HappySkeptic mentioned “soul” in his previous post, so I responded.
Some people seem to think that the “free will” is something that comes from the soul or is some kind of a “special sauce” of the soul. I don’t know, maybe I misunderstood them.
Do some of them believe that we don’t have a soul and we have free will?
Like you said, perhaps they think that the output of a program has no meaning and that if we are a set of algorithms, then our thoughts have no meaning.
One person told me that free will means our ability to make a decision.
My response to that is, with an EXAMPLE:
A light bulb connected to a battery + breaker is a circuit that makes a decision.
When you set the state of the breaker to ON, the light bulb turns ON.
So, it looks like a system that makes a decision.
The algorithm is
if(breaker==ON)
Lightbulb=ON;
else
Lightbulb=OFF;
EXAMPLE:
We can also change the breaker. Let’s put a photoconductor in its place.
if(photoconductor detects light)
Lightbulb=OFF;
else
Lightbulb=ON;
EXAMPLE:
A human can walk around a maze and make decisions to not run into the walls. He can walk around and make a map in his memory and try to figure out how to get out.
We can make a robot that does the same thing.
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Like you said, maybe some of these guys (theists and atheists and the other flavors) mean something else when they say free will. It’s the special sauce that they want to believe that they have and they want to think that they are different than a calculator. Some of them want to think of themselves as some sort of supreme ultra being that is a few degrees shorter than the big giant brain (the god).
There is also the question of the other apes. Do they have free will or are they just robots?
What about cows and pigs?
What about emotions? Do they have emotions?
Some people seem to think that the “free will” is something that comes from the soul or is some kind of a “special sauce” of the soul. I don’t know, maybe I misunderstood them.
Do some of them believe that we don’t have a soul and we have free will?
(December 31, 2021 at 1:44 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: You also offered the notion that free will was the outcome or effect of programming (in the brain). Well - that's not free will - or at least not the free will that people once wished to assert (and some still do). Free will is the programmer, not the programming. The idea that our decisions are meaningfully unalike the outcome of a set process. A bootstrap paradox.
Like you said, perhaps they think that the output of a program has no meaning and that if we are a set of algorithms, then our thoughts have no meaning.
One person told me that free will means our ability to make a decision.
My response to that is, with an EXAMPLE:
A light bulb connected to a battery + breaker is a circuit that makes a decision.
When you set the state of the breaker to ON, the light bulb turns ON.
So, it looks like a system that makes a decision.
The algorithm is
if(breaker==ON)
Lightbulb=ON;
else
Lightbulb=OFF;
EXAMPLE:
We can also change the breaker. Let’s put a photoconductor in its place.
if(photoconductor detects light)
Lightbulb=OFF;
else
Lightbulb=ON;
EXAMPLE:
A human can walk around a maze and make decisions to not run into the walls. He can walk around and make a map in his memory and try to figure out how to get out.
We can make a robot that does the same thing.
------------------------
Like you said, maybe some of these guys (theists and atheists and the other flavors) mean something else when they say free will. It’s the special sauce that they want to believe that they have and they want to think that they are different than a calculator. Some of them want to think of themselves as some sort of supreme ultra being that is a few degrees shorter than the big giant brain (the god).
There is also the question of the other apes. Do they have free will or are they just robots?
What about cows and pigs?
What about emotions? Do they have emotions?
