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Free Will
- Thread starter Sleeppy
- Start date
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
With people's need to reconcile reason and factual reality with irrational and logically inconsistent notions of deity.
It originates with the thought "I," and takes flight (works) with the thought "I am."
It's dependent only upon the symbol "I."
Freewill is simply doing what you want to do.
Sometime the decisions we make restrict the limits of our freewill like doing something criminal and getting put in jail.
Religions and governments impose laws which try to restrict freewill. Actually they impose either real or imagined consequences which attempt to restrict the limits of your freewill.
mahmoud mrt
Member
Free will is the ability to make a choice, and perform it
But keep in mind that God is the one who allowed you to make this choice and perform it
If you want to get deeper in this topic you can read this:
http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...stence-non-existence-heaven-hell-torture.html
Regards
Mahmoud
In-determinism.
Potentialities as possibilities.
No. IDK, rephrase?
Choice depends on probabilities and if they don't exist then straight to hard determinism. Does human choice depend on these probabilities? Not as far as we can tell but we do know that all matter and energy is dependent on it. Life is the only thing I have seen that even hints to having this wiggle room outside of the micro realm.
Free will does not exist as far as can be seen. It would require genuine randomness. Our genes, experiences, how we were raised, natural brain chemistry, and numerous other factors dictate who we are and what we will do in any situation. My friend used to use the idea of a "god computer" that could track all possible variables in the universe. From the big bang it could calculate all events that would to you creating this thread.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Yup. And without freewill the notion of sin and salvation is meaningless. Hence it exists as an indispensable facet of Christian theology. Not that this makes it true, just why it's so ardently defended. And not defended with any evidence or logic, but more often with fallacious arguments and tactics. I have yet to see an argument for freewill that hasn't eventually devolved into incoherent meanderings around the idea---if the idea itself is ever well spelled out. Personally, the best definition I've come across is that freewill is the ability to have done differently. While expressed in the past tense is not ideal, I believe it serves as a good starting point from which to look at freewill, particularly as it stands in opposition to determinism.
At least hard determinism is falsifiable or even false from what I have seen. Unfortunately that isn't enough to give humans free will. Will in itself seems like as strange concept to begin with, when life ever shows or has will is more about autonomy than anything else. With that, autonomy isn't enough for free agency either. All that said I find it paradoxical since hard determinism is falsifiable. Actions are indeed happening where more than one potentiality is possible.
roger1440
I do stuff
Free will originates in your imagination. There is no such thing.
I think free-will is relative to the observer. From my perspective I have free-will. From the ultimate perspective it is all Brahman's will and we are Brahman.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Depends by what you mean, exactly, by "potentiality is possible." What potentialities and how possible? And, if you're talking about events at the quantum level, how they actually impinge on the super-atomic world (that above the quantum level).
Technically, how possible doesn't matter if all you're talking about is its potential possibility. What matters is that it's potentially possible.
Skwim
Veteran Member
I'd be interested in the nature of the manifestation of these potentialities, which if incorrect would negate them.
Free will is a powerful illusion created by our inability to perceive all the causes of the choices we make.
Tom
Again, you're just insisting it be potential or not. And I agree.
Possible enough to be a verified influence.
A good question, how the atomic world influences the macro world but simply everything macro is made up of these micro influences. So almost as if there is never a time it isnt influencing because micro is part of this world. I would say that more of the influence would come from the higher power aspects of matter and energy.
Skwim
Veteran Member
But the only place where determinism may be moot is at the quantum level, which is below the atomic/molecular level at which we operate.
As Max Erik Tegmark, a Swedish-American cosmologist said.
"The main argument against the quantum mind proposition is that quantum states in the brain would decohere before they reached a spatial or temporal scale, at which they could be useful for neural processing. Michael Price, for example, says that quantum effects rarely or never affect human decisions and that classical physics determines the behaviour of neurons."
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