Abstract
The self has other properties besides purely being able to experience things as described in Chapters IV and V. It can also do things. And so we are confronted with the problem of free-will. We can argue : do we have free-will, or are all our decisions the manifestations of something that is in-born, plus all our training or conditioning? If a statement is made : “I do not have free-will,” two inferences can be made : this statement could be a result of a conditioning, the subject being well-trained to repeat it like a parrot, which makes it devoid of significance ; or the subject may claim that he has free-will just to make this statement, which is an arbitrary and self-stultifying statement.
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© 1970 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Eccles, J.C. (1970). Man, Freedom and Creativity. In: Facing Reality. Heidelberg Science Library. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3997-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3997-8_8
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