2015-12-17 at 3:58 PM UTC
Say you woke up 5 or 10 years in the past; your consciousness right now back in your past self's body. Now say all of your memory of everything that happened since then was erased.... You would end up doing exactly the same things as before right?
2015-12-17 at 5:46 PM UTC
-SpectraL
coward
[the spuriously bluish-lilac bushman]
Not necessarily, because everyone else wouldn't be doing the same things as before.
2015-12-18 at 10:09 AM UTC
It's just a question of if executive function is preserved in the "rewind". Like there are a lot of things that go into our decision making that don't involve memories (genetic predisposition for things like addiction of example) so just erasing a person's memories likely would produce different actions than previously. But if we just assume you revert to a previous total mental state then sure, I'd argue it would be logically contradictory to make a different set of decisions. But even the alternative, the idea that identical initial conditions can produce different terminal states, doesn't permit the thing we generally think of when we talk about free will.
2015-12-20 at 2:42 AM UTC
-SpectraL
coward
[the spuriously bluish-lilac bushman]
Thing is, most actions a person takes are based solely on instinct and guesswork. A person may be identical to their former self in every respect, have the exact same environment, and be at the exact same place at the exact same time, but may still make a different decision, therefore a different outcome.
