free will

[Whateverist]

If only particles exist, how do you explain the existence of living cells?  And even if living cells exist, how do explain the existence living tissues composed of cells let alone organs made up of systems of tissues?  For that matter how do you explain multi cellular creatures.  If you can't explain it, obviously we don't exist and the volition we experience as creatures is entirely illusory.  No free will is only the tip of the iceberg; it's actually no nothing, all the way down .. except for particles of course.  They are free to continue binging around haphazardly.  

Nervy matter thinking it can just come together in any old manner that suits it.  Doesn't it know that our ability to explain it is paramount?  Without a good explanation particles may only bing around chaotically.  At least until we can explain how they do more than that they should refrain from all forms of complexity.[/sarcasm]

I don't quite understand what you think cells are made of. Molecules maybe? And please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't molecules made of atoms, and atoms of neutrons and protons (and elektrons) , and aren't those made of quarks, and aren't quarks and elektrons subatomic PARTICLES?

That's like saying houses don't exist because they're made of bricks.

On the other hand I'm sorry if your whole comment was sarcasm, that isn't clear to me.

So the point being: if particles come together to create large scale effects right up and including life and consciousness which we accept as real enough, why not the experience of volition and conscious choice? If other large scale configurations have their reality, why not those? Or should I put my question in the form of a farce?

[bennyboy]

If only people had the free will to stop creating them eh?

lol cheeky!

[Angrboda]

[LadyForCamus]

I think that you'll have a hard time getting everyone to agree that the universe consists of particles, and particles alone.  I would also caution aganst a line of reasoning that states that since particles do not have a will, things made out of a particles cannot have a will.  Or that if a thing made of particles has a will, that means that individual particles have a will.  Both sides of that statement are uninformative..one being a fallacy of composition, the other a fallacy of division.  

A particle may not be able to type this message to you.  Obviously, a thing made out of particles can.  That a thing made out of particles can type this message to you, does not imply that any single particle can.

Well since particles is all we have discovered, it must be, as I said, be something we haven't discovered yet.

You might be right here, although I don't think that something that only moves when a force is apllied to it suddenly moves on it's own just because there are more of it.

Also it is true that one particle cannot write this message but more together can, however that doesn't mean they have chosen themselves to do so.

I'm confident that you missed Rhythm's points entirely.

[fdesilva]

Hi Sappho
A long, long time ago, I like you had this very same question. As you say if you imagine all the particles of the universe at this instance then their state will determine the next. So then Free will as we feel it is impossible. Everything I do, I might feel like I am making choices but in the grand scheme of things my brain at any given instant is determined by the state of the previous instant and therefore not really Free. It seemed crazy, I was around 18 years at the time and I used to think about these on an off for the next 10 years.
One day I had my Eureka moment and it was this. Imagine the particles at a given instance. Now if you were to plot the motion of these particles over time they would be like strings across space and time. Like a 4-dimensional spider web.
Now here is the deal.
What if you pulled on one of these strings? Pulling it would mean changing its position across time and space. In other words, Free Will is possible at a given instant but doing so will also mean you change the past as well as the future.
I wrote a paper it did get published  4 years later, you can find it here
http://philpapers.org/rec/DESCAS
More recently I wrote a shorter version with less physics
http://tianweb.com/Event%20to%20Dualism.pdf

[Edwardo Piet]

Free will smee will.

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