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OfflineBrainChemicals
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The existence of Free Will is far from certain
    #6804451 - 04/18/07 01:29 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I have been interested in it a long time. I recently began reading the book "The Illusion of the Conscious Will."

Although we feel like we are willing our actions, where does that decision come from? Factors, an amount of variables so huge, make our decisions- there is no "soul" making a decision that is free from millions of different things causing that choice. We are just one huge, HUGE chain of causation. Our thoughts, or decisions, everything was caused by something else.

This of course removes the responsibility from killers, rapists, and so on- which could be bad- but it really technically isn't "their" fault... They should obviously still be kept away from society, though. This world will continue to wind down a path of cause and effect. There is only one physically possible future.

When we die we will most likely live trillions and millions of other brains, for all eternity. We have probably lived millions and trillions of lives before this. There is no connection between our millions of lives, because all that exists is the brain... no soul.

This is one of the things I think I think, but I'm not sure. What else do you think? Do you know what I mean?


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6804457 - 04/18/07 01:30 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Not only is the existence of free will uncertain, it's completely absurd. In order for free will to exist one would have to admit that there is no causation and that therefore existence is completely random.

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OfflineMushroomTrip
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804473 - 04/18/07 01:34 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

So are you suggesting we're not responsible for any of our actions & choices?


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6804484 - 04/18/07 01:37 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Basically. There is no "we." We are just automated machines with this illusion that is a consciousness.


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6804486 - 04/18/07 01:37 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I definitely agree. People do not wake up one day and choose to be rapists or choose to be child molesters, it happens as the result of general character dispositions which are themselves determined by genes and environment.

I think we tend to recognize this in our everyday practices. We evaluate good and bad employees, or good or bad people based on their past behavior, because we tend think that indicates something about their future behavior. If free will were present there would be no reason to think that.

If free will was present a person's actions would be absolutely random. They could change at any time, they could choose to be a new person the next day--thus judging a person by their past behavior would be prejudice.

For example, so long as Mr. Smith acted like a good upstanding citizen starting March 14 2007, I would have to ignore the fact that on April 10 2001, and July 9 1998 Mr. Smith was convicted of child molestation while considering his application for a position as a preschool teacher. So long as he had stronger credentials, and according to present behavior seemed a very honest man, I would have to presume he chose to change and can now be trusted around children just as much as the average Joe.

Nobody in their right mind will actually do this. Nobody would hire a convicted child molester to be a school teacher or baby sitter no matter their present behavior or qualifications-because nobody really believes in free will. We know Mr. Smiths disposition was the result of complex psychological causes, and we thus know that it is highly improbable that Mr. Smith just one day woke up and changed.


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6804488 - 04/18/07 01:38 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

MushroomTrip said:
So are you suggesting we're not responsible for any of our actions & choices?




Yes, that is an implication of hard determinism.

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804504 - 04/18/07 01:43 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

it stars saddam said:
Quote:

MushroomTrip said:
So are you suggesting we're not responsible for any of our actions & choices?




Yes, that is an implication of hard determinism.




I think it depends on how you define responsibility. If you see it as a matter of choice-then no. If you see it as a matter of character-then yes.

I think the big effect though will be on the utility of blaming people or attempting to change them. According to a libertarian (free will type) you can just tell them they are bad, knock them around a little and hope they choose to start acting differently. According to a determinist the situation may be a little more complicated.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804515 - 04/18/07 01:46 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The moral implications of determinism are irrelevant anyway, as any argument from that angle would be an appeal to consequences.

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OfflineMushroomTrip
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804537 - 04/18/07 01:53 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

What about self-discipline?
What about the act of choosing to reanalyze & not act on impulse?
What about two people with the same background making different choices?


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804542 - 04/18/07 01:54 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

it stars saddam said:
The moral implications of determinism are irrelevant anyway, as any argument from that angle would be an appeal to consequences.




Not really. Virtue ethics is not consequential yet is compatible with determinism.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6804545 - 04/18/07 01:55 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

MushroomTrip said:
What about self-discipline?
What about the act of choosing to reanalyze & not act on impulse?




Learned habits.


Quote:

MushroomTrip said:What about two people with the same background making different choices?




Different genes.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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OfflineSampaJasli
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804551 - 04/18/07 01:56 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

you're thinking too dichotomously.
people have some control over their own future, that's not to say that their past experiences don't affect them, but both factors play a role.


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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804556 - 04/18/07 01:58 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Cultures obviously have huge implications too. In our culture, is VERY important not to fuck up. Our brain knows this, and self-discipline (which can be almost painful) is used. Like he said, Learned Habits.

Two people, even identical twins, will be hit with different things and causes and therefore react differently. Furthermore, although they are identical twins, they aren't the EXACT same when it comes to brains, etc.


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804563 - 04/18/07 01:59 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

SampaJasli said:
you're thinking too dichotomously.
people have some control over their own future, that's not to say that their past experiences don't affect them, but both factors play a role.




How could people possible have control? You think there is an uncaused action? Furthermore, evidence done supports what I have been saying. Evidence, especially recently, has shown the brain shoots an action before your consciousness even knows it.


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804564 - 04/18/07 01:59 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Quote:

it stars saddam said:
The moral implications of determinism are irrelevant anyway, as any argument from that angle would be an appeal to consequences.




Not really. Virtue ethics is not consequential yet is compatible with determinism.




How could ethics or morality even exist in a system of hard determinism/fatalism? Fatalism reduces our existence to a process, therefore any action or thought that is performed in this universe is merely an inevitable part of the process, like a domino falling in line. Any moral value judgements we attempt to place after the fact are meaningless and subjective to the conscious agent.

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6804572 - 04/18/07 02:01 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

BrainChemicals said:
Quote:

SampaJasli said:
you're thinking too dichotomously.
people have some control over their own future, that's not to say that their past experiences don't affect them, but both factors play a role.




How could people possible have control? You think there is an uncaused action? Furthermore, evidence done supports what I have been saying. Evidence, especially recently, has shown the brain shoots an action before your consciousness even knows it.




Soft determinism is hogwash. It basically says "causation is kinda real, but free will is kinda real too."

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OfflineMushroomTrip
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804599 - 04/18/07 02:07 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Learned habits?
How do you know that?
There are cases in which people don't have in hand those habits that are being able to make them aware that such thing as self discipline is an option.


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804612 - 04/18/07 02:10 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

it stars saddam said:
How could ethics or morality even exist in a system of hard determinism/fatalism?




As determined judgments. We could evolve a set of determined judgments as an evolutionary consequence of being social animals.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804622 - 04/18/07 02:12 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Quote:

it stars saddam said:
How could ethics or morality even exist in a system of hard determinism/fatalism?




As determined judgments. We could evolve a set of determined judgments as an evolutionary consequence of being social animals.




Yet those determined judgements would be subjective and a direct result of the environment or particular society in which they evolved. This is made obvious by the profound moral relativism one encounters when examining the customs of other cultures.

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6804628 - 04/18/07 02:13 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

MushroomTrip said:
Learned habits?
How do you know that?




It just seems like the most reasonable conclusion based on personal observation. Don't get me wrong, I realize there is a strong possibility that genetics plays a huge role as well.

Quote:

MushroomTrip said:There are cases in which people don't have in hand those habits that are being able to make them aware that such thing as self discipline is an option.




My apologies but I don't quite understand this statement. Do you mean that some people were never habituated into being self-disciplined but that making them aware of the habit can affect them?


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804640 - 04/18/07 02:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

it stars saddam said:
Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Quote:

it stars saddam said:
How could ethics or morality even exist in a system of hard determinism/fatalism?




As determined judgments. We could evolve a set of determined judgments as an evolutionary consequence of being social animals.




Yet those determined judgements would be subjective and a direct result of the environment or particular society in which they evolved. This is made obvious by the profound moral relativism one encounters when examining the customs of other cultures.




What is your point?


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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OfflineSampaJasli
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6804643 - 04/18/07 02:15 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I think you'll find that moderate stances and middle grounds, although less satisfying answers, are usually the closest to reality.


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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804644 - 04/18/07 02:15 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Not when the middle ground is completely impossible.


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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OfflineMushroomTrip
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804651 - 04/18/07 02:17 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

My apologies but I don't quite understand this statement. Do you mean that some people were never habituated into being self-disciplined but that making them aware of the habit can affect them?





Yes.


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

:bunnyhug: :yinyang2:

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6804652 - 04/18/07 02:17 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Or at least superfluous.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804653 - 04/18/07 02:17 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Quote:

it stars saddam said:
Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Quote:

it stars saddam said:
How could ethics or morality even exist in a system of hard determinism/fatalism?




As determined judgments. We could evolve a set of determined judgments as an evolutionary consequence of being social animals.




Yet those determined judgements would be subjective and a direct result of the environment or particular society in which they evolved. This is made obvious by the profound moral relativism one encounters when examining the customs of other cultures.




What is your point?




That existence in a system of hard determinism is inherently amoral and devoid of personal responsibility, and that this fact has no bearing on the truth of determinism.

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OfflineSampaJasli
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6804663 - 04/18/07 02:18 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

and why would you say that a middle ground in regard to the existence of free will is impossible?


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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804669 - 04/18/07 02:19 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

SampaJasli said:
and why would you say that a middle ground in regard to the existence of free will is impossible?




There is a middle ground, it's called soft determinism, and it's rather silly. Let's not forget the law of excluded middle; either free will exists or it does not.

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804672 - 04/18/07 02:19 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

it stars saddam said:

That existence in a system of hard determinism is inherently amoral and devoid of personal responsibility, and that this fact has no bearing on the truth of determinism.




You already made that assertion. Do you have any actual reasoning to back it up or are you just going to repeat yourself at this point? If so you are committing the fallacy of begging the question.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804695 - 04/18/07 02:25 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

it stars saddam said:
Fatalism reduces our existence to a process, therefore any action or thought that is performed in this universe is merely an inevitable part of the process, like a domino falling in line. Any moral value judgements we attempt to place after the fact are meaningless and subjective to the conscious agent.




Note how you neglected to quote that part of my post on the previous page.

Argument By Selective Reading

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InvisibleOrgoneConclusion
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804696 - 04/18/07 02:25 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

If there is no free will, then there should be no S&P Forum guidelines, no traffic or any other kind of laws...

TIME TO RAPE & PILLAGE!


--------------------

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6804702 - 04/18/07 02:26 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Appeal to Consequences

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OfflineSampaJasli
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804704 - 04/18/07 02:27 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

at any one point I have an almost infinite number of options of which actions or reactions I can preform. Although my prior experience may eliminate a great number of those options through long-held beliefs or social customs, etc., I still have the ability to do one thing or the other.


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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804713 - 04/18/07 02:29 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

No, in your brain, I believe, it may be technically impossible.

Say I tell you to stand up in the middle of a class and shout "I LIKE SPERM ALL OVER MY FACE." You won't. There is nothing I could say short of offering you money or pulling out a gun that would eventually make your brain undergo that process of "okay, I will do it."


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
Posts: 15,571
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804716 - 04/18/07 02:29 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

While we're on the topic of fatalism, I highly suggest that all of you budding philosophers read The System of Nature by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach, which can be found here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8909

Labeled the "Bible of atheism" upon its release in 1770 France, it features one of the most compelling arguments for fatalism I've ever read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_Nature

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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804717 - 04/18/07 02:30 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Quote:

it stars saddam said:
The moral implications of determinism are irrelevant anyway, as any argument from that angle would be an appeal to consequences.




Not really. Virtue ethics is not consequential yet is compatible with determinism.




I think he meant the argument that determinism would lead to a loss of responsibility is a fallacy - argument from consequences.

Assuming that determinism is true, it seems impossible to judge a persons actions using any deontological/non-consequentialist morality. But, just because you cannot judge a person's choices doesn't mean you cannot judge the person or the consequences of his/her actions. I personally do not believe determinism ultimate destroys the concept of responsibility, although it does alter it in significant ways. You cannot punish someone because they're an awful, sinful, rotten person that deserves to be punished, but you can punish a person in order to prevent them and others from causing an undesirable action.

There are a number of ethical systems that are compatible with determinism: egoism, utilitarianism, Nicomachean ethics, and Rawl's social justice.

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804718 - 04/18/07 02:30 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Unless you don't have infinite options. Then while you may consider other options, the exact option you act upon can be considered determined--all one has to do is treat conscious reflection as a determined/determining mechanism.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
Satan

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6804721 - 04/18/07 02:30 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

OrgoneConclusion said:
If there is no free will, then there should be no S&P Forum guidelines, no traffic or any other kind of laws...




I'd also like to point out that it was wholly determined that these arbitrary laws would be constructed by the human animal.

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InvisibleVeritas
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804728 - 04/18/07 02:32 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Are you saying that the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not want us to rape and pillage?  :confused:  If he really wanted us to behave, wouldn't he reach out with his noodly appendage and rip the bong out of our hands?

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804733 - 04/18/07 02:33 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

it stars saddam said:
While we're on the topic of fatalism, I highly suggest that all of you budding philosophers read The System of Nature by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach, which can be found here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8909

Labeled the "Bible of atheism" upon its release in 1770 France, it features one of the most compelling arguments for fatalism I've ever read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_System_of_Nature




I think evolutionary psychology has changed a lot of what we think about human nature since the time of Holbach.


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6804736 - 04/18/07 02:33 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

MushmanTheManic said:
Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Quote:

it stars saddam said:
The moral implications of determinism are irrelevant anyway, as any argument from that angle would be an appeal to consequences.




Not really. Virtue ethics is not consequential yet is compatible with determinism.




I think he meant the argument that determinism would lead to a loss of responsibility is a fallacy - argument from consequences.




Yes, I apologize if that was unclear.

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Invisibleit stars saddam
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804738 - 04/18/07 02:34 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Do you live in France or are you an immigrant?

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804749 - 04/18/07 02:37 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I don't answer France questions. ^_^


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Invisibleit stars saddam
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6804750 - 04/18/07 02:37 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Damnit.

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OfflineSampaJasli
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6804755 - 04/18/07 02:38 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I half believe in determinism but I like to argue things out to better understand them. And I must say I'm having a hard time keeping up my side of the argument. Anyways what's the point of arguing in favour of determinism anyway? and of believing in it? I think believing in free will is better if just for the fact that you feel you have some power over your destiny


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804762 - 04/18/07 02:41 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

SampaJasli said:
Anyways what's the point of arguing in favour of determinism anyway? and of believing in it?




Defending truth and not believing in unrealistic concepts simply because they make people feel better.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804763 - 04/18/07 02:41 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I think that even if we believe in determinism, because the illusion of consciousness constantly exists, it is hard to get away from. I don't think about determinism often, and even if it's true there is nothing especially you can do. It doesn't cause someone to just sit around and "go with the flow." It's just kinda a fact that you are aware of behind everything, but you don't pay attention to.

For me it is at least.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6804765 - 04/18/07 02:42 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I think the illusion of free will is always going to be around. Determinism seems like something that can only be grasped intellectually. Everything seems as if your choosing your behavior freely, but you are not.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6804780 - 04/18/07 02:44 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I don't really feel like determinism & free will would have to exclude each other.
Maybe in some cases we're just "driven" while in other cases we have the power to chose independently from what the odds would show.


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And never known your face
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6804786 - 04/18/07 02:45 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Look back at when you made one of your biggest mistakes in your life. One of the ones you really regret.

Then look back some more, and ask "If everything else was the exact same, and I didn't know about the consequenced, would I have still made the same choice." You would have. Every single time.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6804800 - 04/18/07 02:47 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

BrainChemicals said:
I don't think about determinism often, and even if it's true there is nothing especially you can do. It doesn't cause someone to just sit around and "go with the flow." It's just kinda a fact that you are aware of behind everything, but you don't pay attention to.

For me it is at least.




I agree with you and feel the same way. I can't help but think though, that even if one believes in determinism, that they can't truly understand it and realize its implications.


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Edited by SampaJasli (04/18/07 02:55 PM)

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: SampaJasli]
    #6805110 - 04/18/07 04:08 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I see belief in free will as similar to belief in God, at first it may seem nearly impossible to imagine a universe without it, but after a while you get used to it and thinking the opposite becomes just as difficult.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6805131 - 04/18/07 04:17 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
I see belief in free will as similar to belief in God, at first it may seem nearly impossible to imagine a universe without it, but after a while you get used to it and thinking the opposite becomes just as difficult.




And therefore the only sane choice is agnosticism :grin:

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: daytripper23]
    #6805135 - 04/18/07 04:18 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Eh, agnosticism has certain connotations I would rather avoid.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6805141 - 04/18/07 04:18 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

"fence sitter"

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6805150 - 04/18/07 04:21 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
I see belief in free will as similar to belief in God, at first it may seem nearly impossible to imagine a universe without it, but after a while you get used to it and thinking the opposite becomes just as difficult.




