RE: Free Will, Free Won't?
September 17, 2013 at 7:44 pm
(This post was last modified: September 17, 2013 at 8:31 pm by The Reality Salesman01.)
(September 17, 2013 at 7:27 pm)Zone Wrote: But that could be test as anything that doesn't have freewill may not understand what the concept of freewill means. So say an android or something would just stare at you blankly if they just followed their set programs and if we didn't have freewill then we wouldn't be discussing it because it wouldn't occur to us.
2 things.
1. Being able to comprehend a concept, doesn't make the opinions offered in regards to it, empirically true.
Example: Being able to understand the question: "Is Rap the best kind of music?" Doesn't validate the answer given in response to it.
2. The Android will respond with whatever answer you program it to provide. Just as it unaware of the choice in default language it uses to form its response. If the data given to the droid is consistent with free-will, the answers to the questions regarding it, if asked in the right way, will coincide with the data. In this sense, people are similar, but we can learn to challenge a programmed response. What separates us, is that a computer must operate in accordance with it.
These concepts are a result of a human being's experience of reality, and the thoughts which are inspired by it; so are computers. Looking to computers for answers to problems created by human thought is putting the cart before the horse. [edit] (I had them in the wrong order, no pun intended)
And I realize that when I say "we can learn to challenge..." It seems as though I'm supporting the concept of being free. I'm not. Because the changes that affect our operating system do not occur consciously, and the conscious mind is where the notion of free-will resides, the changes in the mind seem incompatible with the concept of free-will. I was only eluding to the human mind being able to process concepts of an abstract nature. There is no evidence to support that the intellectual plain of awareness associated with concept of free-will contributes in any way to the change in ones position toward a particular idea. The plain of awareness responsible for that operates apart from our conscious awareness of the effects it produces.
As for the OP, the evidence provided by those experiments, while interesting, is not necessary to dispute the common notion of Free-Will. The origins of the thoughts that occur in consciousnesses, appear without any conscious coaxing of their existence! Sam Harris does a great job of illustrating this in his book, and to avoid plagiarizing the whole thing, I've posted one of the lectures he gave upon releasing his book. Pretty cool stuff. I find the topic very interesting.
