Is free will an emergent property of the human brain?

In summary, the conversation discusses the concept of free will and whether it exists or not. Some participants believe it is an illusion, while others see it as a blessing. The idea of determinism is also brought up, with some arguing that our choices are predetermined by past events while others believe in the randomness of the universe. Ultimately, it is concluded that it is impossible to prove the existence of free will or predestination.
  • #71
Originally posted by Mentat
. . .is there a point in time where I thought about pizza, or is that an event smeared out over time?

Of course there is, it's called the present.

Would the chain of events that took place happen without that thought? The origin of this particular 'event chain' occurred on it's own. How can a series of events begin without something to begin with?

The thought, "I want pizza", was initiated by your bodies examination of it's current condition of hunger. Your mind is able to

-harness this incoming information (present condition),
-knowledge from the past (where you got good pizza before)
-manipulate the current environment (phone the order in)
-to produce a satisfying result in the future (it arrives).

All this by using the present as a pivot point.
 
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  • #72
Originally posted by Canute
There are a range of points at which the tape meets the head. We have no way of constructing 'one point'. In fact there may be no such thing as one point.
This is merly an argument for what is "relative." For example, if you took the point of a needle and magnified it 100,000 times under an electron microscope, it would certainly look different than the point of the needle you just pierced your hand with via the aid of the naked eye.

So, at what point does the point become a point? Obviously when it serves its "effective purpose" of being a point.
 
  • #73
Originally posted by Canute
Freewill is a big problem. If we have freewill the current scientific model is wrong, for the universe is not causally closed as science assumes. Also it would mean that consciousness is causal which, unless you believe that consciousness is material, is in direct conflict with science.

Yet if we do not have freewill we have to scrap our legal system, and will have a hard time explaining feelings of guilt. One might also ask how come we are never taken by surprise by what we do?

If consciousness is not causal then we must assume that we can tell the future. Otherwise there would be no explanation for how we can know that we've decided to do something tomorrow and actually do it when the time comes.

It's a logical minefield.

On feelings of guilt. This is a natural biochemical response to actions which may be beyond our control. It's much the same way that we have remorse and fear over death. It's a part of our natural process, but we still experience feelings of regret over it. Just because something is inheirent, doesn't automatically preclude emotional response over it.
 
  • #74
OK first to the perception of "the present". We must ultimately concede that the term "present" is a subjective word, and not objective. For further clarification I'd refer to the ancient greek story abou the rabbit and the tortoise. (demacules was it?) If the turle started first, but the rabbit was faster, the rabbit would never win the race because the distance between the 2 would be broken down into halfs in infinite increments, so the rabbit would never win, if we broke time down in the same way( I may be off on the details, but you get the point.) So this has all been discusses and agreed upon.

As to free will- It does not exist. It is an illusion. tea or coffee. He chose coffee because he had coffee that morning, and because he's had coffee 16 times over the past 3 weeks, and had tea only once. And because he prefers the taste of coffee. And because his wife hates it when he drinks tea. And because coffee is first on the menu, and because tea gives him gas.. and on, and on and on.

People try to equate the inequities in the decision making process with free will, when in actuality, it merely comes down to things that we haven't taken the trouble or time to gauge yet. The gaps between the thought process and the actual choice do not actually exist. There is a process which leads us to sucessfully make a choice from all our selections. It's based on our past actions, beliefs, experiences, thoughts, and actions. He would have inevitably chosen coffee. To know all thought processes leading up to this decision is to know and predict the future. It's like gambling without the risk.

Consider this: Everything that we are is casuality. Free will claims to be a drop of randomness amongst a see of order. Let's consider this. We as human beings have evolved through a natural process of ordered selection. Our physical makeup. Including our brains. Our thought processes, our behaviors, our decisions, all have roots in basic human instinct. At the root of it is ID EGO, and SUPEREGO, controlling our lives, our minds, our choices. Sure, we have a higher thought process that gives us the illusion that we are making free choices. But not before the old ID, EGO, And super ego gives it first level clearance. And those are subconscious processes beyond our control. We don't even percieve of them most times. Like the fight or flight response. The survival instinct. That's why so many find it so difficult to sacrifice their lives. It's the battle between the subconscious self preservation, and the higher brain function telling us that we have to kill ourselves to save many more lives, etc. And the same applies to our normal every day decisions. Like the study on how we have already made a decision a split second before we react to that decsion. It's all been decided, we just haven't gotten the update yet. It's all a matter of perception. And free will is a matter of perception of reality, and our understanding of the process. We percieve our decisions as something that isn't static because we lack the undestanding of all the variables that go into the making of each decision. If we did, we'd see that there is actually order in what we percieve as chaos

