(March 14, 2015 at 7:09 am)Ignorant Wrote:FreeTony Wrote:Having thought about it for a while, I don't think . . .
Well, if the ideas expressed here are true, then of course "you" don't "think". "You" don't "do" anything if "you" are reducible to a mixture of physical interactions determined by nothing but a previous causal history. "You" can't help BUT "behave" in the way you do, in a very similar way, although admittedly more complex way, that a bacterium or a pine tree or a cow can't help BUT "behave" as they do. Your entire post is nothing but the effect of a long series of randomly occurring causes that would not differ in any substantially meaningful way from say, falling asleep, defecating, telling your children that you love them, writing a poem, painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or composing a symphony (all of which would be equally reducible to the random alignment of causes into your own specific causal chain). That is, if what you have described is true.
In fact, your own experience of "identity", the "you" we see and the "I" you experience are ultimately delusions. If "you" are reducible to a particular and determined causal chain, then what "you" were 5 seconds ago is not the same "thing" as the "you" that exists now (having undergone 5 seconds worth of the continuing causal chain). There is no "you". Mind blowing.
I actually think it is more likely that we are just like a learning machine, simply because I don't actually see the need to add anything else (Occams Razor) to explain human behaviour and decision making. I'm not saying that there isn't either a random QM like element, nor some other thing that approximates to the "feeling that we do have a conscious choice over decisions" we experience. More investigation is needed.
We may feel like we have free will. This isn't justification for saying we do, especially when we can't even define it or test whether a person has it or not.
