On 8/7/2011 9:09 PM, Vam wrote:
That's the kind of pitfall one can fall into... through excessive
imagination.
There is a method to trace it back to the source.
But I do not know of anyone here who is familiar with that method.
Yourself included?
Happy to see you again Vam, I am vividly eager to gain new explanations
in this area, as all else has failed miserably to explain- and I have
been looking..
On Aug 7, 9:16 pm, rigsy03<[email protected]> wrote:
One could trace the power back to its root and find the tendril of
determinism, imo.
On Aug 7, 5:18 am, Vam<[email protected]> wrote:
Let's assume nothing... except " the power to make our choice within
certain constraints."
We could be making a wrong choice, a less preferred choice...
but we have the power to make it... and are free to make, or not.
On Aug 6, 8:35 pm, paradox<[email protected]> wrote:
Lets assume (in strategic logic) that all decisions are goal directed,
and purposive. When we make (or think we make) a decision, are we
fully minded of our strategic goals, and do we conduct a comprehensive
purposive review of our options and variables, to arrive at an optimal
outcome with the best probability of advancing our strategic goals?
One could argue that this is not free will in action, since the
strategic goal itself is subject to "organic" constraints; the other
would have to concede, but could argue that the "decision process" was
as freely made within overall system constraints as is possible to do.
On Aug 6, 3:00 pm, Vam<[email protected]> wrote:
"... but is your decision freely made ?"
What is meant by " freely " made ?
Do you mean ' without being under the influence of gravity ' ?
There will always be a dynamics in our background, and some in the
foreground. So ?
On Aug 6, 4:24 am, paradox<[email protected]> wrote:
Do you really, Allan? Or do you really think you do? If you always
have a choice of 'A', 'B', or 'C', but you were always ever going to
choose 'C', you have free will, but is your decision freely made?
On Aug 5, 8:04 pm, Allan Heretic<[email protected]> wrote:
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 -
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