Writer's Block: Freewill vs. fate

[vvvexation]

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...Why ask this about love in particular? Either we have free will with regard to everything, or we don't.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be odd if we had free will for many activities, but not for others? Hmm. How to make a story out of that...

[pauraque]

Ow, the false dichotomy! As far as I know, you can't choose your emotions. That doesn't make them predestined, though.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I was tempted to say that too, but I wasn't sure how confidently I could assert it and then I realized the main point was even bigger.

But yeah, I guess even if we do have free will, that doesn't mean we control our emotions.

[dpolicar]

Well, if the traditional notion of free will were coherent at all, it might be that one had free will with regard to some things and not others... e.g., I might be able to choose when to go to bed, but not be able to choose when I woke up (modulo alarm clocks), or choose whether to climb a flight of stairs but not whether to levitate to a second-story window.

But the traditional notion of free will is incoherent. Love, like everything else, emerges inexorably from its precursors. Things as they are are as they are because they got that way because things were as they were in the first place.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!