I was reading this book and the following is a cut down version of the conversation.

M1 “Where is your free will? Is it part of your brain, or does it emanate from someplace outside your body and somehow control your actions?”

M2 “I’ll say it comes from my brain. I mean, it’s a function of my brain. I don’t have a better answer.”

M1 “Your brain is like a machine in many ways, isn’t it? The brain is composed of cells and neurons and chemicals and pathways and electrical activity that all conform to physical laws. When part of your brain is stimulated in one specific way, could it respond any way it wants, or would it always respond in one specific way?”

M2 “There’s no way to test that. No one knows.”

M1 “Then you believe we can only know things that have been tested?”

M2 “I’m not saying that.”

M1 “Then you’re not saying anything, are you? So where is free will?”

M2 “It must involve the soul.”

M1 “Soul? Where is the soul located?

M2 “It’s not located anywhere. It just is.”

M1 “Then the soul is not physical in nature, according to you?”

M2 “I guess not. Otherwise someone probably would have found physical evidence of it.”

M1 “So you believe that the soul, which is not physical, can influence the brain, which is physical?”

M2 “I guess I believe that.”

M1 “Do you believe the soul can influence other physical things, like a car or a watch?”

M2 “No, I think souls only affect brains.”

M1 “Can you soul influence other people’s brains, or does it know which brain is yours?”

M2 “My soul must know which brain is mine, otherwise I’d be influenced by other souls and I wouldn’t have free will.”

M1 “Your soul, according to you, knows the difference between your brain and everything else that is not your brain. And it never makes a mistake in that regards. That means your soul has structure and rules, like a machine.”

M2 “It must.”

M1 “If the soul is the source of free will, then it must be weighing alternatives and making decisions.”

M2 “That’s its job.”

M1 “But that’s what brains do. Why would you need a soul to do what a brain can do?”

M2 “Maybe the soul has free will and the brain doesn’t. Or the soul causes your brain to have free will. Or the soul is smarter or more moral than the brain. I don’t know.”

M1 “If the soul’s actions are not controlled by rules, that can only mean the soul acts randomly. On the other hand, if your soul is guided by rules, which in turn guide you, then you have no free will. You are programmed. There is no in between; your life is either random or predetermined. Which is it?”

M2 “Maybe God is guiding my soul.”

M1 “If God is guiding your soul and your soul is guiding your brain, then you are nothing more than a puppet of God. You don’t really have free will in that case, do you?”

M2 “Maybe God is guiding my soul in a sort of directional way, but it’s up to me to figure out the exact steps to take.”

M1 “That sounds as if God is giving you some sort of an intelligence test. If you make right choices, good things happen to your soul. Is that what you’re saying?”

M2 “It’s not about intelligence, it’s about morality.”

M1 “Morality?”

M2 “Yes, morality.”

M1 “Is your brain involved in making moral decisions or do those decisions get made someplace outside your body?”

</end discussion>

Now I’ve been thinking about this conversation all night and I can’t find anyway out of it. It’s as if every answer is barred. The idea of having no free will is actually disturbing me.

So, my question is do you think free will is real?

Yes, on the surface level we have the ability to choose between two options freely, or so it seems. Speaking of Choice I go even further sometimes in something that seems to some as a form of Victim Blaming, but I don't mean it as that but rather as a form of Self Empowerment:

.com.au says:

do you think that the shit people go through is their own fault?

Abrahim says:

I believe if they have a choice in how they deal with it and percieve it

Abrahim says:

they decide if its shit or not

.com.au says:

but say getting cancer or being the victim of a terrorist attack

Abrahim says:

also that whatever happens to them, if they are still alive, they are dealing with it, and for whatever reason and in whatever small way, decided to be in that circumstance to test themselves perhaps or to gain some learning

.com.au says:

that isn't the victims fault k well that's cool

Abrahim says:

the person decided to be there where the terrorist attack occurs, I believe we are full of knowledge, that we can tune into lots of information thats out there, and that there is no such thing as being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but rather choosing to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, to perhaps test oneself, to face an issue, or to gain some learning or all of the above, that it serves a function for the survivors I dont think cancer just pops out of no where either I believe people do things that cause it, such as eating bad, smoking, going in the sun too much etc etc

.com.au says:

that would be fine except for the fact that people aren't omniscient

Abrahim says:

I believe everything is connected, people can't think of everything at once, but the information is out there and our mind is tuned in but blocks out TONS AND TONS of info so that we can focus

.com.au says:

so it's not really a choice

Abrahim says:

I dunno, I think its a choice, where we decide to be

.com.au says:

but it's not an informed choice as we don't know that if we go into to wortk today we will die in a horrible fire

Abrahim says:

in the case of encounters such as going and getting lost on a steet and then getting mugged, but surviving it may not be conciously informed but I do believe that it wasnt completely random, that the person, in whatever subconcious or internal way took those steps to that place

.com.au says:

to get mugged?

