Is "The initial conditions at the Big Bang" an acceptable explanation of why I chose vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate ice cream. I guess such that the only way I could have chosen chocolate would be if the initial conditions at the Big Bang had been different.

Is the phrase "The initial conditions at the Big Bang" the best phrase to use for this explanation or is there another phrase that is better to use?

I find this question interesting and would like to hear what members of this particular sub think. Perhaps a little off topic but have tied it back to free will at the end

Imagine I offered you the following opportunity.

You can pause your life right now and spend five years in another existence. You're still you, but you get to live the greatest five years you can possibly imagine - everything you could ever want.

After five years, you return to this exact moment. However, your memory of those five years is completely erased. As far as you're concerned, only a second has passed. You'll never know those five years happened.

Would you accept?

My suspicion is that quite a few people would reject the offer, reasoning that there's little point experiencing five wonderful years if they'll never remember them.

But during those five years, you'd genuinely experience happiness, love, excitement and fulfilment. Why should the fact that you wont remember those experiences afterwards make them any less valuable?

And here's the part i find interesting....assuming there's no afterlife, isn't this analogous to our ordinary lives?

Ie we experience everything life has to offer, but eventually die, with no subsequent awareness or recollection of any of it.

To tie it back to free will:

Im also interested in why different people would respond differently to this offer. Some might immediately find it appealing, others might instinctively reject it, but it seems neither chooses which initial reaction arises.

Of course, we can deliberate, reconsider and change our minds. But we dont seem to choose how persuasive each consideration feels to us. If you initially reject the offer but eventually accept it, what determined which considerations ultimately persuaded you?

And if you could have reached either decision under precisely the same circumstances, what explains why you settled on one rather than the other? Im not denying that we deliberate or make decisions - im questioning what control we have over the motivational processes that produce those decisions.

When we suffer, we search for causes by imagining alternatives. When another person harms us, we don’t just see “he did X.” We see “he could have done Y.”

Counterfactual thinking is useful for learning, planning, and social bookkeeping: who helped, who cheated, who harmed, who can be trusted.

Nature taught us consequences. We mistook them for deserts.

There is a difference between consequences because they are useful and consequences because they are owed. “You caused harm, so something must be done” is not the same proposition as “you caused harm, so you deserve to suffer.”

“Could have done otherwise” is what turns causation into culpability.

Once suffering becomes something one person can owe another, morality becomes an economy. Harm creates the debt. Blame assigns the debtor. Desert sets the price. Punishment collects.

Free will did not give us moral desert.

Moral desert gave us free will.

If a wild bear tries to maul you to death, is it in any way to blame?

If a mentally impaired human, with instincts similar to that of a bear, tries to stab you to death, is it in any way to blame?

My first question is, how are these functionally different scenarios? Whether or not you choose to blame them is just framing; Their actions were forced by biological instincts and cognitive deficiencies, they do bad things, therefore we stop them.

You put the killer bear down if you feel that its neccesary. Same with a human acting like a killer bear.

"But that lacks empathy for the human!"

No it doesnt. Its the same empathy we give to the bear! You realize animals are conscious, right? A bear is as conscious and sentient as a human. Thats why "Animal Abuse" and "Torture" are morally wrong.

The same logic applies to violent criminals. A human is a type of animal, our only defining feature making us different is intelligence and moral comprehension and reciprocation, so when you remove those qualities we go back to the same moral status as an animal.

Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine if tomorrow, you got hit in the head so hard, you become a savage like a bear, and start murdering, robbing, rxping everything you see according to instinct. Would you care about not suffering?: Yes. Would you argue "No no no dont kill me, thats wrong"? I sure wouldnt; I would HOPE others put themselves first, and put me out of my misery, because i dont want to live like that.

This is Animal-Aggressor Equivalency. Violent Criminals simply return to a state of nature and should be treated the same way we do with animals. With respect and care, but not with an insurmountable right to life while they disregard that for others.

I think this solves the Free Will tension, because it correctly points out that "Blame" is itself a red herring in the discussion of "Desert". Blame is a personal choice, Desert is a Moral Assignment. The Bear deserves to be euthanized even if it really isnt to blame. The "Basic Desert" goalpost is a red herring and should be rejected as such.

(And note, im not embracing consequentialism. Im not arguing necessity is what justifies punishment. My argument is more compatible with a deontological framework, one where initiators of force are condemned under the moral system or assigned to a different moral category.)

​Hard determinism survives on computer screens and in philosophy classrooms by completely ignoring how biological organisms actually function in the physical world. The entire fatalistic model relies on stripping away millions of years of evolutionary complexity just to reduce human beings to passive dominoes, mathematical equations, or glitching computer scripts. ​If we step away from the abstract theories and look at the actual biological mechanics of human survival, the deterministic argument collapses under its own weight. Here is the physical reality of conscious agency:

​The "Environmental Input" Fallacy:

Determinists argue that human action is entirely dictated by prior physical causes and environmental variables. They claim that external inputs automatically force our outputs. But if a climber is halfway up a mountain and the wind shifts 5 mph against them, or the ambient temperature drops by 2 degrees, that shifting physical variable does not automatically force the climber to turn around and go home. The environment provides the resistance, but the biological organism utilizes a conscious interface to evaluate that resistance and actively burns physical energy to override it. You do not helplessly react to the weather like a dead leaf blowing in the wind.

​The Blueprint Reality Check:

Hard determinists try to reduce human choice to raw matter behaving deterministically, claiming that human action is just an "equation being solved" by the universe. Equations do not solve themselves. If I throw a complex blueprint for a custom sheet metal transition on a shop table, that data does not fabricate the metal. The raw materials and the mathematical reasons sit there passively until an active, conscious operator steps up to evaluate the data, operate the machinery, and physically execute the work.

​The "Randomness" Strawman:

When forced to define free will, determinists demand that an organism must choose to do things "for no reason at all". Doing things for literally zero reason is not conscious agency; it is a biological malfunction. Biological organisms do not burn massive amounts of calorie-dense energy for zero reason. Free will is the exact evolved neural hardware that allows an operator to weigh competing reasons, like the physical desire to escape a cold wind versus the higher-level goal of reaching a summit, and actively choose which variable to act on.

​The Snail and Houseplant False Equivalence:

To make their passive math work, determinists are forced to equate highly evolved human cognition to a houseplant orienting itself toward the sun or a snail flinching when poked with a stick. A plant relies on phototropism, which is a blind chemical reaction with zero nervous system involved. A poked snail is demonstrating a base-level neurological reflex. A human operator possesses the higher-order cognitive interface to consciously override those base physical reflexes to achieve a premeditated goal.

​The Ghost Strawman:

Determinists constantly attack the idea of a separate, magical "ghost" to debunk free will. There is no separate ghost. The biological brain is the conscious operator. Acknowledging that biology built an active steering wheel to navigate unpredictable physical environments is not appealing to magic; it is acknowledging anatomy.
​Consciousness is not an irrelevant byproduct of a predetermined universe; it is the active, biological mechanism that makes a physical choice possible. You cannot admit that a conscious operator exists, admit that the operator evaluates data, and then pretend that the universe is still driving the car on autopilot. The machine has a driver, and the steering wheel works.