As an aside, very few can direct their dreams in the dream state. This alone is about 1/3 of our life.
On Aug 2, 12:53 pm, RP Singh <[email protected]> wrote: > Of the various choices before you , you choose to do that which your > nature decides upon at any given moment. You may let go an opportunity > now to fiercely grasp at a later moment. The choice, of course , is > yours but you are under the control of various motivating forces > which, taking control of your very free will, make you do that which > the strongest force within you at a given moment wants to be done. > That which you do today you will not do tomorrow and all with a > seemingly free will. You can con yourself by opening and closing your > grip that you are the master , but you are not. It is only your > reasoning processes which are at play , which take control over you at > times just as your basic desires. When you think it appears that you > are thinking freely but actually it is some part of your personality > which is carrying you along. If you take psycho-tropic drugs you will > think and act in a bizarre manner but with what to you is free will. > > > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 12:14 AM, Jo <[email protected]> wrote: > > I don't understand how some can say we don't have free will. You can > > choose to do anything you want at any given time. How is that not free > > will? > > > On Aug 2, 12:51 pm, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: > >> "We have access to a technology that would have looked like sorcery in > >> Descartes's day: the ability to peer inside someone's head and read > >> their thoughts. Unfortunately, that doesn't take us any nearer to > >> knowing whether they are sentient. "Even if you measure brainwaves, > >> you can never know exactly what experience they represent," says > >> psychologist Bruce Hood at the University of Bristol, UK. If > >> anything, brain scanning has undermined Descartes's maxim. You, too, > >> might be a zombie. "I happen to be one myself," says Stanford > >> University philosopher Paul Skokowski. "And so, even if you don't > >> realise it, are you." Skokowski's assertion is based on the belief, > >> particularly common among neuroscientists who study brain scans, that > >> we do not have free will. There is no ghost in the machine; our > >> actions are driven by brain states that lie entirely beyond our > >> control. "I think, therefore I am" might be an illusion. > >> So, it may well be that you live in a computer simulation in which you > >> are the only self-aware creature. I could well be a zombie and so > >> could you. Have an interesting day." (from a recent New Scientist) > > >> We range over debates in free will and what it is to be human. So far > >> we haven't established free will or even that we are not merely > >> avatars in 'something else's game'. > > >> I wonder whether there are advantages in considering ourselves as > >> creatures limited by programming and also capable of it?
