Reply To: Good News: And No Religion, Too

Interesting (but unfortunate name — when I saw “Christian List on Free Will” I thought I had gone to a religious site).

I don’t think that TM here was denying that humans are “intentional agents” (have “wills”) or have “causal control” (that what they do causes something to happen). He was denying that humans can choose between “alternative possibilities” — that when you go into a cafe your choice whether to order tea or coffee is not a free one, that if you chose tea that was the only possibility (as shown by you choosing it)

A difficult position to maintain unless you are prepared to argue that everything that happens (and is going to happen) was predetermined at the time of the Big Bang. Or, as List points out, unless you think that the only reality is the movement of physical particles and that everything can (and should?) be explained in terms of this. In other words, “mechanical materialism”.