Yes click here, that is my view, but let me clarify something. So many people who argue for the reality of the soul are either moralists, who need it to justify sin/punishment, to whom I can offer no solace, or people who simply don't like to think of themselves as machines. Speaking to the latter, why does it matter if there is or is not something that you have never met in life, that you cannot describe or know anything about? What you have been assuming to be free-will, the appearnce of choice, still exists despite the lack of a transcendent soul. It makes no difference whether you in fact have free will or just seem to. Even the word 'free-will' means nothing except as that experience with which we're all very familiar and which we'll continue to have long after we learn there is no soul.

Yes click here, that is my view, but let me clarify something. So many people who argue for the reality of the soul are either moralists, who need it to justify sin/punishment, to whom I can offer no solace, or people who simply don't like to think of themselves as machines. Speaking to the latter, why does it matter if there is or is not something that you have never met in life, that you cannot describe or know anything about? What you have been assuming to be free-will, the appearnce of choice, still exists despite the lack of a transcendent soul. It makes no difference whether you in fact have free will or just seem to. Even the word 'free-will' means nothing except as that experience with which we're all very familiar and which we'll continue to have long after we learn there is no soul.

But if we did not have statistical evidence that putting on flack jackets make it less likely that you will be wounded, then why would anyone buy or wear them? Are you saying that flack jackets do not work?

The fatalist says that no matter what anyone does, he cannot change what will happen. As in the Death parable. Not just "whatever happens will happen". That is just a tautology. Fatalism is not what is called determinism. In fact, it is inconsistent with determinism.

Yes click here, that is my view, but let me clarify something. So many people who argue for the reality of the soul are either moralists, who need it to justify sin/punishment, to whom I can offer no solace, or people who simply don't like to think of themselves as machines. Speaking to the latter, why does it matter if there is or is not something that you have never met in life, that you cannot describe or know anything about? What you have been assuming to be free-will, the appearnce of choice, still exists despite the lack of a transcendent soul. It makes no difference whether you in fact have free will or just seem to. Even the word 'free-will' means nothing except as that experience with which we're all very familiar and which we'll continue to have long after we learn there is no soul.

I'm sorry, I just do not see how that response follows what I said. The relevance of statistical evidence and fit-for-purposeness of flack jackets does not seem to alter my argument at all.


I agree that fatalism and determinism are not synonymous. I disagree that they are mutually exclusive. You seem to be under the impression that, since determinism has complete and continuous causal links, by acting one 'changes' the future. One does not 'change' the future any more than one may 'change' the past by going back in time, unless one stipulates real alternative timelines.

And, I do not understand why it does not. If fatalism says that no matter what a person does, it cannot affect the outcome, then why would not the donning of the flack jackets affect the outcome? Wouldn't it reduce the probability of the soldier being harmed? If not, why don the jackets?

Since determinism implies that all events, including human actions and choices can be affected by previous events, and fatalism denies that human choices and actions can be affected by previous events, it follows that determinism and fatalism are incompatible.

We may have a problem about what "fatalism" means.

So far as I understand it, a person's action is free if he is not compelled to do what he is doing. For instance, a Joe marries Martha of "his own free will" when he wants to marry Martha and does so. Isn't that what is ordinarily meant by the phrase?

Ahhh... okay, but in that case I'm not sure the question makes sense. If the outcome following '(not) donning the flak jacket' is fixed because the Universe is fatalistic, so is the outcome '(not) donning the flak jacket'. The soldier has a choice: that is, he must undergo some decision-making process. But the decision he makes is set: the process of choosing may be simply a means to get to that decision (determinism), or some irrelevant process, or whatever you like to posit I suppose.


Ahhh again. Okay, yeah I'm not with you on your definition of fatalism. I think that's an overdefinition: I'm happy with 'the outcome is fixed', less so by specifying how it must or must not be fixed. Your definition seems to be synonymous with 'acausal'.


Like you said yourself on another thread, there are distinct ideas of free will. I agree with yours. For me it helps to compare with its opposite (or negation). Someone or something without free will must follow linear instructions: if A, do B. Absolutely unconstrained will would be as paradoxical as God's omnipotence, thus the question for me is less 'do we have free will?' (yes) than 'how free is my will?'

I think you may be confusing fatalism with determinism. Which people often do. As I said, fatalism says that the future is fixed, and it does not matter what any one does to avoid it. It is all "written in the stars". "Whatever will be will (unavoidably) be" etc.

