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

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

This is quite similar to Pascal's Wager, and suffers the same problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'm quite aware of the similarity, and in fact referred to it here before you mentioned it. But I disagree that it suffers from the same problem. The two big problems with Pascal's are that there are multiple hypothetical gods to decide between, not just one, and that the value of believing or cost of non-believing depends on the gods, and are (by his hypotheses) unknowable to us. Neither of these affect Sipfle's application of the idea to free will.