From that point of view determinism takes all the attributions of God but has a differen name... isn't that somekind of contradiction in what you're saying?  :ooo:


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6805152 - 04/18/07 04:22 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

hmmm yea it basically means you cant know anything for sure...

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: daytripper23]
    #6805154 - 04/18/07 04:22 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

And therefore the only sane choice is agnosticism :grin:




Wize words :thumbup:


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: daytripper23]
    #6805201 - 04/18/07 04:38 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

We never thoroughly agreed on any subject but once and then we looked at each other and thought one of us must be very ill". In uncharacteristically bold discussions after dinner Darwin asked his guests "Why do you call yourselves Atheists?", saying that he preferred the word "Agnostic". Aveling replied that "Agnostic was but Atheist writ respectable, and Atheist was only Agnostic writ aggressive". Darwin responded "Why should you be so aggressive?". Freethought is "all very well" for the educated, he argued, but are ordinary people "ripe for it?"




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin's_views_on_religion

I guess given that standard it comes down to whether or not you think ordinary people are ready for the word atheist. I suppose Huxley and Darwin didn't think so, hence the coining of the word agnostic. (BTW the link doesn't work because of the comma.)


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6805208 - 04/18/07 04:41 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Perhaps after nearly 150 years, ordinary people are "ripe for it," as is indicated by Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion staying consistently towards the top of the bestsellers list in the states.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: it stars saddam]
    #6805528 - 04/18/07 06:09 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Determinism is interesting. There are people who consider it the rails which the train of nature runs. Everything affects everything, every action taken affects all future actions in a rippling effect. Reminds me of the movie Butterfly Effect. If you haven't seen it, I suggest watching it.

Why do humans have such a wide range of emotions? In the animal kingdom, the only emotions are ones used for survival. Lust for procreation, fear for self-protection, anger for the protection of a territory or a pack, et cetra. What is the use of embarrassment? Of contempt? Jealousy or other emotions strictly human? There is also the ability of self-realization. A human can know him/herself, and question their own existence. Why would something like this be developed? How could these traits be developed through determinism?

It would be interesting to see somebody write a comprehensive paper and/or response with substantial evidence that points to determinism as the cause for the creation of the human animal as we know it.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FreeUrThoughts]
    #6805555 - 04/18/07 06:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

How do you know for sure what the are the animals feelings?


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
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And searched this human race
Here is true peace
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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FreeUrThoughts]
    #6805610 - 04/18/07 06:29 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FreeUrThoughts said:
Determinism is interesting. There are people who consider it the rails which the train of nature runs. Everything affects everything, every action taken affects all future actions in a rippling effect. Reminds me of the movie Butterfly Effect. If you haven't seen it, I suggest watching it.

Why do humans have such a wide range of emotions? In the animal kingdom, the only emotions are ones used for survival. Lust for procreation, fear for self-protection, anger for the protection of a territory or a pack, et cetra. What is the use of embarrassment? Of contempt? Jealousy or other emotions strictly human? There is also the ability of self-realization. A human can know him/herself, and question their own existence. Why would something like this be developed? How could these traits be developed through determinism?

It would be interesting to see somebody write a comprehensive paper and/or response with substantial evidence that points to determinism as the cause for the creation of the human animal as we know it.




I think there is no unique use for embarrassment. I think it is probably a misinterpreted general emotion, like "bad" with a unique twist depending on the situation.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FreeUrThoughts]
    #6806760 - 04/18/07 10:43 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FreeUrThoughts said:
Determinism is interesting. There are people who consider it the rails which the train of nature runs. Everything affects everything, every action taken affects all future actions in a rippling effect. Reminds me of the movie Butterfly Effect. If you haven't seen it, I suggest watching it.

Why do humans have such a wide range of emotions? In the animal kingdom, the only emotions are ones used for survival. Lust for procreation, fear for self-protection, anger for the protection of a territory or a pack, et cetra. What is the use of embarrassment? Of contempt? Jealousy or other emotions strictly human? There is also the ability of self-realization. A human can know him/herself, and question their own existence. Why would something like this be developed? How could these traits be developed through determinism?

It would be interesting to see somebody write a comprehensive paper and/or response with substantial evidence that points to determinism as the cause for the creation of the human animal as we know it.




The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker :wink:

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6806791 - 04/18/07 10:52 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Or the book I'm reading I mentioned in the original psot.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6807990 - 04/19/07 09:36 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

there is a very good reason for embarassment within human society.
for society to work there must be shared values, embarassment or shame occur when people deviate from those values. for instance homosexuality, getting caught stealing, etc.
when someone says embarassment, it calls to mind more trivial events like a word slip or something, but its still an important emotion. I'm sure social animals experience it in some degree..


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6813480 - 04/20/07 04:42 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

It seems to me as though enactivism may be relevant to the discussion.

Quote:

In psychology, and the cognitive sciences more generally, enactivism is a theoretical approach to understanding the mind. It incorporates an historical perspective -- in the sense that each individual's developmental trajectory shapes their understanding of reality -- with the result that it can be seen to subsume and synthesize arguments from embodied and situated cognition to present an alternative to cognitivism.

Enactivists criticize representational views of the mind and emphasize the importance of embodiment and action to cognition.

-Evan Thompson, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Toronto.[1]


At a fundamental level, enactivism is anti-dualist. There is no "core" self, but there is rather an enchained set of context-dependent associations that collectively provide a point-of-view in approaching the momentary problems of being. In this sense, individuals can be seen to "grow into"[1] the world; it is not, a priori, "represented."[2]





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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6814758 - 04/21/07 02:25 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

BrainChemicals said:
What else do you think? Do you know what I mean?




Take a philosophical idea, especially one with a difficult past.
Take it for granted; assume it must correspond to something real.
Sink oneself into theoretical quicksand; get lost in it (here it's called free will).

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain *DELETED* [Re: Lakefingers]
    #6815022 - 04/21/07 07:16 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Post deleted by soulcircus

Reason for deletion: .


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: soulcircus]
    #6815478 - 04/21/07 10:26 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Ask the unicorn...or question it if you want.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6819051 - 04/22/07 12:38 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

You "there is no such thing as free will" guys are all over the map in this thread. Some of the statements you make directly contradict earlier statements you have made.

Of course there is free will. It is observable and testable.

I think the problem is that a lot of you conflate "tendency" with "inevitability". For example, I much prefer the taste of Cheetohs over walnuts. If you were to place a bowl of each in front of me, I would usually pig out on the Cheetohs and ignore the walnuts completely -- even if I were quite hungry. My tendency is to not eat walnuts. Yet every now and then I will eat a few walnuts. I am not FORCED to choose Cheetohs over walnuts -- I retain the free will required to eat a handful of walnuts whenever I choose. And sometimes I DO choose to eat walnuts.

Similarly, though I can speak both English and Spanish, my tendency is to speak English. I am much more fluent in English than in Spanish. Pero, a veces elijo hablar Espanol.

Do certain outside factors (cultural conditioning, monetary rewards, coercion and more) tend to influence my choices? Claro que si! That doesn't mean I have no choice but to act in just one way... that I am merely a helpless self-awareness along for the ride in a body that will do what it is programmed to do no matter what.

The whole "free will is an illusion" nonsense pops up several times a year in this forum, and I've never understood why. It is so self-evident that humans are volitional beings that it baffles the hell out of me why so many seemingly rational people can seriously try to dispute this fact.



Phred


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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6819180 - 04/22/07 01:23 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Phred, not to sound condescending, but your reading comprehension could use some work. We have been consistent, you just don't understand what we are talking about. Trust me.

The scientific community, over the last 50 years, has increasingly accepted that it was probably naive ever to believe in free will in the first place. The other user- I forgot his name- has argued this point pretty clearly. And all you can say is that "it is so self-evident" - that is all you can say. You sound like a Christian who talks about how "He is just absolutely sure his god exists."


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Edited by BrainChemicals (04/22/07 01:27 PM)

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6819251 - 04/22/07 01:56 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

BrainChemicals said:
You sound like a Christian who talks about how "He is just absolutely sure his god exists."




This sounds like a fallacy of philosophical debate to me.


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I wouldn't fear
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Like being here
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6819254 - 04/22/07 01:58 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

BrainChemicals said:
Phred, not to sound condescending, but your reading comprehension could use some work. We have been consistent, you just don't understand what we are talking about. Trust me.




In fact, this does as well. Instead of demonstrating that one's claims are consistent, or asking for a demonstration that they are of the individual claiming that it is so, you simply make an appeal to authority "trust me". Please demonstrate how he "just doesn't understand" what you are talking about, or ask him to substantiate his claim, or something. An appeal to an authority (the request to simply trust your opinion on the matter) is a fallacy.


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6819256 - 04/22/07 01:58 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred, not to sound condescending, but your reading comprehension could use some work. We have been consistent, you just don't understand what we are talking about. Trust me.




I do understand what you are talking about, and yes indeed, many of the posters in this thread have contradicted themselves. I don't need to say "trust me" on this -- a simple review of the posts proves my point.

Quote:

The scientific community, over the last 50 years, has increasingly accepted that it was probably naive ever to believe in free will in the first place.




Bullshit. A completely unsupported (and blatantly false) assertion. Define "the scientific community". Next, define "increasingly accepted". Finally, point us to a single scientific paper showing free will does not exist.

Quote:

And all you can say is that "it is so self-evident" - that is all you can say.




Not at all. I illustrated my point with a few (out of countless hundreds of thousands I could have used) examples showing volitional action -- my eating of different foods, my choice of when to use English and when to use Spanish. I didn't just claim volition exists, I demonstrated it exists.

You yourself exercised volition in composing and sending your reply to my post. You could as easily have used "patronizing" as "condescending", for example. Instead of saying my reading comprehension "could use some work" you could have substituted, "needs improvement" or "is sorely lacking" or "is sub-standard".

Or you could have first typed "needs improvement", then reviewed the post before sending and decided "could use some work" was more likely to get my attention than your original phrase, so you could then have invested a bit more time and edited out the original phrase and typed in the new one. Or, to take a subtle dig at me, you could have tossed in a Spanish phrase or two.

Or you could have declined to respond at all.

If you haven't bothered to expend the mental energy to identify the myriad choices you made while composing such a short and simple response, then of course you will deny the existence of volitional action. To you, the reason your fingers typed the phrase "could use some work" was because you had no other choice but to use that phrase -- you were compelled to use that exact phrase and no other. Despite the fact that you understand the phrase "needs improvement" and have undoubtedly used it many times during your lifetime, there is no possible way you could have used it in your reply to me, because your response to me was pre-ordained from the beginning of time.

I leave it to the readers of this thread to determine which viewpoint sounds like someone talking about how "He is just absolutely sure he is a helpless pawn of circumstance".




Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6819316 - 04/22/07 02:23 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Of course there is free will. It is observable and testable.

Whether or not the universe is deterministic is neither observable nor testable.

If you don't agree, propose a test.


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Free Will Test [Re: Diploid]
    #6819424 - 04/22/07 02:53 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Simple Free Will Test

Eat some food that in the past you have totally detested; something that made you gag and shudder with displeasure.

Now using Free Will, eat that same substance and actually enjoy it. No, do not force it down, do not pretend, do not smile externally to show the critics. Savor each bite and wonder why you previously found it disgusting.

Decide to instantly find it appealing and from this day forth make it a delicacy that you will relish.

Ready? BEGIN!

Be sure to post the results. DO IT and do not just talk about it - for a change.

Another philosophical conundrum solved by Shmoopy. :yesnod:


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6819430 - 04/22/07 02:55 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Who the hell is Shmoopy? :lol:


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6819434 - 04/22/07 02:57 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

How would that be free will?

The only reason anyone would do this now is because of your post :wink:

Living in a deterministic universe doesn't mean we can determine what will happen. For us mere mortals, cause and effect are very slippery things...


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: trendal]
    #6819447 - 04/22/07 03:02 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

What do you mean 'how'?

Freely choosing your reaction and not being at the mercy of cultural/ biological conditioning is an example of non-determinism. Doesn't matter if I asked it, could you do it? To ask "Will you do it?" is an forgone conclusion in futility from all that I have witnessed on the boards.


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6819457 - 04/22/07 03:05 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

But I would never of thought of doing that until you posted it on these boards :wink:


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: trendal]
    #6819465 - 04/22/07 03:07 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

More ducking & jabber. :yawn:

Just say you refuse to take the test and would rather type and read another 8 pages of blather than do a real act of discovery.


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6819471 - 04/22/07 03:10 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

:lol:

How is anything I said ducking?

I highly doubt that I could do what you asked...but if I did it, it would be because you asked me to do it.

I say again, where's the free will?


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: trendal]
    #6819479 - 04/22/07 03:13 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

trendal said:
I highly doubt that I could do what you asked...but if I did it, it would be because you asked me to do it.





Wouldn't you rather do it because of the queen of Spain instead?


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If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
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Loving every breath of you

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Re: Free Will Test [Re: trendal]
    #6819480 - 04/22/07 03:13 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I really do not care if my will is absolutely free -
except I really don't want any body else's will to impinge on it's
automated nature.


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: trendal]
    #6819500 - 04/22/07 03:23 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

:psycow:


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6819503 - 04/22/07 03:24 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

More ducking & jabber. :smirk:


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Re: Free Will Test [Re: redgreenvines]
    #6819511 - 04/22/07 03:27 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

:rofl:


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6819658 - 04/22/07 04:09 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
Of course there is free will. It is observable and testable.




To my knowledge there is no scientific test of free will and no measurable observation. If you have a link that proves otherwise I would like to see it.

Quote:

Phred said:I think the problem is that a lot of you conflate "tendency" with "inevitability".




What is your basis for this accusation?

Quote:

Phred said:For example, I much prefer the taste of Cheetohs over walnuts. If you were to place a bowl of each in front of me, I would usually pig out on the Cheetohs and ignore the walnuts completely -- even if I were quite hungry. My tendency is to not eat walnuts. Yet every now and then I will eat a few walnuts. I am not FORCED to choose Cheetohs over walnuts -- I retain the free will required to eat a handful of walnuts whenever I choose. And sometimes I DO choose to eat walnuts.




That is invalid due to the fact that tendency and inevitability are not mutually exclusive. You may have a tendency because your genetic composition and environmental programming made it inevitable that you would act on your tendencies in a specific manner.

Quote:

Phred said:Similarly, though I can speak both English and Spanish, my tendency is to speak English. I am much more fluent in English than in Spanish. Pero, a veces elijo hablar Espanol.




You have the potential to speak spainish with respect to your knowledge and at an epistemic level, however whether you speak spainish or english at any given point can still be determined by underlying causes.

Quote:

Phred said:Do certain outside factors (cultural conditioning, monetary rewards, coercion and more) tend to influence my choices? Claro que si! That doesn't mean I have no choice but to act in just one way... that I am merely a helpless self-awareness along for the ride in a body that will do what it is programmed to do no matter what.




It does make the choice factor superfluous.

Quote:

Phred said:The whole "free will is an illusion" nonsense pops up several times a year in this forum, and I've never understood why. It is so self-evident that humans are volitional beings that it baffles the hell out of me why so many seemingly rational people can seriously try to dispute this fact.




It's not just people, even scientists apparently are making reference to free will or at least the soul (which is the proposed mechanism for free will) as an illusion:

Quote:

Mustangs, Monists and Meaning
The dualist belief that body and soul are separate entities is natural, intuitive and with us from infancy. It is also very probably wrong

By Michael Shermer

Dualists hold that body and soul are separate entities and that the soul will continue beyond the existence of the physical body. Monists contend that body and soul are the same and that the death of the body--the disintegration of DNA and neurons that store my personal information--spells the end of the soul. Until a technology is developed to preserve our patterns with a more durable medium than the electric meat of our carbon-based protein (silicon chips is one suggestion), when we die our patterns die with us.

The reason dualism is intuitive is that the brain does not perceive itself.

The principal barrier to a general acceptance of the monist position is that it is counterintuitive. As Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom argues in his intriguing book, Descartes' Baby (Basic Books, 2004), we are natural-born dualists. Children and adults alike speak of "my body," as if "my" and "body" are dissimilar. In one of many experiments Bloom recounts, for example, young children are told a story about a mouse that gets munched by an alligator. The children agree that the mouse's body is dead--it does not need to go to the bathroom, it can't hear, and its brain no longer works. Yet they insist that the mouse is still hungry, is concerned about the alligator, and wants to go home. "This is the foundation for the more articulated view of the afterlife you usually find in older children and adults," Bloom explains. "Once children learn that the brain is involved in thinking, they don't take it as showing that the brain is the source of mental life; they don't become materialists. Rather they interpret 'thinking' in a narrow sense and conclude that the brain is a cognitive prosthesis, something added to the soul to enhance its computing power."

