Your "Free" Will is Not Free

[room414]

kain_kusanagi said:

IIIIITHE1IIIII said:

kain_kusanagi said:

That is total and utter bullshit. No offense, but it is 100% hokum.

The kid could have decided not to buy either and get a drink from a water fountain and eat an apple when he gets home. Or he could buy a bag of chips or a toy or put the money in a piggy bank and save it up for college. Even after picking one and walking to the check stand his eye could catch a more enticing choice. Maybe at the check stand the kid could end up donating the money in the disabled jar instead of buying anything.

Anybody can make up an example with only two choices and then rationalize it and make it seem plausible. The real world is much more complex and full of real choices. Our past does not dictate our lives it only informs us so that we can plan our future. The present is so full of choices we filter it out and don't even realize the hundreds of choices we make because they are often so trivial. We only notice the choices we make when faces with need, want, health, love, etc.

Free will exists because anything else is impossible. There is no computer program running our lives. We are the writers of our own plotlines. What we choose to believe and do is our responsibility alone.

Of course there are countless options for the kid, but the two presented are the only options that he really care about and are considering at the moment. I just wanted to make an as simple scenario as possible (unlike you who did the opposite) because this is applicable whenever a decision is made.

Your simple scenario is so flawed that it illustrates nothing. We are all 100% responsible for our actions and choices. Your arguement would place all blame for bad choices on history. That's the problem. We may not be able to change our past, but we are in control of our present and future. Our past only gives us a context to make choices in our present so that we can set our future. Nothing more, nothing less. I suppose you think a rapist isn't at fault because his life leading up to his crime forced him to do it?

You don't really believe you're in control do you? Master of your own fate? How much control did you have over your ethnicity, where you were born, your physical appearance, level of intelligence, athletic ability, how your parents raised you and the affect that had on you etc. etc. etc.? You think you're in control now? A little tragedy should change your mind. Spouse dies, illness, car crash, lost job because another employee had it in for you, some asshole shoots you in a theater etc. etc. etc. .

The truth is that we are completely at the mercy of forces beyond ourselves. It's a very difficult thing for the human ego to accept though so it deludes itself.

The rapist, like the rest of us, is at the mercy of theses forces but that doesn't justify his behavior or free him from the penalty of it. I kind of see it like cattle(or sheep and goats if you prefer) being herded. The cow can choose to stop and eat grass, it can go with the flow, it can even try to run away but ultimately it's destination is determined by the one doing the herding.