Just to murk things up a bit - Struan, I'm curious about what seems to
be a contradiction to me. In an earlier post you wrote:
"Methinks you misunderstand. You can choose whether to BELIEVE in
free will or not, but that makes
not one jot of difference to whether you ACTUALLY have it. You cannot
choose whether you actually
have it. You either do have it or you do not.
Consider a man in a room with a locked door. He does not know that
the door is locked. The man
believes that he can choose whether to leave the room or not and
decides not to leave, believing
that he has, of his own free will, made the decision. But the reality
of the situation is that the
decision was never his. He is staying in the room and that is that.
Your paradox is therefore a
false one because you conflate belief and reality
David Lind continues: And then in your most recent post you defend
the existence of "self" (in response to Rich's post) when you said:
"But there still is a self - just not an independent one - and that
self likes to know if it can make choices which are free. The self may
well be a 'myth,' but that doesn't make it any less 'real' or worthy
of investigation."
David Lind continues...
It seems on one hand you're saying whether we believe we have free
will is irrelevant (locked door scenario) and on the other, that
whether "self" is myth or not, doesn't make self less real. How is it
that in regards to the door analogy, the man believing he has free
will doesn't make it real when your belief in a "self" makes it real
whether it's a myth or not.
Confused.
Shalom
David Lind
Trickster@postmark.net
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