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Old 04-28-2010, 03:24 AM   #24 (permalink)
SecretMethod70
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Kant has great worth, but I find Spinoza compelling on this topic mainly because his idea of free will conforms more easily to what we know to be true through science. It's not that one needs to go back to Spinoza to find arguments against free will, rather it's that I think his are quite clear. It doesn't hurt that his explanation is what originally set me on the path of free will skepticism a number of years ago.

Schopenhauer, in a sense, modified Kant toward once again recognizing a lack of free will when he spoke of our "will to live." That individual will is merely a manifestation of the single Will: Schopenhauer understood it as nature, and now we can understand nature as a phenomenon of physics (even if we can't yet use physics to describe the incredibly complex interactions of nature, we know it is behind them). Recognizing our will to live as our sole objective will and part of the greater Will of nature, it removes humanity from the pedestal we so often try to put ourselves on and reunites us with the rest of existence which most of us have very little problem admitting lacks free will.

Jumping further ahead in time, we can consider Einstein who was unafraid to unite philosophy and science:

My Credo
Quote:
Originally Posted by Albert Einsten, My Credo
I do not believe in freedom of the will. Schopenhauer's words: “Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills” accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of freedom of will preserves me from taking too seriously myself and my fellow men as acting and deciding individuals and from losing my temper.
I find myself agreeing with such viewpoints in large part because I don't view philosophy as an isolated discipline, and so I try to consider it in the context of our other knowledge. There are many things we do not know and for which philosophical thought experiments are useful exercises to understand the world around us. We do have a decent idea of the general nature of the universe though: there are laws, and all of existence conforms to those laws. To the degree existence does not conform to those laws - the very real but not totally confirmed possibility of quantum randomness - it is random, not willful. In that context, I have a hard time taking seriously any philosophy of will that does not in some way recognize that underlying truth of the universe.

If I believed in a higher power, I might be willing to accept that human beings are instilled with some essence that allows the electrochemical impulses in our bodies to act according to something other than the rules of physics, but I do not believe in such a power. Without that belief, I currently see no way to reject determinism. At the moment, that means also rejecting free will, but perhaps compatibilism will win me over. I haven't sufficiently explored the idea yet, but at present it seems unlikely to me that free will and determinism can somehow coexist.
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Last edited by SecretMethod70; 04-28-2010 at 03:36 AM..
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