BLOG #8

Free Will and Determinism

According to the movie “Minority Report” and the play “Oedipus the King”, both talk about how people have the free will to make their own decisions, even when their lives are predetermined by whatever destiny they have. However, in order to have free will, a future that is not determined by fate is necessary. So how can we talk about free will when lives are determined by destiny? Simply, is something that is contradicted, because people can only choose their own decisions without them being influenced by a prediction of what will happen in the future. “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" (Kane 1996, 81ff). In other words, free will occurs when people have the control on over what happens in their lives, but while their lives are determined by some oracle (destiny), free will doesn’t play a role in the movie and the play. However, people will always have the capacity of changing a future that is unknown.

The play “Oedipus the King” gave me to think that there was nothing that he could do to change his destiny, because it was a determined future for him. The oracle of Oedipus future said that “Oedipus was going to kill his father and marry his mother” (Oedipus Rex, 36), even though the King Laius and the Queen Jocasta, sent Oedipus who was their son to get kill, in order to prevent their destiny, it came true at the time that, Oedipus didn’t get killed and when he ran away from his town because he knew already his fate. I believe that his decisions were really stupid, because he already knew his destiny, so he was able to change it. But instead of changing it, he made all foolish decisions that make me think that Oedipus had always the free will, but his life was already influenced by the determinism.

The movie “Minority Report” made me think in a predetermined future that wasn’t a future, because the murders that were supposed to happened, didn’t. The movie deals with the crimes, when there were 3 oracles that predict a future crime, but the “pre-crime” agency was in charge of don’t make those murders to happen. How can we know that something is about to happen, when doesn’t really happen? Well, I believe in the free will where our lives cannot be determined by a destiny. It can always change with the decisions that we make. As the main character of the movie said “You see the dilemma don't you. If you don't kill me, precogs were wrong and pre-crime is over. If you do kill me, you go away, but it proves the system works. The precogs were right. So, what are you going to do now? What's it worth? Just one more murder? You'll rot in hell with a halo, but people will still believe in pre-crime. All you have to do is kill me like they said you would. Except you know your own future, which means you can change it if you want to. You still have a choice Lamar. Like I did”. so this is why I think that even though their lives were determined by fate, they had always the free will to make their own decisions. I believe that nobody could predict a future, since a future could be changed by the decisions that we could make on the present.