The distinction (as I understand) is that fatalism does not rely on causal chains, deterministic processes, etc. It does not rely on anything; it simply states that any given future event is inevitable. Yes, it is often ascribed to the whims of some higher power with a game plan, though I'd say this is a special case (or set of special cases) rather than a strict definition. In general, fatalism states that outcomes are inevitable. Determinism states that outcomes are inevitable too and, further, that these outcomes depend only and entirely on conditions of the universe immediately prior to them, which depend on conditions of the universe immediately prior to them, which depend on...

Kennethamy, the experience that I was referring to is what we all commonly think of when someone says, in daily life, "I went to the buffet and decided to have the general tso's chicken instead of the mongolian beef." That experience, the appearance of free will, obviously exists. The question is whether or not free-will, as an absolute, a force that transcends apparent reality, exists. This is somewhat analogous to the objection the existentialists made to Descartes 'proof' of self with cogito, ergo sum. He failed to define what 'I' am. In other words, he proved the apparent reality of ego, but failed t prove its absolute, transendent reality, which was his objective. If course, he did prove it absolutely if you accept his premise that God exists, but I do not.

I think a very valuable study would be to detemrine what is the origin of our belief in free will, of the appearance of free will. That's something I've been working on for some time.

Kennethamy, they're just words. I already said what the experience was, twice now. I will call it 'making a decision' for the sake of simplicity. This is not the same as 'free-will' understood as a transcendent soul, first-cause, etc.

I still don't understand what you think the appearance of free will is the appearance of. What is actually happening behind the curtain? Here I am, choosing vanilla over 10 other flavors of ice-cream. No one is forcing vanilla on me. It appeared to me that I chose vanilla of my own free will. You say it was only an appearance. What was actually going on, then. That's a plain question? I don't think it had a thing to do with souls or first causes, and I know nobody who does. I was making a decision. Fine. Was I acting freely or not?

I think I can explain it to you. Think of a pinball machine. In brightnoon's opinion we are like that. We are a ball in a pinball machine, an ever so complicated machine. The ball has absolutely no control over where it goes. It's path is 'chosen' by every things that it bumps/careens off of. In life brightnoon says that we 'make our future decisions' based off of what happened in the past. Like in the pinball example if the ball hits one bumper we can mathematically calculate that it only has one trajectory.

Bright noon is saying that there are 10 options but they really aren't possible choices. You have been influenced sometime in the past to like vanilla so that would be why you choose it. If this time you choose chocolate then you were influenced by something that made you desire to choose otherwise this time. Maybe this time you 'choose' to get neither that is only because you were influenced in the past to get none.

He is saying that it is an illusion because we do not realize that it is because of these influences that we choose how we choose. Even now, if you were to go out and get ice cream you may think "well brightnoon assumes i'm going to choose vanilla so I'll choose cookie dough instead"
See in that very example you would have choosen cookie dough BECAUSE you were influenced into doing so. ANY choice you make can be viewed and the history behind it to show you why you chose what you chose.

The problem with using simple analogies like a pinball is that it obfuscates the very nature of (the illusion of) free will. A pinball adheres to mere kinematics. It also depends more on external parameters than innate properties (obviously it does depend on innate properties, but more so on environment, positin, velocity, etc). The will does not merely conform to deterministic processes, it IS the deterministic process. This gives us the idea of ownership of our fate because it is us doing it. Part of the problem is our idea of being somehow special compared to any other kind of system for reasons far beyond complexity. The notion of a soul compliments this, one of the primary reasons I imagine theists could never reconcile free will and determinism (others, of course, including that free will was granted by God and determinism seriously impinges on His omnipotence if he must act according to some set of starting conditions). There is, I agree, and illusory aspect to free will in a deterministic universe, but I think there is also a very real component which I have stated before and will state again: the ability to dynamically build a set of considerations in any decision-making process. Of course, fish have this ability also.

This is inarguably put. However much you like the idea of free will, you can always find reasons for anything you do.

Oh I'd still say my example holds true if and only if there is no soul. Everything it still based on kinematics. Our bodies molecules bounce and move around to make us do these things. If there is no soul there is no free will we are exactly like a pinball machine. (a very complex one I might add though)

I state those reasons being unavoidable if you do not have a soul.

Even a pinball machine (not just the pinball) is more dependent on external than internal considerations (consider its behaviour when left to its own devices). So we are actually more like the system of pinball machine and pinball machine operator. :perplexed: