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Old 10-14-2005, 06:16 PM   #154 (permalink)
joe_eschaton
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Location: Llantwat Major
'Free will' indeed.

Spinoza says a tennis ball, if it could think, would believe itself to be moving of its own free will. Schopenhauer adds that the tennis ball would be right.

As usual with philosophy people ignore the question of what truly, and not allegedly, hangs on the answer; ie. what actual difference to anything does the answer make?

None.

People would still act like they do, for reasons that they do, and still be responsible.

The only problem case for us asises in law with the possibility of coercion, which may mitigate a person's free but unlawful action. But if the bank manager was forced to open the safe at gunpoint it was not as if he had no choice: he acted of his 'free will' all the same.

Nothing would be affected by introducing some metaphysical principle of free willing at all - it merely seems necessary to Theists to separate man's will from God's in the light of evil. It has no consequence for us who live life, as opposed to them denying it.

We are all of us affected by causes and motives - this is what it means to will something at all. And so long as that willing is unobstructed, it remains free.

Like a free-falling weight, or any freely standing beam. Free as the driven cockroach.
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