Are We Really Free? The Truth About Meat Buns and Oedipus

'Are we really free?' Many people think so. We choose our own thoughts and actions, like when you can swipe away a video at any time. This morning, I chose to wear a shirt and eat a 'meat bun'. These choices are all free, right? But we all know that everything has a cause and effect. Everything happening now is a result of the past. You probably believe that our behavior is free, but also believe that the world is determined by causality.

Let's go back to breakfast. I had two 'meat buns' and a glass of soy milk. Liberalism believes that these choices are not a result of anything, but just my thoughts. But determinism believes that these thoughts have deep reasons that made me choose 'meat buns' and soy milk instead of oily dough sticks or dry noodles. In this way, our so-called free choices are just the inevitable result of a series of mental events. Determinists believe that free will is just an illusion. As the French philosopher Paul-Henri Thiry said in the 18th century, everything that happens now is the result of a continuous chain of events, and human beings and their behavior are part of the physical world, constrained by physical laws. You think your mind can make free decisions, but your mind equals your brain, which belongs to the biological category, and biological status is actually a physical status. Today's physical world belongs to determinism, and there is no room for free will in this picture. We are all just cogs in the machine, doing what we are destined to do. Oedipus had to kill his father and marry his mother, I had to eat 'meat buns' and soy milk, and as for you, you had to finish watching my video. It's one of those things that you just have to do.