The reason dualism is intuitive is that the brain does not perceive itself and so ascribes mental activity to a separate source. Hallucinations of preternatural beings (ghosts, angels, aliens) are sensed as real entities, out-of-body and near-death experiences are perceived as external events, and the pattern of information that is our memories, personality and "self" is sensed as a soul.

Is scientific monism in conflict with religious dualism? Yes, it is. Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does. Does monism extirpate all meaning in life? I think not. If this is all there is, then every moment, every relationship and every person counts--and counts more if there is no tomorrow than if there is. Through no divine design or cosmic plan, we have inherited the mantle of life's caretaker on the earth, the only home we have ever known. The realization that we exist together for a narrow slice of time and a limited fraction of space elevates us all to a higher plane of humanity and humility, a passing moment on the proscenium of the cosmos.





SCIAM


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6819663 - 04/22/07 04:10 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Diploid writes:

Quote:

Whether or not the universe is deterministic is neither observable nor testable.

If you don't agree, propose a test.




Whether or not the universe even exists is neither observable nor testable, when you get right down to it. Its existence can be demonstrated only ostensively, and even then a solipsist will object to your ostensive demonstration.

The test I propose to demonstrate the existence of free will is an easy one --

-- give me a phrase you want to see me use in my next post. Make it a phrase unlikely to be used in normal conversation. An example might be "Two hundred and thirteen volts of household jailbait" or "Einstein's galoshes".

-- I will then exercise my volition by including that phrase in my post replying to yours.

Clearly, there is no possible way that determinism would explain your challenge to me to use a nonsense phrase followed by my choice to actually use that phrase. If I use the phrase, then it demonstrates my volitional nature.


Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6819689 - 04/22/07 04:17 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Clearly, there is no possible way that determinism would explain your challenge to me to use a nonsense phrase followed by my choice to actually use that phrase. If I use the phrase, then it demonstrates my volitional nature.

How does this demonstrate your volitional nature? He (would have) told you to use the phrase. You then proceeded to use the phrase, as you were told to do.

Further, if you chose not to follow the instructions it still wouldn't be evidence of "free will". I would instead say that everything up to this point in your life has lead you to choose not to.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6819764 - 04/22/07 04:38 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

To my knowledge there is no scientific test of free will and no measurable observation. If you have a link that proves otherwise I would like to see it.




Observe me take three coins out of my front pocket. Next, observe me select the lightest of the three and hand the other two to you. Next, observe me flip the coin I retained into the air, catch it in my mouth, and spit it onto the palm of my left hand. Finally, observe me dry off the coin with my shirt tail and place it in my back pocket.

Quote:

What is your basis for this accusation?




Comments such as yours: "If free will was present a person's actions would be absolutely random. They could change at any time, they could choose to be a new person the next day--thus judging a person by their past behavior would be prejudice."

Here you exercise the fallacy of the excluded middle -- since we can observe that people do not usually tend to perform completely random actions, their actions must instead be predetermined. You see it as either A or B, and since observation shows it isn't A, it therefore MUST be B. In actual fact, it is C -- my actions are neither random nor automatic, but self-directed.

Quote:

You may have a tendency because your genetic composition and environmental programming made it inevitable that you would act on your tendencies in a specific manner.




What environmental factors made it inevitable that I would ffe534 +0jJcu r gg gisdemdf 27&F% while replying to your post?

Quote:

You have the potential to speak spainish with respect to your knowledge and at an epistemic level, however whether you speak spainish or english at any given point can still be determined by underlying causes.




Which "underlying cause" (by this I presume you mean an effect of one or more of the laws of physics) makes me cambiar de Inglese a Espanol quando quiero, y solamente quando quiero? Which "underlying cause" makes me choose to emphasize a word in my post in italics rather than in bold or all caps?

Quote:

It does make the choice factor superfluous.




This is unresponsive. It makes no sense in the context of the point being discussed.

Quote:

It's not just people, even scientists apparently are making reference to free will or at least the soul (which is the proposed mechanism for free will) as an illusion:




1) Scientists are a subset of people

2) Scientists do not necessarily grasp philosophical issues

3) Psychologists are hardly "scientists"

4) This particular "scientist" is not even addressing the issue of volition. He is discussing the "soul". The two are not equivalent.



Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6819811 - 04/22/07 04:51 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
Observe me take three coins out of my front pocket. Next, observe me select the lightest of the three and hand the other two to you. Next, observe me flip the coin I retained into the air, catch it in my mouth, and spit it onto the palm of my left hand. Finally, observe me dry off the coin with my shirt tail and place it in my back pocket.




That is observing a determined action not free will. If you are going to argue that such action is evidence is free will you are begging the question.


Quote:

Phred said:Comments such as yours: "If free will was present a person's actions would be absolutely random. They could change at any time, they could choose to be a new person the next day--thus judging a person by their past behavior would be prejudice."

Here you exercise the fallacy of the excluded middle -- since we can observe that people do not usually tend to perform completely random actions, their actions must instead be predetermined. You see it as either A or B, and since observation shows it isn't A, it therefore MUST be B. In actual fact, it is C -- my actions are neither random nor automatic, but self-directed.




If free will exists then a person's actions can change radically without cause, that is what I meant by absolutely random. Also if you are going to propose an interactionist position you have to overcome the problem of dualism.

Quote:

Argument from causal interaction

Varieties of dualism in which mind can causally affect matter have come under strenuous attack from different quarters, especially starting in the 20th century. How can something totally immaterial affect something totally material? That's the basic problem of causal interaction. This problem can be broken down into three parts.

First, it is not clear where the interaction would take place. For example, burning one's fingers causes pain. Apparently there is some chain of events, leading from the burning of skin, to the stimulation of nerve endings, to something happening in the peripheral nerves of one's body that lead to one's brain, to something happening in a particular part of one's brain, and finally resulting in the sensation of pain. But pain is not supposed to be spatially localizable. It might be responded that the pain "takes place in the brain." But, intuitively, pains are not located anywhere.

This may not be a devastating criticism. However, there is a second problem about the interaction. Namely, the question of how the interaction takes place. It may be supposed that this is solely a matter for science to resolve -- scientists will eventually discover the connection between mental and physical events. But philosophers also have something to say about the matter, since the very notion of a mechanism which explains the connection between the mental and the physical would be very strange, at best. For example, compare such a mechanism to a mechanism that is well understood. Take a very simple causal relation, such as when a cue ball strikes an eight ball and causes it to go into the pocket. What happens in this case is that the cue ball has a certain amount of momentum as its mass moves across the pool table with a certain velocity, and then that momentum is transferred to the eight ball, which then heads toward the pocket. Compare this to the situation in the brain, where one wants to say that a decision causes some neurons to fire and thus causes a body to move across the room. The intention to "cross the room now" is a mental event and, as such, it does not have physical properties such as force. If it has no force, then it would seem that it could not possibly cause any neuron to fire. The puzzle is to explain how something without any physical properties could have any physical effects at all.

Some philosophers have replied to this, as follows: there is indeed a mystery about how the interaction between mental and physical events can occur. But the fact that there is a mystery does not mean that there is no interaction. Plainly there is an interaction and plainly the interaction is between two totally different sorts of events. The problem with this response is that it does not seem to answer the full power of the objection.

The objection can be formulated more precisely. When a person decides to walk across a room, it is generally understood that the decision to do so, a mental event, immediately causes a group of neurons in that person's brain to fire, a physical event, which ultimately results in his walking across the room. The problem is that if we have something totally nonphysical causing a bunch of neurons to fire, then there is no physical event which causes the firing. That means that some physical energy seems to have appeared out of thin air. Even if one maintains that the decision has some sort of mental energy, and that the decision causes the firing, there is still no explanation of where the physical energy for the firing came from. It just seems to have popped into existence from nowhere.[25]




Dualism philosophy of mind

Either that or you have to present an ahistorical definition of free will. Likewise you will have to explain how an interactionist free will avoid being superfluous.


Quote:

Phred said:What environmental factors made it inevitable that I would ffe534 +0jJcu r gg gisdemdf 27&F% while replying to your post?




Your belief in free will which you absorbed from your culture can be seen as a contributing environmental factor.


Quote:

Phred said:Which "underlying cause" (by this I presume you mean an effect of one or more of the laws of physics) makes me cambiar de Inglese a Espanol quando quiero, y solamente quando quiero? Which "underlying cause" makes me choose to emphasize a word in my post in italics rather than in bold or all caps?




The necessity of the situation combined with linguistic bias and a desire to try and prove that there is free will can be seen as causes for your above assertion.

Quote:

Phred said:
Quote:

It does make the choice factor superfluous.




This is unresponsive. It makes no sense in the context of the point being discussed.




If causation is able to fully account for a person's actions even in theory then it follows that a belief in free will is unnecessary for the development of a coherent world view.


Quote:

Phred said:1) Scientists are a subset of people

2) Scientists do not necessarily grasp philosophical issues




They may provide pertinent information on philosophical issues.

Quote:

Phred said:3) Psychologists are hardly "scientists"




You have no rational basis for this assertion.

Quote:

Phred said:4) This particular "scientist" is not even addressing the issue of volition. He is discussing the "soul". The two are not equivalent.




The soul is the proposed mechanism for free will. If you are going to argue otherwise you must present an physical a causal alternative.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6819815 - 04/22/07 04:52 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Trendal writes:

Quote:

How does this demonstrate your volitional nature? He (would have) told you to use the phrase. You then proceeded to use the phrase, as you were told to do.




It demonstrates my volitional nature because I have informed him in advance of my intention. If -- and only if -- he indicates an unusual phrase he wishes to see me repeat, I will use it in my replying post. If he doesn't give me the phrase, I won't use it.

Of course, I could as easily choose not to repeat his phrase -- or I could throw a monkey wrench into the works by perhaps using it later in the exchange than I said I would, not using it all, or deliberately mispelling some of the words in the phrase, or typing the words of the phrase backwards or whatever. But this time I won't. I have decided, in advance, that if Diploid gives me an indicated phrase, I will repeat it in my reply to the post in which he uses it. That's not the laws of physics making the decision here, it's me. Phred.



The ludicrous thing about people who pretend to deny their volitional nature is that their every act contradicts their professed belief. Everyone here who is trying to make a convincing case against the volitional nature of human beings is volitionally choosing their words in such a manner as to convince others there is no such thing as volition.

Everyone who is participating in this thread believes he possesses volition. Why else even post to a forum dedicated to philosophy and spirituality? I shouldn't have to point out the obvious, but it appears I must -- if humans are not volitional beings, then both spirituality and philosophy are quite literally null concepts. If you truly believed you had no volition, you wouldn't try to convince others this is the case, because you would recognize that we others (me, for one) can't change our minds about it, since our thoughts are predetermined.




Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6819829 - 04/22/07 04:55 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
Everyone who is participating in this thread believes he possesses volition. Why else even post to a forum dedicated to philosophy and spirituality?




There can be multiple reasons. Preference, the need for society to have an accurate world view, and the need for one's self to have a coherent world view down to the fundamental level.

Quote:

Phred said:I shouldn't have to point out the obvious, but it appears I must -- if humans are not volitional beings, then both spirituality and philosophy are quite literally null concepts. If you truly believed you had no volition, you wouldn't try to convince others this is the case, because you would recognize that we others (me, for one) can't change our minds about it, since our thoughts are predetermined.




The discussion could itself be a cause that helps to change your mind.


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6819874 - 04/22/07 05:07 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Of course, I could as easily choose not to repeat his phrase

If the universe is deterministic, then the chain of subatomic interactions in your brain that lead to your perceived decision would be inevitable.

You're confusing the sensation of free will with the fact of free will.

Just like a billiard ball bouncing around a table may think it has free will, but in reality it bounces off each edge at an angle predetermined when the cue ball was struck.

I accept that you believe you have free will, but I do not accept that you have demonstrated that you do.

And I'm not saying that the universe IS deterministic. I believe it isn't, but that's just intuition. There is no way to know with certainty.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Offlinefireworks_godS
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6819879 - 04/22/07 05:09 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Great points. :thumbup:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6819947 - 04/22/07 05:25 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

That is observing a determined action not free will. If you are going to argue that such action is evidence is free will you are begging the question.




Au contraire. I am performing that sequence of actions for you to observe because I have chosen to demonstrate my volitional nature to you. I could have chosen to ignore your request, since it really doesn't matter to me whether you believe in free will or not.

Quote:

If free will exists then a person's actions can change radically without cause, that is what I meant by absolutely random.




Of course they can. See my choice to suddenly start typing in Spanish on The Shroomery rather than in English. That's a pretty radical change, for me. Yet it is not random -- I don't randomly switch from Spanish to English in my everyday life. I deliberately chose to radically alter my behavior in order to demonstrate that I am a volitional being. Once the point was made, I reverted to typing in English.

The thing is, I don't randomly utter Spanish words. I do so when I choose to do so, and only when I choose to do so. Not when some subatomic particle somewhere in the universe randomly reverses its polarity or spin.

Quote:

Also if you are going to propose an interactionist position you have to overcome the problem of dualism.




No I don't. The fact that I interact with you through methods of my own choice says nothing about the mechanism by which I make those choices. The dualists might be right or the monists might be right, or they might both be wrong. All that matters is I have demonstrated that I am a volitional being.

I am not concerned that the science of today cannot explain how my wish to type the letter "r" on my keyboard results in my typing the letter "r" on my keyboard. It is sufficient for me to demonstrate that when I choose to hit the "r" key with a finger, I do in fact hit the "r" key. More telling still is that if I occasionally miss the "r" key and instead hit the "t" key, I choose to delete the "t" and retype the "r".

Now, it may bother you that you can't explain with your current level of knowledge just why I hit the "r" key whenever I choose to, but it doesn't bother me a bit. More to the point, the fact that you cannot explain to your satisfaction the mechanism by which I hit the "r" key at will does not invalidate the fact -- and yes, it is a fact -- that lo and behold! Phred hits the "r" key when he chooses to.

To dumb this down even further, the fact that science didn't know until quite recently that ethyl alcohol is a metabolite of yeast cells didn't prevent wine from being made. One need not fully understand a phenomena in order to observe it.

Quote:

Your belief in free will which you absorbed from your culture can be seen as a contributing environmental factor.




What I believe or don't believe has no bearing on whether or not I am a volitional being -- whether that belief popped into my head unaided or whether I heard it from someone else. Are you saying that if I believe I have free will, then I am in fact a volitional being, but if I don't believe so, then I am the hapless victim of circumstance along for the ride in an uncontrollable meat shell? That all I have to do to free myself from my predetermined fate is to believe my fate is not predetermined?

Quote:

The necessity of the situation combined with linguistic bias and a desire to try and prove that there is free will can be seen as causes for your above assertion.




And where did this desire to prove I am a volitional being come from? More to the point, how does this sudden desire somehow give me the power to momentarily act volitionally, then as soon as it passes, I am once again a helpless passenger in an uncontrollable meat robot?

Quote:

The soul is the proposed mechanism for free will. If you are going to argue otherwise you must present an physical a causal alternative.




No, the soul is YOUR proposed mechanism for free will. It isn't mine. The fact that your pet "scientist" is adept at tearing down straw men of his own construction does nothing to disprove the existence of free will. That's like two witch doctors arguing over the process by which grape juice becomes wine: one says it is the work of the devil, the other says it is the work of the gods. In actual fact, it is the work of unicellular organisms eating and crapping.




Phred


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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6820031 - 04/22/07 05:47 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
Au contraire. I am performing that sequence of actions for you to observe because I have chosen to demonstrate my volitional nature to you. I could have chosen to ignore your request, since it really doesn't matter to me whether you believe in free will or not.




That is begging the question. You are using free will to explain the act, and using the explanation of the act by means of free will to try and justify your belief in the concept. If one does not believe in the concept from the onset the proposal of free will as an explanation becomes unwarranted.

Quote:

Phred said:Of course they can. See my choice to suddenly start typing in Spanish on The Shroomery rather than in English. That's a pretty radical change, for me.




No it isn't. That does not indicate a longer-term or root level alteration your personality in any way hence your assertion that you have radically changed is dubious.

Quote:

Phred said:Yet it is not random -- I don't randomly switch from Spanish to English in my everyday life. I deliberately chose to radically alter my behavior in order to demonstrate that I am a volitional being. Once the point was made, I reverted to typing in English.




But your choice was itself either determined or not determined. If the former it is caused, if the latter it is random. Appealing to choice as the deterministic factor is circular and amounts to saying it was uncaused.

Quote:

Phred said:The fact that I interact with you through methods of my own choice says nothing about the mechanism by which I make those choices. The dualists might be right or the monists might be right, or they might both be wrong. All that matters is I have demonstrated that I am a volitional being.




According to your theory causal mechanisms are interacting with acausal mechanisms. That indicates a property dualism.

