>>11834271Hmm. So were the thoughts which formed this comment a choice of yours, or did they essentiall create and then output themselves through a set of limbs which similarly moved by themselves?
Are we causal agents, who have some kind of self-determining factor to ourselves, or are we like a chain of dominos blowing in the wind?
Think carefully before you answer. It's very easy to cast oneself as an automaton for the sake of winning one's own argument, but ultimately since neither of us can prove or disprove free will it will not help your case and will only remind me of the way Daniel Dennett hilariously denies the existence his own consciousness for the sake of advancing his own incoherent position on the issue. Though I'm not saying you can't say we're automatons, I'm only saying that it should be defended by argumentation and that rebranding yourself as such will not improve your position.
>>11834286A "self-causing" or "self-determining" factor or element. Something which may be interacting with other elements in a causal system, but is not itself the direct cause of. For example, my stomach sends signals to my brain when it detects low food supply. The natural response would then be to find food to eat.
1) Biological determinism would mean that in the event of hunger, you are automatically going to seek out food.
2) Free Will/Self-Determination would mean that even if your body is sending you the most intense signals possible regarding the need for nourishment, there is still ultimately the decision whether to eat or not and that you could even allow yourself to starve to death if you wanted to, because you have the ability to direct your choices irregardless of how strong biological factors influence those decisions.
I gave a realistic example above, but we can abstract further and simply ask the question of whether we are "agents" or simply "automatons". Free will means the former, determinism the latter. Maybe there's options between the two.
