>>11366660I know I'm going to sound like a cunt, but I don't get why this is so hard to grasp.
People are not free radicals. We don't operate independent of reality, no single thought is spontaneous. In this sense everything CAN be determined. With a complete mapping of the mind (being not much more than a complicated grouping of cells) and full working knowledge of its mechanisms, we can determine the instantaneous state of a given mind in a controlled environment. Another example would be two biologically and experientially identical people placed in identical environments. If, under these conditions, their behaviours still are not like-for-like then their divergences would likely be explained by complicated and chaotic causal factors (which themselves can be factored in to whatever predictive model we use, improving the accuracy of our determination), without any reference to notions of hidden, or supernatural agency. Even in a worst-case scenario, where we take quack quantum theories of consciousness into account, the random factors do nothing to inform our notion of agency which would thereby be determined by inconsequential, random phenomena - if these influence our behaviours at all.
Although we live in a determinable world, this does not vitiate any notions of agency, autonomy, the self, or individualism. Exposition, internal monologging, self-negotiating, reasoning, decision-making etc. are all vital to the human condition. This is besides the fact that most of our behaviours are instinctual, reactionary, learned, and so on.
I don't want to bang on any more, but this just seems like common sense to me - then again I've had several arguments with flatmates about this.
