RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 8:30 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 8:49 pm by bennyboy.)
duplicate post, sorry
So let's take free will. If we have no free will, will you then open the jails, or will you continue to expect punishment for criminals, even though all their actions are just the spear-point of a series of deterministic events? Will you give up on achieving your dreams, knowing that your success or failure are not under the control of your free agency, which is illusory? Will you continue to debate on forums as though one free-thinking individual is actually debating with others, or will you just see it all as fluctuations in quantum fields?
This is the hypocrisy of the people who are against the idea of free will. They continue to ACT as though they believe very much in free will. And if anyone attempted to limit their freedoms, they'd squawk like angry hens-- they certainly would not see the behavior of their captors as inevitable, and therefore accept them.
(April 19, 2015 at 7:25 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Doesn't follow.....here you go again..."no free will...then no -x- neener neener"......right from the very beginning.....there's just no other way you can argue free will..is there?Why should I feel compelled to make any argument other than the one that seems best to me? From my perspective, you are special pleading: all those OTHER abstracts, illusions and miconceptions are fine, but when it comes to free will, you want to throw a penalty flag. I'm saying that nothing we experience as humans-- absolutely nothing at all-- accurately represents reality. And yet we talk about love, beauty, morals, goodness and badness, etc. as meaningful terms. The problem is that the mechanical world view you hold doesn't represent what it's like to live and experience as a human being: it fails to describe it, or to contribute anything useful to it.
So let's take free will. If we have no free will, will you then open the jails, or will you continue to expect punishment for criminals, even though all their actions are just the spear-point of a series of deterministic events? Will you give up on achieving your dreams, knowing that your success or failure are not under the control of your free agency, which is illusory? Will you continue to debate on forums as though one free-thinking individual is actually debating with others, or will you just see it all as fluctuations in quantum fields?
This is the hypocrisy of the people who are against the idea of free will. They continue to ACT as though they believe very much in free will. And if anyone attempted to limit their freedoms, they'd squawk like angry hens-- they certainly would not see the behavior of their captors as inevitable, and therefore accept them.