A Sense of Free Will: the consciousness quagmire (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, September 06, 2015, 18:17 (3155 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: The proposition: if I remember rightly, last time we discussed this I made the (unanswered) point that all these factors go to form our identity (though this is never complete, since it continues to develop with every new experience). Even if what makes “me” may be beyond “my” control, nevertheless it is me, and so when I make my choices, “I” alone am responsible for them. In this sense, I may be said to have free will: I make my own conscious choices within given constraints. I would therefore suggest that the answer to the question of whether we have free will or not depends on the level at which we wish to consider it. Our instincts tell us that we have it, because it is our self and nothing else that makes the decisions, but our intellect tells us that our choices have been fashioned for us by conditions over which we have no control.-Hear, hear!!!