RE: Free Will -- the "materialist string" pulls both ways.
April 4, 2016 at 7:18 am
(This post was last modified: April 4, 2016 at 7:19 am by Jehanne.)
(April 3, 2016 at 8:38 pm)pool the great Wrote:(April 3, 2016 at 12:25 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I would argue that you don't; rather, I would argue that you are incapable of doing evil things, such as robbing banks, kidnapping little children, torturing animals, etc. I would cite as evidence the fact that individuals who do such things, without exception, have deficiencies within their brains and/or past environments which has a direct and discernible causal link with their present behavior. These correlates can be demonstrated using statistical methods.
You would argue that I wouldn't be capable of doing evil things and base your belief of the non existence of free will on that?
Yeah, good luck with that.
There is no other explanation. What would it be? A soul? A spirit? Your brain produces your mind, "you", and all of your behavior is simply the electro-chemical reactions of your brain, nothing more, nothing less. When you die, you will cease to exist; it will be, from "your" perspective at least, that you were never born in the first place. Conservation of energy, momentum and charge work everywhere in the Universe; why not in your head, also? If so, then there is no "you" causing electrons to jump from one orbital state to another; rather, it is just the 100 billion neurons and the 100 trillion synapses that give rise to "you", and consequently, your behavior, your every thought, your every action. The point of my OP is that well-form neural circuits and pathways lead to well-formed individuals.