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Owen_Philos123 t1_j9baylf wrote

Determinism vs Free will relating to the rest of philosophy

If you believe in determinism, doesn’t this kind of ruin all other philosphical thoughts and theories? As in this case all of your life is pre determined anyway?

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apatheticmugen t1_j9cl35o wrote

I believe free will is an emergent property/illusion. I personally subscribe to hard determinism. I don’t think there’s nothing stopping up from feeling we have free will, but how we feel about the universe and how the universe actually is can be different.

Similar to what the other person said, I believe the free will we feel is past oriented free will. If you took a moment in your life and you made a save point, in hard determinism, the event that occur after that point will always be the same even if you loaded that moment an infinite amount of times.

Let’s say you wanna go to the past to change something. You failed your math test. If you went back to that moment without any recollection of the present, the events would always be same. But if you could go back to the past with new knowledge, then sure you can finally change that. But that wouldn’t happen since you have didn’t experience failing the test which would force you to add/change your methods.

Let’s now say you have another chaise to take the test. What do you do? You learn from your experience and change. If you didn’t change, you be in the same position when you took the test the first time.

There’s benefits to believe you have free will, but your free will is compromised of past experiences. If you want to change your path, experience more or simulate experiences.

Some people subscribe to the idea that subatomic particles add a level of randomness which potentially create a different permutation, but I personally still think there’s no randomness. There appears to be randomness to us, but it’s also possible these particles are still following a predetermined path which we currently cannot fully observe and understand.

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Owen_Philos123 t1_j9cm0nn wrote

Great point, i understand what you mean in terms of your ‘free will’ will always be dictated on the past events and actions so in term it can’t be free will.

What about from the moment you were born? Do you believe you had free will at that point?

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apatheticmugen t1_j9cmr26 wrote

I believe free will is a gradient that increases with awareness, experience, power, and control. At what point when you die do you lose your free will?

If you compared a baby to a rock, that baby has more free will. If you compare a baby to an adult, some would probably say the baby has none. Just depends what you compare it to.

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[deleted] t1_j9bg0rz wrote

[deleted]

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Owen_Philos123 t1_j9bh11l wrote

Thanks for that explanaition, i am still new to the idea of determinism. I just find it interesting the whole idea of determinism and once i found out about it it made me rethink many aspects of life.

As a rule for myself i have found not to get too obssessed with the idea of determinism as it can feel pretty negative and consuming of your life.

I feel like free-will is a more natural human feeling to have however that doesnt mean it’s correct.

Thanks for your insight, pretty new to philosophy as a whole

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