Life itself is a paradox

No worries Pro, I’m just glad you’re not forfeiting PRO The choices you make are determined by the choices you've made in the past, that is a general fact of life. But what about the choices you've made before you made any other choices? These are the choices that have been determined by your parents, your surroundings, your environment. CON I would go as far as “choices we make are influence by past decisions”, or rather the effects of past decisions. For example, I like ordering the club sandwich at McAlister’s because every time I get it I enjoy it. Sometimes I order something else, but when I am wanting to make a “safe” choice, I go for the club. I would definitely disagree that my decision is only based on my past choices and is much more complicated. Things that I know would affect my decision would include, temperature, time of day, my mood, what I feel like spending, what I had for lunch yesterday, what the person in front of me orders and if I smell something good, I might just change my mind. As far as the choices we make before we make a choices. I’m not sure it is even possible for one to make a decision for another. If it were, I would chose for my 5 week old daughter to sleep longer and only to cry when hungry. Choosing where to live and similar things are the parent’s choices to make, not the child’s. When my parents chose to move from my home city to another, this was a choice that they made not me. Ie. I was not old enough to make a decisions one way or the other. If I was older I could have chosen to run away, hopefully I would have realized that would be a poor decision in the long run. PRO But what if we took you out of your environment, into new surroundings, without your parents to help determine the choices for you to make? Is there anything? What about the altruism gene? The altruism gene is the theory that states that if any ancestor of yours did a selfless act that your are more likely to do something selfless as well, even if you never knew them. So, are any choices really yours, rather than choices you were genetically coded with? Con If one is removed from our environment and placed into a new one, I see no reason that our decision making process would change. Below is a general process from making decisions. (1) Gather information Identify the alternatives Weigh the evidence Choose from alternatives Take action Review the decision I don’t think that people are saying that genes make decisions for you, rather there may be a genetic disposition for behavior. Ie. Person x has genetic makeup that predisposes them to the flavor of bananas. This gene is not making any decisions for you, it is just a factor in the decision making process. You can choose to not get that banana split. http://www.umassd.edu... Pro It is to my understanding that the majority of the choices you will ever make as a person are based on how you were raised (as I had said before), which even though it is you making said choices, it is your guardians' influence that determine how you make the choice. And this trend goes back generation after generation: Your parents had their choices influenced by your grandparents; your grandparents with their parents, and so on. Despite your individuality as a person, you will still be a product of choice as your ancestors before you. Con I disagree with your understanding of how choices are made. It is my opinion that decision making is much more complicated than ones past choices and the choices of ones parents. To drive home the point, if my parents could choose just one thing for me, they would choose for me to be a practicing Catholic. I when to a Catholic school, grew up in a very Catholic home/environment and I even only had Catholic friends as a child. If parents can make decisions for their children, why am I, in their works, a little confused about my faith? I’ll agree that our environment and past experiences shape us and play a huge factor in our decision making process. But I contend that decision making is more complicated than simply being a product of our past decisions, parental choices and environment. Side note I have not seen an example of a fallacy or paradox in Pro arguments.