Best wishes, Rob

1. Adjective: Done of your own accord

I do not believe in a deterministic universe because it is too chaotic, too dependent on contingency.

You are confusing upredictability with indeterminism.

(‘Round and round we go)

Addressing the meat of your comment; yes, I believe in free will as limited by our capabilities, our past, and current circumstances. I do not believe in a deterministic universe because it is too chaotic, too dependent on contingency.

Does free will have to be perfect in order to be valid?

Because that question is semantically ambiguous, I ask you to define to what you refer to by “free will” and “validity”.

But, in the spirit of things, yes, I do think we’re meat machines and subject to the stochastic nature of physical reality, with the caveat that there are so many degrees of freedom applicable to our choices that even though they are deterministic, they are unpredictable (i.e. for all practical purposes, our choices are “our own”.

But consider the situation from our point of view. We don’t know what’s going to happen, so we at least have the appearance of choice. And then you have the possibility that omniscience applies only to what has happened, not to what hasn’t happened. That what hasn’t happened, what is yet to be, cannot be known.

Sure. But we do have experience and theories, and we can know to a certain extent.

(Drop a wine-glass on a slate floor from shoulder-height, the outcome is rather predictable, no?)

But what really matters is how we are affected. Our choices depend on what we know, and because we can’t be perfect in our knowledge, we can’t know what we will do. It is this essential ignorance that gives us our freedom of action.

Not just on what we know, but on our predilections; but yes, I take your point. We choose so as to increase the likelihood of favoured (or, alternative, to decrease the likelihood of unfavoured) outcomes.

But the freedom of action is unrelated to that ignorance; it refers to which choices you could make, not to which you should make. A salient (though conceptual) difference.

But frankly, it is my stance that belief in predestination means a degrading of basic human dignity, and a denial of basic human rights. It justifies tyranny and oppression. while free will promotes human dignity and basic human rights.

Well, then; as I noted above, since you believe an omniscient being exists, you perforce must believe in predestination (inasmuch as what it knows shall occur, will occur; it can go no other way!).

Free will also means you are responsible for what you do, and not some blind fate.

Of course.

What you do is your doing, and you take responsibility for it.

But not all that one does is freely-chosen; in my opinion, one can only be held responsible for one’s uncoerced choices, whether that coercion is due to other agencies or to circumstances.

(Beware of over-generalisations!)