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Do we have free will?
- Thread starter capthowdy
- Start date
justa_gurl
Member
so then if it is theoretically impossible for anyone except that particular individual to make that choice, is it safe to say it is in fact a personal choice? that is dependant upon the a combination of psychological, emotional, genetic, and other external influences specific to that particular individual?Tawn said:
justa_gurl
Member
but it is a personal effort to determine, based on individual specifics unique to you?Tawn said:
is every response than an 'automated' one then, even when there are several seemingly correct or equivalent responses?
I suppose you could say so.justa_gurl said:
There are no equivalent responses. You may agonise between two choices for a long time - but some small thing will make you choose one over the other, in fact the human mind is capable of making decisions on the smallest of things.. a die roll a flip of the coin. If two responses were truly equivalent you wouldnt be able to choose - except this cannot happen.
Yes, but for them all to be the same we'd have to be the same person in the same time and space.
Malus 12:9
Temporarily Deactive.
Carderro has said the most sensible thing in this thread so far...
Yes, however a clone cannot occupy the same space as you. Youd react pretty similar for a while.. but small situational differences would change you both.michel said:Is he, though? I would have thought (going by Tawn's argument) that a clone would be 'more than' an identical twin.
Have you watched a Sci-Fi series called Farscape?
In that theres an alien who makes exact copies of people (and then consumes them).. but the main character and his copy both survive. Its quite interesting because shortly after being 'separated' they play scissors, paper, stone against each other and keep getting the same results.
However later in the series they end up getting separated and because of the different events and experiences they both have they each become slightly different from each other..
Its a fairly good portrayal of what im talking about..
NothingIsNot
Member
What makes you the person you are is the choices you make (IMO). So are you always the same person, or do you change in time?
capthowdy
Astarot
Ok I've been away a couple of days, I've read the entire thread and I have a question for Tawn. It's obvious you don't believe in free will, but do you believe in choice? To me they are one in the same, what you are saying is life is pretty much a big game of go where all the moves are predetermined yet haven't been made yet. Even if that is so the order in which the moves come is different each time, random. I believe you make decisions based on choices, even though the choices may sometimes be limited, however you still choose. Example: say you're in a bar and someone upsets you....the obvious choices (or simplest) would be walk away, or react violently. Yes the person upsetting you is the catylist for this decision, but the choices are still yours to make, that to me is free will in it's most simple state.
Fluffy
A fool
Capthowdy, do you believe there is any difference between choice and any other sort of probability such as flipping a coin other than the bodies involved? If so, do you have any kind of justification for such a belief and therefore a justification for differentiating such a thing from other forms of probability.
In my own beliefs, choice and probability are one and the same. We choose to eat lunch just as much as a coin chooses to land heads up. We are ingrained with a incorrect assumption, however, that makes us think that the former is somehow more free or independent than the latter simply because of our personal, natural biases towards ourselves. Of course the majority of humanity wants to believe we have some sort of special mystical ability to "choose" where no other body or thing can because we wish to make ourselves more powerful than anything else and this has been in society so long, it is difficult to get out of this set way of thinking.
The problem when taking a hypothetical situation, such as the one that you bring up, is that it fails to take into account all of the millions of causes that result in your decision. For example, what you had for breakfast that morning or a similar fight you got into last week might temper your response. If you don't look at EVERY single cause then you will always get a small margin which is unexplained and allows you to put this down to choice when in fact it comes down to our inability to calculate all the possible causes for a given act.
In my own beliefs, choice and probability are one and the same. We choose to eat lunch just as much as a coin chooses to land heads up. We are ingrained with a incorrect assumption, however, that makes us think that the former is somehow more free or independent than the latter simply because of our personal, natural biases towards ourselves. Of course the majority of humanity wants to believe we have some sort of special mystical ability to "choose" where no other body or thing can because we wish to make ourselves more powerful than anything else and this has been in society so long, it is difficult to get out of this set way of thinking.
The problem when taking a hypothetical situation, such as the one that you bring up, is that it fails to take into account all of the millions of causes that result in your decision. For example, what you had for breakfast that morning or a similar fight you got into last week might temper your response. If you don't look at EVERY single cause then you will always get a small margin which is unexplained and allows you to put this down to choice when in fact it comes down to our inability to calculate all the possible causes for a given act.
capthowdy
Astarot
You're talking microcosm and macrocosm, some people believe if they can see it for what it truly is they can control it. But that is besides the point here, you said you choose to eat lunch like a coin chooses to land heads up. The coin is an inanimate object without the ability the evaluate and rationalise. With the coin it's all random whether it lands on heads or tails, the coin dosen't decide which to do. Unlike you, when you choose to eat lunch you also choose to what you eat for lunch. How you can compare yourself to a coin spinning on a table, I do not understand.
Fluffy
A fool
Firstly I would like to say that, similarly, I cannot comprehend how people cannot see the similarites between themselves and any other body when it comes down to matters of choice and probability. I would suggest that me and you come from very different mind sets which is perhaps why we cannot find any common ground so I will go over the essential parts of my belief in the hope of better communication.
If we assume that every action has a set of causes and any action if any event whilst any cause is merely the action of another set of causes, then we are effectively saying that, given a complete knowledge of a set of causes, we can predict an action before it happens with 100% certainty.
However, given our current intelligence and technology, it is not possible to analyse a complete set of causes so we come up with words such as probability to help us explain the chance of something happening. Now a coin is generally said to have a 50/50 chance of landing either side up. However, if we knew the set of causes and found out that given this set of causes the coin would land heads up, then we can safely say, with 100% accuracy, that the coin will land heads up, rendering probability effectively meaningless.
To believe in probability is to believe that under 2 indentical sets of causes, it would be possible for the same coin to land on opposing sides which is completely illogical. Therefore there is no such thing as chance or probability beyond that of a tool to express our lack of ability to know a complete set of causes.
Similar to a coin flip, a human "choice" has a set of causes. However, how can it be a choice if I can predict what you will do before you do it? How can it be a choice if there is 100% certainty of your action before your brain has even encountered or analysed the problem and decided on the course of action? How can it be a choice if your action was determinable from the beginning of time?
capthowdy
Astarot
Say you could predict a possible outcome of what someone might do, then you tell them this is the choice you'll make this is what you'll do, with that scenario a whole new set of choices come into play, like the choice to defy. As far as cause and effect I know it exsists I learned about in 5th grade science, but when it comes to people it is more complicated other factors come into play, like personal preferences based on choice and the will to do so. Simplicity is good, but to over simplify is to overlook.