Free Will.

[Sonoran Na'vi]

Originally Posted by Woodsprite

Well, just finished reading all posts. And just wanted to go back to addressing "fate".

My theory: I think it's possible that fate and free will are inherent to each other. I understand the alternate universe theory, but in reality it's just us, no alternate.

If fate were to say I was going to go out today and buy a newspaper (which I rarely do), I would do it, and still have free will. Why? Because I wouldn't ever know. No one else would either. Thus, free will.

You can say there isn't any fate involved when you suddenly decide not to do something or vice versa, but you'd still be accomplishing exactly what fate said you'd do. You only thought you changed the future, when in fact, you just fullfilled it. No matter what happens, you'll always be doing everything you're supposed to, as dictated by what the present holds.

I didn't have to write this post. I could've gone in the other room, forgot all about this thread, and watched some T.V. But fate said I'd stay on my laptop and write this out. I can't change what I've done, so I've effectively shown fate to be my ultimate "death", if you will. What you're to do in the future is entirely up to you, but whatever you do is still what would've always happened. The only reason man has free will is because he doesn't know the future.

That's an interesting theory on how fate and freewill could be reconciled. If fate reduces a set of choices to one choice, wouldn't freewill be an illusion if freewill is dependent on whether or not one has knowledge of their fate?

This is because I define freewill as the possibility of choosing a number of options from a set of choices for a given occurrence. If fate narrows the choice for every set to one option, the possibility of choosing any of the other options is zero. If freewill is the ability to choose from any option in the set, the presence of fate would contradict the essential nature of freewill. This is why I believe the illusion of freewill is what can be reconciled with the presence of fate as we have the illusion of choice without actually having a choice.