Determinism vs. Free Will

[InkL0sed]

I've always liked Epicurus' idea of time as being a river. Always in motion, never stopping. Powerful enough to wipe away entire civilizations, yet also gentle enough to promote their prosperity. The river always changes things in it's path, etc.

I guess it just depends on what kind of boat you get born on when you're starting, in most parts of the world.

In America, we're supposed to get paddles and the training necessary to learn how to supe up our boats. But thanks to fuckhead Boosh, that's been excluded from the American experience.

And that's enough cross-referential ranting from me for today.

Um. Random rant ftw?

[Jenos Ridan]

Soft Determinism: my actions/thoughts/words have consequences, many of which are difficult if not impossible to predict. It is similar in concept to the drop of water causing ripples. Free will basically HAS to exist in order for my concept of determinism to occur.

[Jenos Ridan]

I've always liked Epicurus' idea of time as being a river. Always in motion, never stopping. Powerful enough to wipe away entire civilizations, yet also gentle enough to promote their prosperity. The river always changes things in it's path, etc.

I guess it just depends on what kind of boat you get born on when you're starting, in most parts of the world.

In America, we're supposed to get paddles and the training necessary to learn how to supe up our boats. But thanks to fuckhead Boosh, that's been excluded from the American experience.

And that's enough cross-referential ranting from me for today.

Um. Random rant ftw?

Random Rant ftw! I agree with everything he says, especially about the US (chortle) Education System.

[InkL0sed]

So, you guessed it, I had an essay about this. It was due today, and I ended up quickly writing one up at school.

So here it is, hopefully this gets some discussion going...

Determinism vs. Free Will

I ultimately agree mostly with determinism. However, I disagree with the hard deterministic notion that knowing the positions of every object would allow one to predict the future. I agree much more closely with soft determinism, and with the importance of the perception of free will.

Though most of us would like to think we have free will, I think it is doubtful that we do. Free will is the ability to make a choice without external influence. But what, in the end, is a choice? After all, this implies that things could have gone another way; and yet, they did not. Unless there are alternate realities in which things did indeed happen another way, I do not feel our choices are made completely at random. The perception of free will allows us to learn from our mistakes, and causes us to make better decisions in the future.

Another way to look at it is to consider the subconscious in contrast to the conscious, deliberating mind. We may not always be aware of it (though we sometimes we are), but we often make decisions in the subconscious, by instinct, or intuition. And yet, though the choice may not have been made after conscious consideration, it cannot be said that it was made against our will. So while we have the perception of free will (because outside forces do not control us), we are ultimately slaves to internal forces over which we rarely have any control. Only in those limited circumstances in which the conscious overrides the subconscious, or when thinking in the abstract, can it be said that we have any degree of true free will.