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Articles

Why is Freedom So Important To Us?

John Shand explains why free will is basic to humanity.

Much has been written about whether or not we have free will. That is not my topic here, but it has a connection to it, in that I want to ask why so much has been written on the matter. Whether we are free or not seems very important to us.

Let’s first suppose that we are not free – that there is no such thing as free will. Let’s further take that to imply that there is no sense in which we may be held responsible for what we do, any more than a tree or a rock may be held responsible when it falls on our head.

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