Self-Determinism

I was reading over at To Make Amends, a fantastic blog by my friend Caleb Winn, and was incredibly impressed by one of his posts, well, all of them really. The post that grabbed my attention was the one regarding predestination, free-will and self-determinism. The article is entitled “Total Self-Determinism“. One of the most poignant quotes:

“Imagine that I freeze a single moment in time and replicate an infinite number of copies of the universe. In each of them, absolutely nothing has changed. I am confronted with exactly the same scenario, at exactly the same time. My body and soul are the same in each universe. Nothing is different.

In such a situation, with an infinite set of identical universes, I would make the same choice in each.

Keep in mind that I am the same. If I do not change, but my choice does, then my choices are independent of my self, and are not contingent on who I am. This hardly seems like a

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2 Comments »

  1. Wan Kong Yew said,

    November 14th, 2007 at 11:10 pm

    That is a pretty insightful view on the old free will / predestination debate.

  2. Welcome to the 9th edition of the Market Anarchist Carnival! « Check Your Premises said,

    December 2nd, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    [...] Connell presents Voting Consent | Reason and Capitalism posted at Reason and Capitalism, saying, “Explains why not voting is often the only morally [...]

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