The Forum > Article Comments > Joe Biden won the 2020 election against Donald Trump, when Kamala Harris, also a Democrat, could not in 2024? Why? > Comments
Joe Biden won the 2020 election against Donald Trump, when Kamala Harris, also a Democrat, could not in 2024? Why? : Comments
By Peter Bowden, published 27/11/2024There are a multitude of eminent people who have argued whether or not we have free will. This paper sets out the assertions of these writers, both for and against.
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But even though it has its limits, we absolutely do have free will and everybody, absolutely everybody - Sam Harris and all the others who claim to be determinists included - actually do, functionally, believe in free will too.
It is impossible to live and talk coherently as a full-blown determinist. Unless it is we ourselves who are actually controlling what we say and do (and not just prior physical conditions extending back into the infinite past) then nothing we say and do can make any sense whatsoever.
Harris cannot stop contradicting himself. On page 62 of "Free Will" he wrote: “Where people can change, we can demand that they do so”. Huh? If everything is totally determined as he says it is, then nothing about the future can be changed, no matter how much Harris demands it should be!
The thesis of determinism being true is self-defeating. If one asserts that there are valid, comprehensible reasons for believing that determinism is true, then in doing so one shows that determinism must necessarily be false.
So, relax, we absolutely, definitely do have free will. But maybe don't relax too much, because by having free will that also makes us genuinely responsible for much of what we do - good and bad.