Free Will

In my philosophy class, we recently had a debate about whether or not free will exists. Though I do not necessarily agree with the argument against free will, it seems relevant to this class so I will attempt to explain it here. Sorry if I confuse anyone; I spend a lot of time in philosophy being confused.

The strongest argument against free will, in my opinion, is made by the philosopher Schopenhauer. His claim is that every single action we perform is caused by a motive that is stronger than any motives we may have to produce other actions. For example, in his essay "Every Existence Presupposes and Essence" Schopenhauer gives the example of a man who has just finished his work day and now ponders his options for what to do. He could go to the club, go to the theater, visit a friend, run off into the wilderness and never return, etc., but he decides to go home to his wife, because behind this action lies the strongest motivation. He could never have made any other decision, because his essence (his 'self', the part of his being that could not change without him being a different person) is such that given all of his life experience, in the situation where he has finished his work day, he will always be more motivated to return home to his wife than to do anything else.

Now, suppose that somebody explains this to the man, and in order to prove that person wrong he decides to run away instead of going home. In this instance, the motivation to prove his free will is what drives the man, and he still cannot escape that his actions are all determined by potentially predictable motivations.

Thus, Schopenhauer claims that free will does not exist. Given certain situations with certain past experiences, and individual will always make the same choice (and therefore is not really making a choice) because it is in their essence to do so. According to Schopenhauer, to argue for the existence of free will is to argue that actions can happen without motivations, that effects can happen without causes, that a person can exist without having an essence. Since this is (or seems) impossible, then choice does not exist. It is an illusion.

This was the first reading that my philosophy professor assigned to the class on the topic of free will. This itself was manipulative because when we read the following readings that argued for free will, we could just refute them by applying Schopenhauer's argument. Arguing on the pro-free will side in the debate was quite tricky.

Because this is not a philosophy class, and we're discussing manipulation rather than lack thereof, I won't get into the arguments for free will. Is that manipulative?