Free Will: Fact or Fiction

[Angrboda]

@Erinome:

John Rawls in his work on justice and ethics, from what I understand, lumps things like intelligence and physical beauty into what he terms "natural goods," being things which are arbitrarily allocated to us as individuals independent of anything we might have done or not have done to deserve them. Curiously enough, he also puts things like "effort" into the category of natural goods as well, being things that we inherit as a consequence of the society, family and environment we are born into. In a Harvard lecture on Rawls, one example of this that was given was, during the lecture, those who rank first in the birth order are asked to raise their hands. First borns greatly outnumber others in this particular Harvard class. I know this effect personally, both as a last born, and coming four years behind a pair of darling twins. Competing for love and affection on the same grounds as my elder sisters would have been a losing proposition. I learned to get what I needed by being sick and helpless all the time. It was the only field in which I could successfully compete. Does that mean I had a defective will? I don't think so. It means I did what I had to do to survive. And it carries forward to today. Am I defective for not changing my basic coping strategies learned in childhood? I would say no, but you seem to disagree.