Since you're opening up the question, perhaps we should consider the possibility that free will may be an illusion. After all, isn't every "input" involved in the human decision-making process deterministic?
I think we understand so little about the construct we call “life” that we’re left clinging to its limitations: karma, free will, predestination, and so on. In the end, I think what matters is what you do from a certain point onward—how consistent you are with your choices so they actually lead to growth. If I know my grandmother had diabetes, do I just blame that and keep eating sweets anyway? I think we take too little responsibility and view this “game” through different lenses, rather than as a whole (and don’t ask me what the whole is—I don’t know :)).
I don't disagree with any part of that statement. In my opinion, both of the following are true:
1) Free will is an illusion.
2) All of a person's practical affairs ought to be conducted as though it weren't. Furthermore, all moral principles ought to be established (and moral conflicts be arbitrated) as though it weren't.
After all, the attribution of a human's actions to an embodied "self" of which they are thought to be in control, is a core axiom regulating the "chain" of inevitable events which transpire in the absence of (actual) free will. We think and act automatically, from the mentality of beings convinced that we don't — and if we were to fully embrace the principle that we do, our lives would become far, far less satisfying.
Since you're opening up the question, perhaps we should consider the possibility that free will may be an illusion. After all, isn't every "input" involved in the human decision-making process deterministic?
I think we understand so little about the construct we call “life” that we’re left clinging to its limitations: karma, free will, predestination, and so on. In the end, I think what matters is what you do from a certain point onward—how consistent you are with your choices so they actually lead to growth. If I know my grandmother had diabetes, do I just blame that and keep eating sweets anyway? I think we take too little responsibility and view this “game” through different lenses, rather than as a whole (and don’t ask me what the whole is—I don’t know :)).
I don't disagree with any part of that statement. In my opinion, both of the following are true:
1) Free will is an illusion.
2) All of a person's practical affairs ought to be conducted as though it weren't. Furthermore, all moral principles ought to be established (and moral conflicts be arbitrated) as though it weren't.
After all, the attribution of a human's actions to an embodied "self" of which they are thought to be in control, is a core axiom regulating the "chain" of inevitable events which transpire in the absence of (actual) free will. We think and act automatically, from the mentality of beings convinced that we don't — and if we were to fully embrace the principle that we do, our lives would become far, far less satisfying.