It has always seemed to me that people get things backwards.
Because someone could predict what you'd do then you have no free will? So the only way to manifest free will would be to be totally irrational in a way that exhibits quantum randomness? That is absurd. Freely choosing to make understandable choices is still freedom. You aren't only free by embracing raw chaos.
Of course we make choices about how to act and also how to understand the world that informs how we act, and you can take siblings from the same family raised the same and see them go off and live their lives in completely different ways based on their own choices. I'm one of 6 kids, and none of us live remotely similar lives today because despite the many similarities of our upbringing nonetheless led us to different conclusions regarding life and how to live.
Ironically, even our beliefs about free will affect how we live our lives, and a person who believes he or she has a choice will act differently than a person who does not believe she or he has a choice. It changes our choices, because we are making choices and manifesting our will thereby.
A laplaces demon who knows everything and has an infinitely precise model of the universe may be able to predict your choice, but again -- understanding and predicting a choice one makes does not mean you aren't nonetheless free to make that choice. It just means your choice is predictable by someone who understands you well enough.
On the other hand, we don't have models about ourselves that are necessarily so accurate. Every decade of my life I find I've done things I didn't expect, and came to believe things I didn't expect, and often it wasn't changes in the material conditions I faced that changed me. Decisions upon decisions bring about changes in a person and after a million decisions a different outcome becomes an emergent property. What can you call that besides free will, the constant decisions as to how to think, how to be, how to perceive the world? I think Aristotle said "we are what we continually do, virtue then is a habit" -- how else do we come upon such habits but by choice?
Because someone could predict what you'd do then you have no free will? So the only way to manifest free will would be to be totally irrational in a way that exhibits quantum randomness? That is absurd. Freely choosing to make understandable choices is still freedom. You aren't only free by embracing raw chaos.
Of course we make choices about how to act and also how to understand the world that informs how we act, and you can take siblings from the same family raised the same and see them go off and live their lives in completely different ways based on their own choices. I'm one of 6 kids, and none of us live remotely similar lives today because despite the many similarities of our upbringing nonetheless led us to different conclusions regarding life and how to live.
Ironically, even our beliefs about free will affect how we live our lives, and a person who believes he or she has a choice will act differently than a person who does not believe she or he has a choice. It changes our choices, because we are making choices and manifesting our will thereby.
A laplaces demon who knows everything and has an infinitely precise model of the universe may be able to predict your choice, but again -- understanding and predicting a choice one makes does not mean you aren't nonetheless free to make that choice. It just means your choice is predictable by someone who understands you well enough.
On the other hand, we don't have models about ourselves that are necessarily so accurate. Every decade of my life I find I've done things I didn't expect, and came to believe things I didn't expect, and often it wasn't changes in the material conditions I faced that changed me. Decisions upon decisions bring about changes in a person and after a million decisions a different outcome becomes an emergent property. What can you call that besides free will, the constant decisions as to how to think, how to be, how to perceive the world? I think Aristotle said "we are what we continually do, virtue then is a habit" -- how else do we come upon such habits but by choice?
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