have no ability to not be
influenced by the outside world.