Suppose that you encounter a fortune-teller that knows everything about the past, present, and future. If...

Suppose that you encounter a fortune-teller that knows everything about the past, present, and future. If you were to ask this fortune-teller about some future event, then this person would be able tell you exactly what will be the case. The fortune-teller is never wrong. Since this fortune-teller is able to state what will be the case for all events, do we have the freedom to act otherwise? In other words, do we have the freedom of choice to act other than what we actually do? We ordinarily think that we are making genuine choices and these choices shape the person that we become. If I were to choose between act (A) and act (B), then I think it is equally possible to pick either (A) or (B). However, the fortune-teller knows that I will pick (A) before I even consider the choice. So was it really possible to pick (B)?

Please consider this situation, and then write a short paper explaining why we do or do not have the choice to act otherwise. Please provide a detailed explanation of your answer and back up your ideas with well thought out claims. Do not use any outside sources for this paper. I would like original thoughts.

Solutions

Expert Solution

The fortune-teller here is acting like a computer program who has all the data of my past actions, thoughts and way of thinking and hence able to predict my behavior about the future.

We act in a particular situation based on the following factors:

Self-esteem: This is what we think about ourselves.
Motives: What is our real reason of doing something.
Values: The various beliefs we have about essentials of life.
Traits: Our temperamental traits.

When we make any decision, it is a permutation and combination of the above along with other factors like degree of comfort, level of risk and the payoff.

We might have the freedom to choose otherwise, but the fortune-teller is able to predict with surety because he has data related to our past events and based on that he is able to tell what our choice would be.

We might have the choice of acting otherwise as I stated earlier due to the level of risk and the payoff of a decision but majority of the time, we act according to our the programming of our sub-conscious mind.

Hayet Jeridi answered 3 months ago

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