The Death of Socrates

The Death of Socrates

Friday 14 January 2011

Is there any such reality as Free-Will

If the "output " of any biological organism is either genetically determined or environmentally determined or random (or some combination of these three) then it would seem that none of these could feasibly be considered "free will" or what anyone means by "free will".

This is not a biological argument, it is a philosophical argument - and a good one.

However, all it establishes is that one must be very careful in talking about "FreeWill" because it is very unclear as to what it might mean or why one should be motivated to want there to be such a thing.

I think that one should take on board the idea that every act is caused (not necessarily determined) by other events (not necessarily in the past, of course) and the seek to elucidate what "FreeWill" might mean if this is the case.

In the and. any "FreeWill" decision either has a rationale or it is arbitrary. If it has a rationale it is either correct or mistaken - given the inadequacy of our knowledge it is always going to be some kind of "guess" as to what is best. If it is correct, it is determined by objective reality and we never really had a "choice"; if it is mistaken, then it is simply a mistaken choice and something to be avoided. If it has no rationale then it may be a "choice" but it is a sub-human choice and nothing to be desired.

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