Olemme koneita

Miksi ihmisillä ei ole vapaata tahtoa?

• It is undeniable that one is the way one is, initially, as a result of heredity and early experience.
  
• It is undeniable that these are things for which one cannot be held to be in any way responsible (this might not be true if there were reincarnation, but reincarnation would just shift the problem backwards).
  
• One cannot at any later stage of one's life hope to accede to true or ultimate responsibility for the way one is by trying to change the way one already is as a result of one's heredity and previous experience. For one may well try to change oneself, but
  
• both the particular way in which one is moved to try to change oneself, and the degree of success in one's attempt at change, will be determined by how one already is as a result of heredity and previous experience. And
  
• any further changes that one can bring about only after one has brought about certain initial changes will in turn be determined, via the initial changes, by heredity and previous experience.
  
• This may not be the whole story, for it may be that some changes in the way one is are traceable to the influence of indeterministic or random factors. But
• it is foolish to suppose that indeterministic or random factors, for which one is ex hypothesi in no way responsible, can in themselves contribute to one's being truly or ultimately responsible for how one is.