"Free will?" WTF?

[ZackT]

Yes, but if you do "choose" to go against your natural disposition, wasn't that choice caused by a combination of your genetics and your experience. Put another way, what else is there that is not itself also caused?

When you put it like that, it sounds like you're saying we're ultimately not in control of any decision we make. Every decision is already predetermined by our genetics, environment, experience.

Basically that sounds like a big excuse to me that one could use to explain why they did something they ought not do, or for behaving a certain way. "I can't help it, it's just a part of me"

And to that, I say bullshit. I would never deny that we all get some pretty damn strong impulses to do whatever, but they are not unbeatable and they have a multitude of different ways we can react to them.

Part of your arguement is that there's subconscious factors going in to play that we're not even aware of. Maybe so, but how exactly are we supposed to gauge how big a factor these subconscious weights actually play? You can't. It may range from completely swaying our decision one way, to still not being enough to change our minds.

Course, this is me talking about shit I don't really know for sure. Just guess-work, saying stuff that makes sense to me. And I think that for most people, free-will is just an idea and that it's generally a lot easier to go with the flow of life around you. But I still maintain that we do always have a choice and some people will make unusual choices, despite their consequences (good or bad).