RE: Do you control what you believe?
October 30, 2012 at 6:57 pm
(This post was last modified: October 30, 2012 at 6:59 pm by IATIA.)
(October 30, 2012 at 12:42 pm)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: As I said, are you defining "choice" as "free choice"?A decision is making a choice. A choice is a set of options.
To make a decision or to choose from a set of options is the same thing. The options can be physical. I choose Pepsi over Coke.
The options can be mental. I choose to dislike this person.
Quote:If not, if you simply mean "decision": if a decision is made by someone and that decision is undetermined by their biochemical/bioelectrical physiology of the body, you'd call that free will?The semantics of making a decision to choose have no bearing on the free will process. The question of free will is whether or not the body has complete control, i.e. determinate.
Quote:Well, what determines the part of them that actually does do the determining then? It can't just keep being more and more and more parts of them because that would lead to an infinite regress. Either at some point they have to be ultimately entirely determined by something outside of themselves or they are ultimately entirely not determined at all.There is not an issue of infinite regression. Everything we are, starts with the Big bang (or for the theists, "let there be light").
As far as an individual is concerned, the determinism that brought them into being has little effect other than bring them to being. Everything after that is what shapes who we are and what decisions we will make.
A set biochemical reactions forces the body to make a 'choice' or 'decision'. The results of this decision will have an impact on the next and so on. I put my hand into fire and it hurt. "Not put hand in fire". I picked up a piece of chocolate and it hurt the sore in my mouth, but "GOOOD. Ignore pain, chocolate good." Ever touch a doorknob and get a jolt? A couple of those in a row and is there not an anxious feeling as you reach for one again?
Everything we do builds a repository of information along with the realtime environment is collected by the senses and processed in an attempt to make the next decision.
Last night on the PBS channel, they successfully hypnotized/brainwashed someone and they 'killed' a stranger. We really are not in control.
I had posted a link earlier for someone on 'quantum suicide'. The gist of this is that our awareness is beyond the body which is just our attachment to 'reality'. If one were to attempt to point a gun at their head and fire, (for sake of argument, two possibilities), one outcome is that we die, the other is that we do not. In the quantum world both possibilities exist together and in my world you are dead, but in your world the gun misfired. Your awareness will always exist attached to some reality. The bottom line in this train of thought is that if this is true, then one should be able to force this shift of worlds through other means. Now you're talking free will.
You make people miserable and there's nothing they can do about it, just like god.
-- Homer Simpson
God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
-- Superintendent Chalmers
Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.
-- Ned Flanders
Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral.
-- The Rev Lovejoy
-- Homer Simpson
God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
-- Superintendent Chalmers
Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.
-- Ned Flanders
Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral.
-- The Rev Lovejoy
