ble. Humans do have this animal quality and at the same time they also have intelligence. Intelligence is where the determinist view falls short. As I sit here writing this paper I am staring into this screen, which is run by a computer and this computer is hooked to world via the Internet; this is intelligence. The complexity of the brain to be able to comprehend its surroundings and learn is what makes us free.As a child develops, his brain is formed laying the groundwork for his animal instincts and at the same time giving him intelligence. Once he enters the world his animal instincts guide him to survive but at the same time he is learning. He takes all the input from his five senses and stores these variables in his brain. These actions continue until the day he dies, continually learning. Now when this child acts he will go back to his brain and us past knowledge to make decisions. This brain “database” is used for looking up similar situations and weighing options on how he should act. For instance, when a criminal chooses to commit a crime he weighs his options. If he gets away with the crime then he will somehow have bettered himself, but if he gets caught then he will be in trouble. The need to better ones self is an animal instinct, which is a strong and predictable. But with the use of intelligence humans are able to choose the best course of action, from prior knowledge. With this in mind, the criminal decides to commit the crime because he sees no better way. His “database” doesn’t give him any other options but to commit the crime, so he can achieve his goal. Now, for argument sake, let’s say that there is the capability to know all the variables and the animal nature of a human. Then are human actions predictable? No, and the reason why lies in human intelligence. As a person takes in different vari...
