Quote:
From Zyr: And given the same conditions for any situation, the same person will do the same thing, not matter how many times it you run through it, i.e. he will not do anything different.
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The problem with that "proof" is that we are almost never faced with exactly the same situation twice, so at some point we will have to do something we haven't done before. So was that newer reaction our choice or does the situation always dictate our actions and reactions? Is not the need to examine the possible consequences of alternate responses to a new situation, and make a decision, an act of free will, or are our responses always going to be dictated by the particular situation, regardless? And even when faced with the same situation twice, if we have learned new ways of dealing with problems in the interim, will the different reaction the second time around still not have been an act of free will (all other things being equal, no omniscient or omnipitant being involved, etc.)?
And if we don't have free will, should we even try to learn new ways to react to new situations? And is the attempt to answer to that question an exercise in free will in itself?
Quote:
From 1010011010: Oddly enough, I, too, would agree that, in effect, "will not" and "can not" are not significantly different.
Operationally they're the same. Just as, from our perspective, fatalism would be indistinguishable from free will!
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Ridiculous. A belief in fatalism inevitably leads to a different outcome than belief in free will, especially from our perspective.