By it, do you mean you must assume you only have free will, or that in addition to yourself, you must assume that some other living beings have free will as well?
If you say you must assume that some other living beings have free will, I must ask why? If there is no objectively verifiable evidence, what is the logical imperative that you must assume some other living beings have free will? I see no logical reason why you must assume the persons you converse with have free will.
I'm a rational man, and I want some evidence or some solid logical argument before I will believe that something exists.
227 posted on 2/21/02 4:22 PM Pacific by PatrickHenry
That's interesting. I could, perhaps, assume that I am unique in possessing free will. But if everyone else were just the product of determinism, would I be able to detect this? I observe that other people generate what I judge to be creative work. That's a clue that they're not going through life like termintes through a log. And in conversation, people are rather quick to respond to what I say, and I'm assuming that my comments aren't predetermined. I could be talking with very clever Turing machines, I suppose. But if that's true, they're very good Turing machines. Anyway, I find others to be unpredictable enough that their possession of free will seems a sensible conclusion. But I guess I'll never really know if I'm all alone, will I? Not unless we can develop telepathy. What's your opinion on this topic? I'm sure you have one.