Blog 8: Free Will and Determinism
Are our lives pre determined or do we decide our own fate? In
the play “Oedipus the King” and the film Minority
Report, two perspectives are shown on how much free will and control people
have over their own lives. The play “Oedipus the King” portrays an idea that despite
what action we take to change our destiny nothing can change the fate that the
gods have chosen for us. Oedipus knew what his future would be and by trying to
use his free will to avoid his fate instead it lead him right to it. In order
to have free will, a person must have more than one option and the ability to
choose that other option. (Huemer 104) The characters in this play believed
that their futures were pre determined and nothing could alter their destiny so
they did not believe in free will because they did not believe in an alternate
possibility.
In the film Minority
Report, the society shown to us relied on determinism, the idea that that
only one future is possible. In the movie people were arrested before actually
committing a crime. These arrests were “made possible by the ‘precogs’, a trio
of prescient individuals working for the police who foresee crimes that are
going to occur if the cops do not intervene.” (Huemer 103) Later in the film,
the police realize that the system is flawed because there is no certainty that
the person is going to commit any crime. John Anderton proved the system wrong
when he chose to not kill the man who claimed he killed Anderton’s son. At
first the people in the film Minority
Report believed they had no free will but their views changed after
Anderton showed them that they had the power to choose their fate.