Or at least that's how I see it
 
  • #75
Originally posted by Mentat
Not exactly. It's more about whether the "specious present" says anything about reality as a whole. IOW, is there a point in time where I thought about pizza, or is that an event smeared out over time.
Just as with digitized music, each "selected interval" (hence point) becoms an "encoded event" which, could be strung out in a whole series of encoded events to achieve this smearing effect if you will. Which, isn't to say that each event cannot be pinpointed (relatively speaking) somewhere along the way. :smile:
 
  • #76
Originally posted by Zantra
On feelings of guilt. This is a natural biochemical response to actions which may be beyond our control. It's much the same way that we have remorse and fear over death. It's a part of our natural process, but we still experience feelings of regret over it. Just because something is inheirent, doesn't automatically preclude emotional response over it.
Biochemically speaking, how does one distinguish between an act that leads to guilt and an act that doesn't. Are you saying the difference is entirely biochemical, and that our conscious appraisal of these acts are irrelevant? Are you saying we could invent anti-guilt pills? Someone's going to make a fortune.
 
  • #77
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Just as with digitized music, each "selected interval" (hence point) becoms an "encoded event" which, could be strung out in a whole series of encoded events to achieve this smearing effect if you will. Which, isn't to say that each event cannot be pinpointed (relatively speaking) somewhere along the way. :smile:
Try using real music, it's a lot harder to make this argument.
 
  • #78
Originally posted by Bernardo
Of course there is, it's called the present.

But it doesn't exist...unless it's the many milliseconds it takes for a complete thought to be perceived, in which case photons must be moving across time faster than "the present" is...but that means they're in the future!

Would the chain of events that took place happen without that thought? The origin of this particular 'event chain' occurred on it's own. How can a series of events begin without something to begin with?

Well, it began with something, but that "something" is probably the first time I ate pizza.

The thought, "I want pizza", was initiated by your bodies examination of it's current condition of hunger. Your mind is able to

-harness this incoming information (present condition),

But this (harnessing the information) is a process not an event.

All this by using the present as a pivot point.

How did you get this conclusion from those series of events? There were obviously many "pivot points", and all of these "points" were actually processes, which means there is still no noticable or definable point called "the present".
 
  • #79
Originally posted by Zantra
As to free will- It does not exist. It is an illusion. tea or coffee. He chose coffee because he had coffee that morning, and because he's had coffee 16 times over the past 3 weeks, and had tea only once. And because he prefers the taste of coffee. And because his wife hates it when he drinks tea. And because coffee is first on the menu, and because tea gives him gas.. and on, and on and on.

Oh, man, Zantra... Do I have to go over all of this again?

Free will cannot be disproven, and your version of determinism doesn't change that. The fact that limiting factors on his decision (that he had had coffee so many times, and didn't care for tea or whatever) existed at all is enough to prove that there is free will. If there were no free will, then he would not choose coffee "because of" anything except for the fact that he was going to choose it. Remember? :wink:
 
  • #80
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Just as with digitized music, each "selected interval" (hence point) becoms an "encoded event" which, could be strung out in a whole series of encoded events to achieve this smearing effect if you will. Which, isn't to say that each event cannot be pinpointed (relatively speaking) somewhere along the way. :smile:

So, what are you trying to say?
 
  • #81
I will reply to you Mentat but I'm busy for a while.

I'm beginning to think (every time I post) that if we went to school together you'd be coming to take my milk money each day
 
  • #82
Originally posted by Bernardo
I will reply to you Mentat but I'm busy for a while.

I'm beginning to think (every time I post) that if we went to school together you'd be coming to take my milk money each day

No, I'm not a bully. I might show you up in class, when your science experiment was scientifically inaccurate, but...well, that's another story .
 
