if you believe in no free will/hard determinism how do you process the paradoxes?

10 comments

1. Some paradoxes would only exist because if there was no free will e.g. the bootstrap paradox.

2. Can you elaborate?

3. Lacking free will and hard determinism are not exactly the same thing. There’s an important distinction to be made that might help with your question.

4. Which paradoxes in particular? It seems to me that libertarian free will is incoherent. If our choices are not based on our DNA, Upbringing, and/or environment then what are they based on? Seems kind of schizophrenic.

5. Free will has no clear definition that has been widely agreed upon. So the phrase is meaningless.

   I’m undecided on hard determinism

6. You have free will, you can always jump out of your window and die, but your body will prevent it from happening.

   We are heavily influenced by our animal/biological conditioning, but as humans we still have a shred of freedom of will.

7. Can you define what you mean by free will. Everyone seems to define it differently so I’ll need you to define what you mean first before being able to answer

8. If free will doesn’t exist, then what we have is a close enough approximation such that there’s no need to worry about it. Newton’s laws of physics aren’t correct, but they’re a close enough approximation that I don’t have to worry about relativity in my daily life.

9. I think its serves very little purpose to operate under the assumption that free will doesnt exist. Even if its true on a pragmatic level what does that do for you?

10. I’ve never encountered any paradoxes.