There are 3 types of people in this issue–Predeterminedists(sp), the real fate believer inners. The free-choicers, the opposite of the PDs, they believe that humans have full choice over their lives. And the other guys (forget what they’re called), who believe that the universe has a predetermined destiny, but humans don’t.
That last one to me seems to not work, because if the earth was destined to be screwed up my artificial pollution, then aren’t humans destined to screw it up? Prove me wrong here!
I guess I’m one of your middle types.
It seems obvious that even if the world were predestined, we can still act as if it weren’t. If it is, then even those thoughts are also predestined, so it won’t matter.
And if it’s not predestined, then you have chosen well.
Therefor, there is no reason to act as though predestination exited at all.
The earth isn’t exactly the Universe (as a whole. hole?). It is merely the host body upon which the humans with free will live.
Each planet has as much free will or destiny as the dominant species. We are at this point in time malevolent parasites on the earth, rather than what we should be: the Earth’s offspring, acting in a manner which supports the planet in a symbiotic relationship.
Either way, our destiny or free will and the Earth’s are intertwined.
Once we’ve free-willed the earth to an uninhabitable cinder, the universe and its destiny will continue without so much as a hiccough.
Just because the result is not pre-destined, doesn’t mean there is free will.
Everything that happens in the universe is the result of predefined physical and chemical interactions so there is no free will. However, there a level of uncertainty built into the system that makes pre-determinancy imposssible.
Thus, though the result of any particular interaction can be predicted the result of the system as a whole can not be predicted. This complexity allows the appearance of free will.
If a God-type exists then it has created a universe which precludes its existance as there can be nothing that supercedes the physical laws of our universe (if there were then they wouldn’t be physical laws).
It is possible that our understanding of the physical properties of our universe are incorrect on some fundamental level, but I am not going to assume something for which there is no evidence just because I want to allow the existance of a God-type.
If nothing supercedes the physical properties of our universe then everything must be defined by them. Thus there is no free will as everything is the result of predefined rules.
However, it is one of the features of our universe that on a sufficiently small scale (a scale at which our brain chemistry works) there exists an irreducable uncertainty as to the state of the universe that makes it impossible to determine ahead of time the results of the aggregate interactions. Thus there is no predeterminacy.
Just because something (macro: the universe; micro: our brain) is chaotic does not mean it is not driven by an underlying order.
Lacking evidence otherwise it must be taken as axiomatic that everything in our universe exists within the constraints of that universe.
If, without evidence of it, we assume the existence of something not constrained by these universal properties (be it a god-type, a soul, or free-will) we might as well assume that while we are at work during the day our couches fly around the neighborhood meeting with other couches.
An idea formed from raw-experience and a priori principles applied to that experience.
An idea formed from experience and/or what you’ve already discerned and the principles you’ve already discerned applied to the experience or previously formed idea.
Now I ask you does your idea that, “There emphatically is no free will,” come from the first method, the second, or the third? Keep in mind that any idea built on a successive method requires that the ideas it uses in the previous method be true.
Your idea made via the third method, at least I believe it to be, (formed via a number of secondary ideas like empirical evidence reflects reality and cause and effect exist ), is not logically able to discount my idea that freewill exists which is based upon the second one (formed via my own experience of action/s and my a priori ideas interrupting those actions). This is because both our ideas have the same potential to be true as they both have the same exact origin, namely our own personal subjective experiences.
If your idea is the Truth, and purely the Truth, then you are correct, there is no freewill. But your idea is ultimately founded in the same subjectivity that everyone else’s ideas are founded in.
