This reading addresses the human existence issue and specifically, it highlights the presence of philosophical claims through the fulfillment of conditions. In addition, the discussion also provides that the existence of arguments requires validity, soundness, and truthfulness of a premise. Most notably, this reading highlights problems associated with the presence of claims or arguments such as circular reasoning and bullet biting. Hence, the discussion further focuses on the issues associated with the existence of arguments. First, the informal circularity fallacy is when a conclusion is reached that is not significantly different from the premise of the argument and by utilizing the conclusion already in the premises.
Circular reasoning supports the trustworthiness of a belief source by pointing to premises founded on the belief source itself. An example of circular reasoning is that voting is legal for eighteen-year-olds; thus, they have the right to cast ballots. The statement is an example of a circular argument since the beginning and end are linked. As long as one is eight years old, one can legally vote (Lockhart et al., 2022). Circular reasoning is important since circular arguments are typically logically coherent if the premises are true, then the conclusion must also be true.
In summary, this reading addresses the issue of existence where the critical arguments and claims are confirmed through the attainment of certain conditions and the validity and soundness of the arguments. Further, identifying arguments’ existence is faced with problems such as bullet biting and circular reasoning. Circular reasoning has notable strengths, such as that reasoning helps preserve judgments. However, circularity has limitations since the reasoning results in mental narrowness by sticking to the same patterns of thought. Circularity is biased since it revolves around unique patterns of justification; hence the type of reasoning is flawed because it undermines the correctness of claims or actions.
This discussion addresses the identity and its occurrence and defines the identity of objects as the similarity of the objects or the sameness of an object concerning another object. The identity of objects is confirmed if the objects meet specified conditions. In addition, the discussion reading examines a famous principle of identity referred to as the identity of indiscernible. The discussion reading examines the truthfulness or falseness of the identity principle of indiscernible by providing verificationist and principle opponent’s arguments.
The discussion evaluates the identity of the indiscernible principle by providing arguments for and against the identity principle. The principle asserts that if X is not identical to Y, then there is some property P such that P holds of X and does not hold of Y, or that P holds of Y and does not hold of x. Equivalently, when X and Y, then X is equal to Y. In the context of ontological properties and implications, the principle of indiscernible can be expressed in resemblance terms without necessarily mentioning the properties of objects.
A strong principle may be expressed as challenging that distinct objects resemble each other, while a weak principle contradicts the resemblance of a state of affairs. Notably, the principle has notable strengths. The identity principle of indiscernible is a commonly acknowledged theory that governs the idea of numerical identity (Lockhart et al., 2022). The principle states that when two objects are identical, any property that exists in either is also present in the other.
In summary, this discussion reading addresses the issue of identity as it highlights the identity principle of indiscernible by providing verificationist and principle opponents’ arguments. The literature illustrates the identity principle of indiscernible and its strengths and limitations. The strengths of the identity principle of indiscernible are that the principle is accepted in guiding numerical identity and appeals to empiricists. On the other hand, the principle’s limitations are that the principle lacks restrictions and has an unrealistic assumption, such as substances cannot share properties.
Thomas Aquinas developed and synthesized ethics into natural law which based the context of morality and responsibility on the extent to which individuals are held accountable when they act in a particular manner. In addition, morality focuses on putting individual responsibility for the wrongs and good in societies and concentrates on the ethics and values of human beings (McLeod, 2019). From the study of morality and responsibility, people focus on principles of determinism and the free will of a human being.
While differentiating between free will and determinism; free will shows that there is an existential context that implies that people are subject to absolute freedom of will, which holds them accountable for all their activities. In addition, the context of ethics indicates that human beings should be implicated for their self-complication and society as a whole. On the other side, determinism implies there is people’s inability to take responsibility for any action due to the actions being a prerequisite of an antecedent action or experience (Blount et al., 2018).
When all the available options seem to be extreme in the modern arguments of sociology, the main question of this paper is to look into the problematics of applying determinism to the modern-day socio-cultural landscape. Free will is an assumption and concept that human behavior is governed by both internal and external factors that individuals have no control over. In contrast, the determinism concept argues that all behaviors have their causes and are easily correctible before they occur.
Free will focus mainly on the idea that human beings can have choices on how they act and behave. It assumes that human beings are free to make decisions and choose how they behave and how they act (McLeod, 2019). For instance, individuals can easily make choices on how they commit crimes or not. This does not however mean that people’s behaviors are random but human beings are free from differentiating the external influence of their actions. Hence, based on the free will approach, people are responsible for their actions. The approach further assumes that all human beings have free will but not all their behaviors are determined.
One of the major arguments against free will and people’s ability to make decisions is the existence of various factors, both social and historical. These factors consciously or subconsciously weigh in when individuals make decisions. Most notably, in the current century, people become immediately affected by their previous experiences in the form of impulses. These experiences make individuals act in a manner implied by society rather than created by human beings. Therefore, such an argument raises a series of questions that mainly concern the strategies to make use of the determinist theory.
The primary hypothesis in this approach will be that people, while incapable of pursuing free will, can be trained to be exposed to a favorable environment leading to the most beneficial decisions and actions for them and society. However, the complexity of the modern world and possible contributing factors make it extremely challenging to outline antecedent experiences and memories that would benefit society as a whole. As a result, neither a human being nor the environment could be held accountable for the action, as it is virtually impossible to trace back the cause of a certain action. The complete lack of responsibility therefore will eventually result in chaos, and the end of the world humans know it nowadays.
Scholars who take the free will approach often argue that determinism eradicates human freedom and dignity hence devaluing their behaviors. Through the creation of the general law on morality and behaviors, the determinism approach does not fully value the unique behaviors of people and their freedom of choosing the best actions which favor them. In addition, both the free will and determinism approaches have limitations when they are applied in daily human life. Firstly, the determinist approach reduces individual human responsibility. For example, a person who has been arrested for a violent act may plead that they were not responsible for such actions. The arrested individual would however argue that the immoral act was due to their parental upbringings and maybe an injury they received in their early life.
A person can at times argue that his action was due to their relationship problem or due to psychological challenges. In addition, determinism has negative social implications on psychology as a study. Most researchers and scientists focus on the discovery of basic scientific policies and laws used to predict future occurrences. As a scientific approach, therefore, determinism may not easily predict the psychological outcome when understanding human behavior. Therefore, arguments against determinism reject the scientific explanation of individual social behavior.
References
Blount, Z., Lenski, R., & Losos, J. (2018). Contingency and determinism in evolution: Replaying life’s tape. Science, 362, 6415.
Lockhart, M., Kwok, O., Yoon, M., & Wong, R. (2022). An important component to investigating STEM persistence: the development and validation of the science identity (SciID) scale.International Journal of STEM Education, 9, 1.
McLeod, S. (2019). Freewill Vs determinism.Simply Psychology.