  • #83
Originally posted by Canute
Try using real music, it's a lot harder to make this argument.
Do you mean listening to it live, and in "the moment," without the benefit of any playback equipment? What's the difference? All the conductor need do is signal the queue, if he wants the orchestra to pause during the middle of a performance. It may not be as convenient as pushing buttons on your stereo, but the effect is still the same. Whereas if he wants to resume, all he need do is signal the queue.
 
  • #84
No that's not it. The point is that to use digitised music as a mataphor for time passing is confusing. Digitised music is quantised into instants. There's no reason to suppose that real undigitised music, or time, is like this.
 
  • #85
Originally posted by Canute
No that's not it. The point is that to use digitised music as a mataphor for time passing is confusing. Digitised music is quantised into instants. There's no reason to suppose that real undigitised music, or time, is like this.
And yet for all intents and purposes it sounds the same, except perhaps with more clarity than old "analog style" recordings, suggesting the technique, although artificial, must be the closest "approximation" to what actually occurs in real time. Meaning, that's the reason why it works and why it works so well.

While indeed, everytime we become aware -- "in the moment" -- we are in effect "resampling" (updating) all of the information which enters through our perception.

Almost sounds like "updating" the frames in a motion picture doesn't it? Oh, and how do we know that this "awareness function" of the brain doesn't "oscillate" at a certain frequency? i.e., at so many "thought-frames per second?" Why shouldn't it? Everything else in nature oscillates.
 
  • #86
Originally posted by Mentat
Oh, man, Zantra... Do I have to go over all of this again?

Free will cannot be disproven, and your version of determinism doesn't change that. The fact that limiting factors on his decision (that he had had coffee so many times, and didn't care for tea or whatever) existed at all is enough to prove that there is free will. If there were no free will, then he would not choose coffee "because of" anything except for the fact that he was going to choose it. Remember? :wink:

Oh my GOD. are you serious man? Don't tell me you're going to bogg me down with wordplay again Ok substitute "because of" with "as a result of", or whatever phrase fits the scenario. He was going to choose the coffee due to the selection process which lead to coffee.

This is a fruitless argument on both sides. It's like I'm saying the universe is infinite and you're saying "show me the end of the universe".

You have to at least concede that if I were correct, and free will was just an illusion created by the complexity of determinism's design, that we would be unable to tell the difference.
 
  • #87
Originally posted by Canute
Biochemically speaking, how does one distinguish between an act that leads to guilt and an act that doesn't. Are you saying the difference is entirely biochemical, and that our conscious appraisal of these acts are irrelevant? Are you saying we could invent anti-guilt pills? Someone's going to make a fortune.

You're asking me to attach a logic to emotional response, which is impossible. Do that, and you will be a millionaire. All I'm saying is that we react to something regardless of our ability to control it. I'm saying (if you read my post right after my response to yours) is th at we are contolled by base instincts (ID EGO SUPER EGO) which don't discern between right and wrong. they are only reacting to a situation..
 
  • #88
Determinsim = boundaries

If the Universe is endless then free will must exist. If the Universe is not endless then it must be pervaded by determinism.

And yet in an endless Universe we can set up boundaries which give us the illusion of determinism, and yet boundaries which are nonetheless breeched, through the capacity of free will.
 
  • #89
Originally posted by Zantra
You're asking me to attach a logic to emotional response, which is impossible. Do that, and you will be a millionaire. All I'm saying is that we react to something regardless of our ability to control it. I'm saying (if you read my post right after my response to yours) is th at we are contolled by base instincts (ID EGO SUPER EGO) which don't discern between right and wrong. they are only reacting to a situation.. [/B]
So where do right and wrong come from? My point was that it's very difficult to show that feelings of guilt are entirely biochemical. It's not easy to imagine a chemical compound that encodes for feelings of guilt.

You said to Mentat -

"You have to at least concede that if I were correct, and free will was just an illusion created by the complexity of determinism's design, that we would be unable to tell the difference."

Which is exactly he said to you. Freewill is unprovable. This does not entail that it does not exist, but just that it might not.