Quote:

Phred said:Now, it may bother you that you can't explain with your current level of knowledge just why I hit the "r" key whenever I choose to, but it doesn't bother me a bit. More to the point, the fact that you cannot explain to your satisfaction the mechanism by which I hit the "r" key at will does not invalidate the fact -- and yes, it is a fact -- that lo and behold! Phred hits the "r" key when he chooses to.




That is a God in the Gaps argument. You are merely asserting that because science hasn't explained the mechanisms underlying your actions that the actions are "chosen" in an acausal sense.

Quote:

Phred said:To dumb this down even further, the fact that science didn't know until quite recently that ethyl alcohol is a metabolite of yeast cells didn't prevent wine from being made. One need not fully understand a phenomena in order to observe it.




I am not observing your will. I am observing actions- the are proposing that the underlying cause of these actions is your free will.

Quote:

Phred said:
What I believe or don't believe has no bearing on whether or not I am a volitional being -- whether that belief popped into my head unaided or whether I heard it from someone else. Are you saying that if I believe I have free will, then I am in fact a volitional being, but if I don't believe so, then I am the hapless victim of circumstance along for the ride in an uncontrollable meat shell? That all I have to do to free myself from my predetermined fate is to believe my fate is not predetermined?




No I am explaining what environmental factors can determine your actions.


Quote:

Phred said:And where did this desire to prove I am a volitional being come from?




Your culture and ignorance. The ignorance stemming from your inability to observe your own mind.


Quote:

Phred said:No, the soul is YOUR proposed mechanism for free will. It isn't mine.




What is your proposed mechanism then? If you do not answer this question then your belief is incoherent.

Quote:

Phred said:The fact that your pet "scientist" is adept at tearing down straw men of his own construction does nothing to disprove the existence of free will.




The equation of free will with the soul is generally the accepted viewpoint with regards to the subject. Michael Shermer is not attacking a straw man but the mainstream view. Just because Shermer's argument may not specifically apply to your case does not alone prove he is attacking a straw man.

Quote:

Phred said:That's like two witch doctors arguing over the process by which grape juice becomes wine: one says it is the work of the devil, the other says it is the work of the gods. In actual fact, it is the work of unicellular organisms eating and crapping.




What if a scientist then asserted that the grapes chose to become wine?

I think that assertion is much closer to what you have proposed.


I also wanted to add that Shermer has presented some actual arguments which you have failed to address:

Quote:

First, it is not clear where the interaction would take place. For example, burning one's fingers causes pain. Apparently there is some chain of events, leading from the burning of skin, to the stimulation of nerve endings, to something happening in the peripheral nerves of one's body that lead to one's brain, to something happening in a particular part of one's brain, and finally resulting in the sensation of pain. But pain is not supposed to be spatially localizable. It might be responded that the pain "takes place in the brain." But, intuitively, pains are not located anywhere.

This may not be a devastating criticism. However, there is a second problem about the interaction. Namely, the question of how the interaction takes place. It may be supposed that this is solely a matter for science to resolve -- scientists will eventually discover the connection between mental and physical events. But philosophers also have something to say about the matter, since the very notion of a mechanism which explains the connection between the mental and the physical would be very strange, at best. For example, compare such a mechanism to a mechanism that is well understood. Take a very simple causal relation, such as when a cue ball strikes an eight ball and causes it to go into the pocket. What happens in this case is that the cue ball has a certain amount of momentum as its mass moves across the pool table with a certain velocity, and then that momentum is transferred to the eight ball, which then heads toward the pocket. Compare this to the situation in the brain, where one wants to say that a decision causes some neurons to fire and thus causes a body to move across the room. The intention to "cross the room now" is a mental event and, as such, it does not have physical properties such as force. If it has no force, then it would seem that it could not possibly cause any neuron to fire. The puzzle is to explain how something without any physical properties could have any physical effects at all.

Some philosophers have replied to this, as follows: there is indeed a mystery about how the interaction between mental and physical events can occur. But the fact that there is a mystery does not mean that there is no interaction. Plainly there is an interaction and plainly the interaction is between two totally different sorts of events. The problem with this response is that it does not seem to answer the full power of the objection.

The objection can be formulated more precisely. When a person decides to walk across a room, it is generally understood that the decision to do so, a mental event, immediately causes a group of neurons in that person's brain to fire, a physical event, which ultimately results in his walking across the room. The problem is that if we have something totally nonphysical causing a bunch of neurons to fire, then there is no physical event which causes the firing. That means that some physical energy seems to have appeared out of thin air. Even if one maintains that the decision has some sort of mental energy, and that the decision causes the firing, there is still no explanation of where the physical energy for the firing came from. It just seems to have popped into existence from nowhere.[25]




I bolded the most relevant parts to assist you.

Can you explain how the physical energy needed for acausal choice appeared out thin air?


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

Edited by FrenchSocialist (04/22/07 05:54 PM)

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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6821289 - 04/22/07 11:05 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Diploid writes:

Quote:

If the universe is deterministic, then the chain of subatomic interactions in your brain that lead to your perceived decision would be inevitable.




That's a mighty big if. Your statements to date seem to indicate you believe there is no "if" about it. You are arguing that the universe is deterministic. Upon what do you base your argument?

Quote:

You're confusing the sensation of free will with the fact of free will.




Au contraire. You are confusing your rejection of the evidence of your senses and of your own reasoning power with a "proof" that the universe is deterministic.

Quote:

Just like a billiard ball bouncing around a table may think it has free will, but in reality it bounces off each edge at an angle predetermined when the cue ball was struck.




Inappropriate analogy. Billiard balls are neither volitional entities nor thinking entities. Hell, they are not even living entities. Volition is an attribute only of living entities of a certain threshhold complexity.

Quote:

I accept that you believe you have free will, but I do not accept that you have demonstrated that you do.




If you reject my proposed demonstration that I am a volitional being, assign me a task which demonstrates to your satisfaction that I am one. It is then up to me to complete the task or not.



Phred


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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6821444 - 04/22/07 11:58 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

That is begging the question. You are using free will to explain the act, and using the explanation of the act by means of free will to try and justify your belief in the concept. If one does not believe in the concept from the onset the proposal of free will as an explanation becomes unwarranted.




LOL! Good one. What you are in essence saying is that if you do not believe in the concept of volition, nothing anyone can do will convince you of the existence of volition.

Quote:

No it isn't. That does not indicate a longer-term or root level alteration your personality in any way hence your assertion that you have radically changed is dubious.




Ah. Standard dodge of moving the goalposts when one's argument has been blown out of the water. Now it is not enough for me to do something radically different from my normal practice, but I must continue to do that something different for some unspecified length of time. And why this reference to my "personality"? Either I altered my behavior volitionally or I didn't. Behavior is not equivalent to personality.

Quote:

But your choice was itself either determined or not determined. If the former it is caused, if the latter it is random.




It is true my choice had a cause. The cause was me. I made the choice. The choice was not made for me.

Quote:

According to your theory causal mechanisms are interacting with acausal mechanisms. That indicates a property dualism.




Says who? It is you who believes in dualism, not me. I don't say my "soul" makes my body do stuff. My consciousness (the cause of my behavior) is not separate from my body, it is an inherent attribute of it. There is no soul/body dichotomy.

Quote:

That is a God in the Gaps argument. You are merely asserting that because science hasn't explained the mechanisms underlying your actions that the actions are "chosen" in an acausal sense.




You are arguing from ignorance. Your claim is that since your understanding of science has no explanation for volition, volition does not exist -- that what we believe to be volition is an illusion of volition. That is no different from a medieval alchemist saying that since neither he nor any of his contemporaries with whose work he is familiar can scientifically explain how water can fall from the sky, rain is an illusion.

Quote:

No I am explaining what environmental factors can determine your actions.




Incorrect. You are at best showing that environmental factors influence my tendency to act along certain lines most of the time. That is a very far cry indeed from showing these factors determine my actions.

Quote:

Your culture and ignorance. The ignorance stemming from your inability to observe your own mind.




What is it about my culture that leaves me no choice but to demonstrate the obvious to a stranger on an internet board? What in my culture demands that I invest any time at all in attempting to persuade someone I've never met to think things through thoroughly rather than just chuckle to myself at his delusions and move on to the next thread?

Quote:

What is your proposed mechanism then? If you do not answer this question then your belief is incoherent.




Again, this challenge is no different from someone a hundred years ago challenging his friend to propose a mechanism for how stars can burn in a vacuum, then claiming triumphantly that since his friend can come up with no plausible mechanism, stars do not exist.

I don't know the precise mechanism by which my consciousness controls my fingers. But I don't know the precise mechanism by which living entities violate the laws of thermodynamics (specifically, how living entities reverse entropy) either. Nonetheless, living entities exist.

I have bumped a few older threads on free will in which the same question is asked, and in which I reply that perhaps (perhaps, mind you -- not for sure) consciousness, although its effects take place in the observable four dimensional universe, may not be entirely of the observable four dimensional universe. Perhaps a part of consciousness occupies a fifth or even sixth or seventh or nth dimension which is not easily apprehendable by humans.

Who knows? Who cares?

Quote:

What if a scientist then asserted that the grapes chose to become wine?




Then he would be as much of a "scientist" as the psychologist whose work you excerpted in an earlier post. Science by its very nature cannot address the big philosophical questions. That is the job of philosophy. Any scientist will tell you that science cannot answer the most fundamental question of all -- why is there something as opposed to nothing. Science just doesn't work that way.

Quote:

I also wanted to add that Shermer has presented some actual arguments which you have failed to address:




I can't personally answer some of those questions. So what? There are plenty of observable phenomena science can't answer yet either. What explains gravity? How do living entities reverse entropy? Why do living entities travel in just one direction along the arrow of time? There is no mathematical reason for this unidirectional journey -- the math works equally well in either direction.

Your entire position basically boils down to --

"I haven't found anyone yet who can explain to my (FrenchSocialist's) satisfaction the mechanism by which volition occurs, therefore volition doesn't exist."

That's a pretty egotistical way to look at things, but hey... if it floats your boat, go ahead believing you are a helpless passenger in a meat shell operating under the control of someone (or something) else.

I can't help but reiterate my earlier observation of the obvious -- if there is no such thing as volition, there can of course be no such thing as philosophy or spirituality.




Phred


--------------------

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6822032 - 04/23/07 06:34 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

That's a mighty big if.

It doesn't matter how big it is, so long as it's possible. We're not arguing the likelihood of free will are we? We're arguing whether or not it exists.

assign me a task which demonstrates to your satisfaction that I am one

There is no such task as anything I assign you could have already been in the pipe of subatomic interactions in my brain, and the result (your performing or nor performing that task) could have been in the pipe of subatomic interactions in YOUR brain.

You may indeed have free will, or maybe not. No experiment performed from inside a deterministic universe can ever say, and since we cannot know if the universe is deterministic from within it, we can never know that it isn't deterministic either.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6822054 - 04/23/07 06:47 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Diploid, your objections are no more than another variant of solipsism.

What you are in essence saying is that since there is no set of actions you could observe an entity perform which would convince you that entity was acting volitionally, therefore, volition is an illusion.

That is exactly the same thing a solipsist says regarding the existence of others (or of anything at all, when you get right down to it) -- that even though I hit him over the head with a coconut, neither I nor the coconut really exist -- I can't "prove" that the entire incident didn't occur in his own consciousness as a very vivid and convincing dream.

I point out for the third time that if there is no such thing as volition -- if all motion is predetermined, and living entities have no more control over their actions than do planets and comets -- then of course philosophy and spirituality (and all they subsume) are null concepts.




Phred


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6822155 - 04/23/07 07:50 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

What you are in essence saying is that since there is no set of actions you could observe an entity perform which would convince you that entity was acting volitionally, therefore, volition is an illusion.

No Phred. Please read more carefully:

What I am saying is that, since there is no set of actions I could observe an entity perform which would convince me that the entity was acting volitionally, it is not possible to know if volition is real or if it is an illusion.

I happen to believe volition is real, but that is my intuition and an educated guess from my understanding of Quantum Indeterminacy only; I do not kid myself that volition can be demonstrated either true or false any more than a qualia can be demonstrated to be universal.

Just like it is not possible to know if a computer that passes the Turing Test is actually conscious and volitional or just executing a deterministic set of machine instructions.

That machine doesn't exist yet, but it's right around the corner.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflineCerebralFlower
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6822492 - 04/23/07 09:58 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

ARE YOU GUYS THINKING OF THE TELEKINETIC PHERMONES?


--------------------
God says dance with your heart
And shake free of you desire

Where theres a will theres always a way
When you get confused listen to the music play


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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6822569 - 04/23/07 10:20 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

What I am saying is that, since there is no set of actions I could observe an entity perform which would convince me that the entity was acting volitionally, it is not possible to know if volition is real or if it is an illusion.




Similarly, since there is no foolproof test you can devise to prove what you perceive is real rather than illusory (i.e. a product of your own consciousness spinning a very vivid and highly detailed "waking dream"), it is not possible to know if the universe is real or if it is an illusion.

So all that is left is solipsism.

Excuse me for categorizing that viewpoint as a tremendously silly argument. You will admit it is dead simple to devise any number of scenarios in which one can easily observe a living entity (me, for example) performing actions identical to those which would be performed by a volitonal being, yet you still claim the entity has not proven it is volitional, because maybe.... just maybe.... some as yet undiscovered and even unhypothesized physical laws of nature determine exactly when I will -- nay, must -- switch from typing in coherent, to the point, on topic English to typing gibberish in Swahili.

That is bullshit. The very nature of communication (not to mention countless other activities humans perform) demonstrates clearly that it is neither predetermined nor random, but purposefully directed. My typing of this sentence is neither a random event like the decay of a radioactive particle nor a mechanically determined (hence perfectly predictable given sufficient knowledge) event like the path an artillery shell will follow.

The thing that irritates me is that every poster in this thread not only knows this is so, they routinely act as if this is so. There is no one here who really thinks every action he takes is preordained. Not a one. Certainly no one here acts as if every action he takes is preordained. The denial of the existence of volition is a trivially simple thing with which to amuse oneself, but that is all it is -- an intellectual parlor trick one trots out occasionally to "impress" the admiring peons before discarding it and returning to one's volitional life. And even that (a temporary departure from volitional action) isn't really what is happening -- the performance of the parlor trick itself requires non-random, non-deterministic behavior on the part of the perpetrator in order to pull it off! It's not as if the philosophical conjuror ceases acting volitionally for the time it takes to perform the trick, then returns to acting volitionally afterwards, he has in fact (must, in fact) been acting volitionally throughout the performance of the trick as well.

The screaming irony ignored by these philosophical charlatans is that one cannot even articulate the concepts necessary to perform the swindle without performing volitional actions -- i.e. purposefully directed actions resulting in coherent speech or writing which conveys the information they wish to pass from themselves to their audience.



Phred


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6822600 - 04/23/07 10:26 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

So Phred, lemme just ask you one question, and please answer directly:

Is a machine that passes the Turing Test volitional?

Yes, No, or Impossible To Tell?

If Yes or No, please provide the metric by which this can be determined.

Note: YOU are a chemical machine that passes the Turing Test.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6823023 - 04/23/07 12:41 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Phred isn't going to get it. He has decided what he believes, and there is nothing we can say that will make him believe otherwise. And of course, he can't choose what he believes.


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6823092 - 04/23/07 12:57 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Hehe, Phred. I absolutely support your POV, just to let you know :laugh:
Maybe I can gamble up some words toward it in a conclusive matter...laters :grin:
:thumbup:


--------------------
Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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Offlinefireworks_godS
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6823126 - 04/23/07 01:05 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

BrainChemicals said:
Phred isn't going to get it. He has decided what he believes, and there is nothing we can say that will make him believe otherwise. And of course, he can't choose what he believes.




If you do not agree with what he has proposed, then feel free to either engage him in discussion or ignore it... I don't comprehend what this statement contributes to the discussion...


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #6823261 - 04/23/07 01:37 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Simply alone to see the possibility of an opposite action gives raise to a mirrored infinite play of possible choices one can do (inbetween).
How can one keep that to a subconscious level, as it implicates the very nature of one's own existent being ?

Say no to robocy ! :laugh:
:heart:


--------------------
Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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OfflineMushroomTrip
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #6823288 - 04/23/07 01:42 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

:thumbup:
Or, in other words, you can chose of you're just the result of determinism or not :wink:


--------------------
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And never known your face
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: fireworks_god]
    #6823329 - 04/23/07 01:53 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

fireworks_god said:
Quote:

BrainChemicals said:
Phred isn't going to get it. He has decided what he believes, and there is nothing we can say that will make him believe otherwise. And of course, he can't choose what he believes.




If you do not agree with what he has proposed, then feel free to either engage him in discussion or ignore it... I don't comprehend what this statement contributes to the discussion...




Phred did the exact same thing:

Quote:

Phred said:
FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

That is begging the question. You are using free will to explain the act, and using the explanation of the act by means of free will to try and justify your belief in the concept. If one does not believe in the concept from the onset the proposal of free will as an explanation becomes unwarranted.




