Philosophers, make your comments here

[Exile]

"If death does something I don't like, I'll be knocking on -his- door next".

I don't believe in fate. I believe in free will. That you can do anything you set your mind to, rather than to trust in an absent deity to "guide you to do the right thing". If you start believing that everything is preset, if you will, that everything is "meant to happen" you might as well not take responsibility for your actions and blame it all on fate, or just not bother trying to better yourself or make something of your life.

Short summary of my 2 cents.

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[kramer]

Free will is a dream of the innocent and ignorant - and a topic to harass students:D

Social behaviour is a very essential need of man therefore you are bound in some way.;)

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Armin van Buuren

[ugliestmoose]

Lay out the choices of every life, every event and decision, regardless of time.

If you pick any point in time, you could say the choices led to it.
However the person picks that choice.

Fate and free will need not be seperated, they can be intertwined.

But DO they? How can you know that any choice you make has not already been predetermined? If you come to a fork on the road, you have a choice to go left or right, but whatever choice you make could have been already decided in the cosmic scheme of things - if you choose left, what proof do you have that you could have ever chosen to go right?

Going off of what Jammi said, suppose you somehow managed to "learn your fate" and now have a vision of your own future. Suppose that it's a pretty crappy future in your opinion and you decide to change it, so you act in a way that ensures it won't happen the way you saw it. But then you realize that if there is a fate, then whatever you saw in your vision is complete bollocks because it would imply that you somehow unshackled yourself from the predetermined fate that governs everything in the universe. The only explanation would be that you were fated to see a vision of...something...but it couldn't have been your future because that would dictate that you have control of it. The point here I'm trying to make (poorly) is that it's impossible for there to be both free will and fate.

I also think the answer to this question heavily depends on your personal beliefs regarding humans' place in the universe - if you consider that people are just another part of the natural world and aren't in some way 'above' the laws of nature, then you might look to scientific theory for an answer. Back before the 20th century Newtonian physics was held up as proof of predeterminism - if you established all the initial conditions in a system then you could know the state of that system at any point in the future. Of course, now we have quantum theory and chaos theory and we know that two systems with the same exact starting conditions will act completely differently over time. The randomness that we now accept scientifically could be a type of "free will" since there is an inherent uncertainty in the future of anything.

[Sabre120]

I'm one for the Soft Determinism approach, I like the idea that we have free will, but that we are constrained to reasonable boundaries, Libertarianism is far too open ended for me

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Dream Theater - "Sabre120 and Jongleur officially win. That is all."

[The_Scarlet_Pimpernel]

The point here I'm trying to make is that it's impossible for there to be both free will and fate.

I think there is neither fate nor free will.

I think there is no fate because it is neither real (because it hasnt happened and therefore does not exist in a real state at present), nor could anyone realistically ever predict a thing like "fate" (because the things we call fate are simply impossible to predict by outselves, free will or no free will, unlike the simple thinks we wouldnt call fate like an apple falling on the ground because of gravity). Since no one will ever really know fate, its nothing more than and abstract concept, or a myth like unicorns and heaven and hell. Sure in the future the universe will be in a certain state, but whether we can affect it with choices or not doenst really matter since we got no idea what the future will look like anyway. So there is no point in thinking about things like "fate", unless you also believe in santa clause and ghosts.

I think there is no such thing as free will, in the way that we could deliberately take two different actions when faced with the exact same problem with the exact same knoledge (apart from a random component over which we have no real control either).

What you might call free will is closely connected what is the "I" that you think is taking choices and is suposed to have free will.

It is the "I" that makes choices and tells us that there is such a thing like free will, like an array of possibel actions.

The "I" (or I call it awareness) is, as far as I perceive it (havent read much about it in psychology though), a thing that constantly draws conclusions from what it sees and remembers, and makes choices based on the conclusions it made.

I think the "I" is so trained on drawing the best possible conclusion (it constantantly does in every aspect of the mind... deciding what is that object you see, what is that pain you feel, is that thing edible yes or no) and making the right choice (its a red light... stop, that pain is a thorn in my foot, I better lift it, no its not edible it stinks) that it would never ever deliberately do the "wrong thing". It could decide to take an action that may seem wrong in some respects, but only if it decided that its the right thing to do for another reason, for example to see the consequence of that action and learn from it.

