What do you think a deterministic world would look like?
If we imagine a world with the same laws of physics as our world, but without freedom of choice.
What would it have looked like?
Morality would have developed in humans for evolutionary reasons, perhaps even an illusion of freedom of choice in these “biological robots.”
So what would have been different? Would reality have looked different?
A related question:
I heard you say that when we do something that goes against our scale of values, then we are essentially “asleep.” We let our body lead us and our freedom of choice is asleep. How would a person behave whose freedom of choice is constantly asleep?
Well, good morning, remembering the Beatles again.
A. Your assumption that a consciousness of choice would have evolved is baseless (this is actually an argument made by many determinists, but I don’t blame them; they are forced to do so). Beyond that, you assume that morality would have evolved as well, and that is also baseless. This is precisely why it is difficult to answer the question, because we have no way of distinguishing which of our actions are done out of choice and which are from nature. Therefore, we have no way of knowing what a world without choice would have looked like (it would only include the actions we do without choice). But in general, it seems to have been a fairly similar world. See columns 645-6.
B. This is not a parallel question but the same question. When a person is asleep, he does not exercise his power of choice. Note that the claim is that when a person acts not according to his values, he is asleep, this does not mean that when he is asleep, he always acts not according to his values.
Leave a Reply
Please login or Register to submit your answer
