|
Understanding through Discussion |
|
|
Register | Sign In |
|
QuickSearch
| Thread ▼ Details |
|
|
| Author | Topic: Do I have a choice? (determinism vs libertarianism vs compatibilism) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5876 days)  Posts: 2297 Joined: |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Rob Suspended Member (Idle past 5876 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Rob Suspended Member (Idle past 5876 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Rob Suspended Member (Idle past 5876 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
You're free to keep believing that, like a true believer. I am not going to try and change your mind because you have free will. I spent too much time in the past trying to argue. Do what you don't have to do now if you have to. But when you put time into the equation, or eternity, then it's not such a conundrum. It may be, that in time, you'll have to do something else.
Your choice, at the appropriate time (which is not your choice). So many of us, trapped here in finitude, and actually believing we are God. Isolated in a universe so vast, and we cannot even escape our own Solar system. Yet we think it is our life, to do with as we please and make havoc out of reason. 
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Rob Suspended Member (Idle past 5876 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Rob Suspended Member (Idle past 5876 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
 Tusko said: I see free will as something that relates not to the universe as a whole but to a very specific subset of the whole - beings with the ability to reason. Javaman said in response:I'd agree with this, apart from the limitation of 'beings with the ability to reason'. I'd change this to 'beings with the ability to choose' - reason is only a very small factor in most of my choices; there seems to be a whole realm of unconscious processing in there. I would like to quote something from Lewis for both of you."Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law--with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either or obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it. We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected to several sets of law but there is only one of these which he is free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey anymore than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses. This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced? If they had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that then for the colour of their hair. (C.S. Lewis / Chapter Title: Right and wrong as a key to understanding the universe / 'Mere Christianity') Thought it was worth noting since you both have found your way onto that same ground. Edited by AdminNWR, : off topic
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Do Nothing Button
Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved
™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024
