It Makes Two Basic Assumptions
Summary
The main assumption the Free Will Defence makes is that a world with free will and the possibility of evil is preferable to a world of robot-like people who never perform evil actions. But is this obviously so? Many people, given the choice, would prefer everyone to have been pre-programmed only to do good, rather than to have the scale and scope of evil in the world.
The second assumption the Free Will Defence makes is namely that we do actually have free will and not just an illusion of it. As brain scans show we make some decisions before we consciously have decided to make that decision and some psychologists believe that we can explain every decision or choice that an individual makes by referring to some earlier conditioning that the individual has undergone
However, it should be pointed out in the Free Will Defence’s favour that most philosophers believe that human beings do have free will in some sense, and that free will is generally considered essential to being human.
