Free Will

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Boru

[Gemini]

Oh, man...that scene.  *attempts to get self under control*

I made a Buffy vid to that scene featuring a Nine Inch Nails song that I still pat myself on the back for to this day.  

For some reason that scene always felt like a revisitation of the scene between them at the end of "Fool For love", but with them finally losing the battle with their inhibitions.  Both scenes are equally powerful, but for completely different reasons.  IMHO, of course.  [emoji6]

P.s., it's nice to have someone to talk "Buffy" with.  [emoji41]

I'd love to see that video! Yeah that scene...ahem

I like your perspective on it. I think at the end of "Fool For Love" they both get humbled--Spike when his concern for Buffy overcomes the sting of his rejection--and Buffy is surprised by how comforting Spike really is to her, despite the very real anger she feels toward him for everything he's done. It's such a touching scene.

I think this humbling and his inability to deny how he feels for her is what eventually leads Spike to get his soul back...I kind of wish Buffy could have gotten over Angel and really loved Spike, the way he wanted her to. It makes sense that she didn't though, and it makes his sacrifice at the end that much more touching.

Yeah, I need more Buffy talk in my life Gonna try to get my husband to watch some with me today. He's never seen all the episodes.

[Edwardo Piet]

Nine Inch Nails?

Best song of theirs IMO (The lyrics are TOTALLY my fucking thing (apart from the god part but who cares about that part

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHpRe0rRe0

Totally not massively sexy, totally not remotely sexual at all.

Yum.

[Edwardo Piet]

Gonna listen to that on repeat now.

[Panatheist]

I am not sure what sense compatibilism is being used in, so I didn't vote.

We possess volitional behavior. A rock can do nothing to stop itself when rolling down a hill. As a volitional being I can use my hands and legs to latch onto something to stop my course. I am making a free decision when I am not forced at gunpoint and so on. In this sense I have choices, possibilities open to me in theory.

But on a much more fundamental level I have no choices whatsoever. All of my behavior is the result of forces beyond my control, the outcome of the laws of biochemistry, electricity, and physics acting on my brain and nervous system in conjunction with my environment, genes, and prior experiences.

Though this is an aside and does not of itself count as evidence it is possible at times to experience all of one's usual behavior with no significant observable difference than usual and yet have no experience of free will at all. It can be very peaceful.

[Whateverist]

Boru

Let me give you a hand. Then perhaps we can move on.

[bennyboy]

But on a much more fundamental level I have no choices whatsoever.  All of my behavior is the result of forces beyond my control, the outcome of the laws of biochemistry, electricity, and physics acting on my brain and nervous system in conjunction with my environment, genes, and prior experiences.

On a fundamental level, there's no "you" anyway, to wonder if it has free will.  On a fundamental level, I'm nothing but a collection of wave functions kind of vibrating in space.  But this says really nothing about what it means to be a person and to experience life.

As soon as we start talking about conscious agency, we're talking about a very, very high order of supervenience.  The real question is whether free will can supervene on building blocks which themselves don't have the capacity for freedom.  My answer to that is-- why not?  That's what emergence IS-- the spawning at one level of organization of properties that are nowhere to be found on lower levels.

This in my opinion is a fallacy that many have committed in the argument against free will-- to paraphrase, "As below, so above."

[The Grand Nudger]

The converse being "as below, so above"...via qm supervenience.  

Does a collection of things which have some sort of free will then, as an aggregate, have that same property. Why would they? OFC, what exactly is free will free from in either case. Who knows. I don't think that the concept is meaningful or descriptive in any sense, and I fail to see it's necessity in any particular example.

[bennyboy]

The converse being "as below, so above"...via qm supervenience.    

Does a collection of things which have some sort of free will then, as an aggregate, have that same property.  Why would they?  OFC, what exactly is free will free from in either case.  Who knows.  I don;t think that the concept is meaningful or descriptive in any sense.

How's the exact same thing I just said the converse?


Well, what does that mean?  Take any high-order experience, say the experience of love.  It doesn't exist anywhere without an agent to experience it.  When we use the word, it's a label for a collection of qualia-- what it's like to be affected by certain hormones, brain function, etc.  But while you can point to neural correlates, you can't really say any or all of them really ARE love.

[The Grand Nudger]

Or is it a label for a collection of chemicals that -do- exist elsewhere and in the absence of a perceptor?  Drawing up and drawing down are converse statements, to answer your question..as indicated by the up...and the down..bits. The two relationships are described more familiarly as the twin fallacies of composition and division. They're both poor thinking for the same reason..the difference being the direction in which poor reasoning is applied.

(as a sideline, have you by chance read The Golden Dawn, Isreal Regardie?)