LOL! Good one. What you are in essence saying is that if you do not believe in the concept of volition, nothing anyone can do will convince you of the existence of volition.




He also didn't answer my question presented from Michael Shermer.


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

Edited by FrenchSocialist (04/23/07 01:59 PM)

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6823352 - 04/23/07 01:57 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

FrenchSocialist said:
Phred did the exact same thing:

Quote:

Phred said:
LOL! Good one. What you are in essence saying is that if you do not believe in the concept of volition, nothing anyone can do will convince you of the existence of volition.








Yeah, pretty much. I didn't see that. :grin:


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushroomTrip]
    #6823497 - 04/23/07 02:33 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

MushroomTrip said:
:thumbup:
Or, in other words, you can chose of you're just the result of determinism or not :wink:




Hey! That sounds like a Shmoopy response. :thumbup: :lol:


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: OrgoneConclusion]
    #6823529 - 04/23/07 02:41 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

OrgoneConclusion said:
Quote:

MushroomTrip said:
:thumbup:
Or, in other words, you can chose of you're just the result of determinism or not :wink:




Hey! That sounds like a Shmoopy response. :thumbup: :lol:




:lol:


--------------------
:bunny::bunnyhug:
All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
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Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6825459 - 04/23/07 11:12 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

So Phred, lemme just ask you one question, and please answer directly:

Is a machine that passes the Turing Test volitional?




According to my understanding of the Turing Test (and I freely admit I may be missing part of it), the idea is for one or several humans to engage a hidden entity (either machine or human) in an extended conversation in an attempt to determine from the hidden entity's responses if it is a human or a machine.

If my understanding of the test is accurate, then I would say a machine that could fool me into thinking I was conversing with a human during an extended exchange such as for example one of the lengthier threads in which I have participated in the Politics, Activism & Law forum would indeed pass one of the necessary (but not sufficient) tests required to determine if it was a volitional being.

The reason I say necessary but not sufficient is that the final determination depends on what the machine does when it is not trying to fool someone into thinking it is human. Does it sit there and do nothing? If so, then no... it is not a volitional being.

I don't know enough about the mechanism of volition (or of consciousness, for that matter) to be able to say machines of sufficent complexity cannot be self aware and act volitionally. I do know that as of today, the only known volitional entities are living entities. That may not be the case fifty or a hundred or five hundred years from now.




Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6825693 - 04/24/07 12:13 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

Phred did the exact same thing:




I did no such thing. Perhaps the problem is your imprecise phrasing. There are times when I find your responses at best ambiguous and at worst incoherent. The way I interpreted your objection was that you were basically saying that one can demonstrate the existence of volition only to one who believes volition is a valid concept -- that if John Doe does not believe there is such a thing as volition, no demonstration proving otherwise will convince John Doe. John Doe will just brush it off as an "illusion" of volition, in much the same way solipsists brush off all demonstrations of a universe external to their own consciousness as illusory.

It is possible that wasn't really what you were driving at. If so, feel free to rephrase.

Quote:

He also didn't answer my question presented from Michael Shermer.




Do you want me to total up the number of my points and questions you have ignored so far in this thread? Because I am happy to do that if you think you can handle the resulting embarassment. Up to you.

As it happens, I did respond to your question re Shermer -- I admitted that I have no answer for some of the questions he asks: for example when Shermer says (after an initial preamble) --

"The problem is that if we have something totally nonphysical causing a bunch of neurons to fire, then there is no physical event which causes the firing. That means that some physical energy seems to have appeared out of thin air. Even if one maintains that the decision has some sort of mental energy, and that the decision causes the firing, there is still no explanation of where the physical energy for the firing came from. It just seems to have popped into existence from nowhere."

-- I will state that I don't know where the energy came from. So what? Neither Shermer nor anyone else knows where the energy comes from that powers our thinking processes either -- what is the mechanism by which the pile of meat you inhabit becomes sentient? Yet sentient beings exist.

Hell, we don't even have to get into the question of sentience -- let's step back a pace or two and look at the phenomenon of LIFE itself. Science cannot even come close to explaining why certain collections of molecules are alive and others aren't. Yet living entities exist.

And -- to make things even more basic still -- science cannot even explain why there is something rather than nothing. Yet the universe exists.

So the fact that science cannot explain why some living entities exhibit volitional behavior does nothing whatsoever to show there is no such thing as volitional behavior.

To reiterate: your contention boils down to nothing more than, "Since the science of today cannot demonstrate a feasible mechanism by which living entities act volitionally, there is no such thing as volitional action." That is every bit as invalid a statement as, "Since the science of today cannot demonstrate a feasible mechanism by which living entities become self-aware, there is no such thing as self-awareness." And every bit as invalid as the statement, "Since the science of today cannot demonstrate a feasible mechanism by which matter becomes alive, there is no such thing as life."

You have a fundamental flaw in your understanding of what science is, and how the scientific method works. All science does is attempt to devise an explanation (theory) which accurately and non-contradictorily describes observable phenomena. The starting point is not the theory, the starting point is the phenomenon.

If the theory cannot adequately describe the phenomenon in question, science concludes not that the phenomenon is illusory, but that the theory devised to describe the phenomenon is inadequate, and must be modified.

You are putting the cart before the horse.

To repeat myself -- it was not that long ago that we had no idea what made stars shine, what turned grape juice into wine, how rain (and even balls of ice!) could fall from the sky. Hell, it wasn't much more than a decade ago that scientists discovered stomach ulcers are not caused by stress or by excess stomach acid, but by bacteria. Science has limitations. Many philosophers (and many scientists as well, actually) say there are certain fundamental questions which science, no matter how advanced it becomes, CAN NEVER answer satisfactorily. Perhaps the question of how volitional action occurs is one of those questions.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps if physicists ever manage to produce an airtight Grand Unified Theory, some of the equations it contains may point to a possible mechanism by which the phenomena of life, sentience, and volition operate. Who can say?

Nonetheless, volitional action is a real phenomenon. Anyone watching two competent practitioners play chess (as just one of billions of possible examples) can determine pretty rapidly that their actions are neither random nor pre-ordained, but purposeful.



Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6825700 - 04/24/07 12:14 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I just finished writing a paper on this very subject, so I' not necessarily in the mood for a debate, but I encourage anyone interested in determinism to do a little reading.

for once, wikipedia actually has a pretty good entry on the subject.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6826036 - 04/24/07 01:44 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
I did no such thing. Perhaps the problem is your imprecise phrasing. There are times when I find your responses at best ambiguous and at worst incoherent. The way I interpreted your objection was that you were basically saying that one can demonstrate the existence of volition only to one who believes volition is a valid concept --




Then you interpreted my objection incorrectly. There are ways to test what unperceived mechanisms better explain observations- none of which were applied to your example, instead the mechanism was just assumed.

Quote:

Phred said:-- I will state that I don't know where the energy came from. So what?




Then where exactly does free will enter the picture? The fact is it would need energy to effect the body. Unless you can demonstrate where this energy comes from your position is incoherent. Or at least, less coherent then a deterministic position where the energy appears as a result of physical causation (neurons firing, metabolic activity, biochemical reactions).


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

Edited by FrenchSocialist (04/24/07 01:51 AM)

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6826401 - 04/24/07 06:15 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

According to my understanding of the Turing Test

Your understanding is essentially correct.

The reason I say necessary but not sufficient is that the final determination depends on what the machine does when it is not trying to fool someone into thinking it is human. Does it sit there and do nothing? If so, then no... it is not a volitional being.

The machine I have in mind would be designed to not sit there doing nothing.

Once it finished its conversation with you, its programming would engage other algorithms to write music and poetry, admire art, ponder metaphysics, form friendships, lament its loneliness, and do pretty much what a psychologically healthy quadriplegic human does.

None of these activities would be predictable even if they happen to be deterministic because the particular path it would follow through all the myriad possible logic trees it executes would be a function of the random input it got through its interactions with people and its other sensors.

So, I'm guessing you would grant that machine the status of volitional?

If so, what is the metric? How can you know that the machine is actually self-aware and asserting its will rather than a v-e-r-y impressive deterministic algorithm?

Is there a hard and fast rule that can be used to determine that this machine is in fact volitional and another similar but more prosaic machine is not? Or does it ultimately come down to your intuition?


--------------------
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2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6826717 - 04/24/07 09:14 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

There are ways to test what unperceived mechanisms better explain observations- none of which were applied to your example, instead the mechanism was just assumed.




There are ways? Name two.

I cannot help but note that you continue to respond as if you misunderstand the issue under discussion here -- I suspect from your avoidance of almost every point I have raised during this thread that this "misunderstanding" is deliberate.

I don't give two shits about which mechanism best explains the phenomenon being discussed. It doesn't matter to me whether our ability to act volitionally is powered by some as-yet undiscovered particle operating entirely within the observable universe or whether it might be powered by some source of energy which acts not just in the observable four-dimensional universe but also in some higher dimension or alternate universe or if it turns out there really is a soul which survives the death of our physical bodies.

It doesn't matter why you (for example) act precisely consistently with how you would act if you were a truly volitional being -- what matters is that you DO act in precisely the manner a volitional being would act, therefore it is more logical to conclude you are in fact a volitional being than to conclude you are instead a clever imitation of a volitional being. Call it Occam's Razor, call it the Law of Parsimony... call it whatever you want. If something looks like a duck, acts like a duck, smells like a duck, sounds like a duck, feels like a duck, and tastes like a duck, the logical conclusion is that it is in fact a duck -- not a cat cleverly disguised as a duck. Anyone wishing to dispute the self-evident fact that it is a duck is going to have to come up with a lot more convincing argument than just claiming "Well, you just think it's a duck. It isn't really a duck at all. It's just a really really flawless imitation of a duck."

Once again (to repeat just one of the MANY points I have raised during this thread which you continue to dodge), admitting that one cannot precisely describe the mechanism by which a phenomenon occurs does nothing to invalidate the existence of the phenomenon. Can you explain where the energy comes from which animates your pet cat? No you cannot. Does this mean your pet cat doesn't exist?

Hell, let's not even bother with living organisms for the moment -- let's discuss the phenomenon of gravitational attraction. By what mechanism do two bodies which have mass attract each other? You are of course aware that science has no answer for something as simple (compared to the vastly more complex phenomenon of consciousness) as gravitational attraction, are you not? Yet you accept that gravitational attraction exists -- it is not just an illusion of gravitational attraction.

Science cannot explain the mechanism behind gravitational attraction, behind consciousness, behind life itself, nor can it explain why there is something rather than nothing. Yet I don't see you arguing the universe is illusory, that there is no such thing as self-awareness, that living beings aren't really alive at all, and that massive objects do not attract each other but only appear to attract each other. Why is that? Why do you insist on raising the bar for just one phenomenon (volitional action) rather than all of them?

To move away from science and back into the realm of philosophy, your position is philosophically indistinguishable from that of the solipsist -- the only difference being one of scope: the solipsist argues all the existents and phenomena he observes are illusory, you are content with declaring just one of the phenomena you observe as illusory.



Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6826744 - 04/24/07 09:28 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

So, I'm guessing you would grant that machine the status of volitional?

If so, what is the metric? How can you know that the machine is actually self-aware and asserting its will rather than a v-e-r-y impressive deterministic algorithm?




Because if it has passed the Turing Test administered by myself -- if it behaves the same way I would myself in its situation (and I know myself to be a volitional being) then I will grant it the status of volitional being. Why would I not? Who says there is one and ONLY one method by which an entity may act volitionally? Not me. Perhaps the mechanism behind volition exhibited by certain living entities is nothing more mysterious than an algorithm of sufficient complexity. Or perhaps some organic (i.e. self-assembling carbon-based) entities exhibit volition by one mechanism while some inorganic (i.e. assembled silicon and metal-based) entities require a separate mechanism in order to exhibit volition.

I have a question for you. You know yourself to be self aware. You also believe yourself to be capable of volitional action, but let's set that aside for the moment, and go with just what you know -- that you are self-aware.

How can you know that other humans you observe are also self-aware? How can you know they are even living entities rather than just extremely well-constructed machines placed where you can interact with them?



Phred


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InvisibletrendalM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6826749 - 04/24/07 09:30 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Can you explain where the energy comes from which animates your pet cat? No you cannot.

Why not? You seem very certain that this cannot be explained, but it seems rather a silly thing to say.

The energy that animates my pet cat comes from the food he eats. That's pretty simple, no?

Hell, let's not even bother with living organisms for the moment -- let's discuss the phenomenon of gravitational attraction. By what mechanism do two bodies which have mass attract each other? You are of course aware that science has no answer for something as simple (compared to the vastly more complex phenomenon of consciousness) as gravitational attraction, are you not? Yet you accept that gravitational attraction exists -- it is not just an illusion of gravitational attraction.

Huh? Gravitational attraction has been explained by science. Einstein? Theory of Relativity? Did I fall into a time warp or something?


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But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6826752 - 04/24/07 09:31 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
I have a question for you. You know yourself to be self aware. You also believe yourself to be capable of volitional action, but let's set that aside for the moment, and go with just what you know -- that you are self-aware.

How can you know that other humans you observe are also self-aware? How can you know they are even living entities rather than just extremely well-constructed machines placed where you can interact with them?




Ha! I was asking these exact same questions in the plants with soul threads.

The answer is that you cannot. We are biased due to our experience. We transfer the fact that we are aware to other human beings, since other humans seem so similar to ourselves, and even to some mammals, because they share certain similarities that might suggest to us that they are self-aware.

But our bias regarding this does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the nature of awareness itself - simply that we know ourselves to be aware, and assume that any phenomenon similar to ourselves must likewise be aware.

Consider this to relate to this discussion however one wishes. :cool:


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6826775 - 04/24/07 09:43 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Because if it has passed the Turing Test administered by myself -- if it behaves the same way I would myself in its situation (and I know myself to be a volitional being) then I will grant it the status of volitional being. Why would I not?

So, let's take this one step further. Say that instead of the machine performing these tasks, I print out the program running in the machine.

Now I manually, with a pencil, step through each machine instruction and execute the algorithm by hand. You would still get the same conversation, it'll just take me longer to compute and write out each predetermined response with my pencil as I step through the instructions that produce the response.

Are these deterministic, inevitable, predetermined responses volitional? Where is the volition coming from?

I have a question for you... How can you know that other humans you observe are also self-aware?

I can't know it. I believe it only through my intuition.

And that's my whole point. Volition appears to be real, but it can't be demonstrated; it can only be intuited, and if the universe happens to be deterministic, it is no different than the printed machine instructions I talk about ^^^ up there.

How can printed machine instructions executed by me with a pencil be volitional? If they aren't volitional, then why would a machine doing the same thing as my pencil, albeit a lot faster, be volitional?


--------------------
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1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6826859 - 04/24/07 10:22 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Volition, along with any other magical property that tries to pass itself off as causa sui, is an insult to intellegence.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6826865 - 04/24/07 10:23 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

MushmanTheManic said:
Volition, along with any other magical property that tries to pass itself off as causa sui, is an insult to intellegence.




Elaborate.


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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: fireworks_god]
    #6826887 - 04/24/07 10:28 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Well...
How the hell can something cause itself?

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6826898 - 04/24/07 10:30 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

By being something that is capable of using a complex set of cause and effects to produce causes? :shrug: :lol:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6826919 - 04/24/07 10:34 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

"The causa sui is the best self-contradiction which has been thought up so far, a kind of logical rape and perversity. But the excessive pride of human beings has worked to entangle itself deeply and terribly with this very nonsense. The demand for "freedom of the will," in that superlative metaphysical sense, as it unfortunately still rules in the heads of the half-educated, the demand to bear the entire final responsibility for one's actions oneself and to relieve god, the world, ancestors, chance, and society of responsibility for it, is naturally nothing less than this very causa sui and an attempt to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by the hair, with more audacity than Munchhausen." -- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

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InvisibleMushmanTheManic
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: fireworks_god]
    #6826927 - 04/24/07 10:36 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The cause would have to travel back in time to cause itself... but then the original cause would not actually be a cause - it would be the effect of a time traveling cause... but that time traveling cause is now an effect too!

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: MushmanTheManic]
    #6826930 - 04/24/07 10:36 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I fundamentally disagree with that statement. If we are capable of assuming full responsibility for our actions and our state of being, then why not?


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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InvisibletrendalM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: fireworks_god]
    #6826985 - 04/24/07 10:53 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Assume the fullness of your responsibility...and let us worry about ours :wink:

I think the quote he posted was quite on the mark! There is always enough responsibility to go around. It is never confined to one person...unless that person was confined from birth from all other humans. Realizing the responsibility falls on others as well does not take away the need to realize our own responsibility.


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6827122 - 04/24/07 11:27 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

trendal writes:

Quote:

The energy that animates my pet cat comes from the food he eats. That's pretty simple, no?




