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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 18, 2015 at 9:41 pm
(April 18, 2015 at 9:04 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Because she -is- a solid body, in the way that we take solid to mean. Whats the problem? There's no problem. The myth of Mom includes her 99.99999% empty space which -is- a solid body (except for the part where we have to redefine something completely lacking in solidity as solid).
Quote:You must have a different definition for mythology than I do. I think that you're going to need a hell of alot of poetic license to make any parity between our sensory experience and mythology stick. Your wife not only "seems" solid...to you...she -is- solid.....to you. For some odd reason..I can't seem to unload the dozen odd dirty jokes I have lined up in my mind for this one.....I think I might have accidentally started respecting you....sonofabitch! : wink :
The myth is in the idea of Mom, which cannot be found anywhere in the physical reality of her QM particles, atoms, molecules, proteins or tissue systems.
Quote:The comment I responded to, with that quoted section, then..seems nonsensical if you've accepted this. Perhaps you could rephrase? The world as we experience it is precisely what we would expect from equipment with the range of operating parameters ours has....not seeing why that's mythology, or why it is different than the physics that it is an expression -of-?
Show me something you perceive without blending it into the complex of ideas which is your world view, and I'll show you a mystical experience.
Where are ANY of the abstracts by which we describe what it's like to be human. Where/what, exactly, is beauty? Love? Inspiration? Hope? You can't define them precisely, and yet you have a sense of them. I'm not arguing free will is real. I'm arguing that most of what it is like to be human is not less real than free will. If free will is nothing, so is beauty. So is goodness. So are honor, morality, etc.
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 12:27 pm
Are we 100% empty space? Does matter actually take up any space at all?
My brain certainly doesn't.
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 12:41 pm
Does matter matter? If not, what is the matter with matter?
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 1:53 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 1:55 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(April 18, 2015 at 9:41 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I'm arguing that most of what it is like to be human is not less real than free will. If free will is nothing, so is beauty. So is goodness. So are honor, morality, etc. Yeah..yeah...and I've commented on the silliness of immediately falling to such statements before. I don't think that I have to take your free will to have any of that -in fact I know that I don't.....but if I did..oh well, so what if they all were nothing?
I'm afraid that if this "free will or you can't have x" is the best free will has going for it...it's in a pretty sorry state. I could probably replace "free will" with some other thing and you'd be able to recognize all of the ways to rip that statement to shreds without any help from me. Here's a hint....my substitute is invisible and begins with a "g".
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 3:05 pm
You are free to do what determinism tells you.
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 3:07 pm
(April 19, 2015 at 3:05 pm)robvalue Wrote: You are free to do what determinism tells you.
Was posting that an act of free will, or a reaction to his post?
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 3:11 pm
(April 14, 2015 at 4:11 pm)wallym Wrote: I make an app that tells me what I should wear. Tomorrow it's going to rain, so it'll tell me to wear galoshes.
That conclusion is 'predetermined', but if I don't run the app, I won't clean my galoshes in preparation for tomorrow, and all the kids will pick on me.
I believe analyzing the question of free will is running the app. Knowing that I have no say in the conclusions I'm drawing doesn't change the fact that my subconscious may draw new "better" conclusions that lead to different "better" behavior. And if it does, then it can output that information so that others will input it, and possibly adapt the 'better' behavior.
The carrot possibly being a positive stimuli associated with these things happening. Rather than free will. 'adaptive will'?
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 3:19 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 3:22 pm by robvalue.)
(April 19, 2015 at 3:07 pm)Quatermass Wrote: (April 19, 2015 at 3:05 pm)robvalue Wrote: You are free to do what determinism tells you. Was posting that an act of free will, or a reaction to his post? It was a combination of past experiences, my current surroundings, reading his post and seemingly random but possibly deterministic quantum interactions.
Also it sounded cool.
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 7:07 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 7:15 pm by bennyboy.)
(April 19, 2015 at 1:53 pm)Rhythm Wrote: (April 18, 2015 at 9:41 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I'm arguing that most of what it is like to be human is not less real than free will. If free will is nothing, so is beauty. So is goodness. So are honor, morality, etc. Yeah..yeah...and I've commented on the silliness of immediately falling to such statements before. I don't think that I have to take your free will to have any of that -in fact I know that I don't.....but if I did..oh well, so what if they all were nothing?
I'm afraid that if this "free will or you can't have x" is the best free will has going for it...it's in a pretty sorry state. I could probably replace "free will" with some other thing and you'd be able to recognize all of the ways to rip that statement to shreds without any help from me. Here's a hint....my substitute is invisible and begins with a "g". I'm not sure why you have discomfort differentiating between the reality of being human and the physical reality underlying the universe. They aren't the same. A desk is real-- but physically speaking, it's not real in the way that it's real for me when I touch it and look at it. Light is real, too, but physically speaking, it is not real iln the way that it's real for me when I experience it.
The "as I experience things" of qualia is always different than the physical reality. So how do we treat this fact? Do we just sweep it under the rug with a red herring: "people are physical, too, and so are our minds"? But this doesn't address the fact that what we think is real and what is "really, really real" are already known not to be the same at all.
I don't much care if free will is "really, really real." It's real in the context of the human experience of life, and that is the context in which I live out my existence.
Let's say I have a decision to make-- among the various candies in the candy aisle. I experience desire, then I look at the different candies and experience my emotional reaction to each one. I go back and forth until one of the candies really catches my fancy. I choose that candy, buy it, and eat it. Was this a process of free will? Well, if not, I didn't actually make a decision. Nor was there even a "me," by which I mean a free-willed agent capable of arbitrating decisions. There was just the awareness of a deterministic process, and the "decision" was illusory because my choice was inevitable. The joy of eating the candy was equally illusory-- there's no "joy" in the universe; it's just a word I give to mechanical processes.
In other words, a view of the human experience without free will means that each of us is here purely as an observer: watching a virtual movie, in essence. But that view of human experience doesn't really describe it very well. It seems to me very much that I'm an active participant.
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RE: What do we do while deciding if free will exists?
April 19, 2015 at 7:18 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 7:19 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Discomfort? I've been describing the ways in which it is nonsensical to me, not discomforting. From what I know of the subject, and from my own experience...they seem to be the same thing Benny. Things that are real to me are real in the way that I experience them. Everytime I consider something outside of my own frame of reference, and discover that there are differences between my relationship to something and some other things relationship to something, physics and biology offer me an explanation as to why.
I'm afraid that you don't get to declare a fact, so the question.."why is it different" again....beyond the explanations offered thusfar..seems non-sensical to me. What I "think is real" is a function of my biology.....I've never been one to sweep things under the rug, I like explaining them. You haven't found an example of anything yet that, to me, is lacking in explanation on that count. Nor have I ever shied away from giving you the mundane biological or physical answer.
If you don't care whether or not free will is "really real"....then whats the point of asserting it, whats the point of having this discussion...why ask questions about it? The truth of the matter is irrelevant to you in a way that it is not irrelevant to me.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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