Hamish Miao

  

Volume 9 | Issue I | March 2025

Saint Andrew’s School ’26

Florida, USA

  

Aristotle once classified three kinds of soul - the nutritive soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. As one of the human beings with the so-called rational soul, I’ve been particularly interested in whether I can use reason to prove to others that we possess free will. If it is possible to ascribe free will to humans, then we can start to give meaning to our lives and ascribe moral responsibility to individuals. However, as I dug deeper into the free will debate, I soon recognized that the major threat to our capability of having free will is not determinism but the hard luck objection, so a convincing counterargument to the hard luck objection is needed. After having a closer look at the objection, I was shocked by the complexity and beauty of the argument that threatens the basis of libertarian free will – the up-to-us condition – through the concept of ‘luck,’ the existence of which everyone accepts. To argue against the hard-luck objection, I attempt to find something to replace the classical up-to-us condition, and I fail; however, I successfully prove that it is possible, and necessary, to find such a condition. Outside my academic life, I appreciate gaming – sometimes the stories told by the games offer philosophical insight to various questions, and I enjoy the process of thinking while gaming.