Originally Posted by
skysaw
I reject the notion that free will and determinism are necessarily mutually exclusive. I believe that perhaps there is room for both free-will and determinism. That perhaps they are simply two sides of the same coin.
Imagine you are holding a remote to your television in your hand. You press a button, and the channel changes. Every time you use the remote, the TV responds exactly as you intended. Imagine this as a model for free will.
Now imagine that your remote doesn't actually work, and that instead your neighbor is playing with his remote, changing your TV. Obviously, you have no control at all. But...
What if you don't know that your remote doesn't work? And what if the neighbor just happens to be pressing the same buttons you are at the same time? The TV is not responding to your will, but to an outside force (forget for the moment the "will" of the neighbor). Imagine this case as a model for determinism.
Seemingly, you have no power at all over the TV. It is just an illusion. Or is it? Every command you enter is carried out. All of your intentions are realised. Does it matter if your remote is broken? Not at all! It still "works" in the sense that pressing the button changes the channel, and not pressing a button does not change the channel.
The question about the existence of free will is simply a matter of interpretation of these scenarios. But I submit that your will (your remote) and the outside force (your neighbor's remote) are intertwined. People are so focused on the question of which remote changes the TV, when perhaps they should be focused on why the remotes are synchronized.
To put this back in real-world territory, imagine your free will and pre-determined events as perfectly synchronized, forever intertwined. Every decision you make is part of your free will, and that free-will decision was pre-determined. Maybe they are simply two different ways of looking at the same thing.