[QUOTE='[Green];33689121']Do we live in a world without hypothetical questions?
There you go.[/QUOTE]
Thank you for this utterly irrelevant post
i'm going to ignore the extreme pseudo intellectualism in this thread and just chip in my two cents
it makes no sense to me that an action I take now determines an action I'll take at an arbitrary point in the future and that's just the way it is. I understand the [I]concept[/I] being discussed - that no matter what action I take, I do it because the context of the situation that has developed dictates no other "right" path for me to take, so I'll only do that - but I think it's ignorant to believe that since there's no way of observing it let alone falsifying it. that isn't to say that free will is different in that respect, but I know I have the right to choose from moment to moment, which in [I]my[/I] opinion counts for more than this blather about physics dictating biochemistry and biochemistry dictating our mind therefore the laws of nature dictates our intelligence and consciousness. Basically, I can only take seriously what I experience.
[QUOTE=Kalibos;33692125]but I think it's ignorant to believe that since there's no way of observing it let alone falsifying it.[/QUOTE]
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to try to claim that it's irrational not to believe in free will by rejecting a basic assumption of the sciences: that everything has a material cause
[QUOTE=Kalibos;33692125]i'm going to ignore the extreme pseudo intellectualism in this thread and just chip in my two cents
it makes no sense to me that an action I take now determines an action I'll take at an arbitrary point in the future and that's just the way it is. I understand the [I]concept[/I] being discussed - that no matter what action I take, I do it because the context of the situation that has developed dictates no other "right" path for me to take, so I'll only do that - but I think it's ignorant to believe that since there's no way of observing it let alone falsifying it. that isn't to say that free will is different in that respect, but I know I have the right to choose from moment to moment, which in [I]my[/I] opinion counts for more than this blather about physics dictating biochemistry and biochemistry dictating our mind therefore the laws of nature dictates our intelligence and consciousness. Basically, I can only take seriously what I experience.[/QUOTE]
But having the right to chose isn't the same as being able to chose.
We always have choices, but there is only one choice we will take, and it is pre-determined by the past combined with the present.
[QUOTE=dgg;33692678]We always have choices, but there is only one choice we will take, and it is pre-determined by the past combined with the present.[/QUOTE]
When people are repeatedly given a handful of choices and still happen to choose the same option time and time again, they do it not because they lack free will, but because there's rarely any reason for them to pick a different choice. Life is short, and usually there's only a few ways to achieve the optimal level of happiness that a person perceives they can attain, so naturally the range of choices a person will make throughout their life will seem rather small and rigid. But do not mistake that for lack of free will.
[QUOTE=God's Pimp Hand;33693371]When people are repeatedly given a handful of choices and still happen to choose the same option time and time again, they do it not because they lack free will, but because there's rarely any reason for them to pick a different choice. Life is short, and usually there's only a few ways to achieve the optimal level of happiness that a person perceives they can attain, so naturally the range of choices a person will make throughout their life will seem rather small and rigid. But do not mistake that for lack of free will.[/QUOTE]
You're missing the point. Regardless of the "choice" the that was made, it was the only possible outcome. It's like flipping a coin. While it's in the air, you think that coin flip could come out either way. But it couldn't. From the moment it went up into the air, the conditions of the universe and the way it was flipped dictated exactly what the outcome of that coin toss would be. Even before it was flipped, other factors determined how it would be flipped. It's the same way with the human mind. It may be sensitive and difficult to predict, but it still obeys physical laws.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;33693710]You're missing the point. Regardless of the "choice" the that was made, it was the only possible outcome. It's like flipping a coin. While it's in the air, you think that coin flip could come out either way. But it couldn't. From the moment it went up into the air, the conditions of the universe and the way it was flipped dictated exactly what the outcome of that coin toss would be. Even before it was flipped, other factors determined how it would be flipped. It's the same way with the human mind. It may be sensitive and difficult to predict, but it still obeys physical laws.[/QUOTE]
This this this this this this this this and this.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;33693710]You're missing the point. Regardless of the "choice" the that was made, it was the only possible outcome. It's like flipping a coin. While it's in the air, you think that coin flip could come out either way. But it couldn't. From the moment it went up into the air, the conditions of the universe and the way it was flipped dictated exactly what the outcome of that coin toss would be. Even before it was flipped, other factors determined how it would be flipped. It's the same way with the human mind. It may be sensitive and difficult to predict, but it still obeys physical laws.[/QUOTE]
A coin flip versus a brain..
