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Free will?
- Thread starter Skeptisch
- Start date
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
A persistent illusion.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Perhaps because you're looking for "anyone".
Thief
Rogue Theologian
No really...
Life has requirements and to make acquisition, I yield to a timeclock.
I also yield to friends and family.
Eventually I will yield to death.
Then to God.
Sounds like I don't have much opportunity for freewill.
But I do.
Even as I type this post I am making arrangements to quit this job and move on to another.
Because I want to.
Life has requirements and to make acquisition, I yield to a timeclock.
I also yield to friends and family.
Eventually I will yield to death.
Then to God.
Sounds like I don't have much opportunity for freewill.
But I do.
Even as I type this post I am making arrangements to quit this job and move on to another.
Because I want to.
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Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."
Skwim
Veteran Member
None that I can help having.
Octavia156
OTO/EGC
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Oh ho ho. Do tell me how the logical impossibility of "free will" is somehow alleviated through discipline. I'm dying to know.
Secret Chief
Degrow!
According to good old Wikipedia>
'Free will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints.'
The four basic positions are - Hard determinism, Hard indeterminism, Compatibilism amd Libertarianism; dependent upon the acceptance or not, of determinism.
'Free will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints.'
The four basic positions are - Hard determinism, Hard indeterminism, Compatibilism amd Libertarianism; dependent upon the acceptance or not, of determinism.
Octavia156
OTO/EGC
well, to put your hand up and say - its not my fault - it was inevitable and pre-determined assumes the idea one has no control over one's thoughts and actions.
Determinism suggested that certain things are 100% inevitable.... but we live in a world of choatic possibilities- so to argue that everything must be 100% inevitable is logically impossible - it can only be said to be highly probable.
Discipline allows us to manifest the less probable.
for example - according to my prior decisions, predelictios, upbringing, position and lifestyle it would be highly improbable for me to join the army.
However it is possible and therefore if i choose that path I'd have to apply great abouts of discipline to manifest something so unlikely.... i have free will - so I do anything i choose, no matter how unlikely or improbable, therefore nothing is determined, until I chose it to be so.
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Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Even a chaotic hand can't draw itself, nor can a chaotic man pull himself up by his bootstraps. The chaos of the universe doesn't allow you to ignore the fact that your actions, feelings, thoughts, etc were dictated by fuzzy particles.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
then you would have done so for a reason, and since the reason is inevitable, so is your joining the army.
Reality is chaotic only at the quantum level, far too insignificant to influent most macroscopic decisions. Other than those, you cannot be faulted, or credited, because "you" are merely a nice abstraction we built out of physics and biochemistry because it makes life easier.
With the quantum, truly random decisions on the other hand, you are still not responsible, because it's not possible for you to influence it in any way.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Thief
Rogue Theologian
You offer 'fuzzy particles' as rebuttal?...really?
Can you name the fuzzy particle that will twist your arm
and force you to respond to this post?
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
Do I need to explain how abstraction works?
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
That's the thing. They don't "twist your arm". They are your arm, and your brain, and your senses, and your perception, and your will. They don't have to twist anything. They are in full control, to the extent that anything probabilistic can be said to control.
Apart from the fact that "chaos theory" began and continues to be dominated by research of the macroscopic world, the assertion that quantum mechanics has little to do with neural activity is an increasingly contentious one. For example, the peer-reviewed journal Physics of Life Review has a series of papers (most of them comments on a single review) currently in press on this issue. The journal Nature published Koch & Hepp's "Quantum mechanics in the brain" back in 2006. The amount of debate and research on the issue has only increased in the 21st century. In addition to the creation of a peer-reviewed journal pretty much devoted to the issue (and, as far as I know, largely ignored within the neuroscience and cognitive neuropsychology community) NeuroQuantology, various academic (i.e., edited and reviewed) volumes in various monograph series have been published along side the increasing number of journal articles. For example, Springer's The Frontiers Collection series has published a number of monographs and volumes supporting the idea that quantum mechanics is essential for consciousness, such as The Emerging Physics of Consciousness edited by Tuszynski (2006), Mind Matter & Quantum Mechanics by Stapp as well as his Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer, and finally works on related issues concerning interpretations and models of modern physics (e.g, the edited volume Probability in Physics or Jaeger's Entanglement, Information, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics).
Ruling out the necessity of QM to explain the "mind" is more than a little premature at this point.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
I'm not buying it.
As if my choice of dinner had anything to do with it.
As if leaving a tip was decided for cause other than social grace.
I suppose you would have me believe my faith in God is caused by chemistry?
Then what's wrong with YOUR chemistry?
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
Difference strokes for different folks. My chemistry, personal experiences, and atomic particles have led me to not believe in gods. Given your same genetics and experiences, I would (fuzzyness be damned) believe in gods as well.