Our imagination is something the "I" uses to evaluate the outcome of actions it could take. What we image and the actions that we see as options are always products of what we remember (or remember/decide we are seeing right now).
There is a random component that affects memories, imagination, and senses, but it doenst give you real control over your choices and perseptions.

So the "I" has no real "choice" between actions... you will unavoidably do what you think is the correct thing. What you call free will is the options you can imagine, but you are not free to choose another one than what your brain tells you is the correct one.

Of course, now we have quantum theory and chaos theory and we know that two systems with the same exact starting conditions will act completely differently over time.

Do you mean "exact starting condition", or "almost exact" starting condition? Right now I dont know where the difference in outcome would come from, but Im not into quantum physics really. Im more familiar with cybernetics and prognostic modeling physical, and in those that doesnt happen for "exact" starting conditions, but of course its not done on quantum physics level.

[Rommie]

No such thing as Fate... you cannot say that God gave you life to follow your pre-rendered life trail, and then die. If such thing as Fate existed, it would imply that Free Will also exists, but only to deceive.

"-I can take my life now, or in the next three years" -Theoretical Deceiving Free Will, in the case that Fate exists. You'd think you have Free Will, but the choice you'll make has been already written.

If Fate were to exist, then we wouldn't be humans anymore.We would be robots.

Free Will, is, well, Free Will. We were born with it, and we use it every second. It shapes the human being.

Fate is something that old men came up with back when Viagra didn't exist.

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In space, nobody knows I'm a panda

[Disparagess]

Meh

Life is just choices, over and over again. The choices are predetermined, and lead to more, different choices. This could be interpreted as fate, though your decision can be interpreted as free will.

Yes, I just finished watching the matrix half an hour ago.

EDIT: AKA, I agree with Linkus.

Also,

But DO they? How can you know that any choice you make has not already been predetermined? If you come to a fork on the road, you have a choice to go left or right, but whatever choice you make could have been already decided in the cosmic scheme of things - if you choose left, what proof do you have that you could have ever chosen to go right?

It's still free will, not fate, because YOU chose it. It doesn't matter if you were fated to make that choice, in the end, it was you who made it, through your own free will.

To me, choices in life are what makes life free will. Things that aren't choices are fate.

Therefore: yeah, both.

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WARNING: Do not watch all of my avatar UNLESS you want to waste over 2 minutes of your life.
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[Slartibartfast]

Meh

Life is just choices, over and over again. The choices are predetermined, and lead to more, different choices. This could be interpreted as fate, though your decision can be interpreted as free will.

Yes, I just finished watching the matrix half an hour ago.

EDIT: AKA, I agree with Linkus.

Also,
It's still free will, not fate, because YOU chose it. It doesn't matter if you were fated to make that choice, in the end, it was you who made it, through your own free will.

To me, considering choices exist in life, then life is not fated.

But some of the choices for you aren't made by you. You don't choose where to live, you don't choose your parents, there's so much you can't choose...

You can only choose to operate with what you already have... Which can be a hell of a lot different to what even your next door neighbour has. So you do have options, but options aren't the same for everyone. Not by a long shot.

[TheJarl]

The fun thing is you can never know if there is fate, because perhaps it is our fate to never know it. Same thing with proving that a god exists or not. If there is a God he could make you think there is no God, why would he do that? Well if there is a God there is a chance that our sense of logic is fake.

Same goes here: It might be our fate to not know it.

Also, unless there are parallel universes you can only make one choice every time, as such there is only one path for you however you still choose this path yourself.

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[Disparagess]

But some of the choices for you aren't made by you. You don't choose where to live, you don't choose your parents, there's so much you can't choose...

You can only choose to operate with what you already have... Which can be a hell of a lot different to what even your next door neighbour has. So you do have options, but options aren't the same for everyone. Not by a long shot.

I must have editninja'd. I forgot one thing.

*quotes own edit*

To me, choices in life are what makes life free will. Things that aren't choices are fate.

Therefore: yeah, both.

I also meant not *entirely* fated there.

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WARNING: Do not watch all of my avatar UNLESS you want to waste over 2 minutes of your life.
Add me on skype: Disparagess