Yeah I get what you're saying, but in our brains the laws of physics and chemistry go a little further than just the energy you transfer to the coin resting on the tip of your fingers.
Anyway, couldn't you say that the material, our shit in our bodies, is actually the cause for this almost like the "free will" that we have? Like a characteristic of our highly evolved body? Which obviously obeys natural laws.. hell, basically it's built ON the physical laws of our world like every other animal, and so.. welp.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;33694374]A coin flip versus a brain..
Yeah I get what you're saying, but in our brains the laws of physics and chemistry go a little deeper than just the energy you transfer to the coin resting on the tip of your fingers.[/QUOTE]
No, not really. Same physical laws, just a more complex system.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;33694374]Anyway, couldn't you say that the material, our shit in our bodies, is actually the cause for this almost like the "free will" that we have? Like a characteristic of our highly evolved body? Which obviously obeys natural laws.. hell, basically it's built ON the physical laws of our world like every other animal, and so.. welp.
Now that I think of it, maybe animals have the exact same kinda free will that we do. It's just that we understand more, some things that animals wouldn't even need to understand let alone us?[/QUOTE]
Pretty much. Our minds are more complex and subtle than any other animal on earth as far as we know, so the things that affect the way we think manifest as more complicated and sensitive actions on our part.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;33693710]You're missing the point. Regardless of the "choice" the that was made, it was the only possible outcome. It's like flipping a coin. While it's in the air, you think that coin flip could come out either way. But it couldn't. From the moment it went up into the air, the conditions of the universe and the way it was flipped dictated exactly what the outcome of that coin toss would be. Even before it was flipped, other factors determined how it would be flipped. It's the same way with the human mind. It may be sensitive and difficult to predict, but it still obeys physical laws.[/QUOTE]
To a limited degree, free will does exist. It depends on the situation. Right now I partially have free will as evidenced by the fact that I can move my body at whim. If I were to be electrocuted however, then sure, I would convulse involuntarily and my mind would be unable to process information, effectively resulting in a lack of control and therefore free will. But while our minds do have to adhere to physical law, to say that our thoughts and actions are [I]completely[/I] out of control and always have been is just plain wrong.
[QUOTE=God's Pimp Hand;33694693]To a limited degree, free will does exist. It depends on the situation. Right now I partially have free will as evidenced by the fact that I can move my body at whim. If I were to be electrocuted however, then sure, I would convulse involuntarily and my mind would be unable to process information, effectively resulting in a lack of control and therefore free will. But while our minds do have to adhere to physical law, to say that our thoughts and actions are [I]completely[/I] out of control and always have been is just plain wrong.[/QUOTE]
Uh... Being able to move your body is not a proof of free will.
The reason you move your body is what determins if you have free will or not.
[QUOTE=God's Pimp Hand;33694693]To a limited degree, free will does exist. It depends on the situation. Right now I partially have free will as evidenced by the fact that I can move my body at whim. If I were to be electrocuted however, then sure, I would convulse involuntarily and my mind would be unable to process information, effectively resulting in a lack of control and therefore free will. But while our minds do have to adhere to physical law, to say that our thoughts and actions are [I]completely[/I] out of control and always have been is just plain wrong.[/QUOTE]
Why? Why is that wrong? The fact that you FEEL like you influence things independently of nature is not evidence. What reasoning do you have that supports the idea that the mind is fundamentally non-physical?
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;33694736]What reasoning do you have that supports the idea that the mind is fundamentally non-physical?[/QUOTE]
I never said that.