Simple, but insufficient. Place food in the stomach of a dead cat and see how far you get.

Quote:

Gravitational attraction has been explained by science.




No, it hasn't. Science has described with excellent accuracy just how much attraction an object of X mass exerts on a neighboring object of Y mass, but has not yet explained the mechanism of that attraction. One of the more favored hypotheses today is that gravitational attraction somehow involves an instantaneous exchange of theoretical particles named gravitons, but the existence of gravitons is so far nothing more than speculation. One of the problems with the graviton model is that it necessarily contradicts the established theory that nothing may move faster than the speed of light. That's a pretty big hurdle for the graviton model to overcome.




Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6827130 - 04/24/07 11:28 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Yes, in that sense, I very much agree with you. :stoned:

I just reread the statement and realized that I wasn't paying enough attention to what it was saying. I definitely think that it would not be an appropriate path to attempt to relieve the rest of reality from its responsibility. We can simply be responsible for ourselves and our own power to influence the course of reality.


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: fireworks_god]
    #6827139 - 04/24/07 11:31 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

firworks_god writes:

Quote:

But our bias regarding this does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the nature of awareness itself -




And as I have pointed out repeatedly -- to deafening silence from my learned debating oponents -- science's entire output to date also "does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the nature of awareness itself". Yet awareness exists.



Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6827163 - 04/24/07 11:35 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
And as I have pointed out repeatedly -- to deafening silence from my learned debating oponents -- science's entire output to date also "does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the nature of awareness itself". Yet awareness exists.




I realize this - that is my point, and was my point in the "plants with souls" thread as well. Clearly awareness exists, we exist as awareness, we experience reality as awareness. The basic truth about our existance is a mystery, and I see no way that it couldn't be, except through the path of awareness (becoming more aware).


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6827232 - 04/24/07 11:48 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Diploid writes:

Quote:

So, let's take this one step further. Say that instead of the machine performing these tasks, I print out the program running in the machine.

Now I manually, with a pencil, step through each machine instruction and execute the algorithm by hand. You would still get the same conversation, it'll just take me longer to compute and write out each predetermined response with my pencil as I step through the instructions that produce the response.

Are these deterministic, inevitable, predetermined responses volitional? Where is the volition coming from?




You are getting ahead of yourself. You are assuming:

1) the existence of that which does not yet exist -- a machine able to mimic volitional human action perfectly

2) that the mechanism driving this as yet imaginary machine is a deterministic algorithm.

How about we discuss instead things which actually exist?

Quote:

Volition appears to be real, but it can't be demonstrated; it can only be intuited...




Consciousness appears to be real, but it can't be demonstrated; it can only be intuited.

Life appears to be real, but it can't be demonstrated; it can only be intuited.

The physical universe appears to be real, but it can't be demonstrated; it can only be intuited.

As I have said over and over and over again in this thread (while you have ignored the point over and over and over again), your statement regarding volition differs not a whit from my statements regarding life, awareness, and the existence of the universe itself. Each of those statements is a showstopper, and each of those statements is intellectually dishonest. They are statements resorted to by those losing a philosophical argument, because while technically impossible to refute, each statement nullifies the concept of philosophy (and spirituality too, for that matter) itself.

There is no point bothering to discuss philosophy with someone whose discussion technique is to invoke anti-philosophy whenever the going gets tough. For the eight or ninth time in this thread, I must point out that taking a position such as this is in essence identical to taking the solipsist position. And as has been amply demonstrated over the millennia, there is less point in attempting to discuss philosophical matters with a solipsist than there is in attempting to teach flatworms to sing.




Phred


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6827281 - 04/24/07 11:58 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

You are getting ahead of yourself. You are assuming:
1) the existence of that which does not yet exist


You are sidestepping a valid question that goes to show your claim that volition definitely exists is baseless.

My machine doesn't exist yet, but it's right around the corner.

A decade ago a machine that could beat the best human chess players didn't exist. It was even stated by many that such a machine would never be invented because the human capacity for intuition and creativity was a unique result of the human mind, much like it's often stated now that volition is.

Yet today we have Deep Blue.

Kasparov, the then best human chess player, lost to Deep Blue. After the loss, Kasparov stated that he sometimes saw a deep intelligence and creativity in the machine's moves that he was at a loss to explain or understand.

So, my question stands.


--------------------
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2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6827323 - 04/24/07 12:07 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Diploid writes:

Quote:

You are sidestepping a valid question. This machine doesn't exist yet, but it's right around the corner.




Leaving aside for the moment the hypocrisy of someone who has sidestepped every point I have raised in this thread chiding me for "sidestepping", your claim that such a machine is "right around the corner" is sheer speculation. Despite the multiplicity of possible moves available in a chess game, it is trivially simple to write an algorithm capable of playing a high quality chess game in comparison to writing an algorithm which will replicate the conversation alone (let alone ALL the actions) of a human such as myself or yourself.

Your belief that such a machine is "right around the corner" does nothing to further the debate. I promise you that when you introduce me to such a machine, I will delightedly engage it in conversation. Until then, we must sadly soldier on without it.

Any chance you might actually get around to addressing any of the many unadressed points I have raised so far?




Phred


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InvisibletrendalM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6827340 - 04/24/07 12:11 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Simple, but insufficient. Place food in the stomach of a dead cat and see how far you get.

Well the cat is dead, what do you expect it will do :smirk:

Are you attempting to point out that living creatures have some sort of "life force" that is unknowable and unexplainable?

Science has come a long way since we thought a "life force" existed. There is a very real difference between a living cat and a dead one, and one that science can explain.

No, it hasn't. Science has described with excellent accuracy just how much attraction an object of X mass exerts on a neighboring object of Y mass, but has not yet explained the mechanism of that attraction. One of the more favored hypotheses today is that gravitational attraction somehow involves an instantaneous exchange of theoretical particles named gravitons, but the existence of gravitons is so far nothing more than speculation. One of the problems with the graviton model is that it necessarily contradicts the established theory that nothing may move faster than the speed of light. That's a pretty big hurdle for the graviton model to overcome.

Wrong. Science has been unable to come up with a quantum description of gravity, but the Theory of Relativity is a different description of gravity and one which works. The graviton may or may not be discovered, and that leaves the state of quantum gravity rather murky. In its place is a theory that has been confirmed to an extraordinary degree - Relativity.


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6827459 - 04/24/07 12:40 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Your belief that such a machine is "right around the corner" does nothing to further the debate.

You ARE aware that thought experiments are one of the cornerstones of philosophy, no?

Despite the multiplicity of possible moves available in a chess game, it is trivially simple to write an algorithm capable of playing a high quality chess game in comparison to writing an algorithm which will replicate the conversation alone

You're summarily dismissing Kasparov's comments about seeing in Deep Blue some of the properties required of a machine that can pass the Turing Test (creativity and intelligence). Kasparov had up until that match always been able to beat computers because they were predictable. He understood algorithmic computation and used that knowledge to bait and trick the computer into a losing position. When he lost to Deep Blue, he was so shocked that he refused to accept that the machine beat him single handedly. He even went so far as to accuse the IBM team of cheating by using a human to give the computer hints during the match. This is how profoundly disturbing he found the loss.

Also, you're ignoring that there are already machines in existence that can write passable music and poetry, though I admit not on par with a human yet.

Additionally, you're oversimplifying a chess game. After a certain number of plies, the combinatorial explosion that results in the problem of finding the best move renders the problem intractable. The problem cannot be solved by brute force. It can only be solved with creativity so that the gargantuan number of possible positions that must be searched is paired down to only a few relevant ones. Without this creativity, even the fastest machines get bogged down by an asymptotic load after a few plies; something that doesn't happen to humans... or to Deep Blue.

This is as complex as any problem can get possibly get and is the reason it used to be believed that humans, bypassing brute force computation with intuition and creativity, would ALWAYS beat computers playing chess. It turned out not to be true.

Any chance you might actually get around to addressing any of the many unaddressed points I have raised so far?

I've answered every question you've posed. If I messed one, please show me.

Meanwhile, back to my thought experiment: if I manually run with a pencil the program of a machine that passes the Turing Test, where would the volition come from?

If you're just going to deny that such a machine can exist because it doesn't yet, well, I refer you again to Deep Blue and lament the end of our debate.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6827526 - 04/24/07 12:56 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

trendal writes:

Quote:

Science has come a long way since we thought a "life force" existed. There is a very real difference between a living cat and a dead one, and one that science can explain.




Not my point. Science provides no mechanism by which certain assemblages of molecules possess life and others don't.

Quote:

Science has been unable to come up with a quantum description of gravity, but the Theory of Relativity is a different description of gravity and one which works.




Again, missing the point. The theory of relativity describes (or accurately predicts, if you prefer) to what extent object X of mass Y will attract object E of mass F. It has nothing whatsoever to say about why object X attracts object E. It says nothing at all of the motivating mechanism behind it all -- it explains the extent to which they are attracted, but is silent on why they should attract at all.

But let's assume that one day we will discover the mechanism by which gravity works, and that we will have the same level of confidence in the explaining theory that we do in our current theory of the nature of electromagnetic radiation. That still leaves unanswered the nature of life, of awareness, of volitional action, of existence itself.

The thing is, I have no idea why there is something rather than nothing. That doesn't mean I deny there is something. Similarly, I don't know why some entities live for a while, then die. That doesn't mean I deny the existence of life. If you ask me why some living entities are self-aware, I'll cheerfully admit I am stumped. That doesn't mean I deny the existence of consciousness. And I am the first to admit I can't tell you why you, trendal, possess the attribute of volition. That doesn't mean I pretend you are not a volitional being.

My point throughout the entire thread has been to demonstrate that the inability to satisfactorily explain the mechanism by which a phenomenon occurs does not invalidate the reality of that phenomenon. Some psychologists claims Dualism cannot satisfactorily explain human decision-making? If true, all that tells us is that Dualism is a flawed theory. Monism can't explain it either? Okay... then discard Monism, too. Can't think of anything else other than Dualism or Monism? That does nothing to show humans don't make decisions, it just shows your imagination has limitations.


Phred


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InvisibletrendalM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6827590 - 04/24/07 01:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Not my point. Science provides no mechanism by which certain assemblages of molecules possess life and others don't.

Well sure, if you define "life" as "something science cannot  explain"... Are you are saying that the only thing separating you from a pile of rocks is this "life" thing? Can you describe to me what "life" is? As long as you define life like this I'll thank you to not speak of Science in the same sentence :smirk:

Science can and has described the mechanisms that define "life". What separates a living animal from a dead one is a breakdown of metabolic processes and a loss of normal brain functioning (if it has a brain).

Again, missing the point. The theory of relativity describes (or accurately predicts, if you prefer) to what extent object X of mass Y will attract object E of mass F. It has nothing whatsoever to say about why object X attracts object E. It says nothing at all of the motivating mechanism behind it all -- it explains the extent to which they are attracted, but is silent on why they should attract at all.

Wrong again. I don't want to get into too deep of a science discussion...but the reasons why things attract other objects are very clear in the Theory of Relativity. Essentially, a mass warps spacetime in such a way that other masses are attracted to the warp. Think of a sheet stretched out with a bowling ball on it, and another small ball near it. They will be "attracted" to each other because they both make indentations (warps) in the sheet (spacetime). Now that doesn't really do justice because, as I'm sure you'll say, we have gravity pulling the balls down...but thats the best analogy I have at the moment. Suffice it to say that by creating a positive warp in spacetime, you are making it "easier" for an object to be in that warp.

My point throughout the entire thread has been to demonstrate that the inability to satisfactorily explain the mechanism by which a phenomenon occurs does not invalidate the reality of that phenomenon. Some psychologists claims Dualism cannot satisfactorily explain human decision-making? If true, all that tells us is that Dualism is a flawed theory. Monism can't explain it either? Okay... then discard Monism, too. Can't think of anything else other than Dualism or Monism? That does nothing to show humans don't make decisions, it just shows your imagination has limitations.

I won't argue that because, as you are well aware, this is a topic that cannot be definitively proven one way or another.

I believe that there is no such thing as free will.


--------------------
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Edited by trendal (04/24/07 01:18 PM)

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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6827652 - 04/24/07 01:35 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I didn't (and don't) care enough about this to rattle off paragraphs, but Phred's arguments (for instance, the duck thing) are SO off the mark and prove absolutely nothing. French Socialist has done a great job arguing. He hasn't tried to be condescending or tried to act smart, unlike Phred. He has made clear, concise, and most importantly RELEVANT points. Phred has just wasted time attacking hypotheticals (like the machine) that CAN exist. It doesn't matter if it's around the corner or in another 5000 fucking years: It is hypothetical and technically possible, and that is all that needs to be fucking said.

Phred has just argued in a very simpleminded way; He sounds a lot like a Christian arguing about how he "knows God exists" because "if you pick a watch up off the ground and examine it's parts, the logical conclusion is that it was intelligently designed." In fact, I'm guessing he is probably religious and uses that argument.


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6827683 - 04/24/07 01:47 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

trendal writes:

Quote:

Science can and has described the mechanisms that define "life".




No, it hasn't. It describes most of the metabolic activities living entities exhibit. That's not the same thing at all. It describes what living entities do, not how they are able to do it.

Quote:

I don't want to get into too deep of a science discussion...but the reasons why things attract other objects are very clear in the Theory of Relativity. Essentially, a mass warps spacetime in such a way that other masses are attracted to the warp. Think of a sheet stretched out with a bowling ball on it, and another small ball near it. They will be "attracted" to each other because they both make indentations (warps) in the sheet (spacetime).




Wrong again. The "stretched rubber sheet" analogy is nothing more than a visual way of analogizing the mathematical equations describing the path an object of mass X will follow in the presence of another object of mass Y. Neither the visual analogy nor the mathematical equations explain why the two objects should move at all -- they are limited to describing the paths the moving objects will follow.

Quote:

I believe that there is no such thing as free will.




You believe it was impossible for you to refrain from replying to my post? Why do you believe that? What force made you to reply to me?



Phred


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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6827781 - 04/24/07 02:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

BrainChemicals writes:

Quote:

I didn't (and don't) care enough about this to rattle off paragraphs, but Phred's arguments (for instance, the duck thing) are SO off the mark and prove absolutely nothing.




Ooooh! Get a load of her! Someone piss in your cornflakes this morning, BrainChemicals?

Quote:

French Socialist has done a great job arguing.




If you call repeated evasion of every point I brought up a "great job", then I guess one could say so.

Quote:

He hasn't tried to be condescending or tried to act smart, unlike Phred.




I have neither acted "condescending" nor "tried" to "act smart". I have, however, raised clearly worded, unambiguous points in defense of my position which have been deliberately evaded by FrenchSocialist despite their being brought to his attention over and over again.

Quote:

He has made clear, concise, and most importantly RELEVANT points.




While ignoring my clear, concise and relevant points.

Quote:

Phred has just wasted time attacking hypotheticals (like the machine) that CAN exist.




Such a machine might some day exist. That doesn't mean it CAN exist. You might want to look up the definition of "hypothetical" one day. You owe it to yourself.

I find it telling you cannot refute my comments on real things which exist today, and can only rail on about my "inability" to address hypothetical entities which certainly don't exist today and may never exist. And of course, you can't even get that right. What part of...

"-- if it behaves the same way I would myself in its situation (and I know myself to be a volitional being) then I will grant it the status of volitional being. Why would I not? Who says there is one and ONLY one method by which an entity may act volitionally? Not me."

...did you find confusing?

Quote:

It doesn't matter if it's around the corner or in another 5000 fucking years: It is hypothetical and technically possible, and that is all that needs to be fucking said.




Hypothetical is not identical to technically possible. There are orders of magnitude more evidence that volitional behavior exists right now than there is of such a machine eventually being constructed.

Quote:

Phred has just argued in a very simpleminded way;




Because it is not necessary to overcomplicate things. One doesn't need a degree in philosophy to observe that humans behave in a manner indistinguishable from the way volitional beings would act, therefore the most logical conclusion to reach is that they are in fact volitional beings.

Quote:

In fact, I'm guessing he is probably religious and uses that argument.




So sorry, my hyper-excitable little friend, but you are batting .000 in this thread so far. I am a stone atheist -- have been for well over forty years now, maybe longer than that. I honestly can't remember how long ago I reached the conclusion that there is no such thing as God.



Phred


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InvisibletrendalM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6827858 - 04/24/07 02:34 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

You believe it was impossible for you to refrain from replying to my post? Why do you believe that? What force made you to reply to me?

The fact that I would reply to your post is, in hindsight, unavoidable. Nothing "forced" me to reply to your post.

Why do I believe that free-will is an illusion? The future. I read somewhere that the past depends on the future as much as the future does on the past. If we can't change the past, why do we think we can change the future? Further, from a viewpoint outside our Universe (and I firmly believe such a viewpoint exists) time just is and the future already exists...what am I to change what already is?

