The point of the present paper is whether or not it is possible to poses free will. I will consider the views of three writers on this topic. Blatchford is a hard determinist who argues that it is not possible to poses free will. Stance is a soft determinist who believes that we poses free will to a certain degree. Taylor is a self-determinist who believes that humans have free will. I will argue in support of Stance. .
There are many different theories on free will. I will focus on the three most predominant views: hard determinism, soft determinism and self-determinism. Hard determinists believe in the strict sense of determinism and that all of our actions are caused by either or environment or heredity. Thus we do not posses any free will at all. On the opposite side there is self- determinists who believe that determinism in the strict sense is false and for some human acts. Thus in those cases the acts are a result from our own free will. Hence we have free will. The last view is soft determinism, which believes in determinism in the strict sense but never the less some acts are free. Hence free will does exist and it is compatible with determinism. Another view, which I will not touch on in this paper, is called Indeterminism. Indeterminists claim that not every event has a cause, and some events have no cause at all. Thus, indeterminists simply negate the broad sense of determinism. .
Blatchford believes that free will is a delusion. He says that the average man believes in free will, but he is only being deluded. Thus according to hard determinists for any act A, there is a set of antecedent conditions sufficient to produce A to the exclusion of all other factors. When the average man talks about free will he most likely will say, "I know that I can act as I wish to act."" Blatchford says that this in fact is wrong and that two factors rule or lives: environment and heredity. Man acts always from temperament, which is heredity or from training, which is environment.
