Humans either have or do not have free will. Discuss. It's interesting to think that all of our thoughts are preceded by elecrical activity in the brain, which we have no control over, not really. So when you 'decide' to do something, are you really deciding it, or are you just doing it because that's what your brain told you to? For this train of thought, you have to think of "you" not as your physical body, but as your thoughts and feelings, if you can understand that. Just as your finger is seperate to your hand, your "you" is seperate to your body.
No you are assuming the standard that my mind and body are seperate. That's an incorrect analogy. It's a dichotonomy of how the "soul" was created. My thoughts come from my brain, my mind and counsciousness, my body carries this head, and brain, it's a network that works together. I've got to "think" to type this in essence my brain controls my body. but only so far, all other functions of my body come automatically like when to relieve excrement, or naturally body functions such as my heart beating. These things are naturally accuring and a section of my brain keeps these function in check. But my thoughts are not by any means apart from my body. They work together. Godless.
Not really Godless. There is a drawn out thread somewhere in here where I pointed out the enormous difficulties involved in such a cop out explanation. It's called 'Can We Think?'
Hi SouthStar it's been a while, I do recall seen the thread, wait a minute I "think" I remember, yes I never participated on that thread, its kind of silly to me to question thought, when it takes thought, to write this to you, and took "thought" for you to answer this thread. Have a nice read: free will Now here's my definition. free will is the "choice you make", wether you are going to clikc the above link or not, that's a matter of "choice", knowing me, and that I'm a "smart ass" according to your evaluation of me, from this limited midium, wether you "choose" to read the link above or not, it's "action" that you determine wether to read it or not, That! "action" of "choice" given is your free will to "choose" wether to read it or not! GET IT? Godless
Can a person actually claim to have FREE will when from the moment of birth until the moment of a decision, he's been "taught" that some things are "good" and some things are "bad"? I.e., you might actually have the choice, but if you "know" that, say, killing someone because they called you a name, is a "bad" thing to do, would you make that choice? See what I mean? Aren't you already partially conditioned in such a way as to eliminate SOME of those choices? And if so, then you will isn't "free" ...your parents and culture and society has already made SOME of your choices for you. Baron Max
In reality, there is no free will. But does it feel like you have? Then the "reality" doesn't really matter. Everything is subjective. The feeling of having free will is the free will.
Petitio principii -- Free will is the ability to do something. Maybe now's a good time to start talking about Conway's game.
Baron, by your analogy murder wouldn't exist. Everyone is tought, however everyone makes their own choices, wether they be evil or good. People get murdered, killed, raped, all by the choices those criminals have made. Thus they have free will to harm or kill a person for whatever they felt justified for their actions. Thus they took an amoral action when they commited a crime against another. That choice! is free will. Yorda True Yorda, you dont possess free will you are a freak of nature!. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! G.W.Bush. The above is an example of Pettitio Principii. (Petitio Principii is undeniably a common fallacy. I often see it in student papers, for example. In student papers it often takes the form of an argument by double negation: "My position is not false, therefore it is true." One characteristic of the Petitio Principii fallacy is that it is more likely to fool the person offering the argument than the person he or she is trying to persuade.) ref. But free will is. Because of the "choice" made. free will Thus if one has a "choice" of an action, one has free will. The simplest answer is the best answer, anything after is just mumble jumble rhetorical crap made up by philosophers who even question if they exist, or are the only entity in existence and everything else, and everyone else is a part of their imagination. Solipcism may be imposible to disprove, but it's an absurdity to believe otherwise. Thus free will exists and I have it, and so is any other person reading this. Because you've have chosen to read this far. Godless
I should have said this before. I would noy count you as your brain. You are your personality, your memories, your thoughts. They are created by your brain, but they are not one with and the same as your brain. I would define "you" as your consciousness. Perhaps you might argue that your thoughts control your brain activity, but what came first? The brain activity, I'd imagine, though I could be wrong.
My thoughts do not "control" my brain activity. That is a natural phenomenon. What I do have is a brain that has all the natural ability to introspect, giving me the ability to have an objective perspective of reality, thus in essence this is what gave the human species the ability to be conscious of self. Consciousness was invention of the human imagination. But then that's a whole other subject. However because I have an organ that is capable to introspect, and at the same time have the ability to have a perspective of self awarness which enabled consciousness, thus giving the ability to have a choice of action, gives me free will. Godless.
Strange you say that! Murder is shown on tv all the time. War is shown in video games and tv all the time. Many people, just angry at someone, will say, "I should kill that bastard!" Some people think that killing in war is okay. See? Our environment teaches us the basics of "right n' wrong". By learning it, our own choices are necessarily beiing limited JUST by our own conscious mind. So is it YOUR free will or is it being somewhat controlled by your education? So if anything, ANYTHING, influences your choices, then how can you call it "free" will? Is that true even if the choices are limited in some way? Say, limited by your knowledge that one choice is much, much better than the others? Baron Max
You are trying to make something simple look as so freaking difficult. That's your choice. I won't accept that I've got limited choices, for instance sometimes I may have limited choices, but I still have a will. If my life were in danger by a car heading my way, and start thinking if I have free will to move out of the fucking way or not as you do I would wind up dead by the time I realized I had a fucking choice to get the fuck out of the way!. Godless.
