My Basic Thought On Free Will

[Magellan]

[ QUOTE ]
If free will is about choices then the answer would also be no, imo. Can you murder your children just to see if they'll scream? Only an insane person can answer that question yes. Instinct will get in the way of that decision.

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You can't discriminate like that; either we all have free will or we all don't have free will. If one "insane" person can exhibit this behaviour then we all potentially can, it's just that the overwhelming majority of people "choose" not to. So if you want to conclude that a person murdering their child just to see if they'll scream is a demonstration of free will, it only takes one person to actually do it to prove that we all have free will*.

For the record, a person behaving that way does not prove nor disprove that we have free will IMO.


*Unless you want to argue that not all human beings are born equal, to the effect that some can truly exercise free will while others can't, but hey, I'm not going there. Also, if you want to argue that point then there needs to be way, at least theoretically, that we can distinguish between those with free will and those without free will that doesn't rely purely on retrospective consideration of someone's actions.

[George Rice]

My point is that there is something that prevents us from doing or thinking just anything. And it's not just because we chose not to. Unless there's something "wrong" with you, you will never be able to do these things.

And this "type" of free will differs from another which has to do with whether on not things are prederermined.

[drzen]

[ QUOTE ]
My point is that there is something that prevents us from doing or thinking just anything. And it's not just because we chose not to. Unless there's something "wrong" with you, you will never be able to do these things.

And this "type" of free will differs from another which has to do with whether on not things are prederermined.

[/ QUOTE ]

Could you do them if you were a cannibal?
Could you do them if there were no law?
Could you do them if you were raised by wolves?
Could you do them if God told you to?

[Splendour]

I am not very knowledgable about free will, but as I think about it I remember something interesting from the novel "The Maltese Falcon" by Dashiell Hammett...In that novel the character being sought by the hero tells a story about how he abandoned his family and whole life after a beam falls off a building and almost kills him...The weird thing was that after having this consciousness altering experience he remarried a woman similar to his first wife and took up a career and life similar to the one he originally had...in other words he jumped tracks then ended up in a very similar groove to the one he started from...makes you think...do we run from one thing to run back to what we just came from...how does free will fit into that? Personally I get bored with the same routine so I doubt if I ever jumped tracks I would end up back in the same place, but you gotta wonder...