(October 10, 2023 at 9:15 pm)ShinyCrystals Wrote:(October 10, 2023 at 9:12 pm)LinuxGal Wrote: If Man chooses to do something based on his upbringing, and his social environment, and his education, and a thousand other things he cannot not control, then his choice is not free. If all those factors can be shunted aside by an act of pure will, then is seen the specter of infinite regression. Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.
Well, I do agree that there is no free will. Anyhow, aside from that, exactly, LinuxGal!
Seriously, there are so many factors that limit choice to the point of choice not being free. I do see that infinite regression thing as interesting, though. You can explain that, and man doing what he wills but can't will what he wills, if you'd like.
Coders run across it all the time. An efficient way to build a function is to make it recursive. While it's running it calls itself, and that second instance calls itself, and so on, until a certain condition is met and the whole chain stops. But the "will" function has no exit criteria. You can never will what you will.
