Free Will

[netmouse]

In the comments on yellowmouser's journal here and here I engage the question of whether or not free will is an illusion (I think not). Updated to add: J argues against me here.

What are your thoughts on the question? Is it an interesting question or purely a polemic debate?

Comments

[knightlygoddess.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't plan to be trapped here. And luckily, I have lived in other areas, so I know there is intelligent life outside of this rural hellhole. ;)

It's more frustrating, I think, to see young people at the college level, 18-24, who don't have an open mind. Isn't that the whole point of higher learning? To expand the regions of your own brain?

I have a brilliant instructor who is teaching his first dual enrollment course and he's never dealt with tenth graders before. He was telling me the other night how he doesn't think he'll be able to do it again, because the closed-mindedness in this area seems to be fostered in the local primary/secondary schools (which is an easily supportable position out here). He said, "I started the program with a sense of excitement and promise, and now I find myself fighting a sense of dread and dispair for our future when I see how these kids not only fail to flourish intellectually, but FIGHT it, at every turn!"

His assignments are joyfully open-ended, and he really wants to see you think. Apparently the students were so up in arms about "not being told what to write" that he had parents calling and telling him that he "wasn't teaching anything." It's so creepy and bizarre to me.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I suppose he can't go quite so blatantly as to make really specific assignments...like "compare and contrast the Catholic mass to what's known about Mithraist ceremonies", say. Or "Summarize what's known about the goddess Est". Ah well.

It's not just rural hell-holes that have parents wanting more specific goals, though; suburban parents worried about their little darlings getting into the right college act just like that.