Hence, even if by logic our lives are determined by causality, we appear to be free.

Right, but to be true to ourselves, we have to put this sentence on the spot. What I mean is, we must realize that when "we appear to be free", it is a false appearance, or at the very least does not reflect the truth. The objective truth must be distinguished from subjective appearances.

The contextual difference between noumena and phenomena seems to be used in this instance to obscure what is actually true, as a buffer for the discomfort of accepting the fact that we are not truly free. I respect that. I'd refer to Dennet again on this matter. I recently read a book of his entitled "Elbow Room; the varieties of free will worth wanting". It starts out accepting that we are in all likelihood not free as most people think we are, but then goes on to show that neither are we as robotic as the opposite of the concept suggests.

Our oldest genes have been carried around the galaxy a dozen times by the gravity of the sun. If the sun is like a tree of life, then people are like its leaves.

Wow, this is awesome to think about. It gives me chills.

Interbane wrote: I'd refer to Dennet again on this matter. I recently read a book of his entitled "Elbow Room; the varieties of free will worth wanting". It starts out accepting that we are in all likelihood not free as most people think we are, but then goes on to show that neither are we as robotic as the opposite of the concept suggests.

Another interesting discussion you two are having. It seems to me that all most of us want is the acknowledgement of some degree of freedom, not an assurance that we are not formed and influenced by forces beyond our control. We very clearly are products in a number of ways, and would we really want to have it any differently? When Robert used the term radical freedom, I don't think he meant to imply that this freedom is total or even very extensive, just that our human roots give us an ability to act and think in ways that could not ever be deduced from physical conditions that we know of. Supposedly, a goal of physics has been to reduce all actions, from the movements of history to a couple holding hands walking down the beach, to particles in motion. If we just knew enough about the behavior of these particles, if all their motions could be plotted, we could then see how all things are explainable by natural law and can be predicted. We'd have the theory of everything. But I hear that even the physicists now have come to doubt that a complete physical explanation of the universe is possible. Stuart Kauffman talks about all this his books on complexity theory.