Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: April 26, 2024, 9:35 am

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Worthy of worship, free will?
#11
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
(October 7, 2015 at 10:10 pm)Little lunch Wrote:
(October 7, 2015 at 9:42 pm)RaphielDrake Wrote: Free will is an illusion. The human brain makes decisions three seconds before we are consciously aware of it.
Our consciousness is forever playing a game of catch-up it will never win. We will never know the full motivations behind our decisions because there are too many factors to be conscious of. Our minds weave a narrative to maintain the illusion of conscious control.

It's almost like your saying that sub-consciousness has free-will.

My idea of free will is that someone could take you back in time, reset your mind to that point and you might do something different.
I think the sub-conscious mind is even more incapable of randomness then our conscious minds.


There is a profound difference between free will, and random or unpredictable will.   If your mind is reset, and it produces a different outcome, that but implies random will.   If that is equal to fre will, then an electron has free will because our best description of it suggests if you were to reset all condition that is possible to reset, it would do something differently.

For your will to be truly free, it would have to be in principle demonstratable that in a particular circumstances, you could have accurately predicted what you would have adone, But no other agent whatsoever could even theoretically have predicted accurately what you would do, even it had a perfect chemical and physical model of the behavior of all your elementary particles, and as accurate as theoretically possible an measure of the initial state of all your elementary particles.
Reply
#12
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
If we are predetermined we are not free because we are predetermined. If we are undetermined we are not free because we are undetermined. We're screwed either way.

Important note on the above ^^^^

The above statements may seem merely tautological and vacuous, but they are meant as rhetoric anyway and still should be able to be comprehended. Just as the saying "boys will be boys" is understood despite the fact it is a tautology.
Reply
#13
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
(October 7, 2015 at 10:37 pm)Chuck Wrote:
(October 7, 2015 at 10:10 pm)Little lunch Wrote: It's almost like your saying that sub-consciousness has free-will.

My idea of free will is that someone could take you back in time, reset your mind to that point and you might do something different.
I think the sub-conscious mind is even more incapable of randomness then our conscious minds.


There is a profound difference between free will, and random or unpredictable will.   If your mind is reset, and it produces a different outcome, that but implies random will.   If that is equal to fre will, then an electron has free will because our best description of it suggests if you were to reset all condition that is possible to reset, it would do something differently.

You cannot have free will without conscious choice and given conscious choice seems to be non-existent in light of the fact that our decisions are actually made unconsciously before we even know about it it follows that we are merely slaves to whatever decision our brains come to next. Decisions which are governed by an insane number of factors, chemical balances and outside stimuli. Were we capable of comprehending them consciously we would be able to precisely predict the actions of any human being. Our consciousness maintains the farce that we are something more than a series of actions and reactions. That we are incontrol more than any other animal. We are not. 

We are an intelligent species. That does not mean our actions are any less inevitable than a bright lab rat finding the cheese at the center of a maze. We're just more complicated is all.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die." 
- Abdul Alhazred.
Reply
#14
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
I'm of the opinion free will is an illusion too. We know we aren't making choices when we think we make them as has been said, so at the very least the part of our brain that thinks it's in control really isn't.

Instinctive reactions as well?

Muscle memory?

It's all a fix.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

Index of useful threads and discussions
Index of my best videos
Quickstart guide to the forum
Reply
#15
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
I'm personally a big fan of free will.
I hope I'm on the right track, I get confused easy...

No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
Reply
#16
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
I know exactly what you're on about, Ignoramus, and I totally agree that keeping caged marine animals should be brought to a halt, as it's a cruel and inhumane practice.
Reply
#17
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
My problem with this view of free will is that it is selectively applied. EVERYTHING we experience is not as we experience it: love, beauty, self, Mom. All of these things are experienced by us as ideas-- so it should be no real revelation that free will is more an idea than a thing. What we experience as free will may not, on another level, be either free, or even the will of an independent agent. But so what? Free will is as free an expression of myself as Mom is an expression of ideas I have about that person and our relationship.

Nor does brain activity before a decision "comes out" make it any less free. It is my brain, my process, my experiences. . . in fact, it would be a paradox to say that you have to consciously be aware of all the things that lead to consciousness. It's also a contradiction to say that because a decision is inevitable, it is not free. Given what I am, why would I randomly make decisions? I wouldn't-- I'd simply choose whatever position (or snack) is most in accord with my personhood.
Reply
#18
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
Free will is an entirely incoherent concept it's so non-existent it cannot even be conceived to be existent..... it's not even an illusion it's an illusion of an illusion. When you think you are imagining it you are not even imagining it. Libertarian free will, when you really unpack what you think you mean you realize you don't even know what the fuck you're talking about.

Sam Harris from his book Free Will Wrote:To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.
Reply
#19
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
Considering the size of the universe god made for us, we have no will at all. We're stuck. Major fuckup.
Feel free to send me a private message.
Please visit my website here! It's got lots of information about atheism/theism and support for new atheists.

Index of useful threads and discussions
Index of my best videos
Quickstart guide to the forum
Reply
#20
RE: Worthy of worship, free will?
Thank fuck that twat doesn't exist eh?
Reply





Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)