RE: If free will was not real
July 26, 2016 at 12:56 pm
(This post was last modified: July 26, 2016 at 1:01 pm by bennyboy.)
(July 26, 2016 at 12:46 pm)Excited Penguin Wrote: You are coerced by environmental factors. You can't escape them. And no matter how much you rationalize your decisions after the fact, it's been proven beyond a doubt that most of the time people have no idea why they do what they do. They come up with reasons if asked, and they truly believe those reasons, but they turn out to be wrong more often than not. Because you see, you are only conscious about so much that goes on in your brain and gives rise to your consciousness and subsequently to your decisions. But you don't control any of it. It controls you. You only experience control, but it isn't really there at all.I'm not coerced by environmental factors-- I respond to them according to my world view and my personhood. Saying, "You wouldn't have bought ice cream unless it was hot. . . so there!" doesn't really say anything useful about the human experience.
And what's this "your brain" stuff? Am I more than my brain, or other than it? You would argue not, I assume. It therefore seems to me you are saying, "The brain's brain doesn't control any of the brain. It controls the brain. It only experiences control, but it isn't really there at all." Again, it doesn't say anything really useful about the freedom I exercise in buying my ice cream.
Quote:You don't control your thoughts.I AM, at least in part, my thoughts. Thinking otherwise means I would be able to control my own nature. But this introduces an obvious circularity, and circles are bad.
Quote: Yet your thoughts are what you are, in a sense. Your thoughts are what make up your decisions. Without thinking, you wouldn't call yourself as having free will, would you ? But that's just it, you can't control your thinking. It just comes out of nowhere, and you identify with it because it's always there and thus the illusion of control comes in, naturally.Who's this "you" you keep talking to? A boy is not a "you." A boy is only a brain. A boy is only a collection of neuronal functions. But you do not refer to "a boy's brain." You keep talking to this "you," as though there's something there which is more than, or different than, a boy's brain.
Your environment produces your thoughts. And your thoughts produce your decisions. Nowhere is there a place for a free agent here.
/GoT plagiarism