Do you believe in free will?

[Whateverist]

You see .. and this is all I'm claiming about free will. I can damn well go to the slaughter house through the left or the right door as I please. There is no amount of environmental conditioning or DNA determined proclivity to guarantee which entrance I take. Thank you.

It is the determinists in their fuzzy minded belief that they are carried along inevitably through the left or right hand door that have the explaining to do.

This cartoon does nothing if not make clear just how much is riding on our decisions.

And what about the ass? Buridan's ass?

I suppose he escapes the slaughter house altogether, lucky irrational ass. Of course his failure to make the decision won't confer immortality on him. We expect to come back and find his rotting dead ass lying precisely between the openings.

I hadn't heard this one before. How absurd. To imagine that every choice was an exercise in rationality where one always chooses correctly. There are plenty of times when we choose and then change our mind. We don't always know what will please and that is no indication of malfunction.

What is really odd about this and the whole inclination toward determinism is the idea of creatures such as our selves purposefully trying to understand ourselves as simplistically mechanistic.