Throughout history, humanity has always pondered if we actually have free will. Do we freely choose our actions or do our actions stem from something external? Some famous philosophers who have contributed to this philosophical argument include Plato, Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Daniel Dennett, John Locke and many more. Some well-known philosophical literature that attempts to answer this question about free will include The Republic by Plato, Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, and Four Views on Free Will by John Fisher. In philosophy, which can be translated roughly to the study of existence and reality, free will is “the ability of a person to choose between different courses of actions unimpeded”(1). Amongst numerous philosophers, a popular requirement and necessity for free will is moral responsibility. Moral responsibility means that a person can be held accountable for their behavior and actions. Helping a person in need would be considered morally right because the person can be praised for it. On the contrary, killing is morally wrong since the person can be blamed for it in a court of law. Furthermore, to illustrate an example, suppose if a tree branch falls on a car in a parking lot, then the question becomes is it morally responsible for its actions (2)? The tree branch is the cause of the damage to the car, but it is not morally responsible because simply, it cannot be praised or blamed. The tree branch is not a moral agent similar to artificial intelligence. To continue, another requirement for free will is the alternative possibilities or the freedom to do otherwise as most philosophers put it. If there is no alternative possibility, then it's very similar to determinism. An agent acted freely is equivalent to saying that the agent was successful in carrying out a free choice (2). Suppose Y is planning to go out for dinner for their wedding anniversary. They have an array of options to choose from: mexican food, chinese food, italian food, etc. Therefore they can choose freely. If all restaurants were closed, and there was only 1 mexican restaurant open, then they can’t choose from free will or desires. That is the only place they will get dinner so whether or not they like it, they have to eat there when they go out. This is why free will requires alternative possibilities and moral responsibility according to most philosophers. 

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The biggest objection to the free will argument is the ideology of hard determinism. Hard determinists believe that there is only one possible outcome to everything, and it is based on the laws of nature and the past events that have already occured. They claim that no one has control over the past, present, or future therefore, we are actually not free. Determinists also say that free will is an illusion, meaning that our brains make us think we have the power to act freely, but we are actually not the source of our actions. Therefore, our actions are actually predetermined by past events which started off with the Big Bang, the beginning of our observable universe . Determinism can be broken into two smaller types of philosophical views: hard determinism and soft determinism. Hard determinists claim that we must be able to choose our character in order for us to morally be responsible. Since our actions come from our character, and because we have not chosen our character, we are not free (3). We have not chosen our biology, and nothing else until up to this point which can be referred to as time t, so humans are actually not morally responsible. For example, if a murderer is sentenced lifetime in prison for a crime he committed, based off of hard determinism, he is not morally responsible for any of his actions because after all, he did not choose to be that type of person.  Next, soft determinists also known as compatibilists, say that free will is compatible with determinism. In other words, compatibilists are saying that X has the ability to do something such that, had X done it, either the past or the laws of nature would have been different than they actually are. To simplify, if Jason has the choices to take either Calculus or Algebra, and he chooses to take calculus, this is simply the effect of past events and the laws of nature from the past. But if had chosen otherwise, in this case calculus, then the laws of nature and distant past events starting from the big bang would all be different (2).

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Next, there is a belief of incompatibilism which is clearly the opposite of compatibilism as explained above. Incompatibilism consists of two sectors: determinists and libertarians. This ideology also has 2 main arguments: the consequence argument and the origination argument. To  start, the consequence argument is based off of the differences between the past and the future. Using the same example from above, let's say that Jason chose to take calculus, but he failed the course because he was not good at the core concepts. He cannot change what has already happened in the past because the F is already on his transcript. However, Jason is able to use this event as a lesson for the future. He should not take courses of which he does not know the fundamentals. He should first study the prerequisites and master those concepts before moving onto advanced classes. To Jason, the past is already fixed, but the future is open (2). He can freely choose in the future by learning from his mistakes in the past. Next, the origination argument explains that if determinism is true, then free will cannot exist since no one freely chooses their actions. Since every action is not from us, we are not morally responsible. 

In conclusion, this shows the different philosophical views about whether or not humans have free will. Philosophy is a complicated field of study and everyone has their own opinion of the view of the world, so as a result, there is no one exact answer. Over the past several centuries, these theories of free will, determinism, compatibilism, and incompatibilism have developed. Free will make us moral agents and higher on the scale above artificial intelligence.