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0 pointsdingaling5y ago0 comments

If the options from which they could choose were constrained by other factors then they weren't really choices.

Free will implies the ability to choose freely.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

WalterBright5y ago· 1 in thread

Please describe some choices that aren't really choices for a typical healthy person in a free country?

I can list a few:

1. having a baby is a choice

2. getting married is a choice

3. buying a house is a choice

4. buying snazzy furniture is a choice

5. buying a new car is a choice

6. buying lottery tickets is a choice

7. where you live is a choice

8. using drugs/alcohol is a choice

These are the kinds of chains that people forge on themselves.

jgwil25y ago

7 and 8 are quite debatable. Where you live is limited by what you can afford, where you work, etc. Drug and alcohol dependence is considered to be an illness by medical doctors, and it's well-known to have strong genetic components.

1 is certainly a choice if people are given access to sex education and contraceptives; unfortunately that is not uniformly the case.

nickpp5y ago· 1 in thread

How about those who freely choose to reduce their choices? Does that mean their original freedom was not real?!

username905y ago

It means they made a tradeoff and shouldn't blame the world for it later. If you laze around and don't gather firewood during autumn then the reason you freeze to death in the winter isn't because nature is unfair but because you didn't get the wood.

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