3 ms·

What are you calling a choice? Are you simply saying that people act? Then yes, that's of course tautologically true.

md224 9y ago
I think we just have an unbridgeable gap of beliefs here: one of you believes that they are the ultimate author of their own words and actions, that their experience of making decisions should be taken as strong evidence that they are in fact making decisions, and that any theory that denied this fact would be in need of revision. The other believes that the scientific enterprise has conclusively disproven the possibility of actual free will, and therefore agency is merely an illusion. Lately I’ve been siding with the first stance, but I can understand both. It comes down to the strength of your faith that Science understands (for the most part) all of the essential features of reality, and also your trust in your immediate experience. It’s a tough question.
- gh02t 9y ago
  Not quite, at least in my case. Like I said I do think that people mostly are the sum of their parts. It's just that for me, the possibility that anyone can escape their circumstances makes it irrational (as well as immoral) to totally exclude a class of people based on characteristics like genetics. The ultimate debate is on sociological reflexivity, and I don't believe that someone's behavior can ever be totally deterministically predicted, analogous to how certain physical phenomena like radioactive decay are truly random. Which is not what the other comment was saying I don't think, but the parent comment was. Edit to add: and even if human behavior was actually a deterministic function of their history it'd surely be a chaotic system. I can't say I really see much difference in that case.
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gh02t 9y ago
It's more that I'm saying humans have agency (in the philosophical meaning of the word). You can't know with 100% certainty what a person will do, even with perfect knowledge of everything about them. You can predict with very high confidence, but never certainty, because people can (and occasionally do) act randomly. That said, I do believe that people are more or less the sum of their parts and I accept that genetics are especially important. However, there are always people who defy expectations. I just don't except that it is a totally deterministic connection.

I think we just have an unbridgeable gap of beliefs here: one of you believes that they are the ultimate author of their own words and actions, that their experience of making decisions should be taken as strong evidence that they are in fact making decisions, and that any theory that denied this fact would be in need of revision. The other believes that the scientific enterprise has conclusively disproven the possibility of actual free will, and therefore agency is merely an illusion. Lately I’ve been siding with the first stance, but I can understand both. It comes down to the strength of your faith that Science understands (for the most part) all of the essential features of reality, and also your trust in your immediate experience. It’s a tough question.

gh02t 9y ago
Not quite, at least in my case. Like I said I do think that people mostly are the sum of their parts. It's just that for me, the possibility that anyone can escape their circumstances makes it irrational (as well as immoral) to totally exclude a class of people based on characteristics like genetics. The ultimate debate is on sociological reflexivity, and I don't believe that someone's behavior can ever be totally deterministically predicted, analogous to how certain physical phenomena like radioactive decay are truly random. Which is not what the other comment was saying I don't think, but the parent comment was. Edit to add: and even if human behavior was actually a deterministic function of their history it'd surely be a chaotic system. I can't say I really see much difference in that case.
- deleted 9y ago
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gh02t 9y ago

It's more that I'm saying humans have agency (in the philosophical meaning of the word). You can't know with 100% certainty what a person will do, even with perfect knowledge of everything about them. You can predict with very high confidence, but never certainty, because people can (and occasionally do) act randomly. That said, I do believe that people are more or less the sum of their parts and I accept that genetics are especially important. However, there are always people who defy expectations. I just don't except that it is a totally deterministic connection.