| Re: questions for determinists |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
Group: alt.philosophy · Group Profile
Author: Perplexed in PeoriaPerplexed in Peoria Date: May 23, 2007 20:56
>> HHFW.
>>
>> (Humans have free will.)
>>
>
> Humans may have free will - but it is also possible to know humans so well
> that you can know well in advance what they are going to do - say - or
> think.
> You may put something in front of a human - say a really interesting book -
> and the human may be interested - pick it up - buy it - read it or they may
> not. This is free will. But if you know this human very well - you would
> know whether he will pick up the book and buy and read or not.
> Thus the future is known.
I'm not so sure. There are some situations (a scene involving Wallace Shawn
in "The Princess Bride" comes to mind) in which it is to a person's advantage
to be unpredictable. So, for these situations, it is not to our advantage
to let anyone know us well enough to predict our responses. Whether these
kinds of situations have come up often enough so that natural selection has
given us 'genes for unpredictability', I don't know. But I do suspect that
in an evolutionary 'arms race' between ability to predict and ability to
be unpredictable, unpredictability wins. It is easier to produce.
| 