You may not buy that, but I do. For now.


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6827914 - 04/24/07 02:49 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I never said hypothetical is synonomous with possible. The question "What would you do if a cow built a car in front of you, drove it through a time machine, and then took over the world" is technically hypothetical.

I was mostly kidding with the religious part, but let me ask you: If you are a stone-cold, "atoms-only" (or whatever the basest component of everything is), then how CAN you believe in free will? If you don't believe in the "soul" (or whatever, like a previous poster said, I do not mean in a religious fashion), then how the hell is it possible that all the little things that make up your brain can somehow create some immaterial entity that is beyond the laws of causation?

"Choices" are very much illusions. Just like the creation of the stars, planets, plants, animals, etc all were part of an unwinding chain of cause and effect, so are we. You have to accept what your brain tells you. Don't feel like smoking tonight? Well why don't you CHOOSE to want to smoke? You can't. The same goes with every choice, decision, thought, etc. If I told you to stand up in a crowded classroom and say "I pooped my pants. Can I be excused?," you'd surely say no. If I opened a briefcase with $1,000,000 dollars in it, your brain chemicals would have a much different "effect" to this "cause," which would most likely result in you immediately standing up and choosing to say it.

In order to believe in free will, you must believe there is something beyond your physical being, because your physical being is absolutely, 100% still obeying laws of cause and effect.


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Weep and you weep alone

Edited by BrainChemicals (04/24/07 02:55 PM)

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6828001 - 04/24/07 03:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

In order to believe in free will, you must believe there is something beyond your physical being, because your physical being is absolutely, 100% still obeying laws of cause and effect.

Our current understanding of Quantum Indeterminacy suggests that cause and effect may not be linked.

If you take a block of 100 radioisotope atoms with a half life of one minute, you can say with very high confidence that 50 of those atoms will decay in one minute, but you cannot find out in advance, not even in principle, which 50 will decay. That knowledge is completely beyond any possibility of knowing.

You know that the excessive binding energy in those nucleuses is what make them unstable (the cause) but the effect cannot be known beyond the statistical knowledge that 1 of every 2 will not exist one minute from now, but which ones can never be known in advance. It's not a technological limitation, but a fundamental limitation reality imposes.

To me, this suggests a non-deterministic universe, and if there is free will, I believe it will be found to be connected with this phenomenon.


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6828064 - 04/24/07 03:33 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

To me, it suggests a deterministic universe to which we are unable to measure on the scales needed. Just because we can't tell which atoms will decay does not mean that it happens purely by chance, and the fact that we can predict that those 50 atoms will decay suggests, to me, a deterministic universe.


--------------------
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6828082 - 04/24/07 03:45 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Just because we can't tell which atoms will decay does not mean that it happens purely by chance

Agreed. But my intuition tells me there are no hidden variables and this process really is completely random. If this is so, it can give rise to all sorts of intangible things, like maybe free will or consciousness itself.

Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff seem to think so, and I find their ideas persuasive.

and the fact that we can predict that those 50 atoms will decay suggests, to me, a deterministic universe

Maybe, but I don't see it that way. And again, I base this purely on intuition, not evidence.

Maybe one day we will know for sure, eh? I hope so.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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InvisibletrendalM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6828089 - 04/24/07 03:47 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

That makes two of us!

I'd hate to be stuck forever with a measurement barrier!


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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OfflineLion
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6828130 - 04/24/07 04:02 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The other day in a psychedelic state I felt the tremendous weight and fear wash over me of being the one living thing, the Sole Experiencer creating a fantasy for himself. It was a fear I have experienced before in its horrifying entirety, and I was preparing myself for a long night of terror. The paranoid, self-centered ego is a thing of grand and terrible proportions, and its deepest workings are the closest I have come to experiencing hell on earth.

Anyway, after spending a few timeless hours in this state, a light kind of clicked on and I realized that if I only use my rational mind I have absolutely no reason to suspect that I am the only experiencer. I analyzed my interactions with my reality and came to the entirely logical and comforting conclusion that there are other creatures out there (by virtue of the fact that I can touch them and communicate with them and they have not, as yet, after a couple thousand days of life on earth, vanished from my experience), that we are all experiencing reality together and trying to come to a better understanding of its nature. Now, I cannot know this for sure, yet by an act of will I caused reason to replace terror. I think our rational faculties give us the power to adapt to reality in a way that is beneficial to us as organisms. I feel that I can will myself to step back and analyze a situation rationally, and that through this process I can understand the root of my suffering and move away from it towards a more centered approach to existing in this dynamic, fluctuating thing we call reality.

The will I exerted may be an illusion, inasmuch as I inherited it from the study of rationality and a culture which places emphasis on evidence, but the point is that developing a strong rational mind is a means of perception which allows for lucid interaction with reality and the ability to take responsibility for actions which were irrational, whether their effect was negative or otherwise. If that is not free will, I am not sure what free will would look like.


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“Strengthened by contemplation and study,
I will not fear my passions like a coward.
My body I will give to pleasures,
to diversions that I’ve dreamed of,
to the most daring erotic desires,
to the lustful impulses of my blood, without
any fear at all, for whenever I will—
and I will have the will, strengthened
as I’ll be with contemplation and study—
at the crucial moments I’ll recover
my spirit as was before: ascetic.”

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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Lion]
    #6828158 - 04/24/07 04:09 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The quantum excuse is fairly invalid. Firstly, it is on an EXTREMELY small scale. A scale where something seemingly solid - like a wall or table - is like 99% air. As scientists have said, the world works differently on a level that small. Humans, tables, dogs, etc exist on a large enough level where they seem to have to obey the same laws as everything else that is "big" (even a grain of sand).

Furthermore, if it is not caused, scientists posturize it is random. Our actions are CERTAINLY not random - that we can be sure about. Furthermore, several prominent scientists have said we just haven't found out why yet- and that it isn't random.

Humans, despite what we believe, are not that technologically advanced yet. We are still in a mostly industrial age. I think real technology is way beyond industry and into things we (at least me) cannot currently fathom.


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Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

Edited by BrainChemicals (04/24/07 04:12 PM)

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6828189 - 04/24/07 04:17 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

BrainChemicals writes:

Quote:

If you are a stone-cold, "atoms-only" (or whatever the basest component of everything is), then how CAN you believe in free will?




Because it slaps me in the face everywhere I look.

Quote:

If you don't believe in the "soul" (or whatever, like a previous poster said, I do not mean in a religious fashion), then how the hell is it possible that all the little things that make up your brain can somehow create some immaterial entity that is beyond the laws of causation?




Asked and answered in previous posts of mine in this thread. I don't know to a certainty the precise mechanism by which I am able to act purposefully -- all I know is that I do act purposefully, and so does every other human I have ever met.

I can make some guesses as to possible mechanisms by which this is made possible, but that's all they are -- guesses.

Quote:

"Choices" are very much illusions.




Unsupported assertion which contradicts observable phenomena.

Quote:

You have to accept what your brain tells you. Don't feel like smoking tonight? Well why don't you CHOOSE to want to smoke? You can't.




False dilemma. I may not be able to suppress my emotions to the extent I would like, but feelings are not actions. I hate washing dishes. I mean, I loathe doing dishes. Always have. Nonetheless, I choose to wash my dishes. What counts is not how I feel while I am washing them, but that I wash them volitionally.

Quote:

f I told you to stand up in a crowded classroom and say "I pooped my pants. Can I be excused?," you'd surely say no.




Depends. What's in it for me?

Quote:

In order to believe in free will, you must believe there is something beyond your physical being, because your physical being is absolutely, 100% still obeying laws of cause and effect.




In order for you to believe you are self aware, you must believe there is something beyond your physical being, because your physical being is absolutely, 100% still obeying laws of cause and effect.

Do you believe you are self aware?



Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828247 - 04/24/07 04:32 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

So basically you are saying you believe in free will because you "feel" like you are willing your actions?

Also, in the past 20 years they have done a variety of tests. I am not sure exactly how they worked, but they showed the brain "actioned" an action before the person reported having decided. Like "either hit the left or right button - decide - but hit the button as SOON as you make the choice."


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828286 - 04/24/07 04:40 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
Simple, but insufficient. Place food in the stomach of a dead cat and see how far you get.





I hope you are not advocating vitalism as well as free will.


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6828315 - 04/24/07 04:47 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I am not sure exactly how they worked, but they showed the brain "actioned" an action before the person reported having decided.

In the 1980s, neurologist Benjamin Libet conducted an interesting experiment:

He used a tool called an electroencephalograph (EEG) to map the electrical activity in his experimental subjects' motor cortex. This is the part of the brain from which muscle movement is caused to occur.

His subjects were placed in front of a clock with one hand that went around once per second. They were then asked to press a button at random times. Each time the button was pressed, the position of the clock hand was recorded electronically, and the subject was asked what the position of the hand was when they first became aware of their intention to press the button.

On average, the subjects reported awareness of their intention to press the button about 200 milliseconds before the button was actually pressed.

Now the interesting part is that the EEG activity in the motor cortex leading to the pressing of the button began 500 milliseconds before the button press. This is 300 milliseconds (1/3 second) before the subject consciously willed the button press.

This means that there is a 'backward' latency in the assertion of free will. The brain is electrochemically a third of a second into the series of events required for the eventual button press when the person FIRST decides to press the button.

How can the brain be initiating the button press a third of a second BEFORE the person wills it?

These results lead to deep questions about the existence of free will.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: trendal]
    #6828329 - 04/24/07 04:52 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

trendal writes:

Quote:

Nothing "forced" me to reply to your post.




According to your position, the physical laws of the universe you inhabit forced you to reply. You had no option but to reply.

Quote:

Why do I believe that free-will is an illusion? The future. I read somewhere that the past depends on the future as much as the future does on the past.




And I read somewhere that flying purple unicorns frolic in the methane clouds of Venus.

Quote:

If we can't change the past, why do we think we can change the future?




We aren't "changing the future", we are acting in the present. Our actions then become part of the past.

Quote:

Further, from a viewpoint outside our Universe (and I firmly believe such a viewpoint exists)...




If you believe such an "outside" viewpoint exists, then why do you not ask yourself if perhaps the phenomenon of free will can be the result of some process which spans both the "inside" universe and the "outside" universe? In other words, some mechanism which operates in the observable universe, but is not entirely of the observable universe. See my description of the the inhabitants of a universe with no height dimension trying to explain the apparently impossible phenomenon of the "unconnected" disks in this post -- http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/2445908#Post2445908 . To we humans, who inhabit a universe "outside" theirs, grasping how the four disks move simultaneously is simple, because we can easily perceive that which they cannot.



Phred


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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828330 - 04/24/07 04:52 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

There are ways to test what unperceived mechanisms better explain observations- none of which were applied to your example, instead the mechanism was just assumed.




There are ways? Name two.




Applying parsimony to empirical data and statistical hypothesis testing.


Quote:

Phred said:If something looks like a duck, acts like a duck, smells like a duck, sounds like a duck, feels like a duck, and tastes like a duck, the logical conclusion is that it is in fact a duck -- not a cat cleverly disguised as a duck. Anyone wishing to dispute the self-evident fact that it is a duck is going to have to come up with a lot more convincing argument than just claiming "Well, you just think it's a duck. It isn't really a duck at all. It's just a really really flawless imitation of a duck."





You are equating observations with explanations. The two can be the same but they are not necessarily the same.

Noting that something is a duck for example, is different then explaining the ducks behavior. Someone can posit for that the duck's behaviors are attributable to environmental imprinting, another person may attribute the ducks behavior to instinct and yet another may attribute the behavior to free will. The only way to know which one is true is by testing the observations.


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6828349 - 04/24/07 04:58 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

BrainChemicals writes:

Quote:

So basically you are saying you believe in free will because you "feel" like you are willing your actions?




Not at all. What I feel has nothing to do with it.

Quote:

I am not sure exactly how they worked, but they showed the brain "actioned" an action before the person reported having decided. Like "either hit the left or right button - decide - but hit the button as SOON as you make the choice."




Lag.


Phred


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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828360 - 04/24/07 05:00 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Lag

Read the description of the experiment again.

The EEG showed the chain of electrochemical processes leading to the button push started before the person decided to push the button.

If the decision to push the button is a result of free will, how could it be that the brain started the chain of events before the person willed the chain of events?

It's not lag, but lead.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6828385 - 04/24/07 05:06 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

BTW I would like to know how Phred explains positive scientific finding which show that there are deterministic mechanisms resutling in behavior:

Quote:

Three new sciences are now vividly rooting our mental processes in our biology. Cognitive neuroscience, the attempt to relate thought, perception and emotion to the functioning of the brain, has pretty much killed Soul One, in Richard's sense. It should now be clear to any scientifically literate person that we don't have any need for a ghost in the machine, as Gilbert Ryle memorably put it. Many kinds of evidence show that the mind is an entity in the physical world, part of a causal chain of physical events. If you send an electric current through the brain, you cause the person to have a vivid experience. If a part of the brain dies because of a blood clot or a burst artery or a bullet wound, a part of the person is gone -- the person may lose an ability to see, think, or feel in a certain way, and the entire personality may change. The same thing happens gradually when the brain accumulates a protein called beta-amyloid in the tragic disease known as Alzheimer's. The person -- the soul, if you want -- gradually disappears as the brain decays from this physical process.

We know that every form of mental activity -- every emotion, every thought, every percept -- gives off electrical, magnetic, or metabolic signals that can be recorded with increasing precision by Positron Emission Tomography, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Magnetoencephalography, and other techniques. We know that if you take a knife and section the corpus callosum (which joins the two cerebral hemispheres) you have the equivalent of two minds -- perhaps even two souls -- in the same skull. We know that if you look at the brain under a microscope it has a breathtaking degree of complexity -- on the order of a trillion synapses -- that's fully commensurate with the breathtaking complexity of human thought and experience. We know that when the brain dies, the person goes out of existence. I consider it to be a significant empirical discovery that one cannot communicate with the dead, and excellent evidence that Soul One, in Richard's sense, does not exist.

A second science, behavioral genetics, has shown that there is a fascinating degree of specificity in our genome. You've all heard of the remarkable studies of monozygotic twins reared apart, who are remarkably similar in intelligence, personality, and attitudes -- even in their opinion on the death penalty and their tastes in music and clothing. And just in the past year there have been discoveries of genetic markers, and in some case genes and even gene products, associated with mental traits such as intelligence, spatial cognition, control of speech, the desire to seek sensation, and the tendency to be overly anxious.

The third science that's connecting mind to biology is evolutionary psychology, which takes an approach to understanding the mind that has long been fruitful in understanding the organs of the body. We can't make sense of an organ like the eye without considering it to have a function, or a purpose - not in a mystical, teleological sense, but in the sense of an illusion of engineering. That illusion, we now know, is a consequence of Darwin's process of natural selection. Everyone agrees that the eye is a remarkable bit of natural "engineering," and that may now be explained as a product of natural selection rather than as the handiwork of a cosmic eye-designer or as a massive coincidence in tissue formation. But the eye by itself is useless -- unless it's connected to a brain. The eye does not carry out its function by dumping optical information into a yawning chasm. Rather, the eye is hooked up to parts of the brain -- anatomically speaking, the eye is an extension of the brain -- and those parts contain circuits for analyzing the incoming visual material, for recovering the shapes and colors and motions in the world that gave rise to the stimulation of the eye. The perception of a world of colored 3-D objects, in turn, feeds into a system of categorization, allowing us to make sense of our experience, to impute causes to events, and to remember things in terms of their significant categories. And in turn, those categories themselves would be useless unless they were organized in service of certain goals, goals set by our emotions. Beginning with the eye, we have a chain of causation that leads to the study of faculties of mind, or modules, or subsystems, each of which can be seen as an adaptation akin to the adaptations in the organs of the body. Recent research has shown that aspects of the psyche that were previously considered mysterious, quirky, and idiosyncratic -- such as phobias, an eye for beauty, the tendency to fall in love, a passionate desire for revenge in defense of honor -- turn out to have a subtle evolutionary logic when they are analyzed in the way in which we have always analyzed the organs of the body





http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge53.html


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6828390 - 04/24/07 05:08 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

My point was Phred has ABSOLUTELY DECIDED that he will never ever EVER EVER EVER change his mind or even think about the possibility he is wrong. That is why this argument is totally fruitless.

Phred, if you are interested in it, check out The Illusion of the Conscious Wilol by Daniel M. Wegner. I don't think you are interested in it though. it seems like you are just arguing to argue.


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Weep and you weep alone

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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: FrenchSocialist]
    #6828394 - 04/24/07 05:10 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

FrenchSocialist writes:

Quote:

Applying parsimony to empirical data...




Which is exactly what I do when I observe that humans act indistinguishably from truly volitional beings. The parsimonious explanation (that which assumes the least complex explanation) is that a human's finger hits the "r" key on a keyboard when he wishes it to.

