Re: On Determinism

Steve Marshall wrote:
"Dave Smith" <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

We have a mixture of motives and our motives may often conflict. We may
want children for some reasons but not for others. Genes aren't the
whole story -- the environment is also crucial.

But isn't having the ability to choose when we don't want them exhibiting free-will. Animals are led by instinct and may breed at specific times. Some animals can breed throughout the year, but we can decide not to have children or even to be celebate acting against our natural instincts.
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I think that you're unkind to animals. They too have some 'free will' over and above instinct. We're seeing it in studies of lots of animals, even birds.

The environmental conditions may well play a part. I don't think free-will can be divorced from such factors .
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Quite. We might think we have a free choice to do X, but what happened when we got out of bed in the morning or when we drove to work will have an influence, as will the particular microbes in our gut.

I'm not too sure what "will" is. We have feelings of wanting to do
things and we focus on goals -- is that what we mean by the term?

Basically deciding to do things. We can't backflip because we will ourselves to do so. But with the wish to do so and trial and error - training and learning, we can achieve it. We use our will to overcome instincts and natural abilities whilst at the same time exploiting natural abilities to develop a skill.

Indeed we can - but our decision to develop that or this skill, or not to, is predicated upon our genes, our upbringing our environment at the time and so forth.
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