“If you are going to tell me what you predict I will do, then your prediction must take into account the effect on me of knowing your prediction, because otherwise it will probably be wrong. Of course it can happen, in a specific kind of case, that knowing the sort of thing I am usually determined to do diminishes my freedom. If I see that I often give in to temptation, I might become discouraged, and fight against it even less hard. But there is no reason to think that this kind of discouragement would be the general result of understanding ourselves better. Or if there is, it must come from some pessimistic philosophy of human nature, not from the Scientific World View. If predictions can warn us when our self-control is about to fail, then they are far more likely to increase that self-control than to diminish it. Determinism is no threat to freedom.”
– Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity
Originally appeared on Philosophy Bits Read More