[QUOTE=dgg;33694723]Uh... Being able to move your body is not a proof of free will.[/QUOTE]
[I]"At whim."[/I]
[QUOTE=God's Pimp Hand;33694801]I never said that.[/QUOTE]
It is implied by what you're arguing.
[QUOTE=God's Pimp Hand;33694801][I]"At whim."[/I][/QUOTE]
Yeah, and what is this "at whim" thing you're talking about?
Usually the reason we do things at whim is because we thought about doing it at whim beforehand. Something else caused us to think about doing it on a whim, like reading a discussion about free will which makes me think of shaking my head and twist my arms. That's not very whim-like at all.
[QUOTE=God's Pimp Hand;33694801]
[I]"At whim."[/I][/QUOTE]
That's it. You think it's at whim, but it's not. choice is nothing more than a complex series of chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. It is an illusion.
You don't even need to believe in philosophical materialism (in the last few months, I've awoken to the fact that we are totally unjustified in our belief of materialism) for the arguments against freedom to will whatever you want. Even if we have something of a higher order than physical law underlying our minds, call it a soul, whatever you want, there's still no way of getting from that to willing whatever you want.
Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills)
Don't make the mistake of thinking the argument derives from materialism.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;33621976]That's not affirming the consequent. Affirming the consequent is an argument of the form:
P -> Q
Q
Therefore, P
That would have to be something like:
If something is made of atoms, then its position can be predicted
A human's position can be predicted
Therefore a human is made of atoms
None of those arguments were of that form. Your complaint is one against inductive reasoning.[/QUOTE]
I don't know what I was doing when I wrote that post. What I should have said:
If there is no free will then everything can be predicted
Everything can be predicted
There is no free will
That would be affirming the consequent. But I've run into a bit of an issue because it can also be stated as
If everything can be predicted then there is no free will
Everything can be predicted
There is no free will
And that is modus ponens. Where it is a bit confusing is that free will would necessarily imply the inability to predict everything.
[QUOTE=Contag;33635905]"Lyall Watson is a bit of a nutjob, as evidenced by the following bookcover (reading it causes brain damage and is not recommended)"
- Contag, this post
[img]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iQE5g5YrL._SS500_.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
I do agree with one point though. "If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."
Though I'd change brain for mind.
[QUOTE=Eudoxia;33739131]I do agree with one point though. "If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."
Though I'd change brain for mind.[/QUOTE]
does that mean we will never understand our minds?
[QUOTE=The Kakistocrat;33741521]does that mean we will never understand our minds?[/QUOTE]
That's impossible to assume.
[QUOTE=dgg;33747703]That's impossible to assume.[/QUOTE]
I'm just saying that's what it seems to say.
[QUOTE=The Kakistocrat;33747764]I'm just saying that's what it seems to say.[/QUOTE]
That's what it is saying. And I agree with it, but I couldn't ever nail it down the coffin since we never know what technologies and information the future brings.
Free will is only limited by the interaction between chemicals in our brain. We do have free will but it is pretty hard to define, seeing as we have millions of synapses in our brain and each one of them has thousands of receptors capable of 'memorizing' signals.
But still, I agree everything follows a law of some sort, and everything derives from it, even free will.
Check this mathematician out, he just discovered creation: [url]http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/28-04-2011/117727-Grigori_Perelman-0/[/url]
I can turn left or right. Ultimately the choice is my own, but logic, emotions and other things will factor into the choice in some way.
We call it "free will" because people don't like the thought of being made to do something, they like the option of choice. They like to feel that they've made a choice when the matter has already been decided subconsciously.
For example if you're playing a game you move your units where you want to, but a good number of those movements you don't even think about, they're made subconsciously.
[QUOTE=blah2;33827077]Free will is only limited by the interaction between chemicals in our brain. We do have free will but it is pretty hard to define, seeing as we have millions of synapses in our brain and each one of them has thousands of receptors capable of 'memorizing' signals.
But still, I agree everything follows a law of some sort, and everything derives from it, even free will.
