Re: Freewill
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"Any thoughts on the implications of free will not existing? "
It makes it awfully hard to blame people for things they had no choice in doing.
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True and I think that's a good thing. Less hate = good. Of course we will still want to take measures to prevent them from harming us so punishment is still perfectly viable as a deterrent.
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Please elaborate.
In the above example, we have no choice regarding what measures we take....
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we always have a choice, it's just not free.
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Right. Even if we have no free will we still must engage in deliberation and rational decision making to accomplish our wants and needs. In a sense we must act as if we have free will, because we have the experience of it. But we cannot change our wants (i.e. what motivates us). We might have a desire to change our desires and that is not impossible, but we cannot change the totality of our desire system at any given moment. Our actions would be 100% predictable to someone who knew everything there was to know about the present, even many years in advance. But we cannot not act as if we have free will. The difference I think the thought that there is no free will can make is, as I've said, giving us less reason to hate others. I hope that makes some sort of sense.
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