Student 1
Free
will is the ability to choose how to act. Free will allows for someone
to make his/her own decisions. These decisions are based on personal
feelings and personal believes. These decisions are what makes you
personally happy. For instance most of us make decisions that are going
to either make us happy or somewhat benefit us. Conversely moral
responsibility is when we make decisions that are beneficial to a
society or to a community as a whole. As humans we have the moral
responsibility to respect each other’s opinion and to abide by the
rules. Although we all have free will we also have moral
responsibilities that we must follow. Free will and moral responsibility
are very similar both of them allow you to decide on what option will
bring the most satisfaction. In free will you are looking for
satisfaction at an individual level for instance if you are face with
two food choices one of them being a salad and the other one a juice
steak it is up to you to decide which choice is best for you, the
decision that you make will only impact you. On the other hand when we
are faced on the decision to drive intoxicated or to take a cab we are
making a decision that will affect society. How you might ask, well the
fact that I choose to drive under the influence puts others in danger
and the possibility of crashing is greater. I believe that moral facts
play a big role in moral responsibility. Moral facts is what we as a
society have learned over the years looking back at my previous example
we as a society have learned that driving under the influence can be
fatal therefore we as a society have rules that address this issue.
According to Rachels Moral thinking and moral conduct are a matter of
weighing reasons and being guided by them (Rachels & Rachels, 2015)
If moral facts and free will didn’t exist then moral responsibility will
not exist either and societies will mal function.
Student 2
Reply to This Message”>Reply Toya
Having
the ability to choose influences moral responsibility because if we are
truly able to choose, then we are able to decide how we are going to
act in a particular situation. The ability to choose is what we would
call free will, but many question whether we actually have free will.
From the moment we are born we are trained to behave in a particular
way. We are guided toward the correct behaviors and punished for wrong
behaviors. But each of us was raised and taught by parents who have
different standards and beliefs, so what is truly right or wrong?
Ethical subjectivism explains this very well. Ethical subjectivism
states that our morals are really nothing more than our personal
opinions about an issue and that neither side is really right or wrong,
it is just what you feel. The question of free will is difficult, and I
personally say that yes we have the will to choose to some extent, but
largely the decisions we do make using our will to choose were the
result of our training as children and young adults. So we are trained
to behave in a morally responsible manner by the generations before us.
If moral facts and free will do not exist, the result would be chaos.
The world would have groups of people pitted against one another
constantly over differences of opinion. Somewhere over time the moral
“norms” that the majority of us live by were created to prevent just
such chaos (Rachels & Rachels, 2015).
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