(July 27, 2016 at 10:26 pm)Excited Penguin Wrote:(July 27, 2016 at 10:16 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I am a determinist, but, I respect compatibilists and their views and feel that I have no choice in the matter!
How can there be a but here? What warrants a but?
If you're a determinist, why cater to compatibilists? I don't get you.
I assumed you were a compatibilist because you specifically said you didn't believe absolute free will didn't exist, which pretty much sums up compatibilist's views.
You can't "respect" someone's views if you don't agree with them. Or, are you talking about the sort of respect where you don't go screaming in the streets, cut people's heads off and terrorize the populace because of a difference of opinion?
How, exactly, do you "respect" someone's views, I wonder, while totally disagreeing with those views at the same time. You can respect the person, but there's no respecting the views, especially not if you don't agree with them.
The existence of free will is a mystery; of course, this is referred to as being the the "hard problem". Whether it can be solved or not, I cannot say, but my guess is that it will be solved. Perhaps scientists someday will be able to arrange neurons in such a way as to prove that consciousness is simply biological with no supernatural element required. Or, the hard problem may simply be intractable, which is hardly proof of a soul and/or some other non-materialistic dualism.
There are a lot of good atheistic folk who are compatibilists, and so, I think that everyone, on this question (free will), can fit into the tent.
