T he discussion of determinism vs. free will has been going on since the days of the Greek philosophers, and will probably never be settled. Is it possible that both views are correct? How could that be true? Before I get into the various arguments, I want to set up the following assumptions: (a) There is a one-to-one correspondence between the state of the brain and the subjective experience occurring at any given time (b) Since the brain is not an isolated system, it must be part of a larger system – the body, sense organs, the body’s immediate surroundings, etc. - which obeys certain deterministic laws. According to determinists, every move we make is dictated by our previous experiences, situations, conditions, etc. – everything which has gone before. The feeling that we select courses of action in response to immediate circumstances is an illusion. The subject can no more change the decision than a planet can change its orbit. If all our deci...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.