A modified cosmological argument

L

Logically Unsound

wwaassuupp and so on
Registered Senior Member
morning all.
i recently started my A-levels and the best subject in the whole world recently was realised. Philosophy.
We covered the cosmological argument, and an irritating argument popped into my head, and as is the way with your own arguments (unlesss their rubbish) its hard to refute them. so i thought id toss it to the lions and see what happened (;))

The cosmological argument works off of the basis that :
"All Effects have a cause"
If this isnt true then the argument is crap, but i dont care for the purpose of this argument.
Then, use the definition of Free will as:
An property that allows a being to make decisions not affected totally by outside influence (dont nit-pick about this, unless its important)
If this is true, then there is a blatent problem. If the effect statement is true, then free will cannot, since by definition it cant. sounds a bit familiar? hehe.
in class, several problems were proposed by teacher and student, and they went like this:
taking the idea of a decision, in this case whether to close a door when its cold, a pupil argued that the outside world was in fact producing a sort of 'chain effect' that led to our 'free will' decision. i.e. in this case, it was cold, i dont like it being cold, therefore i close the door.
i agreed that this was true, but this does not affect the argument, since even though we are affected by the world (causes), we do not make decisions purely on those causes.
to go back to the door situation, if i was in a walk in freezer (why not?) i might be cold but my will tells me that it has to be cold, so i do not take action, when basic cause and effect would lead me to make it warm.
if you dont like that analogy (it was made up on the spot) choose your own, but i think you see what i mean)
my teacher then argued that this is irrelevant. i asked her why, and she said that even if our will was effected by the outside world. crap i just went and had dinner and now ive forgotten.
basically, either we are total slaves to cause and effect (i.e. there is no free will, or i.e. determinism of the hardest line) or we are distinct from the universe and therefore outside of cause and effect. this however, means that it is reasonable to apply the same to God, and allow his existence, since there is not much of a leap between souls and God, but i am not interested in doing that right now. i will be making another thread in the physics section, ill posta link, and i need to know an answer to that. (its a refutation from emirical observation on the statement "every effect has a cause")
please refute en masse, cause i dont like this any more than anyone else would.
 
As I have no formal qualification or study in philosophy I can't delve into your question using it's terminology.

However from what I understand you are comparing cause and effect with freewill and that by the nature of the absoluteness of causality and effect freedom of choice or freewill is an illusion.

Of course this is a very popular and somewhat boring topic, talked about continuously, and I think most people have decided with some justification to give it the flick and think of something else.

The cause of course is futility and boredom. The effect is to get on with something else or more precisely "anything" else as long as it isn't as boring as the issue of freewill and determinism.

So how does a sense of futility and boredom come about as part of the cosmological argument.

Is boredom determined in some way that can be put down to causality, is a sense of futility something that has causality.

How does one determine futility, boredom, beauty, sexual attraction, food preferences, and what movies you like and don't like etc etc?

Can any thing be actually determined as far as our unique individual emotional responses are concerned?
Sure there are ways to build a box to put everything in, similarities and comparisons with their inherent statistics and methodology, but is this determining the exact cause? Is it ever possible to determine the exact cause , the complete causality that leads to an emotional effect?
Maybe we might argue hormone [x] did it but exactly what quantities and exactly what type of hormone, chemistry etc. What exact and full assessment of stimuli is available to us.?

It would take eternity to document all the causes that lead to one single effect I would suggest and as eternity is time infinite then causality is also.

So, we very well may be able to determine a single part of that cause and also a single part of the effect but to assess all and every aspect would be impossible.
They often refer the butterfly effect and how a single butterfly can be a precipitator of major events but what events created the butterfly and the butterfly before it.

So where does causality start from, when did the cause have it's origins?
When will the effect stop having it's effect?

I have typed this post, someone will read it, go out and get married have kids and sit down 50 years later and say something to some one that has a small reference to what I have written. And state how this fool called QQ was wasting his time typing to an internet forum made him realise he should get on with his life and not worry about freewill and determinism and blah blah blah......which led to him going for a walk and bumping into the dream girl of his life......etc etc etc...


So my argument regards the cosmological proposition is:

If you can determine the whole cause and the whole effect I will submit and agree that freewill does not exist for in a sea of infinite variables we achieve the freewill we often talk about, the only oppression being the ones we choose to allow.
 
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Dude, your post appears to say that we need to know all of the causes and all of the effects to know the first one. in some things perhaps this is true, but in the case of free will the component of uncaused-ness is either inherent or not there at all, regardless of how the body relates to it...

and your comment that people just dont care about this topic since its talked about so much means nothing. at school i sit for a whole hour listening to people talk rubbish about america and how bush is an idiot, and its the same conversation they had last year.

on top of this, this argument is only similar to those in general terms. they mention nothing about god or uncaused effects, they only work off of the basis that we have never detected a soul or instrument that allows free will.

your final paragraph implied free will comes from merely having many options? huh? seems a bit dramatic
anyways, whatever
.
 
ok....say,

One man in a given situation percieves he has 3 choices or alternatives and these three choices only exist because he has the freedom to choose between these three choices, if that freedom to choose was not present then he would have no choices to make.

Another man in a similar situation sees he has 100 choices or alternatives, they only exist as alternatives simply becasue he is free to choose from any of them, if he he can not freely choose he has no choice. Thus no freedom to choose.
Another dude in the similar situation sees 1000 choices and alternatives ....and so on and so on...etc etc.....

What makes one man only see 3 choices whilst another may see 1000 choices?
Has the man who sees 1000 choices any greater freewill than a man who only sees 3 choices?

Both are after all free to choose from what they percieve are the choices available. Both are equally free to make that choice.

Does greater choice imply greater freewill?
 
"Cause and effect" vs. "free will" is trying to describe things as if the universe were black and white.

A boulder on a hillside is restrained by the soil beneath it. The soil erodes and no longer supports the boulder. The boulder now rolls down the hill because it has no alternative. The boulder is subject to some sort of rule called "cause and effect" and can only respond to external influences.

On the other hand, I really like cold weather. Even if the outside temperature is zero F. or below, I still sleep with the window above the bed open! I don't leave the window open because I am compelled to, but because I enjoy the cold and actually sleep better. I could close the window and not sleep so soundly, but I choose to excercise free will and leave it open because I know the consequences to myself of closing it.

"Free will" and "cause and effect" is not an either/or argument. Sentient beings can recognize a variety of choices to the extent of their intellectual capabilities. Non-sentient matter is not so lucky.

BTW, did your teacher not have any other choice in career opportunities?
 
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I suggest picking apart the words.

What does FREE really mean in this context?

What is WILL?

I tend to find, when doing this, that a useful and practical definition of "free will" is possible, even in a deterministic universe - the two are not exclusive.

By separating the two words, it becomes more clear that only influences outside of the normal means by which the will operates could be considered to interfere with its freedom.
 
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