But that's not correct if you ask me.
So this is my point entirely. Its not real, yet you choose to use your preconceptions to justify why all the information pointing otherwise justifies your reaction, because you don't fully understand the phenomenon.
Just like everyone else.
All I'm saying is you're not special, which seems to be exactly what you're saying about everyone else, so I'm not sure why the cognitive dissonance.
No, there's a tremendous difference. What I'm trying to say is that just realizing we don't have free will isn't going to shut down everything, we'll still be driven to do things because that's what we are, but this is not the same thing as there being no difference.
It changes our self-understanding.
So then what is the difference and how does a change in self-understanding affect reality?
Thus we arrive at the dangerous precipice of "can't know nuffin" where all discussions eventually go once they have lingered long enough.
Maybe not having free will doesn't change anything for you, but it does for me. It delegitimizes certain world views and legitimizes others, because like everybody else I must believe in something, right?
It took me awhile to wrap my mind around this exchange, and I still don't understand it fully, but let me weigh in.
1. For Tleilaxu, a rejection of free will is important because that rejection "delegitimizes certain worldviews and legitimizes others". Since elsewhere in the thread he asserts that "free will necessitates some kind of divine aspect, a soul", I think it's clear that Tleilaxu is referring to the Christian worldview that formulated arguments defending free will despite an omniscient God that go back to Aquinas.
2. But, in fact, free will does not need to rest on a theological foundation. Kant, Hume, Spinoza and others marshaled various arguments in favor of human freedom of action. In short, it is not necessary to believe in God to defend free will.
3. Specifically, the cognitive dualism of Roger Scruton (which, I believe, is a refinement of the Kantian position) gives us two ways of looking at reality: the way of science, which reduces and explains; and the way of "intentional understanding" (or
Verstehen, a term from Kantian philosopher Dilthey), which describes and interprets.
4. From Scruton's "Modern Philosophy: An Introduction And Survey":
"Here, then, is how we should express the Kantian theory of freedom: people may be conceptualized in two ways, as elements in nature, or as the objects of interpersonal attitudes. The first way employs the concept [of] human being...it divides our actions at the joints of explanation and derives our behavior from a biological science of man. The second way employs the concept [of] person...Through this concept, and the associated notions of freedom, responsibility, reason for action, right, duty and justice, we gain the description under which a human being is seen,
by those that respond to him as a person. Our response is locked into the web of interpersonal feeling. Each of us demands justification of the other, and the resulting give and take of reasons is the root of social harmony." (italics added)