Abrahim says:

yep

.com.au says:

with the intention of being mugged?

Abrahim says:

and its connected and working together so the mugger too sent out the vibes that attracted the victim who sent out the vibes who attracted the mugger and both of them took the steps to meet like an agreement on a higher plane of conciousness a mutual learning, test, encounter, interaction, I believe we choose to meet who meet, choose to walk where we walk and same goes for them and in that its all connected and working smoothly together its all metaphysics though

.com.au says:

not cognitive science?

Abrahim says:

maybe maybe not I believe alot of people benefit from believing "shit happens" and leaving it at that since they perhaps dont feel like extracting much out of it would a rape victim wanna hear they decided to be raped to learn a lesson? no way jose lol

I believe in free will with a lower case "f". It's somewhat of an illusion. There are no "destinies" or "fates" or anything like that. And we do, in fact, make decisions. However, our mind does function like a machine, influencing our decisions. Our will is tied to the function of this machine, and thus, we don't truly have free will. There are methods of thinking and desires that we cannot do away with because we are programmed to have them. Don't let it get to you, though. It's a bit silly to sit there and ask yourself "Do I really have free will, or just a very, very good illusion of free will?" In the end, it's a waste of time. I believe, whether people freely make them or are simply submitting to neural programming, we are all responsible for the choices we make throughout life. The search for free will is really just a search for responsibility.

The thought of no free will scares me though. I’d just be watching my body do all of this shit I have no control over . . . It disturbs me.

I guess we do make choices, but they are somewhat controlled by a machine. It still, I can't help it, it gets to me.

I find it interesting how much we are subconsciously influenced to make decisions.

Most of the time when we think we are making an independent decision we have actually been influenced, deliberately or otherwise, to make it.

So even superficially, without getting deep and philosophical about it, most of the time free will is an illusion.

Jx

quote:Originally posted by Adrenochrome:

The thought of no free will scares me though. I’d just be watching my body do all of this shit I have no control over . . . It disturbs me.

Haha! Try having OCD and a tic disorder. Uncontrollable thoughts, compulsive behavior, and tics. O_o

The decisions of those past can almost always predict the decisions we will make.

Jessic hammered it!

The illusion of having free will is necessary to help us feel "in control". We have no way of knowing how our subconscious influences our behavior. Even if we got a basic, rudimentary understanding of it, our neural networks are set up so that we are blind to all the communications going on that lead us to our "free will"

Kinda like not being aware of breathing. We know we breathe. We know our lungs are the organ that makes breathing possible. But we just aren't privvy to the communication going on between our brains and our lungs.

We don't so much care to be privvy to the communication going on between our lungs and our brain because breathing is such a "mindless" function - it holds no morals, no opinions, and us knowing the mechanics behind it does not make us feel better in any way. We just take it for granted.

However, it is very important for humans to be able to "control" their behaviour - since it is a model of how we represent ourselves to the world. We don't feel comfortable thinking that the biggest part of our personalities is formulated behind the scenes where we can't influence it.

quote:Originally posted by Adrenochrome:

The thought of no free will scares me though. I’d just be watching my body do all of this shit I have no control over . . . It disturbs me.

I guess we do make choices, but they are somewhat controlled by a machine. It still, I can't help it, it gets to me.

It's not your body, it's you. You don't have free will in the sense that you didn't have control over what sort of person you'd be; but once you're born and have a personality, you do whatever you decide to do! These decisions are influenced - decided - by your personality quirks and so forth, but that's what makes you... you.

You love chocolate, so you buy a chocolate bar. That was your decision. It wasn't decided by anyone else. You might not've been able to choose to be someone who didn't like chocolate - you may have bought the chocolate because you were influenced by your own desires and outside events and so forth - but does this change the fact that you wanted chocolate and you bought it? Not at all. You want the chocolate, no matter where this desire comes from!

Edit: What I'm trying to get across is that while we can't choose not to have the impulse to do something, it doesn't matter because that impulse is us. You still want to eat the chocolate. I may not have been able to do anything other than pick up this can of orange-ade, but it doesn't bother me because I want to pick it up anyway! Thing is, we're not forced into anything; we're still deciding, it's just that these decisions were decided by previous events and internal mechanisms. But it doesn't make your desire and action in getting a chocolate bar any less real.

[This message has been edited by Twisted_Ferret (edited 07-02-2006).]

Determinism.

Don't ever let someone reply to the argument from evil with the "evil exists because we have freewill" retort.

quote:Originally posted by Adrenochrome:

M1 “Your brain is like a machine in many ways, isn’t it? The brain is composed of cells and neurons and chemicals and pathways and electrical activity that all conform to physical laws. When part of your brain is stimulated in one specific way, could it respond any way it wants, or would it always respond in one specific way?”

The gross missimplification on how the human brain biologically operates here basically makes this whole thread nothing more than a farmer from 1123 trying to explain how the sun works.