Godless, Sheesh, how you limit my options! Has it occured to you that I might not click on that link because I don't have enough time? I assume that it might be a lenghty paper, and I don't have the time to read it. Or am not all that interested as I'd prefer all pertaining arguments to the discussion would be presented here, in this thread -- quoted form other pages, if it so be. * * * Baron Max, All fine, but from this perspective, to have free will would mean to be completely independent from the environment. Humans cannot be completely independent form the environment, so they don't have free will -- so per the above line of thinking. The concept of free will then shows to be completely redundant. But why does it exist then? * * * Yorda, If by this, you also mean things like "I can't prevent a thunderbolt to strike me, when I am out in the field in a storm" or "Humans can't prevent that the Sun will eventually collapse", then I agree that we have no free will -- that is, no saying in certain things, many things. I agree. You don't have to believe that you are free; but if you keep believing that you are not free, you will keep on acting as if you are not free. You actually have free will only after you have recognized yourself to have free will. A baby does not have free will. A teenager thinking all world is against her does not have free will. A housewife feeling trapped in her monotonous life and seeing no way out does not have free will. * * * §outh§tar, That's a too broad of a definition. A baby is able to poo, but to ascribe this to free will is too much of a stretch in my opinion. Explain. * * * Godless, What about the raped, robbed, murdered? Where was their free will in being raped, robbed, murdered? Free will exists a) by recognition and after that b) by inference, both inference ex ante and inference ex post. You don't know you are free until you are free, so to speak. Or clumsiness. That something is externally perceived as a choice does not yet mean that the acting agent perceived it as a choice. It can be that the acting agent perceived his course of action to be THE ONLY OPTION, and as such, the act of choosing has not taken place. What took place is an act done out of force of circumstances. Choosing can only take place if the agent perceives there to be at least two options. If the agent perecives no options, then choosing did not take place. Yes. But not every action is performed upon an act of choosing. You have committed a logical fallacy which I pronounce to from now on be called *argumentum ad philosophos*, or "argument against philosophers" ; ie. argumentator denigrates a philosophical argument on the basis that philosophers are suckers. It is impossible to prove that all philosophers are suckers, and it is therefore fallacious to do as if one has proven it. Bollocks. I can identify no choice being made in me reading this through.
The ability to poo is not the result of free will? Just imagine.. We'll play the game soon enough. I'm getting hungry. I noticed thinking makes me hungry..
Of course we haven't got any free will. Everything we do, we does because of a reason, and the reason is based on the impression, wich we had because of something, and that 'something' gave us the impression because of something other, etc... Result: We have no free will.
Like Morpheus said in the Matrix: "What happened, happened and couldn’t have happened in any other way." When you look into the past, destiny becomes visible. It's not possible to see the ultimate future, but you can see into the future from a certain point. Imagine that you could see one minute into the future and you would see yourself sitting in front of your computer. Now, since you know that, you could prevent it. But if you prevented it, then the ultimate future was that you prevented it. And that cannot be seen, since if you saw it, you would again be able prevent it by sitting here, and hence, it isn't the ultimate unchanged future that you see. Just like with everything, free will comes from the mind - from thoughts. If the mind is still, there is nothing (the ultimate unimaginable reality) Free will comes from attachment. Life is a dream, which we observed, but because we loved what we saw, we attached ourselves to a certain body and to certain things. Because we think we are a body and a person, we appear to have free will. Relativity of the mind. I sometimes have these dreams: at first, I'm not at all conscious (nothing), then I begin to see something, like a movie... then I begin to feel and see the things as if I would be there... then I begin to realize that I can control myself in this dream... by this point, I already know that it is only a dream and I can open my eyes and end the dream by free will.
I'd belive it would depend on where you live. If you lived in a arabic state like Afghanistan being ruled by the Teliban and you were a woman, I wouldn't think that you would have any free will. Laws governing certain peoples, be it Arabic or Communisim or for that much any dictator who wants people to do what they are told or face death. Living under extreme conditions as I have mentioned results in lack of free will for get out of line and it's good bye. Some may think that those people afore mentioned do still have free will for they could just move away, shoot themselves or shoot those in charge. Many times peoples rights are taken away and travel is curtailed, guns are coinfiscated and ones family desperatly need each other for survival under those extreme conditions therefore preventing free will to happen.
Cosmictraveler, Yes and no. I was once in a forest and met a dog, some 40 kilos of claw, teeth and muscle, dangerously growling. I distinctly remember pondering several options that I perceived to have: 1. ignore the dog and go on my way 2. turn around and back out 3. scare him away Either of them could work fine, or not. The situation then changed as I heard calls from afar, it seems the dog has gotten lost and people were looking for him. Only that the valley was such that it was hard to locate the direction from which the voice was calling, and I saw the dog was listening, but was confused as to which way to go. So I decided to make myself useful, called the dog and he followed me. I led him out of the wood, through the village, asked around whose dog it is, and as they told me, headed in the direction of the dog's home. The dog was following me in a distance of some 10 meters, but was there, and when he strayed, came closer upon calling; and so for almost a kilometer. Near home, his owner was already looking for him. So -- did I have free will in this? I certainly could not provide my options, neither could I determine how the dog will respond to what I do. But I could choose between perceived options. I say free will is the ability to choose. If a person perceives options to choose from, then they also have free will. But the mere existence of perceiving options does not ensure that the person will act on their free will.
