Today I managed to make my philosophy professor laugh. We were studying David Lewis who argues that freedom and determinism are compatible. For most of the class I felt like I could not wrap my head around his theory. As far as I could understand he was arguing that we have freewill even though we are casually determined because if the laws of physics were different we would be ‘able to do otherwise.’ I assumed I was just not getting something because it all seemed so ridiculous. After class I went up to my professor and told her what my understanding of the theory was. I asked her if I was missing out on anything. Amazingly I wasn’t. I then asked the obvious question: so his definition of freewill is the ability to be determined differently if the laws of physics change? She just laughed and nodded. Talk about a meaningless argument.
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