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Dan Dennett on free will and determinism
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RE: Dan Dennett on free will and determinism
In a deterministic world, free will is an illusion, and therefore even if you think you have a choice (do I pull the trigger or not?), you really don't. Your choice was predetermined, if you hesitate and change your mind, that was predetermined, and your decision was predetermined. You may feel guilty over killing this person, but that feeling was also predetermined.

And just to clarify, the area of quantum mechanics that supports indeterminism is the calculations that show that certain parts of the quantum world are random and uncaused. Namely that given a known location of a sub-atomic particle, and all the information about it, the best you can do is predict a probability distribution of where it will be next. You will never be able to accurately predict it's next location because it's movement has some randomness in it as well. This is know as the uncertainty principle.
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Messages In This Thread
Dan Dennett on free will and determinism - by Edwardo Piet - January 27, 2009 at 1:55 pm
RE: Dan Dennett on free will and determinism - by LukeMC - January 27, 2009 at 5:11 pm
RE: Dan Dennett on free will and determinism - by Tiberius - January 27, 2009 at 6:35 pm
RE: Dan Dennett on free will and determinism - by Tiberius - January 28, 2009 at 6:10 am

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