writes:
Well, I think that most Christian philosophers since Kant have given up on
the idea of being able to prove their ideas about God immortality and free
will by pure reason. I certainly admit that it is logically possible that
we do not have free will, and that everything we do is determined by outside
agencies
To jump into the debate after so long: I think the crux of the problem is the
notion of "outside agencies". There are no such things. Or more precisely I
think there are no inside things. I do not deny the existence of mental
processes nor do I deny that they affect actions (cause them if you will when
we "choose" to do something). But I would deny that there is any difference
between these things. It is the outside inside dicotomy that is false. We do
choose. Those choices are made by a brain that is fully organic. Its choices
are not free in the sense that they have no cause. The choice that will be
made however cannot be determined in advance because of both quantum
indeterminency and deterministic chaos (just as we cannot predict weather
etc). So the specific future is not set in stone. What is set in stone is
that humans will have a range of behaviors and that it is possible to predict
which behaviors will appear most commonly. As I have said before, I think
there willl be "gas laws" of behavior in the future. We do not know where
individual molecules will be in a volume but for the things we want to
predict (e.g volume pressure heat) these things are irrelevent. But from the
perspective of a proton (or an individual conscious being) it's position is
very important. So the proton is free in the sense that its precise position
x time from now is unknown but it is not free in the sense that it is
obligated to behave like a proton. Now obligated to behave like a proton
doesn't give it much leeway but obligated to behave like a human gives lots
of leeway.
