---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <turquoiseb@...> wrote : Snip
Exactly. That is what makes discussions or arguments about *whether* we have free will or not so BORING to me. They're completely unproductive -- a point that can never be proven one way or another. It's as silly as trying to debate the existence of God. Total waste of time. C: I don't doubt that it isn't interesting to you, so it would be a waste of your time. But in a broader sense the inquiry into where our free will starts and ends is highly useful in neuroscience. To measure brain activity that precedes our subjective experience of choice tells us a lot about how our brain communicates with itself. From a sociological POV this question has vast implications, and always has, in how we approach society's sense of justice in our legal system. It wasn't long ago that we hanged an elephant for killing a man. Today we have people on death row who were not mentally able to make a choice, so this topic is very up as we learn more about the brain and how it creates sociopaths. I believe that this information may lead to a more just humane society where we don't sentence people with a wink wink to getting raped in prison for their "choice" to commit a crime. From a personal POV I find the question insightful as I attempt to approach making personal changes in my life. In my experience, self improvement of any kind is like herding cats. Understanding more about how we end up influencing our own decisions may well lead to the answer to the question "why do I have dark chocolate Klondike bars in my freezer if I SAY I want to lose weight?" It turns out, to my chagrin, that the guy who wants to lose weight is NOT in charge of the whole herd of cats! B: This may not sit well with you, Curtis, given that your degree was in philosophy, but one of the things I've never quite understood is the way that societies tend to place "philosophers" on pedestals, as if what they do makes them more "worthy" of being on one. Most of them IMO spend their time thinking and arguing about points like this that can never be resolved. So I"m supposed to "look up to" someone who spends their time in such futile pursuits? :-) :-) :-) C: I think philosophers lost that position after ancient Greece and have sunk to being the butt of late night jokes in the present society. But thinking about thinking, how we might bullshit ourselves less seems like a worthy subject. And like most of my personal obsessions, it isn't for everyone. I do think that assuming that any subject can never be resolved is premature. We have resolved all sorts of things throughout history, but it took us some time.My pet peeve is when we do figure something out that was debated for centuries like "Slavery is wrong" and then end up with more human slaves by the numbers today than any time in history! WTF. I am glad we hashed it out and came out pretty unanimously against it in the end but it isn't doing as much as I hoped. I'm blaming the herd of cats for this one too! From: "curtisdeltablues@..." <curtisdeltablues@...> --In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <punditster@...> wrote : On 5/1/2014 3:02 PM, curtisdeltablues@... mailto:curtisdeltablues@... wrote: > > I am reading his book on free will right now. Very thought provoking. > > Someone needs to tell Barry that Harris says the idea of free will is > incoherent. Humans are not free and no sense can be given to the concept > that they might be. Go figure. C: I believe that Barry and Sam would agree on the reality of our felt sense of free will. The question has to do with whether or not the data of all of our unconscious process support that POV as a realistic possibility. And it doesn't matter if the unconscious influences are karma from past lives or just unconscious neural process that can be measured before we are consciously aware of them, they still undermine our felt sense upon reflection. That's sorta what I was trying to say about my tendency to prefer pragmatism these days. IT DOESN'T MATTER whether free will exists or not; to be sane in this insane world, you've pretty much gotta act as if it does. Every time you "make a decision" you're pretending free will exists, even if you claim to believe that it doesn't. Harris' book has some other POVs that he does not ascribe to where the person expands their sense of what we are to include those unconscious influences so that they can all go under the umbrella of "me" making a decision. I am not sure where I fall yet, I may have to read some others to see if their POV appeals to me more than Harris'. I suspect it is the pragmatic POV that most appeals to Barry on this topic but I could be wrong. In either case we all must act as if we have free will, we have no other choice! Exactly. That is what makes discussions or arguments about *whether* we have free will or not so BORING to me. They're completely unproductive -- a point that can never be proven one way or another. It's as silly as trying to debate the existence of God. Total waste of time. This may not sit well with you, Curtis, given that your degree was in philosophy, but one of the things I've never quite understood is the way that societies tend to place "philosophers" on pedestals, as if what they do makes them more "worthy" of being on one. Most of them IMO spend their time thinking and arguing about points like this that can never be resolved. So I"m supposed to "look up to" someone who spends their time in such futile pursuits? :-) :-) :-) Yeah, I know...I'm overstating things for emphasis. I *get* that thinking about the theoretical is some people's idea of FUN, and that arguing one's beliefs about these theoreticals is also some people's idea of FUN. And if it is, cool. Me, I'm just not drawn that way any more.
