2/20/12

This weeks question was wether or not I would consider myself a compatibilist or an incompatibilist. I had no idea what either of these terms meant, so the defination I got off of Wikipedia.com is that compatibilism si the belief that free will and determinism can happen at the same time, and that it is possiable to believe both without being logically inconsistent. Incompatibilism is defined as the view that a deterministic universe is completly at odds with the notion that people have free will. It took me a long time to have an opinion on what I believed in, considering that I never really put much thought into it. But I came to the conclusion that I would consider myself a compatibilist because I feel that free will and determinism can coexist and help us make the decisions that lead us in our lives. The way that I see it is that without free will we would fully depend on other people to do something as simple as making a decision and determism gives us the drive to take the risks that help us learn and grow to lead better lives.