Iachus32

And yet for all intents and purposes it sounds the same, except perhaps with more clarity than old "analog style" recordings, suggesting the technique, although artificial, must be the closest "approximation" to what actually occurs in real time. Meaning, that's the reason why it works and why it works so well.
True. All I was saying is that there is no evidence that time or space are quantised. There is therefore no evidence that there is a present 'instant' instead of an arbitrary sampling of a particular sized slice of it, what someone here called our 'specious' present.

As you say, perhaps the mechanism is oscillations in the brain,(roughly as Francis Crick argues) which can be fooled by film frame rates and high speed digital sampling. However that is about our perception, not evidence that time is quantised.
 
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  • #90
Ya, mentat and I already had this argument eons ago. It's a stalemate. He can't prove free will exists any more than I can prove that it doesn't. No one can. But it's been kinda slow in in philosophy lately. Was just trying to create a debate:wink:
This is a neverending argument, but we still argue it- Why? I guess because it passes the time.. lol. Actually- I argue it. Mentat just points out how futile it is

To the biochemical stuff. Well basically, I'm saying that we react to situations at a basic level, regardless of their relevance, guilt or not. That's the premise of it. After the initial response, we then logical sort it out with our higher brain functions, which is based on past experiences, and all the other factors that go into determinism.

There is a saying. Problems cannot be solved at the same level at which they were created- al einstein said this. And this means that we are trying to solve the problem of how we arrive at a particular conclusion, but we are using our own minds to do it. We need a computer much more complexed than the human mind to calculate all the variables involved in the deterministic equation-assuming such an equation exists.:wink:
 
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  • #91
Originally posted by Canute
Iachus32

True. All I was saying is that there is no evidence that time or space are quantised. There is therefore no evidence that there is a present 'instant' instead of an arbitrary sampling of a particular sized slice of it, what someone here called our 'specious' present.

As you say, perhaps the mechanism is oscillations in the brain,(roughly as Francis Crick argues) which can be fooled by film frame rates and high speed digital sampling. However that is about our perception, not evidence that time is quantised.
No, I don't believe time is "quantised" as such, but rather continuous, of which a "sampling" can be made of any given interval, to which you can also ascribe the notion of "the present": present second, present hour, present day, present year, etc..

However, I prefer to define the present in terms of the continuous sampling of our "conscious attention" (at whatever rate that may occur, or even variable), as it aligns itself to each moment -- and hence experience -- to which it is drawn. In other words it's a matter of being aware of what you experience as you're experiencing it.

While it's to this that I ascribe the notion of free will, where you always seem to "find yourself" in the middle of what you're doing and deciding what to do about it, for instance flipping through the channels on TV and deciding what program to watch ... or, deciding to get up off the couch and get something to eat.

Indeed, it's the very act of making a decision -- which, is transitional -- that makes us most aware.
 
  • #92
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Oh, and how do we know that this "awareness function" of the brain doesn't "oscillate" at a certain frequency? i.e., at so many "thought-frames per second?" Why shouldn't it? Everything else in nature oscillates. [/B]

with every frequency or sound there's a wave that goes up and below the common zero hz. in so called thought-frames per second the frame with no thought would be the the zero since it would be the beginning and the ending of the thought or sound. A frame that had thought would have an oscillation or a frequency that had a wave of equal porportions on either side of zero. For every thought there's an aspect of truth in it or zero since it came from it and ended in it. so this awarness funtion of the brain I would say doesn't nessasarly have to oscillate at all to be aware since truth is the zero everything from there oscillates a wave from zero.
 
  • #93
Irregardless of whether this oscillation occurs or not, there's still an oscillation (of sorts) between a state of awareness and a state of being less aware which, as I suggested in the previous post, depends upon the switch-over or transition between states, and requires making a "new choice."

Let's say for example we're standing at the refrigerator, with the door wide open and deciding what it is we want to eat. And here we may not even realize that we're standing there, that is until after we make our choice, and decide we want to go into the other room. And we say to ourselves, "Hey what are we doing here, my legs are not moving," as our attention shifts from the food and we begin walking into the other room.
 
  • #94
Sorry for the length. I'm seriously into this subject.

