The Existence Of External Forces :: essays research papers

The Existence of External ForcesTo determine whether a particular action was decided upon by an undivided or whether the action was predetermined one must study its causal agent. Instudying sheath one finds that there are two types of manages those that aretypified by natural laws, such as a dropped book falling to the ground, andthose typified by the moral pass onations of men. This distinction isimportant because it shows both that no man can take hold his environment contraryto the laws of natural or scientific laws, but neither are his actionscompletely out of his control.The first type of cause we can consider as accepted facts, these wouldbe the natural and scientific laws that all objects must obey. It is obviouslyfalse to assume that a man may walk finished a tree or fly like a bird, but thesethings can be factors in the set of causes leading to an action.The second type of cause is more difficult to define. It is made up ofthe past experience and perceptions of men, b ut more importantly it is the wayin which men use these things. This type of cause is arrived at differently ineveryone, and it can non be measured, predicted, or understood as well as theother type. In fact it is often unable to be seen at all, but it must existsimply because the entire world or even the simple workings of one mans braincannot be set forth completely using only the laws of nature. A complex moraldecision is created in the mind of men by more that just a stochastic or predictableset of electrical impulses, but by the not completely understood spiritual andpsychological make-up of men. This type is the true cause of an action.When one sees this combination of causes he must accept the idea ofdualism. Dualism is the idea that there are two hemispheres of the universe,the physical, ordered and understood by science, and the spiritual, abstract andnot understood. The spiritual hemisphere is the force that guides actions thatcannot be explained solely by physical cause s. While the moralistic cause mayhave more weight in the type of action, it cannot ever defy natural laws. Forthis reason both radical determinism and free give seem impossible. With thisdescription given, to determine the amount of free will that a thing has, it isonly necessary to see how that thing uses or is affected by the two types ofcauses.Let us first consider man. spell is obviously the creature for which this