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But if free will does not exist and you believe that, then you would know that whomever you're making the suggestion to is incapable of changing whatever path t

by bena 7y ago

But if free will does not exist and you believe that, then you would know that whomever you're making the suggestion to is incapable of changing whatever path they were going on in the first place. By suggesting a course of action, you are implying there is an actor with agency out there. Now, while the actor itself may not actually have agency, that does not absolve you. Any attempt to persuade is an implicit acknowledgement of free will.

ericb 7y ago
> Any attempt to persuade is an implicit acknowledgement of free will. > But your if-then exhibits no independent action. Attempts at persuasion don't imply free will, they just change the input to the if-then in a downstream deterministic process. If bash script A calls bash script B with a command line flag to make it follow an alternate behavior, nothing is implied about the free will of either bash script.