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Your focus is temporally misplaced. I will accept that the existence of Free Will does not require changing anything -- certainly nothing in the past. What Free Will does require is the ability make a free choice -- even if the selected alternative may be foreclosed by extrinsic forces...

I disagree. As I stated previously, I am not talking about scientific or mathematical determinism identified by Isaac Newton and advocated by Albert Einstein -- which is a scientific theory about the actual nature of the universe. I am talking about the metaphysical paradigm of Determinism...

It is apparent that you have given much thought to this subject, and you obviously are very knowledgeable and intelligent. For those reasons, I appreciate your posts. Notwithstanding the foregoing, everything you write presumes the Determinism (or Causal Determinism) permits variability of...

By happenstance or fait (or maybe a big data algorith), the following popped up on my FB feed today: It is worth reading.

Again, that is either because you lack the ability to believe otherwise, or because you volitionally form your beliefs is a careless manner. The former is understandable. If the latter is true, one would think you would want to do better than that. I do believe the position I advocate --...

There is a relatively famous parable about Zeno of Citium, the founder of Greek Stoicism. According to legend: Zeno built his philosophy of apatheia on a determinism which a later Stoic, Chrysippus, found it hard to distinguish from Oriental iatalism. When Zeno, who did not believe in slavery...

I believe that is deliberate distortion of what I wrote, and I have a difficult time believing you do not know that. If you want to have a serious discussion, that is great. If you just want to hurl insults, I suppose that is your prerogative, but it does nothing to advance the discussion, and...

Something akin to Subjective idealism. It is theoretically possible that there is no objective reality that is separate and apart from any observer’s perception -- a notion that has support within Quantum Theory, which posits, among other things, that the observer's observations are a...

As I wrote (and you omitted from your quote of my post): "And, if I do have Free Will, I have placed my faith in these beliefs because doing so provides me with great serenity and peace -- both of which feel good to me." I suppose you could say that is Epicurean hedonism or possibly a form of...

As a practical matter, I doubt that it is humanly possible to have no beliefs at all. To lack any beliefs at all would require that someone be in a catatonic state with no internal thought activity. When we take a breath, we do so based on a belief that the air is breathable. When we take a...

Of course determinism, stoicism, and Buddhism "are just as likely to be wring or misleading as anything else." I do not profess to have placed my faith in these "beliefs" based upon logic or any probability of truth. If the universe is truly and entirely deterministic, I have placed my...

I appreciate your input. The trouble I have with the view you espouse is that it equates the illusion of making a choice between two illusory alternatives with the exercise of Free Will. I fully agree that it "feels" like we make choices, and do so in the exercise of Free Will. It may even...

In an interview published at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/breakthrough-prize-winner-gerard-t-hooft-says-quantum-mechanics-is-nonsense/, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft offers a compelling critique of the conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics. 't Hooft...

Free Will does not require the ability to "change" something. Rather, and as I have written before: Stated differently, the existence of Free Will in its pure form depends upon (a) the existence of true “options” or “alternatives,” and (b) humans being capable of thinking (and acting) in a...

Everything you have written is about the ability if humans to make predictions of the future, and nothing about whether the future is fixed or capable of alternatives. You are injecting a requirement of human predictability into a metaphysical construct that has no such requirement. If all you...

I suppose we will just have to agree to disagree on what the "best" understanding is, as the best minds in physics have disagreed on the point you assert since Quantum Theory was first articulated. Moreover, even the best collective understanding of human beings is no more than that -- a...

OK. I get it. You believe in free will -- either because you freely choose to have that belief or because that is the belief you are caused to have by antecedent activity that dates back to the beginning of time. I am not conflating pre-determinism with determinism. I am applying a...

Quantum Theory does not disprove that the universe is truly and entirely deterministic. At most, Quantum Theory posits that certain activity of the universe is incapable of being predicted with certainty at a quantum level, and even then I would argue that Quantum Theory posits no more than...

Science = Modern Mythology While there are suggestions of this concept in the writings of many respected philosophers, one of the most direct discussions appears in the work of Paul Feyerabend. As explained in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the “SEP”) (at...

Free Will either exists or it does not exist. The same is true of Determinism. The two cannot, however, co-exist. Compatibilism is an illogical, but understandable, construct that is embraced by either (i) people who lack Free Will and are compelled to embrace Compatibilism despite its...