Thursday, March 12, 2009

If you are a determinist…

…you will, by your own confession, live your whole effortless life and die your one purposeless death without ever having done anything. If determinism is true, no one an no-thing has ever done anything on and of its own; only "things have happened" as a function of blind, unsleeping Nature. You have never done and can never do anything wrong, since you cannot, by definition, do anything not already inscribed in you by an illiterate, mute Nature. Moreover, you will never have done anything good, since you can't do anything good, insofar as good is just what ends up happening in Nature by means of your paralyzed bundle of atoms-on-loan, on loan, mind you, from no one.

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