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From	Message
grege79 13-Aug-10, 15:04	Free will I am sure this has been done, but I wanted to ask something. I will give the short version - I was having a debate with a friend about the existence of free will. She said it did not exist, I said it did. My argument was that if there is no free will, then how can we judge the murderer, the rapist, the pedophile? Without free will, their actions are beyond them. My friend continued to argue against free will, but maintained these individuals have responsibility and should be punished. Can this be?
antinephilehi 13-Aug-10, 18:16	Free will If there is no free will in "doing the crime" then with the same reasoning there is no free will in us punishing the offender. I believe there are matter that can be acted upon.And there are matter that can act. We can take a stone and throw it into the water. That would be me acting and the stone acted upon. If there is no free will then is there life? Do we all have the same amount of free will? Do we have to have choice in order to have free will?
obsteve 14-Aug-10, 14:21	hi grege79 even if the actions of criminals are beyond them (let's say no free will) then using "punishment" as an argument for or against free will might not make sense, given that we may have no free will in using it! Perhaps there is free will, but I think that the the dice are at least heavily loaded for some people to commit some crimes. Given the same genetic makeup and social conditioning as the criminals I couldn't be certain I would "make the choice" not to break the law in the ways you outline.
rilke 14-Oct-11, 09:11	Divine Intervention A little bit of both.
shamash 19-Oct-11, 22:11	goals and noxiants all life forms react to goals and noxiants. A dog sees a juicy steak and wants it: goal. A man with a knife is guarding his steak: noxiant. Free will: it is our choice to go for the pleasure we desire -- or to avoid the pain associated with whoever or whatever forbids the satisfaction of our desire.

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