Determinism.....

[Tiberius]

The body made the decision? Really? Then why have a brain at all? I has smart body

Your brain is part of your body. Honestly, do you just try to make moronic jokes when debating? Right, next...

The brain made the decision... something that thought about the choice. That means that the something that thought about the choice was free. Our personality, decisions, and everything in the body is controlled by our mind. There is no programed instinct in choice. None... because an instinct is no different from a computer: a simple program. A reflex. There is no choice in reflex.

Non-sequitur. It does not follow that because the brain thought about it, the choice was free. A computer "thinks" about a problem, but it doesn't have a free choice in the answer. The answer is determined by it's programming, literally the way it thinks about things. What I am arguing is that a "free" choice must depend on the conscious mind, given that the sub-conscious is not where we do our conscious thinking (hence the name). Free will can be summarized as "free conscious thought". In other words, when we think in our conscious mind about a decision, and make a choice, that choice developed through our conscious thoughts. Neuroscience currently says the complete opposite, that the choice we think we make in our conscious mind is actually being practically ordered at us by our subconscious. Our conscious thought process in this aspect is mere illusion.

Not all of life has free will... that is why I say that some life is a biological machine... and some machines are synthetic life. For it is possible to be alive... and still not live. You could not argue that an instinct, a programmed reflex, is any different than the subroutines of a computer. There is no choice in it, therefore there is no free will. Free will is 100% based upon the ability to choose.

Yes, and how do we know we have the ability to choose? We don't. What we observe is our conscious minds taking orders from our subconscious minds. We don't get to choose, we get told what to do.

You do insist you are right though. You argued against infinite limits to try to validate .9^=1 because it has a small mathematical following in that thread, and you are arguing against our ability to choose to validate that the subconscious is not us because this theory has a small neuroscientific following. Please stop arguing from 'establishment'... it's driving me nuts.

I love how you try to justify your previous failure to debate me by saying I had a "small mathematical following". Yes, if by "small" you mean the entire scientific community, and everyone apart from 2 people in that thread (fr0d0 got it by the end; as I recall, only you and leo were left).

I don't insist I am right. I believe I am, but then I don't find it valuable arguing my position when I assume the opposite. I can imagine arguing from establishment would be irritating to you. In all the debates I have seen you in, you have never conceded a single point. You have a plainly arrogant nature, you always think you are correct, and even when your arguments are shown to be filled with logical fallacies, you continue with them like there is no tomorrow. You aren't the kind of person I'd choose the debate with, not because I think your position is either correct or interesting, but because it's like arguing with a brick wall.

The subconscious, as I said in my last post... is inferior if it is labeled properly. It remains a part of us, and it is a subject that we do not yet have much more than theories and observations to support. You use evidence you say... so show me evidence. I am a skeptic by nature, and forgive me if I do not believe things just because I am told that 'scientists' think so. I must justify things by me... for I will not believe things without reason to. I may have written an observation off of the top of my head, but that makes it no less valid an observation than one idea written of the top of one's head, and edited 50 times to look better.

Here are a couple of things I found. There was a early 2009 article I read which I haven't re-discovered yet, but when I find it I'll post that too:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries...d_decision
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience...isions.php

By 'right' and 'wrong', I mean correct and incorrect. I'm overlooked that you might have thought I was referring moral standing... I apologize for the miscommunication. For clarity, I'll call it 'correct/incorrect' from here. And yes, I do think that things can be correct or incorrect... for example: 1=10 is incorrect. 1=1 is correct.

So again, how do you measure correctness in anything other than logic? Is is correct to choose to step off the sidewalk now, or 2 seconds from now? One decision might lead to you being run over, but is that necessarily an "incorrect" outcome? What if you'd been planning on killing yourself later that day, and getting hit by a car landed you incapable of doing so; further lying in the hospital you realise you don't want to commit suicide anymore. Far-fetched example? Yeah sure, but no less valid.

Ah, I see what you were trying to say in that instance. As a question of interest: Why does that make your choice any less valid? The subconscious is a part of you... That you decided on it before you acted: isn't that simply called 'wisdom'?

I'm not talking about deciding on it before acting. I'm talking about the subconscious making the decision before the conscious. In other words, your conscious mind (where you do all your thinking...well, at least conscious thinking) isn't making the decision at all. It has no choice. It is told what to do by the subconscious mind. It isn't *you* (as in your personality, your consciousness) making the decision, it is your onboard computer. Acting on brain impulses and instinct, and whatever else happens in there. Your personal ability to think seems to have nothing to do with it.

I think a name should be descriptive... for what other reasons would something have a name? If I call everything 'Chair'... then what does it mean? Not much, to be honest. However, if I use 'chair' to refer to a specific thing: then the properties of all chairs should be similar so far as the definition has placed. It has tremendous bearing on what we are talking about: The subconscious is a mislabeled word IF, and only if it is greater than or equal to consciousness. Simply: if consciousness is the subconscious's slave: then it is the conscious that is lesser, and the term 'subconscious' should be redefined to match what is being described. Call me a moron with an embarrassing argument if you wish... it does not make the argument any less valid.

Complain about the term then. I think you are reading too much into it. To use your previous example of a "submarine", it doesn't mean it is inferior to a "marine" or the sea, or anything else. It just means it operates below it (below in a navigational sense, not a hierarchy sense). The subconscious operates below the conscious mind, in the sense that it is there, but inaccessible to us.

Anyway, my original point was that this was a red herring. Discussing the etymology of a word bears no relation to the concept the word describes.