You lays have free will no matter how you seeing it created. It is the consequences of those choices that can be a bitch, Allan
On 4 aug. 2011, at 17:48, paradox <[email protected]> wrote: > There are a number of approaches to this question, Jo; but essentially > and in summary (and i do a great injustice to a very powerful > philosophical school), the deterministic tradition suggests that since > we''re fundamentally bounded chemical systems immersed in a "sea" of > ever more elaborate chemical processes, regulated by immutable > (replicable and predictive) physical laws, and nothing else (which > takes you back to the mind/brain question), our actions are no more > than expressions of these chemical processes, constrained at an > aggregate level by universal physical laws. When we think we make > decisions based on choice, it is the mind "stroking" itself since, in > terms of "proximate" action, we know that our decisions are preceeded > in time by a neuro-electrcal "footprint" (interesting work by Benjamin > Libet, presented in his book "Mind Time"); and in terms of more > deliberative action, we are pretty certain to make the same decisions > over and over again given the same set of variables, since our > cognition is hard wired, and its operations are governed by the self > same chemical processes and physical laws. Hence the question: do we > have free will? and if we do, how much free will do we have? > > > > On Aug 2, 7:44 pm, 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?- Hide quoted text - >> >> - Show quoted text -
