RE: Do you believe in free will?
March 13, 2012 at 10:03 am
(This post was last modified: March 13, 2012 at 10:08 am by genkaus.)
(March 13, 2012 at 8:56 am)Rhythm Wrote: You very much seem to be seperating your will and your choices from "you". Somehow you are "making" these things, controlling your will. Is it possible that you are these things, that you don't make choices, you don't make your will, that they make you. By what mechanism are you "changing" your will, "making choices"? You say you can show the practical application of free will, well, so can I, but I have strong suspsicions that it is the practical application of a useful illusion. It would be more convincing if you could show us your free will, or the mechanism by which you achieve free will. Some part of you that escapes processes which we find to be very deterministic, in short, how have "you" escaped biology.
To be clear, I do not separate my will and my choices from "me". They are instantiations of "me". To ask whether you control your will or whether your will controls you is simply nonsensical, because they are one and the same. One does not "cause" a change in other, they change simultaneously. My contention was that one can initiate a change in oneself which would end up changing both oneself and one's will.
Secondly, you display a strong assumption that free-will requires escape from causality. That freedom of will means freedom from any causation. I consider that position nonsensical. If that position were true, then anyone who acts according to reason is not practicing "free-will". So no, I do not consider free-will to require "me" escaping biology, since that would mean that the "me" should be separate from my biology. That is the dichotomy that has given rise to the argument in the first place.
(March 13, 2012 at 9:40 am)Rhythm Wrote: Not unless you can demonstrate that this is so. Until then, you're simply arguing that the illusion is so complete that it transcends illusion, somehow. IE, magic.
A complete illusion would still not be reality.
What exactly are you asking me to demonstrate here?
(March 13, 2012 at 9:51 am)Rhythm Wrote: Your free will is not required to be free? Why call it "free" will then? You believe yourself to be an independant entity from causality? Let's ask your mother if she agrees.
My free-will is not required to be free from causality. It is still required to be free from external forces and dependent upon me.
I'm not independent from causality and neither is my will. I, however, do exist independently (of rather separately) from the rest of the universe that is not me and so does my will (to the extent that I do).
