Mind's Eye Re: Freewill - A useful myth?

Does human myth justify behavior, or does the premise justify your
view above?

On Jan 5, 4:33 pm, malcymo <malc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Humanity has always, for some reason, felt the need to support his
> world view with a series of myths commonly termed beliefs in order to,
> in some way, justify its behaviour. We must not, however, believe that
> these myths are always spiritual or mystical in nature. Many are not.
>
> The legitimacy of a myth depends on many features. Umberto Eco in his
> excellent tome 'Foucault's Pendulum' quietly draws our attention to
> the requirements needed for the creation of a robust myth and there is
> no doubt that within most religious and philosophical beliefs the
> required elements are found.
>
> Secular myths, however, are somewhat harder to pin down. This may be
> because they are founded little more than intuition. They are
> therefore difficult to identify as myths in the first place. Also,
> such myths can often serve a very useful purpose.
>
> Let us take as an example the idea of freewill. The idea is so
> embedded in our psych that most of us believe it to be a reality. Even
> so, an in depth study soon reveals the fragility of the idea. So
> fragile is it that philosophers have argued over the question of
> determinism v free will for generations; time which could have been
> more usefully employed on other ventures. Indeed some eminent
> philosophers believe that free will and determinism can sit
> legitimately together – the so called Such is the nature of a myth.
>
> We can only suppose that such an idea must appear rational to us in
> order to give it legitimacy. After all, our ideas of virtuous
> behaviour, responsibility and justice are founded on the idea of free
> will; that we are responsible for our actions and must accept our
> responsibilities. Yet, there is no doubt that free will defies the
> tenets embodied in modern physics, the idea of cause and effect. It
> seems to be extremely difficult for us to accept that some things just
> are.
>
> I am interested in this dilemma because if we eventually discover, if
> we have not already, that determinism is beyond dispute how should we
> react? How could we possibly recreate our society to live with such a
> 'truth'?