[lit-ideas] Re: Do You Have Free Will?
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 20:23:39 -0230
Somebody somewhere put it quite well. Paraphrasing: When I'm deliberating about
what to do I am not trying to predict what I will do. Thus is freedom of the
will a necessary condition for the very possibility of rationally choosing,
deciding, inquiring, etc.. Whether finite, fallible beings such as we are
*really* have free will is, as the Russians say: "Nye riba nye myasa." The
question, in other words is quite otiose. Das heisst: you have to decide and we
want your decision within 24 hours (and you better be right). Everything else is
commentary.
Cheers, Walter
Quoting Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> It's obvious that every philosopher lives her or his life just like all
> of us, worrying, planning, excusing, praising and criticising, just as
> if free will were true. There is no other way to live, after all. But it
> doesn?t mean they are all believers. Perhaps life happens...just
> happens. And our interior stories about what it all means come after the
> fact.
>
> Science, ever peeling away from philosophy, experiments and observes and
> measures and finds...that sometimes it seems that we move before our
> brain sends the message to move...as though our brains are playing catch
> up. This is spooky stuff and there are ethicists pondering what to do if
> science proves there is no free will. What will happen if people stop
> believing that they are choosing? Perhaps the scientists should keep it
> to themselves. Perhaps no one would believe them anyway.
> Ursula
> shamelessly dipping into this conversation without having done the
> requisite reading...
>
>
>
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