Check this mathematician out, he just discovered creation: [url]http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/28-04-2011/117727-Grigori_Perelman-0/[/url][/QUOTE]
free will is not limited by the reactions, it is "created" by the reactions.
[editline]21st December 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=ViralHatred;33827114]I can turn left or right. Ultimately the choice is my own, but logic, emotions and other things will factor into the choice in some way.
We call it "free will" because people don't like the thought of being made to do something, they like the option of choice. They like to feel that they've made a choice when the matter has already been decided subconsciously.
For example if you're playing a game you move your units where you want to, but a good number of those movements you don't even think about, they're made subconsciously.[/QUOTE]
it's not even subconscious. Even our conscious decisions are decided by chemical reactions, not ourselves. It's only because of the complexity of the reaction that leads us to believe it is free will.
[QUOTE=blah2;33827077]Free will is only limited by the interaction between chemicals in our brain. We do have free will but it is pretty hard to define, seeing as we have millions of synapses in our brain and each one of them has thousands of receptors capable of 'memorizing' signals.
But still, I agree everything follows a law of some sort, and everything derives from it, even free will.
Check this mathematician out, he just discovered creation: [url]http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/28-04-2011/117727-Grigori_Perelman-0/[/url][/QUOTE]
What a wonderfully well-written article
[quote]Special services need to know whether Perelman and his knowledge may pose a threat to humanity. With his knowledge he can fold the Universe into a spot and then unfold it again. Will mankind survive after this fantastic process? Do we need to control the Universe at all?[/quote]
Grigori Perelman: Fields medal winner, secret Bond villain.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;33830616]What a wonderfully well-written article
Grigori Perelman: Fields medal winner, secret Bond villain.[/QUOTE]
what exactly did he discover? All I understood was that he can measure the Universe or something.
I seriously don't understand why do you all discuss about something like free will if you believe that human mind is just "a bunch of chemical reactions". A discussion like this will boil to describing if the future phenomena in our universe is physically predictable or not, and that has nothing to do with free will.
IMHO if we attempt to describe ourselves and our lives by a conception we use to describe phenomena in our universe (in this case physics) we'll just fail. We'll fail because physics is a human effort to understand relationships between observable and measurable phenomena; if you try to determine something by physics then you will transform that thing into something that can be measurable.
But some things in our lives (like emotions or free will) can't be measured or observed by a third-person observer, and you can't make science out of them. When we try to transform them into something measurable we just look for something measurable related to them, but that 'looking' makes the concept vanish and be replaced by 'what it relates to'.
For example, when you try to answer the question about free will you say something like
"[...] It's the same way with the human mind. It may be sensitive and difficult to predict, but it still obeys physical laws."
In this view, the poster identified the human mind with the brain (although he didn't say it explicitly). Of course, you can say that the human mind is *caused by* the chemical interactions in our brain and that it's affected by them, but saying that is something totally different than saying that the human mind *is* the chemical reactions in our brains. Mind and subjective experiences are not just some physical phenomena occurring in our brain, nor they can be studied that way.
Actually, physical phenomena tell you little more than nothing of what a subjective experience is. When we study thing like free will or some other concept derived from the subjective experience we have no choice (excuse de pun) but to study them in subjective experiences.
Free will is something that just presents to a conscious observer: right now, as a conscious observer, I am presented with a series of things I could do, I could choose from. The fact that I was motivated by what I previously saw or thought doesn't mean that I didn't chose. In fact, a choice is always motivated by something, but that doesn't mean it's no a choice.
I am of the opinion that on a physical level, of course everything we do is predetermined; if things were played out again in the exact same way with the EXACT same rules, then yes, by definition the result would be exactly the same. That said, once we move away from the basic level, the concept of "free will" does exist. Yes, the physical composition of our brain is what is causing us to make certain decisions, but since that combination of nerves and electricity is our mind, then technically it IS our mind making the decision, even if it is making that decision because of the reactions happening within; those reactions are "thoughts." We think, we make a decision, we act; predetermined? Yes. Voluntary? Also yes. Those are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts.
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