Week of October 2, 2023 – A family of well-mannered bovines: the result of choices but not of free will.

(Above: The family of Cow #326. The heifer to the left is her daughter, the cow to her right is her granddaughter, the little bull calf in the center is her great grandson, and of course, the large red cow is #326 herself. La familia de la vaca #326. Las vacilla a la izquierda es su hija, la vaca a la derecha es su nieta, el ternerito en el centro es su bisnieto, y por supuesto, la grandota vaca roja es la propia #326.)

10/1/2023: Today began in the low 70s and warmed into the mid 80s. Mostly cloudy and slightly drizzly morning followed by a mostly cloudy afternoon.

10/2/2023: Today began in the low 70s and warmed into the mid-80s. Mostly cloudy with very brief and very light bouts of rain.

10/3/2023: Today began in the low 70s and warmed into the high 80s. Mostly sunny. Still hazy like it has been for the past two days.

10/4/2023: Today began in the low 70s and warmed into the high 80s. Mostly  sunny.

10/5/2023: Today began in the low 70s and warmed into the high 80s. Mostly sunny.

10/6/2023: Today began in the low 70s and warmed into the high 80s. Mostly sunny.

10/7/2023: Today began in the low 70s and warmed into the mid 80s. Mostly cloudy. Brief bout of rain just before dusk.

Final Note: All of these thoughts are interesting, but the green-highlighted text is particularly excellent, and the yellow-highlighted text are my personal thoughts on the matter.

A quote from the Wikipedia Article on Determinism:

Causal determinism, sometimes synonymous with historical determinism (a sort of path dependence), is “the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature.” However, it is a broad enough term to consider that:

    …One’s deliberations, choices, and actions will often be necessary links in the causal chain that brings something about. In other words, even though our deliberations, choices, and actions are themselves determined like everything else, it is still the case, according to causal determinism, that the occurrence or existence of yet other things depends upon our deliberating, choosing and acting in a certain way.

Causal determinism proposes that there is an unbroken chain of prior occurrences stretching back to the origin of the universe. The relation between events and the origin of the universe may not be specified. Causal determinists believe that there is nothing in the universe that has no cause or is self-caused. Causal determinism has also been considered more generally as the idea that everything that happens or exists is caused by antecedent conditions.

A small quotation on free will’s relation to Causal Determinism from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Whether or not one can have freedom of action without free will depends on one’s view of what free will is. Causal determinism does not mean that acting agents lack the freedom to do what they want to do. An agent could do what he/she wants to do, even if he/she is causally determined to want to do that action.

Final final note:

Here, it can be seen that free will and choice are different concepts. My definition of free will is “the ability to choose independently of all circumstances and outside phenomenon”. Choice, on the other hand, is “the selection of one perceived possibility from multiple perceived possibilities.

My take is this. In the case of beings that can perceive various possibilities (such as humans), choice is real. When it comes to the act of choosing, however, that act – like everything else in our current reality – is completely determined by antecedent events and conditions.

In summary, there is no free will, but there is choice.

1 thought on “Week of October 2, 2023 – A family of well-mannered bovines: the result of choices but not of free will.”

  1. Thanks for sharing once again, still struggling with the choice/freewill concept, perhaps its because from my vantage point, it’s a distant one, I perceive a long chain of possibilities that are weaved through via the prompts of prior conditioning, one of which may very well be the belief that freewill or choice or maybe even both actually exist.

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