RE: Do Humans Have Compulsary Will? Which best describes your take on 'will'?
May 29, 2015 at 5:22 am
(This post was last modified: May 29, 2015 at 5:31 am by emjay.)
(May 28, 2015 at 9:40 pm)Cato Wrote: At any given moment, any of us could get up and drop our next deuce on the floor. I'm confident that most of us won't for a myriad of reasons. My problem with the determinist position is that the existence of toilets and the practice of putting shit where we usually do is all due to sequential particle interactions set in motion in the very young universe.
The problem arises when someone drops a turd on the floor after 40 years of using a toilet. A determinist must then assert that this behavior was also unavoidable because of a 13B year old chain of particle interaction. I am okay with counterintuitive conclusions; however, determinism lacks demonstration. Also, if everything is determined then the claim is un falsifiable.
Despite claiming a scientific basis by pointing to our increasing knowledge of QM, determinists cannot connect the dots to mind meaning it's pure speculation. For me, the position has only a moderately more stable foundation than the claim that everything is ordered by an old white dude with a beard in the sky.
That's an interesting perspective - I hadn't thought of it like that; I suppose determinism as I see it could be seen as a kind of god-substitute. But just to say that just because I see the big bang as the first cause of everything, and take comfort from that, doesn't mean I don't look for the more recent causes of anything. The brain is very good at finding the common denominator to blame for events whether that be for positive or negative reasons or for problem solving, and it and ultimately whatever it selects needs to be something you can work with - you can't solve a problem by going back to the big bang nor can you work out who or what to be angry with or grateful to by going back to the big bang. So though the clockwork universe is a great comfort to me, especially when I'm dealing with events outside my control, it's not the be all and end all of it.
@bennyboy
I'm completely undecided on whether the mind is a byproduct or not. That's why I didn't vote. But were it not for the word 'byproduct' I would have chose number 6. Replace it just with 'product' and I still wouldn't be sure.
