Can we blame someone for making irrational choices during emotionally intense situations? Suppose that John was deeply in love with Joyce while Joyce is really using John for his money. It's obvious to all of John's friends, he is being used but he won't listen to reason. Is John to blame or is it his biological makeup to blame (or his environment) ? One can say that there are plenty of people who are able to snap out of these types of situation so why can't John, but I don't think it's that simple.

I've been reading some philosophy stuff and I noticed that philosophers sometimes make a difference between "causing" and "bringing about". But I really can't understand what that difference is. My English dictionary says those verbs are synonyms. Could you help me?

Asked "do you believe in the faith you follow through choice?" I would expect most respondents would answer "yes", yet this is clearly not the case and is largely true only for people who have converted from one faith to another. A child growing up in Belfast with Protestant parents, Protestant grand-parents and Protestant great-grand-parents is going to be Protestant. A child growing up in Italy is 90% certain to be Catholic, a child born and raised in N.E. Thailand is 97% certain to be Buddhist etc etc. Where does the choice come in? Surely for anyone who doesn't question belief in God, the God they follow is down not to choice but to geography - does this not make a mockery of belief?

It seems to me that people are strangely concerned that determinism means that they don't have free will. Could you explain why this view is common? Even if a decision is a result how the universe was before they made someone makes their decision, part of the universe was them. So if they are the person who wanted to make the decision, how can they believe that they didn't have a choice. They did have a choice, they just made the one they wanted, because they didn't want the other choice. In short, why is determinism seen as so incompatible with free will?

Can determinism be proven by reason alone? Or was it only discovered empirically?

"And whoever forces himself to love anybody begets a murderer in his own body." (D.H. Lawrence, 'Retort to Jesus'). Self-help books advise that we can fall in love with whom we chose, that we can choose to love, to re-ignite love, etc. What is your opinion?

If I had a device that could manipulate people's wants (like make them want to give me free money for no reason) would that take away their free will?

I am a very skilled amateur magician. As such I believe I hold a slightly better understanding about perception, deception, belief, conviction, and the human thought process than the average man on the street. One aspect about humanity that continually amazes me is the sheer predictability of actions and the dearth of variation when it comes to responding to a given situation. Case in point: In the middle of presenting a card trick where a chosen playing card continually goes to MY pocket under increasingly strenuous conditions I make the off-handed comment "One time I did this trick and I applied a little too much pressure and the card invisibly shot out and ended up in some other guy's pocket...". 9 times out of 10 after I am done with the initial sequences the spectator I am engaging will challenge me to make the card go to HIS pocket. Needless to say I have already secreted the card to his pocket using technical machinations much, much earlier. To the spectator the challenge was a random one; to me it...

There are fairly obvious reasons that preventing someone from achieving their desires is immoral. But is it also immoral to influence just what those desires are (e.g., through advertising)? Do we have rights, not only to pursue our goals, but to have goals which are autonomous (so to speak) from external influences?

I do not believe that true freedom can actually exist within any society that is governed by any form of laws or rules. To me, freedom is to be completely without restraint of any kind, be it legal, social, theological, or whatever. As long as there exists any sort of list of things that are not to be done, said, or thought, and these rules are actively upheld by empowered individuals and/or groups, I do not think that anyone within such a society is truly free. I would like to know if anyone agrees or disagrees and why.