Originally posted by Brother EdwinWas the First Cause an Effect? Or perhaps the First Effect occurred without a First Cause? Or perhaps one of the Effects of a Specific Cause is Free Will? Or perhaps...
Free will does not exist at all. Everything is a product of cause and effect. Down to the atom.
Originally posted by XHerakleitosGood try, but 'it's' in this context? Oh dear.
The problem comes intitially from having thought freedom and determinism as mutually exclusive, opposed concepts....i.e. determined as such. The mechanisitic style there tricks itself with a vision of the cosmos whereby it's conclusion is a self fulfilling prophesy.
Originally posted by Brother EdwinAre you saying that free will can't exist because it needs structure. ie the physical manifestation of the will of others to ineract with.
Free will does not exist at all. Everything is a product of cause and effect. Down to the atom.
By this sort of reasoning you would trap yourself like Syd Barret did when he found the attractive inertia of staying put in bed all day his best option, because while he lay there he had an infinite choice of possibilities to look forward to.
The instant he got up from that bed he would have made a choice that would increasingly send him down pathways that would lead to other choices that ultimately would constrain the infinite. A reality that beguiled Syd and led to his demise as lead singer of Pink Floyd.(if certain itv rockumentaries are to be believed)
By way of analogy then, free will could only exist in the absense of any other force of will. Semantically speaking of course.