Response 19

Andrew Towns

Intermediate Composition

The opinions I hold at current day are very similar to those I held before coming

into college. I believe a large portion of those opinions were influenced by my parents,

then peers, and then media. The foundation of my moral beliefs was formed at a young

age by my parents and has likely stayed the same since before grade school. Things like

knowing that killing and stealing is bad are the very first things we learn as children and

over time we flesh out those beliefs by asking questions to our parents and peers. Things

like the death penalty are for me difficult to come to a moral decision on. It seems nearly

impossible to make a decision on whether or not someone deserves to die unless they are

a threat to the well being of others. My opinions on this issue have changed quite a bit

from before college and I attribute that to a lack of a real understanding of the issue. The

issue, in my head, has little to do with my life personally and I cannot see it having an

affect on how I live my life in the future so I find it hard to empathize with the situation.

This opinion is likely to change in the future as the issue becomes more relevant to how I

live my life or maybe just as I mature the relevance will become more apparent.

However, on the issue of free will my opinion has been that we have no free will.

By this I mean that all of our decisions are predetermined or can be predicted given

enough information. However, I do not believe that we will ever be able to obtain enough
information from the environment to accurately predict someone’s behavior on our own. I

believe that the physics of the universe determine the movement and reactions of each

molecule and cell in every body and that if the physical properties of every molecule in the

environment where known we would be able to predict the state of that environment at

any point in the future and know the previous states of that environment. Using that

information, we could know how a person will act and interact with other individuals

exactly. This opinion is one I remember considering when I was very young thinking about

how all coin tosses are really 100% or 0% and not 50/50 because the physics of the toss

determine the outcome. It is not however, a useful model from which to make decisions.

This perfect information reality doesn’t exist. Which is why I often mentally shelve these

beliefs when talking about issues of nature vs nurture where I ascribe to a nurture

dominant belief. Although I believe there are certain brain chemistries that determine a

large portion of a persons actions, things like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. In reality,

it is more useful to think of people as having free will even if that isn’t the case. Much like

how Newtonian physics were found to be not exactly correct they still work well enough

that nobody knew why until Einstein came along. People should still be responsible for

their actions and I believe legal responsibility should remain as is.

My beliefs are always changing through the media I consume. Even in taking this

class I have formed opinions on the efficacy of neural imaging and the predictability of a

persons actions through brain scans. We are always forming opinions on new information
and fitting our existing beliefs in with them. There are many things I have yet to consider

and I very much doubt that my beliefs are even mostly correct. I anticipate making many

changes to my opinions and beliefs throughout my life.