(February 10, 2012 at 12:52 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Fair enough. We're still flirting with anthropic bias, but it's very difficult to avoid. I suppose I could pick at the causally sufficient statement..but I'm afraid we'd veer into unfriendly territory....If our biology (our brain) and our conditioning (our experiences) are not sufficient....just what, exactly...are you proposing?
I don't equate our brain with biology, nor do I equate conditioning with experiences. I mean I agree that a lot of thoughts originate automatically due to basic biological structure of the brain, but our consciousness can be considered as a curious mechanism within the brain itself by which it can alter or attach weight to these automatic impulses. Similarly, while conditioning is programmed behavior simply connecting a particular cause to an effect, we can actually analyze and desiccate the experience and pick and choose what we retain from it. Which is why I've been insisting that for this to be possible (and I believe that free-will is a name given to this particular mechanism of the brain), before we analyze our experiences or attach weight to our actions, we must be aware of them.
