Reclaiming Freedom
Steve Taylor says of determinism: “I refute it thus!”
No, it’s not a main trend, some insist, but the only possible trend. In fact “trend” itself is a misnomer. It implies one path chosen over another in a world where all paths are derived from and lead to the same explanation.
You know, if that is the only explanation.
On the other hand, given some degree of human autonomy, the path I am on will almost certainly never trend. After all, it’s the path suggesting that what many deem to be their own “free choice” in regard to moral and political value judgments, is really more a profoundly situated existential “self” rooted in dasein.
Which is more perturbing, right?
On the other hand…sigh…wouldn’t the “central beliefs of behaviourist pschology” not in turn be but a necessary component of the laws of matter? Or was B.F. Skinner the lone exception?
You think that you are free. You feel that you are free. Your gut instinct tells you that you are free. But any and all of these identity fonts are just manifestations of the forces that set into motion existence [and then self-conscious existence] itself.
And here everything comes down to whether or not we have the capacity to grasp that of our own free will. As a species on this planet. With or without an existing God.
And then the part where the conscious mind gives way to the subconscious mind gives way to the unconscious mind gives way to most primitive of all brain functions.
I know: let’s not go there. Really, to go there introduces all the myriad factors that makes it harder and harder to be, among other things, an objectivist regarding the behaviors that you have convinced yourself that all other rational and virtuous human beings are, like you, obligated to embrace.