RE: Free Will, Decision making and religion
March 14, 2015 at 5:28 pm
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2015 at 5:41 pm by Smaug.)
It's also useful to consider the principle of casuality here. The most simple formulation is enaugh. I.e. every happening has it's cause. It basically leaves out all the posibilities for intuitively-defined variants of Free Will I've been talking about above, including those proposed by the religion. The principle of casuality works both for stochastic and deterministic systems so in both cases there have to be some laws of Nature involved in the process of decision-making. Otherwise said process doesn't make sence at all.
To sum it up, I'd say that the whole problem of Free Will stems from the fact that this notion is one of the most basic philosophical categories. Which means that it's either too underdefined, or outright undefinable or the definitions are too far from what an average human intuitively want. At least it is so at the current state of philosophy.
To add to what Parkers Tan said, if we consider more fundamentalistic interpretations of abrahamic religions, than any Free Will definition will do. Since if the threats of Hell were real any "normal" decision-making criterion works as if there were no Free Will at all. But without a notion of Free Will this scheme won't work because it's needed to introduce the fear of disobedience (obviousy, no Free Will - no chance to make a mistake by yourself - no guilt and fear).
To sum it up, I'd say that the whole problem of Free Will stems from the fact that this notion is one of the most basic philosophical categories. Which means that it's either too underdefined, or outright undefinable or the definitions are too far from what an average human intuitively want. At least it is so at the current state of philosophy.
To add to what Parkers Tan said, if we consider more fundamentalistic interpretations of abrahamic religions, than any Free Will definition will do. Since if the threats of Hell were real any "normal" decision-making criterion works as if there were no Free Will at all. But without a notion of Free Will this scheme won't work because it's needed to introduce the fear of disobedience (obviousy, no Free Will - no chance to make a mistake by yourself - no guilt and fear).
