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Originally posted by Moonduck
"if your actions are fixed, then you don't have free will. That is the entire definition of free will. "
Depends on your point of view. If you choose your action, if you weigh your choices on pros vs cons, etc, is that not free will? What matters if there is some deterministic future? If, at any moment, your choices matter little in the big picture, how does that diminish your ability to choose?
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Does a computer program have free will? It is an entirely deternministic algorithim. It could be programmed to weigh up pros and cons, giving each a different weighting. It has the ability to "choose" one output over another. Does it have free will? No. Because it's output is determined, even before it is run.
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You seem to be implying that a set future removes your ability to choose. I say that a set future is the product of many choices. Now, if you add in the corollary of widespread foreknowledge, then you argue a point about a deterministic future devaluing free will. The hypothetical precognitive being will foresee the future and perhaps have a good case for its' free will being hampered, but the rest of humanity? Only if you are willing to argue that there is some being guiding billions of indvidual actors towards a certain set future.
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I am saying that if you know your future choice, you don't have to make it... a paradox. The hypothetical being can foresee other peoples choices. Assuming that the being DOES actual act "as he was supposed to" then the others will follow suit.
"Only if you are willing to argue that there is some being guiding billions of indvidual actors towards a certain set future." - I don't see how this follows.
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"If we cannot alter our actions, then we don't have free will, we are mere automata with the illusion of having free will."
With such a statement you fall into the epistemological trap of phenomena. If an observer's whole phenomenal perceptive array shows us empirically to have free will, free will is reality for said observer. To say otherwise wanders away from any sort of empirically provable or observable reality into pointless metaphysics.
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So if you see legless angel bunnies floating around, they too are also "real"? Just because we believe that we have "free will" doesn't not make it real.
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Honestly, your premise leads to the idea that an artist has no choice as to what she paints simply because the painting will eventually have some form. Look at it from the opposite side and try to prove that the theoretical existence of set future (an idea I find ludicrous), denies free will.
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From my earlier post I expalined that I do not believe in determinism, either in practice or in principle. BUT, if you were to accept determinism, it would negate free will.
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How does the knowledge that some act I will make has an eventual outcome devalue my choice to perform said action?
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Because it means that you CANNOT choose to perform a different action. If you are only capable of "choosing" a single action, how is that a choice?