The Riddles of Existence by Earl Conee and Theodore Sider

Throughout this section of the class we have talked about free will and the responses through different point of views. In this paper I am going to discuss the problem of free will itself and then describe the determinist, libertarian, and the compatibilist responses to the problem and talk about some benefits and drawbacks from the different positions. Finally I will give you my output on the various responses to the problem and defend why I believe in what. I will make references from the Riddles of Existence by Earl Conee and Theodore Sider and from the lectures. There are many definitions of what free will is, I looked up online what the actual definition of free will was. â€Å"The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion†. The book talks about the problem of free will. An example of how you did not act on your own free will. Let’s say you are kidnapped. The kidnapper makes you do some unciviliz ed things to other people and if you did not follow the kidnapper’s rules he would gruesomely kill you. So he makes you kill a child by pressing your finger against the trigger, then he forces you to behead a man, a father of three kids by using your hands. Not once during those instances where you acting on your own free will. You didn’t want to kill anyone. In the book Sider talks about how problem of free will is a ticking time bomb that is hidden within our most deeply held beliefs (Sider 113). With free will comes