Free Will (115)

13 Name: Anonymous Scientist : 2007-02-22 00:46 ID:NK6j9axv

>>11

I think we may have been arguing over issues of semantics again. In an earlier post you said (I believe it was you at least)

>Free will: will not bound to external causality (e.g. influence of environment, genetics, upbringing, stock market). When person A does action B, and it was the case that he could have NOT done B, he acted with free will.

Do you believe there is ever a situation where person A could have not done action B? Because my problem with the concept of "choice" is that if it exists then person A could have chosen to not do action B and exercised his free will. If there is no free will though, person A could never have chosen not to do action B, therefore he really had no choice in the matter to begin with. That's why I've been arguing that the concept of choice is just an illusion.

Oh, and in answer to your question, yes I agree that an apple falls to the ground because of an attractive force between bodies of matter known as "gravity."

>>10

Just to clarify, we're still talking about a deterministic universe, not a universe with quantum physics.

I did not invoke any sort of supernatural ability. What I am saying is that just because you do not know (or perhaps cannot know) every property of every particle in the universe, does not mean that those properties do not exist in absolute form. In a deterministic universe, they do. (In our actual quantum physics universe, they do not.)

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