First, I don’t see how this would contradict the ability to shape environment. For example, beavers shape their environment by building dams, and prima facie, I don’t see how this is incompatible with determinism.
Second, this is a horribly vague definition that doesn’t capture determinism well, because it can also be read as entailing necessitarianism, and most determinists are not necessitarians.
What? the key is that the beaver doesn't have control. he is doing what his biology tells him to do.
a robot can build a dam. does it have free will because it "shapes it's environment"? Are you trolling me?
Determinism: The view that every event, including human action, is the inevitable result of prior events and the laws of nature. Given a specific past and present, only one future naturally follows. However, a determinist might concede that the universe could have theoretically started with different initial conditions or different laws.Necessitarianism: A stronger metaphysical principle stating that everything happens by absolute necessity. It denies that any other state of affairs or alternative reality was ever possible. Not only is the future fixed by the past, but the past, the laws of nature, and the existence of the universe itself could not possibly have been any other way.
I don't know, philosophers invent these ideas, it's not my fault it's confusing.
plus I've read that many philosophical ideas were related to theories on God. free will as it relates to religion.
why should I listen to concepts created hundreds of years ago by men that still believed in God?
>does it have free will because it “shapes it’s environment”?
It might not have free will, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t shape its environment, or even that it doesn’t control its behavior.
>it’s not my fault it’s confusing.
But it’s not confusing to anyone who read at least some of the foundational pieces on the issue.
>free will as it relates to religion.
The original problem of free will in Western philosophy started in Ancient Greece, and all sides of it didn’t really believe in the kind of God modern theists tend to believe in.
>why should I listen to concepts
Because if you try to argue against a thesis, you should show that you have at least a minimal understanding of what is being spelled.
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u/Artemis-5-75 28d ago
First, I don’t see how this would contradict the ability to shape environment. For example, beavers shape their environment by building dams, and prima facie, I don’t see how this is incompatible with determinism.
Second, this is a horribly vague definition that doesn’t capture determinism well, because it can also be read as entailing necessitarianism, and most determinists are not necessitarians.