RE: Determinism, Free Will, and A Thought Experiment
January 9, 2014 at 10:25 pm
(This post was last modified: January 9, 2014 at 10:58 pm by Mudhammam.)
(January 9, 2014 at 9:23 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Your thought problem hinges on whether Rob's will actually does always match his brain activity. Is there a reason why I should accept that as a given?
Let me attempt to clarify, Rob's will always agrees with Rob's brain chemistry but Rob's brain chemistry does not always agree with Rob's "will," evidenced nicely by bennyboy's example of Rob blinking even though Rob really does not want to blink because he wants a $100. Our "will" is our illusion that "we're" acting "freely," according to our deepest sense of desire, whatever that is (even if it is something that doesn't seem to be in our best interest). This argument attempts to demonstrate that determinism is a posteriori true if libertarian free will is our alternative because libertarian free will appeals to an agent that is every bit as automated as Rob, considering that agent has a roughly defined nature (and don't all intelligible concepts?).
"But why is that true?" I can hear you asking.
Because a human nature, our brain activity, sets the guidelines for what we can and cannot do, prior to us actually doing it. If an agent, say God, cannot contradict his nature, and one's nature is confined to doing either A or not-A at any particular moment, you may ask, "But are we free within that limited nature?" To act within the limitations of your nature or more specifically your brain's activity at any particular instant is only to say that your brain activity is always limited to one particular arrangement of chemical reactions (even if these brain states change every fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second, the moment you're "doing" anything it will be one specific way, even in fluidity). How could our will be independent from it? Without brain activity, humans are just corpses, with no will. Even a highly controlled brain appears less free to us, though not always to that brain. Granted, some have suggested that our entire understanding of physics must change to understand consciousness, or MAYBE our logic is fundamentally restricted and therefore possibly errant, but again, that doesn't seem to be very helpful, since then we can't really even talk about it. Am I just ranting or does any of that seem rational?
