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To: TigerPaw who wrote (788)	4/28/2003 11:14:15 AM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 20773

You've morphed the question into a very, very interesting question. IS the future fated? IS there any such thing as free will? As chance? To preserve our sanity, we have to assume that free will exists. I have to assume that I am choosing freely to write this to you, not that I am writing it out of inevitable necessity and have no actual choice whether to write it or not. But if we knew all physical and all psychological laws, and if we had computers or minds powerful enough to model such laws, and had the ability to incorporate every quark, or whatever the smallest particle is these days, in the universe into the model, would be be able to perfectly predict the events of the next million years? Are those events in fact necessarily determined by the interplay of matter and physical and psychological laws? (Keeping in mind that our thoughts are all conveyed by matter and therefore can, at least theoretically, be modeled by a powerful enough physical model.)