Wittgenstein and determinism

It was at least ten years that I didn't read anything by Wittgenstein. A casual reading of an abstract on determinism, made me recall the power of stimulating radical thoughts of this great thinker. What contrast to today's poor talk, like Searle's or Putnam's.

He describes the contrast between the belief in free will and finding the biological causes that caused the body of an assassin to strike. You can state this as the problem of prediction and choice: if what's going to happen is totally determined, it wil be hard to believe that there is a choice. Given the body state, he could not but strike. A totally deterministic view of physical events is practically unfeasible, as it is now well known. But this is not an answer to the incompatibility of free will and a deterministic model at a macro level.

To me it's just funny to believe that human dehaviour is phisically or biologically determined; it is a way of putting the cart (our theories) before the horse (our minds). I would start by treating the deterministic/macro scientific view as the best available approximation, actually the only honestly believable approximation, in the context of a phenomenologically betrayed life; my time and mental energy are so far for these problems, but at times I wish I could start thinking seriously about this.

The abstract is from "Wittgenstein's Lectures on Freedom of the Will".

(I rather put Klimt' painting of Ludvig' sister than his photos for clear aesthetical reasons.)