I’m afraid I’m not sure how this relates to what I wrote? I didn’t say anything about determinism in the (name removed by moderator)ut. I’m talking about determinism in the decision making process, no more, no less.
By “determinism” do you mean physical determinism, i.e. of brain chemsitry? In such a case our decisions could well be both deterministic AND non-rational!
But, as far as I know, there are different classes of decisions, and not all involve free will. An artistic decision, for example, doesn’t. The artist’s choice is entirely determined by his taste and his desire to produce the best work of art possible to him at the time. Thus, his considerations are purely aesthetic, and his aesthetic taste is what it is, so, no free will.
I submit that your O.P. is a little confusing because you don’t clearly differentiate between the physical process of brain chemistry and the logical process of reasoned thought. While these two processes may indeed work in tandem, they are conceptually different. Determinism in brain chemistry simply means that our brains operate the way they do due to the laws of chemistry, whereas determinism in logical thought would have to mean that our reasoning process held to a certain definite stateable set of rules. Conversely, rationality and non-rationality appear only to address the logical process of reasoning and not the physical process of brain chemistry.
I haven’t seen this idea advanced here too much, maybe it is new to some, but I hold that quantum indeterminacy holds a key to understanding the harmony between physicality and free will. In other words, chemistry itself is not entirely deterministic, and therefore brain chemistry is not entirely deterministic. There are quantum events that can go either way statistically, so there is allowable under current physics, a variation in possible outcomes. This possibility of variation allows our free will, which otherwise would have to be seen as nothing more or less than a subjective illusion.
I believe that our free will decisions, such as they are, are free. That is to say, neither deterministic nor non-rational. They are not deterministic for the reasons elucidated in the previous paragraph. They are not non-rational, because they are made by us with our rational minds. You seem to be confounding rationality with fatalism. Rationality does not guarantee only one possible outcome, as you seem to imply. Rather, rationality simply means that a being with free will weighs the options, and decides, based on considerations, which avenue to take. The process of weighing options is what we call rational thought. Which options are chosen, is a matter of personal choice. And free will decisions, generally, are in the realm of morality, so that the decision is to either do what is right or do what may be more expedient or more attractive for whatever reason. To kill someone is not a non-rational choice, it is only an immoral one. Rational consideration does not guarantee moral action; if it did, every rational creature would automatically be a saint, and we know that isn’t the case.
