| | At any moment, an entity could change it's mind and begin to value an alternative over the other (i.e., "choose otherwise") Based on what? A person changes his mind in response to new evidence, new knowledge, new awareness. He doesn't change it for no reason. According to your theory, I could change my mind in the next instant and begin to value subjectivism over objectivism, socialism over capitalism, altruism over egoism, etc., for no reason whatsoever. But this is absurd. No one behaves this way. If this is your defense of free will, then I rest my case. But think about the choices lower animals make. Many of them are predictable. We might even say that they are pre-determined. The "choice" of beavers to make a dams -- and to make the entrance of the dams open up underwater (every single time) -- is pre-determined; it is predictable.
Human choice isn't; so it isn't. Animal behavior is not entirely predictable, but it is more predictable than human behavior, because human beings are more complex mentally and psychologically than animals. Still, human behavior is, to a large extent, predictable. I can predict, for example, that traffic will almost always stop at a red light and go at a green light -- that stores will for the most part open when they say they will, that people will get up and go to work more or less at the same time every day, etc.. We can even predict how people will vote. The extent of Obama's victory was predicted quite accurately by the betting polls.
On the other hand, animal behavior can sometimes be quite erratic and unpredictable. Elephants have occasionally rebelled against their handlers and trampled them to death; previously docile tigers have attacked their trainers and mauled them unexpectedly.
The fact that an animal's or human being's behavior is (pre)determined does not mean that we can predict it with infallible certainty, because we are not omniscient and cannot know all of the factors affecting it. "(Pre)determined" does not mean "perfectly predictable."
- Bill
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