The act of being free or at liberty instead of being in confinement or under physical restraint. That is the dictionary’s definition of freedom. This word is understood many different ways throughout the world, and in Philosophy. Philosophers over time have asked questions like, what do we mean by freedom, does freedom even exist, how is freedom possible in a world governed by laws, and can we ever know whether there is freedom?
One of the early ideas about freedom was Determinism, which is the thesis that everything that occurs happens of necessity. This idea first came about from Leucippus and Democritus, who concluded that every existing thing was composed of atoms in motion. One quote from Leucippus’s book is “ Naught happens for nothing but everything from ground of necessity.” That is the only fragment of his book that we have left. I take that statement to mean that freedom is non existing because people don’t get to do what they want but only what the need to do to live a successful life. These Philosopher’s statements were not taken seriously until the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton led to the Enlightenment. Two philosopher’s ideas came into view at this time named D’Hobbach and Pierre Simon LaPlace. They were the first of the new so called age of reason.
During this age of reason some new ideas came to view called Hard Determinism. Their view was that determinism was true, but the truth rules of the possibility of freedom. If everything is necessary nothing is true. B.F. Skinner was one of the hard determinists, he believes in the concept of freedom with the teleological models. Which is one that explains things in terms of goals, purposes, plans, and intentions. Skinner believed in casual explanation, with stimulus- response model based on the famous Pavlov’s famous dog experiment. He believed he could extend the Pavlovian model to the human sphere there by overturning the traditional teleological model and placing us “beyond freedom and...