Originally posted by Zantra
Ya, mentat and I already had this argument eons ago. It's a stalemate. He can't prove free will exists any more than I can prove that it doesn't. No one can. But it's been kinda slow in in philosophy lately. Was just trying to create a debate:wink:
This is a neverending argument, but we still argue it- Why? I guess because it passes the time.. lol. Actually- I argue it. Mentat just points out how futile it is
Great stuff. I thought that you thought that you could prove that you could prove something, even though you were trying to prove that you weren't free to make up your own mind on whether you agreed with what you were trying to prove or not. My mistake.

I'm not quite certain yet that we can't work out the freewill thing. But we probably have to come at it from a different angle. Great minds have explored all the technicalities of this issue for millenia, and they haven't got anywhere from a 'Western' perspective.

Maybe we're stuck in the wrong paradigm, looking at it in the wrong way, asking the wrong questions. Maybe the world is stranger than we think it is, and we're just not imaginative enough to see it for what it really is. After all we only get a bunch of electrochemical patterns in our brains, we have to reconstruct the world from those.

Bad mistakes must be possible. Mistakes that are life threatening, like a belief that tigers are harmless, would soon be weeded out by evolutionary selection. But what about mistakes that aren't life threatening, or those that actually make us more likely to reproduce?

We could have errors in our conception of the world that go back to the dawn of time when you think about it seriously, we just wouldn't know. As long as they promoted our physical survival they would persist forever in our species as evolving memes. Imagining we have freewill may be one of these persistent errors.

But then the whole notion of a 'real' phenemenal world may be a persistent error. After all this is what Plato and other idealists have been arguing for at least three thousand years. If we can't be certain that the phenomenal world really exists then proving freewill is the least of our problems.

There doesn't seem to be any way through this inevitable muddle. This is why I'm sure that there must be a different way of thinking about it.

The trouble with this subject is that it leads all over the place. For instance the existence of freewill implies that consciousness is causal, and causal consciousness combined with freewill is a definite scientific no-no. So the fundamental mechanisms of cause and effect is the part of the issue as well.

The question of freewill, as you probably know already, raises other difficult questions and eventually calls into question our whole idea of our existence as 'selves' in the 'world'.

“Very few seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, explanations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questionner.” (The Vampire Marius, Ann Rice, The Vampire Lestat)


To the biochemical stuff. Well basically, I'm saying that we react to situations at a basic level, regardless of their relevance, guilt or not. That's the premise of it. After the initial response, we then logical sort it out with our higher brain functions, which is based on past experiences, and all the other factors that go into determinism.
I can read that two ways. Are you saying that we act/react and then afterwards create a narrative to explain what happened to ourselves, are are you saying that all this is an entirely physical process?

There is a saying. Problems cannot be solved at the same level at which they were created- al einstein said this. And this means that we are trying to solve the problem of how we arrive at a particular conclusion, but we are using our own minds to do it.
I'm certain that you're right. We must see beyond the shadows.

We need a computer much more complexed than the human mind to calculate all the variables involved in the deterministic equation-assuming such an equation exists.:wink: [/B]
What makes you say that? I would have thought that we need to simplify the problem, not make it complicated to the point where we need a machine to do it for us.

As far as freewill goes my guess is that any such machine would only ever be able to tell us what we'd told it.

Be funny if we built one and, after many long years of programming and waiting, it refused to cooperate or answer any questions.
 
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  • #95
Originally posted by Zantra
Oh my GOD. are you serious man? Don't tell me you're going to bogg me down with wordplay again Ok substitute "because of" with "as a result of", or whatever phrase fits the scenario. He was going to choose the coffee due to the selection process which lead to coffee.

This is a fruitless argument on both sides. It's like I'm saying the universe is infinite and you're saying "show me the end of the universe".

You have to at least concede that if I were correct, and free will was just an illusion created by the complexity of determinism's design, that we would be unable to tell the difference.

Yes, that's what we conceded together some time ago, my friend. However, to the point of substituting the term "because of", it becomes irrelevant which term you use, so long as you believe that Event X is a limiting factor...since limiting factors are only such if they are "limiting" the otherwise free will of the individual.

No, you can't prove one or the other (I've been saying that since PF2), but I can prove that determinism (whatever version you may use) is just a spin-off of free will, and is thus at odds with (and not a justification of) predestination.
 
