Do Humans Have Compulsary Will? Which best describes your take on 'will'?

[bennyboy]

I think I would agree with the statement, that mind - the "spark", the lowest common denominator of mind, if you will..is a subjective perspective.  I'm not sure what the options are, regarding the last bit.  Spontaneous as opposed to what?  Spontaneous as differing from.....?

I'm saying that there is mind or not-mind, with no gradation between. The gradation runs from simplest mind to most complex, but not from nothing to something.

Your statement regarding what must proceed what is demonstrably incorrect - particularly so regarding evolutionary biology.  The system that -is- your ceiling fan existed long before it produced any effect, and the system that -is- your ear existed before any human being ever hear with one.   Magic?  I don't think that there is -ever- a requirement of proposing magic in explanation of -anything-.

I don't think your counter-examples are sufficiently similar to mind to draw conclusions from, at least for me.

Stating that mind and brain co-evolved does not, in any way, make a contradictory claim to the statement mind evolved as a byproduct of brain.  In fact, mind evolving as a byproduct of brain explains both -how- and -why- the two co-evolved.

There was never a moment in history where the existence of mind influenced the course of evolution of a species and in which the mind did not already exist. However, the were certainly moments in evolution in which the brain influenced the course of evolution without there being anything we'd call mind. So while the proximate cause of a mind seems to be a brain, the ultimate cause of mind is not supervenience on the brain-- because the first brain capable of elemental awareness must have had that awareness at the SAME time that it itself was brought into existence. There is no temporal lag, and therefore no causation. You could just as well say that at the moment mind popped into the universe, the first mind-supporting structure was simultaneously brought into existence-- and then claim that the brain evolved to accommodate mind, rather than developing the property of mind. But I would take neither position.

In evolutionary biology -survival- is -always- the determiner.  It is the only "determiner".  

First of all, that's not correct-- fitness depends on survival and also on the ability to procreate, and BOTH of those are largely dependent on the ability of an organism to subjectively perceive and interact with its environment.

Second, I said mind was "one of the determiners." We could spend 20 pages arguing about what a "determiner" is, but I'd rather not. It's pretty clear that I'm saying there was no part of the evolution of mind in which there was no mind, except for that spontaneous first jump from non-mind to mind.