The free will/determinism-debate, according to Nick Land


"If you're trying to choose between free will and determinism you're so mired in metaphysical confusion that it is, frankly, comical. No-one is going to win in a free will/determinism debate, because the two concepts are mutually complicit and mutually confused, and they're both symptoms of a pre-critical understanding of time. […] Because what's at stake here, ultimately, is extremely traditional within modernity, it's just Kantian. Which is to say: Time can not be conceived of as an object in time. If you're trying to put time in time, then you're engaged in a hopeless metaphysical undertaking. The time of the future doesn't come from the time of the past… The future does not come out of the past; that is the mechanical, common-sensical error which is so tempting for everyone to make. The past, the present and the future, that structure of time comes out of time; it is transcendental. It doesn't come out of any particular part of time… […] Now once you stop thinking about that [common-sensical, linear view] as in any way a meaningful way of thinking about things, then what are you saying about these free will and determinism arguments? Because both of them actually then look very much like the same thing, don't they? If you're a determinist you think that the present has come out of the past and if you're attached to free will, you think that the future will come out of the present; I mean, it's the same mistake; it's not that they're really opposed in any important way…"

- Nick Land, responding to questions about the free will/determinism-debate in the Hermitix podcast

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