Last Post: Free Will

So it's kind of sad that this is the last blog post, so I'll make it a good one (although all the other ones have hopefully been good too). Its also the last post so it will likely be long. I want to talk about the Tralframadoirans idea of free will. While some may easily dismiss the idea of fate, there have been numerous "forward thinkers" who think free will is not real. I'll say straight up, I believe in free will. The Tralframadorians' concept of time (hereafter TCT) is worth exploring a little, because many people with big degrees agree with it, just not necessairily who Kurt says came up with it.

The idea that all events are "frozen in amber" that people can just look at certain events and ignore others seems silly. The very nature of the story seems to defeat it. How can one at one time be looking at time, and yet be in time? How can they be testing and examining Billy, and be looking through another window of time? Why not just look through time to see how the examination would have come out? But I don't think this particular notion needs much discussion because i don't think most of us agree with it.

So here's the big picture: Free Will vs. Fate.

First, I'll take on the idea of fate. Fate is often percieved as all of our actions are predefined for us, and we just go with the flow. Ironically, such thinking would seem to suggest a higher power of some sort setting the path we follow, but many fatalists don't believe in one. But that's another story. There are two large problems with such thinking. First, if that were true, why do we bother to act? Why not just sit their like vegetables? The fatalist would say "well, if you're fated to do that then that's what you'll do." Fatalsim is a neat argument in that any logical thinking response can be ignored and just said to be fate. Even the very act of me writing this could be dismissed as "fate." So I'd like to ask one look at my arguments in a dispassionate state, ignore your personal feelings and don't just dismiss what I'm saying as "fate." The second large problem with the idea of "fate" is that no one knows what their fate is. I might be "fated" to eat chicken tomorrow, but that could just be because I ran out of beef. That type of argument is at least funcitonal on a fatalist level. But let's take a different example. Say I have both beef and chicken. I eat chicken. I choose to eat chicken, it has nothing to do with a predefined order of events.

Now let me deal with a likely objection. The fatalist says "But Ed, you believe in a God, right? One who knows everything right? So fate must be true, correct?" No. It doesn't. Here's two explanations. The first: I don't know what my choice is going to be until I make it. I have the coice to act as I see fit. But maybe that's not convincing enough. Try the second: God just knows what my choice will be. He allows me to make my choice on my own, but just knows how I'll choose. In effect, he doesn't make my choice for me, he just knows what I'm going to choose.

Now let me sum up with arguments for free will. Almost everything you do in a day can be done a different way. You can walk with larger steps, you can open the right door or the left door, you can hold the door for someone or not, the list goes on. It seems silly to say that I'm fated to have my steps 17.813 inches apart each step. It seems more likely that that is just a comfortable stride. holding the door for someone: I choose to be nice, or I choose to not be. Life is all about choices. You chose to read this post, and hopefully you'll choose to comment on it. How do you guys think?