Quote:

... and statistical hypothesis testing.




Elaborate, please.

Quote:

Noting that something is a duck for example, is different then explaining the ducks behavior.




Oh good grief. In this particular metaphor, the duck IS the behavior. Your clumsy sophistry is tiresome in the extreme. It's a frigging famous figure of speech, fa cryin' out loud!

Why not address the underlying concept the aphorism encapsulates? Here it is again --

" -- what matters is that you DO act in precisely the manner a volitional being would act, therefore it is more logical to conclude you are in fact a volitional being than to conclude you are instead a clever imitation of a volitional being."

By the way, do you think you might one day eventually address the points I have raised over and over and over again?



Phred


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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828399 - 04/24/07 05:12 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
BrainChemicals writes:

Quote:

So basically you are saying you believe in free will because you "feel" like you are willing your actions?




Not at all. What I feel has nothing to do with it.





Phred seeing as you have presented no rational argument and instead simply made accusations like "that's a dodge" or "classic solipsism" and begged the question the only rational conclusion is that you are arguing from emotion.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

Edited by FrenchSocialist (04/24/07 05:13 PM)

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828409 - 04/24/07 05:15 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
" -- what matters is that you DO act in precisely the manner a volitional being would act, therefore it is more logical to conclude you are in fact a volitional being than to conclude you are instead a clever imitation of a volitional being."





You are again engaged in circular reasoning. You are making your example the model of a volitional being, and then arguing that this model of volition is what proves your interpretation of the example.

I could do the reverse by saying you are acting exactly as a determined being would act, so your actions prove determinism is correct.


Also Phred how do you explain how specific personality traits can be measured:

Quote:

In studies of twins raised together and apart, researchers have shown that about 40 percent of the variance in personality traits is attributable to genetics. Another 35 percent of the variance is attributable to the nonshared environment (that is, experiences that are not shared by siblings who have grown up together). Of the remaining variance in personality, about 20 percent is associated with errors in measurement, which leaves just 5 percent that can be explained by the shared environment (or family milieu).





http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge47.html

Quote:

There are several ways of testing it. In my book Born to Rebel, I engaged in two major empirical assaults on this problem. The first method of attack involved historical evidence. I gathered data on more than 6,500 participants in major revolutions in science, politics, and social thought. In addition, I arranged for each individual's position in each controversy to be validated by half a dozen or more expert historians. Overall, I asked 110 historical experts to examine my lists of participants in revolutions, and to assess whether these lists were representative of participants as a whole. My experts were also asked to nominate missing individuals, and they rated every participant on a scale of acceptance and rejection. Obtaining these expert ratings involved a tremendous amount of work, in part because I did it in person. I flew a quarter of a million miles around the world as I gathered these expert ratings from scholars in England, France, Germany, Italy, and America. My second line of research involved a reassessment of the birth-order literature as a whole. There are more than 2,000 publications on this subject, and what was needed was a meta-analysis to determine whether there are more significant findings than would be expected by chance. In my meta-analysis I tested specific hypotheses about sibling strategies, using the Big Five personality dimensions as my guide. That is, I expected firstborns—relative to laterborns—to be more (1) conscientious, (2) aggressive, (3) conventional, (4) extraverted in the sense of being dominant (laterborns are more extraverted in the sense of being sociable), and (5) emotionally volatile, in the sense of being quicker to anger. All five of these hypotheses were confirmed by my meta-analysis, which involved a statistical survey of 196 birth-order studies controlled for social class and sibship size.




http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sulloway/sulloway_p2.html

Both the above examples, along with Doctor Pinker's assertion, along with Doctor Shermer's assertions indicate that science is able to explain a great deal of personality in a deterministic manner, whereas the free will explanation you have presented has no underlying evidence and little explanatory power. You can't even say where the energy needed for free will to operate comes from.


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"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

Edited by FrenchSocialist (04/24/07 05:26 PM)

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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6828451 - 04/24/07 05:27 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Diploid writes:

Quote:

In the 1980s, neurologist Benjamin Libet conducted an interesting experiment:

He used a tool called an electroencephalograph (EEG) to map the electrical activity in his experimental subjects' motor cortex. This is the part of the brain from which muscle movement is caused to occur.

His subjects were placed in front of a clock with one hand that went around once per second. They were then asked to press a button at random times. Each time the button was pressed, the position of the clock hand was recorded electronically, and the subject was asked what the position of the hand was when they first became aware of their intention to press ...(snip)




And his experiment has been replicated by whom? What were the results obtained by others who ran the same experiment?

At least some (and perhaps all) of the discrepancy is the inherent lag between the occurence of an event and our perception of it. Other experiments involving direct measurement of brain activity have shown that a visual cue (i.e. the sudden appearance of a circle on a viewscreen) precedes the registering of that cue by X milliseconds. I can't remember now the value of X. The point is that by the time I register a hand sweeping across a clock face as having reached the three o'clock position (for example) the hand has already moved significantly past the three o'clock position.

This has led some people to claim we are all actually "living in the past" -- at least to the extant of X milliseconds, since we perceive in our consciousness events that have already passed us by -- albeit by a very short period of time.

Phred


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InvisibletrendalM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828460 - 04/24/07 05:32 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

According to your position, the physical laws of the universe you inhabit forced you to reply. You had no option but to reply.

Well that's how it happened didn't it?

And I read somewhere that flying purple unicorns frolic in the methane clouds of Venus.

My quote appears in "The Fabric Of The Cosmos" by Brian Green, although mine may not have been the exact phrase. The book poses several questions of the nature of time, one of them being the said quote.

Where does your quote appear :smirk:

If you believe such an "outside" viewpoint exists, then why do you not ask yourself if perhaps the phenomenon of free will can be the result of some process which spans both the "inside" universe and the "outside" universe?

What makes you think I haven't already grappled with this question? Suffice it to say that nothing, in my experience, points towards what you say to be true. That is, I have not seen/experienced one thing in my day that would lead me to believe that humans have some sort of not-of-this-universe component. Further I find the notion that humans are "special" in some way over all the other creatures that exist to be completely anthropocentric. You might say that animals have this "special" quality too, but then where do you stop? Does an amoeba have "it"? What about a bacterium? A virus?

I tire of making up things to prove, to myself, the existence of free will.


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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

Edited by trendal (04/24/07 05:47 PM)

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OfflineFrenchSocialist
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828463 - 04/24/07 05:33 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
And his experiment has been replicated by whom? What were the results obtained by others who ran the same experiment?




Phred that is a pointless question. You haven't even presented an experiment, until you bring at least 1 piece of scientific evidence for your assertions you are not in a position to ask others to further justify their own. Either bring something to the table or stop complaining.

Bring a link, an experiment, a statistic, present a mechanism or even a guess as to where the energy for free will comes from. Present something.


--------------------


"Both liberty and equality are among the primary goals pursued by human beings through many centuries; but total liberty for wolves is death to the lambs" -- Isaiah Berlin

Edited by FrenchSocialist (04/24/07 05:34 PM)

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6828499 - 04/24/07 05:43 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

And his experiment has been replicated by whom? What were the results obtained by others who ran the same experiment?

Geez Phred, this is a pretty nit picky rebuttal characteristic of someone who knows he's wrong but refuses to accept it.

Libet is not a fly by night quack. Libet is a Nobel Laureate. His experimental results have been reproduced and published in peer reviewed journals.

Do you really doubt his results enough to make me jump through hoops and get you citations? I will if you demand, but Jesus, are we looking for Truth here or just trying to win a debate?

At least some (and perhaps all) of the discrepancy is the inherent lag between the occurrence of an event and our perception of it.

You have it backward. There is no occurrence to perceive here. You're misunderstanding the experiment.

The subject is asked to press a button at random and report the position of the clock hand when they decided to press the button. There is a 200 ms lag between the time the person decides to press the button and the time the button is actually pressed. This is understandable.

What is NOT understandable in the context of free will is that 300 ms BEFORE they decided to press the button, the EEG recorded the initiation of the button press, THEN the subject became aware of his decision to press the button, THEN another 200 ms later the button was actually pressed. It's the 300 ms LEAD that is interesting.

How can the brain be in the process of pressing the button BEFORE the person decided to press the button? The only explanation I see is that, even though they have the sensation of being the entity who willed the button press, it was already underway well before they even thought to do it.

If free will caused the button press, what conscious entity willed it? It wasn't the subject because he didn't have the sensation of making the decision until 300 ms AFTER the actual decision was made and underway.

The EEG recorded the button press starting to happen BEFORE the subject willed it.

You get it now?


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6831441 - 04/25/07 10:09 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The reportage to the mind of the will simply is delayed 300ms.
It may need time to become aware of one's will :grin:
Especially by 'randomly' pressing a button, which has not so much to do with 'choice', more with 'automation'.
So one has not to be aware of this kind of (random) 'choice'.


--------------------
Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #6831693 - 04/25/07 10:59 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Exactly. BlueCoyote puts his finger on it.

From http://www.consciousentities.com/libet.htm --

Quote:

There are several avenues of attack against Libet's other conclusions, of course. Is the RP really a signal that a decision has been made? If I make a decision about my insurance policy, does an RP appear, or is it just wrist movements that cause RPs? The circumstances of both Libet's experiments and the earlier ones by Kornhuber and Deecke are rather strange: they require the subject to get into a frame of mind where they are ready to make a decision any moment. Might not the RP merely signal a quickening of attention, rather than a moment of decision?

Libet believes that by timing the moment of awareness through his oscilloscope arrangement, he eliminated the need for the subject to spend any time on reporting the moment of awareness: but isn't it possible that we need a certain amount of time just in order to report the awareness to ourselves? Awareness of the decision you have made is one thing, being aware of that awareness is another - which might well be thought to require some further time to develop.




Libet performed the experiment in 1977 using EEG and oscilloscope (not a clock with a hand sweeping around its face). Someone running a similar experiment today would use a computer and PET scanner instead, probably. EEGs of thirty years ago were quite primitive compared to the brain imaging equipment available to researchers today -- they could accomodate a limited number of sensor inputs, and the positioning of the sensors on the cranium of the subject was at that time more an art form than a science. I have no doubt the higher resolution of today's equipment would show more complex neural activity during the experiment -- perhaps the initial broad peak of the RP (one an EEG would pick up), then perhaps a less noticeable blip which an EEG built three decades ago might have missed. In which case, the broad peak might represent the "readying" buildup, with the smaller blip representing the actual instant of decision.

I didn't ask for reports from those who replicated the experiment out of bloodymindedness, Diploid, but because of factors such as this. If the last time anyone gave it a shot was twenty-five or thirty years ago, we have to look at the results in the light of the limitations of available equipment.

The points raised by BlueCoyote and the author of the article at the link I provided both came up with the same objection I was trying to indicate with my terse "lag" remark. There's a lag of X milliseconds between the blip crossing the three o'clock position and the subject's perception that it has reached that mark (L1, which according to the article I linked is generally believed to be around 50 milliseconds), there is the lag between deciding to hit the button and actually hitting the button (L2 -- the 200 milliseconds Libet adjusted for), but there is also the lag of Y milliseconds (L3) between deciding to hit the button and reporting to yourself that the decision has been made. L1 + L2 + L3 (at the least -- there could be others I may be overlooking), with Libet correcting for L1 but not L2 or L3.



It's worth reading the entire article I linked, by the way. Some interesting commentary on perceptual lag that is not directly related to Libet's work. The article is not particularly long.



Phred


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OfflineBrainChemicals
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6831716 - 04/25/07 11:04 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Like FS said, you still have to bring SOMETHING into this argument besides your amateur conjecture.


--------------------
Laugh and the world laughs with you.
Weep and you weep alone

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #6831885 - 04/25/07 11:44 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The reportage to the mind of the will simply is delayed 300ms.
It may need time to become aware of one's will


Say what?

How do you will an action you haven't thought of willing yet?

I'll buy that absurd explanation if you'll agree that I posted this message before I typed it. :rolleyes:


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Offlinefireworks_godS
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6831898 - 04/25/07 11:46 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Diploid said:
The reportage to the mind of the will simply is delayed 300ms.
It may need time to become aware of one's will


Say what?

How do you will an action you haven't thought of willing yet?

I'll buy that absurd explanation if you'll agree that I posted this message before I typed it. :rolleyes:




What he is referring to is regarding a scientific study that has been shared in this forum several times. If anyone has a link to this study, please share. :grin:


--------------------
:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you

:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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InvisibleDiploidM
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Phred]
    #6832004 - 04/25/07 12:05 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

but isn't it possible that we need a certain amount of time just in order to report the awareness to ourselves? Awareness of the decision you have made is one thing, being aware of that awareness is another - which might well be thought to require some further time to develop

Will begins with an overt conscious thought manifesting your will. You don't will something unknowingly, and THEN develop the conscious thought manifesting your will. That's backwards.

If you believe that ^^^ rebuttal, then you must also grant that an unconscious person can assert free will because, after all, an unconscious person can will their arm to move (essentially what that rebuttal is saying) and later when conscious again become aware of having willed their arm to move.

It's backwards! How can you not see this?

EEG and oscilloscope (not a clock with a hand sweeping around its face)

Yes Phred. I simplify for the sake of brevity where the simplification is inconsequential to the debate. A mechanical clock with a one second period or a line on oscilloscope phosphor emulating a clock with a one second period == same thing in this context.

If the last time anyone gave it a shot was twenty-five or thirty years ago, we have to look at the results in the light of the limitations of available equipment.

Alright. Point taken. I'll see if I can find more recent experiments along the same lines. But arguing that somehow will and conscious awareness of the will are separate things is absurd, and that's what you and BlueCoyote are arguing.


--------------------
Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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OfflineSurpriseSex
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6832352 - 04/25/07 01:10 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Isn't almost everything far from certain?

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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: BrainChemicals]
    #6832846 - 04/25/07 02:50 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

BrainChemicals writes:

Quote:

Like FS said, you still have to bring SOMETHING into this argument besides your amateur conjecture.




The thing is, saying the results prove there is no such thing as volition is also conjecture. It is not the only explanation which fits the data.

The results of the experiment can be explained assuming a lag in "reporting". The design of the experiment does nothing to explain the reason for the lag, it merely measures the lag between two events -- a spike on an EEG tracing and a finger hitting a button. As well, it is entirely possible more sensitive equipment would report multiple spikes at differing times, with the first spike representing a readying to decide, and the final spike representing the decision itself.

And even then, the same experiment run with more sensitive equipment still cannot explain the significance of the spike(s) -- ANY of the spikes -- it can merely report their existence. It is up to reviewers of the data to hypothesize the significance of each spike. Some reviewers propose one possible explanation, other reviewers propose a different explanation. Which explanation is correct? It is impossible to say conclusively with this data alone. Perhaps neither explanation is right.

To claim the data proves there is no such thing as free will is an enormous stretch. Not even Libet went that far.



Phred


--------------------

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OfflinePhred
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6832940 - 04/25/07 03:08 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Diploid writes:

Quote:

Alright. Point taken. I'll see if I can find more recent experiments along the same lines. But arguing that somehow will and conscious awareness of the will are separate things is absurd, and that's what you and BlueCoyote are arguing.




No, it is not absurd. I suggested you read the rest of the article I linked for a reason. The various implications of neural lag have been examined by more than Libet. The author of the article at the link brings more ideas to the table. See his description of a tennis match.

When I read the bit about tennis players, I was reminded of an article I had read a few years back explaining how given the proven existence of neural lag, the ability of professional baseball players to not just hit a pitch, but to hit it accurately enough to direct it (not always successfully, mind you) to various parts of the ballpark seems on paper an impossible feat. The article then went on to explain how this apparent paradox wasn't a paradox at all, but I admit I can no longer remember all the details of the explanation. I do remember it involved no violation of the arrow of time, nor did it involve predestination. When I read the author in my linked article talking about a similar situation re tennis players, a lot of it was familiar, but it wasn't nearly as lengthy or detailed as the explanation given in the baseball article. I'm pretty sure the baseball article was also from some neurological journal or magazine, but I'm not ready to swear to that. I'll see if I can find it again.



Phred


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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: The existence of Free Will is far from certain [Re: Diploid]
    #6836942 - 04/26/07 01:34 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The brain is not soo much a linear processor, as it is a parallel one.
We only slowly come to the conclusions that bear understanding of those specific 'time marks' in the brain.
'Understanding' itself seems like multi orchestrated conclusion patterns over the brain with different synchronistaion codes.
I think, this experiment is very interesting, and will become even more interesting with more precise instruments and more precise experimentation settings, BUT it can't locate origins of 'will' in a brain yet. Maybe it occurs out of some resonance of some patterns, maybe there's a spontaneous firing of some miraculous brain region or cell, maybe there arise many 'measured' potentials and only some lead to an release of the action of will.
I am interested in scientific exploration of this case, too :wink:


--------------------
Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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