Are Believers Rational Beings? - Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology

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Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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Sclorch
Clyster

Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness

Re: Are Believers Rational Beings?

[Re: infidelGOD]
#615769 - 04/20/02 11:06 AM (22 years, 10 months ago)

Actually, I do think there is such a thing as free will. I think I'll bring up some William James....

James developed the idea that neither freedom of the will nor determinism is provable. Whatever action one chose, the determinist would insist that, given antecedent conditions, no other alternative was possible. The defender of free will would insist that within the act of choosing are indeterminate possibilities, and that the choice once made is not epiphenomenal, but rather a necessary condition of the action. Each side employs different metaphysical postulates about possibility. On what grounds does one choose between postulates in philosophy? Consequences, both logical and practical, are decisive. Logically, on the postulate that we live in a deterministic world, science itself would have no more rational or truth-bearing status than voodoo or numerology (reeks of "believers" eh?). What one believes would be the end product of cellular and other physical causation, and if what one asserted to be true happened to be true, this would be due to good fortune rather than rational insight. So unrestricted determinism is self-defeating.

I could go on, but I think that is a good outline for why I lean towards free will.

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Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology

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