Free Will & the Mind
Are your choices really up to you?
Freedom, Determinism, and Consciousness
If every event is caused by prior events, are our choices free? Hard determinists say no; libertarians insist we have genuine, uncaused freedom; compatibilists argue free will and determinism can both be true if we act on our own desires without external compulsion. A parallel puzzle concerns the mind: is consciousness a non-physical substance (dualism) or entirely physical (physicalism)?
“A man is free when he acts according to his own will, even if that will is itself caused.”
Where this sits in the course
“Free Will & the Mind” is lesson 2 of 3 in Being & the Self, a course about the deeper structure: identity, free will, mind, and being.. The lessons are sequenced rather than a menu, so this one assumes what came before it.
Being & the Self is itself one of 18 courses in thinkr. The set opens with what philosophy is, moves through the Stoics and the Eastern traditions, then into what can be known, what exists, how to act and how power works — closing on practical reasoning you can use in an argument this week.
In the app this lesson is followed by 5 exercises that check whether the idea actually landed — and every answer, right or wrong, is explained rather than scored. That is the part a written page cannot reproduce.