Free Will 1, Determinism 1

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or Free Will 1, Determinism 1

“But if our brains decide what we think before we think it, then don’t all our choices emanate necessarily — at least! — from when we oozed out of the ooze onto what we knew before we arrived was dry land?” It was the spider man, Maynard [Meh -'närr] Hale,* on the speaker phone in French. “Fair enough,” Uncle Albert answered, also in French, “if you want to live the life of a lab rat that thinks he’s a neuroscientist or a neuroscientist that thinks he’s a lab rat, but if as long as today is Friday and tomorrow is Saturday and historians are still drawing timelines on blackboards from left to right . . . ” at which I lost several words though I did catch the names “Berkeley” and “Samuel Johnson” and finally “Austin Farrer” and the words “British linguistic philosophers” (because they were in English).  The philosophers apparently argue that outside of the lab, or the maze in the lab, we talk about free will and determinism in terms of agency and event: I did this, then I did that, then this happened; or, this happened, then I did this.
     Meh -'närr sighed — in English: How could he converse in French “if Al -'bair was going to take the side of common sense?”   
                                                                       07.02.22

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* One of Uncle Albert’s former students. Follow the link. Stone pictured right is one of many that claim to have been kicked by Samuel Johnson.