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Politics : FREE AMERICA -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (14456)	6/16/2007 9:04:00 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14758

"So why do you say my cat doesn't have free will? Do you know my cat?" I don't need to know your cat; as you have made no claims that there is something that would exclude your cat from the norm. Simply declaring your cat to have free will is meaningless unless you have some privy to your cat's nature that has eluded the rest of us. I only need to consider that you are making an unsupportable claim about your cat. as making wild declarations seems to be your habit in these discussions. Free will is not limited to self-determination since we don’t determine our circumstance or control the responses to our actions. In order to act in a willfully free manner we must first have complete control over the circumstance within which we choose to act. Even if we had some influence over the situation there are too many uncontrolled conditions in every circumstance to say we have absolute control. Therefore, a choice of action is a response to whatever the given situation is. That being the case we can’t claim to be able to act completely free of the influences of other forces, circumstances, and outcomes. With regards to non-human animals there are no credible zoologists claiming animals act outside their nature in a way that could be considered a corruption of their nature. At most, they would behave in an unusual way after being subject to behavior conditioning by human controls. Behaving in response to conditioning should not be confused with free will. People are more or less free to follow along or ‘go with the flow’ as they say. For a person who’s conduct is highly regulated by situational causes, floating along through life in a semi-robotic manner may be the most comfortable path to take, much like other animals who are objects of their environmental conditioning. When there is little time available for considering the meaningfulness of one’s circumstance or where a person is found comfortable with the status quo, it may seem there is little need to examine the causes, meaningfulness, and purpose of one’s life. When there is no commitment to basic principle, the flow is met with choices representing the path of least resistance. With the exception of human beings, creatures respond to situations in a manner that will instinctively promote the greatest chance of survival for not only the individual but its kind. Human beings have a unique condition, however. Human beings have the free will to respond to their unique situations in a way that is right and good according to human nature or in a manner that is a corruption of that good nature. As far as we know, only human beings possess this type of choice. The free will to choose is not to simply behave in response to one’s circumstance, as all creatures do that. Whether we are giving thought to the conditions of our circumstance or not, simply having chosen a behavior does not imply the exertion of free will. The ability for one to exert free will to conscientiously choose a course of action when considering temptations that are corrupting influences, mark instances of free will choices and are a measure of one’s character.