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The world is deterministic and there is free will. These folks are emphatic that the world is made of stuff like atoms, and life, in the elegant words of psychologist Roy Baumeister (currently at the University of Queensland in Australia), “is based on the immutability and relentlessness of the laws of nature.”[5] No magic or fairy dust involved, no substance dualism, the view where brain and mind are separate entities.[*] Instead, this deterministic world is viewed as compatible with free will. This is roughly 90 percent of
Despite starting by separating determinism / free will and free will / moral responsibility, I follow the frequent convention of merging them into one. Thus, my stance is that because the world is deterministic, there can’t be free will, and thus holding people morally responsible for their actions is not okay (a conclusion described as “deplorable” by one leading philosopher whose thinking we’re going to dissect big time).
A decision is a decision, but an urge is just an increased likelihood of a decision.
