Month: November 2014

2. Free Will and the Difference Between Choice and Free Choice


anti-choice determinist

To avoid confusion, I should make a distinction between choice and “free choice”. The opposite of a “free” choice would be an “unfree” choice. If someone is forced to make a choice, can it be thought of as a choice at all? I don’t think so. Much of this confusion comes from different definitions of the word “choice”.

The WordWeb dictionary has three definitions for choice:

1. The person or thing chosen or selected
2. The act of choosing or selecting
3. One of a number of things from which only one can be chosen

We have the act of choosing which we call choice. We have the thing that was chosen which was called a choice, and yet it was still predetermined before we were presented with the available options. We would still be caused to choose. Since we don’t choose which choices are presented to us, we still…

View original post 388 more words