Monday, January 22, 2007

Ockham's Osterizer

This whole “free will” versus “predetermination” debate gets sort of tiring. Near as I can tell, equally good cases can be made for either side. You might end up saying that each of us is free to decide that our every thought and action is predetermined. Or that it is preordained that we believe ourselves to have free will. Or split the difference and say that we are free to determine our own rationalizations for the things we have no choice but to do. Basically, I think it’s all to keep Jesuits from pining too much about the celibacy thing.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So it really is Ockham, not Achem. Strange, when you consider that the correct spelling has the extra silent consonant.

Anonymous said...

Freely applied, the lex parsimoniae method would predestine one's will to assume a thought otherwise.
. . . but, in 100 words?

PS: 2 more words in your "about me" gives you an even Benjamin.

Dave Maleckar said...

Okay okay. It seems to be getting kinda clever in here. Both these comments are opaque to me- doesn't anybody have anything dumb to say?

About my "about me," I'm counting the hyphenated terms "oddly-shaped" and "fast-talking" as two words each.