Thursday, April 9, 2009

Disproving Deterministic Incompatiblism

I'm sick of having this conversation, so look. An exercise:

Put a cup on the table in front of you. Now if you want to, say the following out loud:

"Right now, I am reading this sentence."

Now look away for a few seconds and then look back. Back? Good. Now for the next exercise, you're going to have to choose whether or not to pick up that cup that's on the table; you should decide whether or not you are going to do it. Got it? Now read the following out loud and either pick up the cup at the end or don't:

"I am going to count to five. When I finish counting to five, I can either pick up the cup or not. One. Two. Three. Four. Five."

See? Okay, now was that so hard?

Look. If deterministic incompatiblism is true, then it's not only true in the past; it's true in the present and the future as well. And yet you just made a bunch of choices. Right? So drop it already.

See how I can tell you to drop it, and you can decide whether or not you're going to do that? Good. We're done here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice! Compatibalism ftw.

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