Thomas Nagel Free Will Analysis

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Human freedom is an important topic to discuss because it is extremely relevant to our lives. Whether we believe in free will or not can drastically alter our actions and goals for life. If human beings do not have free will this can lead others to believe that the actions people make are not chosen by them and therefore not responsible for anything. In this case, people are therefore not accountable for anything they do. In this essay a discussion of humans freedom will take place to hopefully shed some light on this topic. To begin, Peter Van Inwagen speaks on free will bringing up three possibilities of how humans make choices. In one case he stated that if we have three options we can choose any of these three options, this is free will.…show more content…
He defines moral luck as a significant aspect of what someone does depending on factors beyond his or her control, yet he or she is still treated with that respect to the object of moral judgment. For example, if someone spent a night out drinking and then decided to drive home, whether the driver hit someone or not determines his or her moral luck. It is out of the driver’s control because he or she has already been set on the path, it just depends if another person’s path crosses the driver’s. Nagel also describes four ways morality is subject to luck. The first way is constitute luck which is the kind of person you are. The second is luck in one’s problems and situations. The third is how one is determined by anecdote circumstance. Lastly, luck in the way one’s actions and projects turn out. All of these however are out of our control. Therefore, we cannot take credit for, be blamed, or be praised for these things. If no one can take credit for anything, or be blamed for anything as Nagel suggests than we do not have free will. Free will suggests our actions are made because we have morally decided them but Nagel makes it seem like we had no choice because we were set on this path from birth. Ultimately Nagel states moral luck is a paradox because a person can be morally responsible for what he does but not responsible because what he does was out of his control leaving him not responsible for what he
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