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rainoThere's no reason to be upset if it does not fulfill your picky standards of what's "free"! Just be grateful you have any sort of will! Most of he universe doesn't.
I'm almost through Dennett's book Elbow Room. It's captivatingly written but not in the least bit fluffy. I don' think I've ever spent as long reading a slim book I really enjoy reading as this one. It just requires a lot of thinking and concentration.
Aaaand I've come to the conclusion that (hard) determinism is, though perfectly logical, just the same sort of trick as Zeno's paradox (the one with tortoise). You can go slowly mad thinking about it, but it does not have any practical application. It's not possible to disprove determinism, any more than it's possible to disprove that every one of us has an undetectable and invisible monkey sitting on top of our heads.
Most of the Universe is causally determined – if you knew exactly the position and velocity of every atom, it might be possible to calculate where t ens up in a million years time (probably this would need a computer as big as the Universe). But not life. Life is an exception. Life = will to change local deterministic causation, and some means to do it.
Most of the 'will' us humans have is the same sort of unconscious will as bacteria have. That's nothing to be grumpy about. So what if the majority of decisions we make are made by or majorly influenced by unconscious stuff and therefore not 'free'? We humans still have the most will and free will compared to anything else in the known universe. And there seems to be a trajectory towards greater conscious freedom of thought, so even if at current moment the amount of 'free will' compared to baseline 'will' is low, it apparently is growing towards ever free-er and free-er will.
***
Something like 3000 years of philosophers wracking their brains about this and all they needed to do was ask me...
I'm almost through Dennett's book Elbow Room. It's captivatingly written but not in the least bit fluffy. I don' think I've ever spent as long reading a slim book I really enjoy reading as this one. It just requires a lot of thinking and concentration.
Aaaand I've come to the conclusion that (hard) determinism is, though perfectly logical, just the same sort of trick as Zeno's paradox (the one with tortoise). You can go slowly mad thinking about it, but it does not have any practical application. It's not possible to disprove determinism, any more than it's possible to disprove that every one of us has an undetectable and invisible monkey sitting on top of our heads.
Most of the Universe is causally determined – if you knew exactly the position and velocity of every atom, it might be possible to calculate where t ens up in a million years time (probably this would need a computer as big as the Universe). But not life. Life is an exception. Life = will to change local deterministic causation, and some means to do it.
Most of the 'will' us humans have is the same sort of unconscious will as bacteria have. That's nothing to be grumpy about. So what if the majority of decisions we make are made by or majorly influenced by unconscious stuff and therefore not 'free'? We humans still have the most will and free will compared to anything else in the known universe. And there seems to be a trajectory towards greater conscious freedom of thought, so even if at current moment the amount of 'free will' compared to baseline 'will' is low, it apparently is growing towards ever free-er and free-er will.
***
Something like 3000 years of philosophers wracking their brains about this and all they needed to do was ask me...
