"Free will?" WTF?

[Rainbowmum]

Well then why? When did I loose my will?

The moment your experiences became the blue print code for programing the device replacing you.

[nullnaught]

The moment your experiences became the blue print code for programing the device replacing you.

in my analogy, there is no one device replacing me. I am substituting electronic parts for flesh parts one by one. There is no programing. I stay fully awake and conscious during the process and never notice a change. I am not sure I am being clear here, am I?

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Yes, but if we are meat machines, what we "choose" to do once we learn and consider cosequences to our actions, isn't that learning and consieration what then is causing our decisions? Without invoking ghostes [sic] how do you escape causation. The fact your deliberations are caused and the final decision is really up to your subconscious which you have no access to and can't influence? All your conditioning and learning and considering is still programing. how do you escape programing when your deliberations are themselves more programing? Causation is inescapable.

http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/determi...ewill.html

My approach is 'moral free will'. I view it as as long as you have the basic understanding of 'right and wrong' you can choose what you do. This goes beyond mere programing.

Someone hands me a gun and tells me I could kill any person in the room with no reprisal (killing them) then I have a choice. Its really a simple yes or no choice - kill or not kill. It is my free will to choose to kill or not kill. This is my free will, allowing me to kill or not kill.

Now lets take this in a different direction. I am attacked, I have a gun - I shoot a man in 'self defense' - I didn't have a 'choice' since I was reacting to the circumstances (Self preservation). This is cause and effect, where the cause (my being attacked) results in my self defense in killing my attacker.

Life is a large grey area, Free will is not an absolute, nor is predestination. Its all grey and it boils down to the given circumstances at the given moment.

Learning and consequences, rational thought is part of the freewill aspect of things.

Our ability to learn new things and even imagine the unlearned is what gives us 'free will'.

[Pix]

I know that to some extent we can change what we think and how we act. I've done it myself and I know far more radical examples (some who radically changed more than once). That said, I believe the majority of humans lack enough self-awareness and lucidity to change, so they're ultimately as free willed as a robot, a slave to their neurological software as much as their physiological hardware.

Once a computer or robot can also be aware of itself and its environment and as a result adapt its thinking (which I hear "fuzzy logic" can already do in some computers that some believe will lead to true AI) then it, too, will have some sense of free will. And with that in mind, here's a scene from ST:TNG that someone brought to my attention recently:




ETA: Btw, awesome book, IMO, on changing your own software is Prometheus Rising followed by Quantum Psychology.

[pellaz]

robots, software, machines are rule driven and dont apply, consider the definition:
free will; ability to make choices that are not externally determined

[Inchante]

robots, software, machines are rule driven and dont apply, consider the definition:
free will; ability to make choices that are not externally determined

Unless you do not believe that there is such a thing as free will

[ZackT]

Yes, but if you do "choose" to go against your natural disposition, wasn't that choice caused by a combination of your genetics and your experience. Put another way, what else is there that is not itself also caused?

When you put it like that, it sounds like you're saying we're ultimately not in control of any decision we make. Every decision is already predetermined by our genetics, environment, experience.

Basically that sounds like a big excuse to me that one could use to explain why they did something they ought not do, or for behaving a certain way. "I can't help it, it's just a part of me"

And to that, I say bullshit. I would never deny that we all get some pretty damn strong impulses to do whatever, but they are not unbeatable and they have a multitude of different ways we can react to them.

Part of your arguement is that there's subconscious factors going in to play that we're not even aware of. Maybe so, but how exactly are we supposed to gauge how big a factor these subconscious weights actually play? You can't. It may range from completely swaying our decision one way, to still not being enough to change our minds.

Course, this is me talking about shit I don't really know for sure. Just guess-work, saying stuff that makes sense to me. And I think that for most people, free-will is just an idea and that it's generally a lot easier to go with the flow of life around you. But I still maintain that we do always have a choice and some people will make unusual choices, despite their consequences (good or bad).

[nullnaught]

Depends on your time frame.



A useful metaphor for life is "river". We can be like a leaf on a river. We can swim upstream or just go with the flow.

If you look at the picture below of a "braided" river imagine you're a kayaker paddling downstream. You have lots of choices, stay to the left, stay to the right, steer down the middle...? The choices are yours: Free Will.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because over time you'll be deposited where the river empties into the vast and seemingly infinite ocean (another metaphor if you like).

Do you believe in an all-seeing all-knowing god?

[Bowyn Aerrow]

All seeing, all knowing God.

But its nothing really mystical.

God stands outside of time - thus is eternal. God has seen all of the past, all of the present and all of the possible futures.

Science is figuring out how this is actually done, string theory, multiple universes, etc. We are just getting a minor glimpse that God sees.

This does not detract from free will - After all God sees all possible futures.

[nullnaught]

but you do one thing. Did god not forsee that that one thing is what you would actualy do? And by the way neither string theory or multiple universes is science as neither postulate is testable. They are both 'what-ifs' starting from a basis of science. They are speculative fiction, however.