What if some form of strong determinism were true? That is to say, the course of events is determined by some primeval event, and everything after is a physical consequence of that. the Big Bang determines what parking space I will choose at the grocery store; every word of Dante's Commedia, every word of every commentary on Dante, etc... This could be literally true but absurd at the same time, like a Borges story.
***
Another way of putting it: free will might be an illusion, but we are incapable of seeing ourselves as not having free will, in that we will always distinguish between choices that seem free and actions that do not involve choice of any kind. The person who believes in free will can answer the determinist by saying that s/he (the free will believer) HAS to believe in free will, by the determinist's own logic.
No comments:
Post a Comment