  • #96
Originally posted by Canute
I'm not quite certain yet that we can't work out the freewill thing. But we probably have to come at it from a different angle. Great minds have explored all the technicalities of this issue for millenia, and they haven't got anywhere from a 'Western' perspective.

Maybe we're stuck in the wrong paradigm, looking at it in the wrong way, asking the wrong questions. Maybe the world is stranger than we think it is, and we're just not imaginative enough to see it for what it really is. After all we only get a bunch of electrochemical patterns in our brains, we have to reconstruct the world from those.

You know. I very much want to agree with you, since I never like to say "this or that is completely unprovable/unknowable/undecidable". However, this issue is indeed undecidable. Every attempt to prove one further validates the other, and thus you get nowhere, no matter how much time or effort you spend on it. It's not a limit of our minds, it's a limit on the issue...it is limited in that neither can be proven without proving the other to just as great an extent.
 
  • #97
Originally posted by Mentat
You know. I very much want to agree with you, since I never like to say "this or that is completely unprovable/unknowable/undecidable". However, this issue is indeed undecidable. Every attempt to prove one further validates the other, and thus you get nowhere, no matter how much time or effort you spend on it. It's not a limit of our minds, it's a limit on the issue...it is limited in that neither can be proven without proving the other to just as great an extent.
I believe you're right. But don't forget that it is perfectly possible to know things we cannot prove. We know that from mathematics.
 
  • #98
Originally posted by Canute
I believe you're right. But don't forget that it is perfectly possible to know things we cannot prove. We know that from mathematics.

Actually (since this is the Philosophy Forum), everything we know, minus a few rare exceptions, is something we cannot prove :wink:.
 
  • #99
Originally posted by Mentat
Actually (since this is the Philosophy Forum), everything we know, minus a few rare exceptions, is something we cannot prove :wink:.

This is why I will never make a great philosopher, even though it's something I enjoy and is good 'exercise'. I like things that can be proven.

I find I have to get over my first impression of 'well that's an insane idea' to actually mill it over in my mind and try to understand it. Actually not just understand it but in my mind defend my own beliefs and thought patterns in the face of it, instead of just dismissing it.

This is another aspect of free will. Our ability to choose to use or not use our minds, to believe by disregarding everything else or to believe with the realization of everything else. But no matter what we do 'everything else' is still out there isn't it.

But is our approach to this determined for us at birth genetically or learned socially? There are examples of people stepping outside their culture to embrace new ideas as well as liberals casting aside new ideas because they just don't agree.
 
  • #100
Originally posted by Mentat
Actually (since this is the Philosophy Forum), everything we know, minus a few rare exceptions, is something we cannot prove :wink:.
Exactly. Yet there are things that we can know despite this.
 
  • #101
I have two rather separate points to make and they are semi-contradictory (partly contradictory but from another point of view they are more supplementary)... So bear with me, heh.

1) Direction by past events and predistination/predetermination of everything in no way negate free will. Predistination is more like being able to predict the future accurately than it is like controlling the future. If we are predistined, then we are predestined to make certain choices. However, we still do MAKE the choices, it is just already determined what we will choose.
For instance, if there is no random (contrary to what modern physics says) and the positions and velocities of particles at the big bang determine all the future in accordance with the laws of physics, our thoughts and actions are determined by the physics of the electrons and protein molecules in our brains. Our thought processes and choices occur based on those unchangable laws of physics, they are already determined. However, they are still choices and thought processes, we still have free will. Hopefully most of you understand what I'm trying to say, it is rather hard to explain.

2) "not just directed by past events". I'm afraid the proof goes in the opposite direction, my friend. Our thought processes and basis for decisions are learned through past events. The decisions we make are based on past events. Even your post asking for proof only occurred because of a specific string of past events that had the result of you thinking about this stuff at exactly the time you did and the result of you choosing to post it and doing so. If we aren't directed by past events, what are we directed by? The concept of "free will" is a bit fuzzy- it obviously means, basicly, that we make our own decisions, but it isn't as clear as that. It seems to have come to imply that we make a decision independent of external stimuli- I ask you what such a decision would be based on? If we cannot rely on external stimuli for information to make the decision, we cannot rely on internal stimuli (memory, etc) either, since all interior content is learned from exterior things. So free will by your definition is apperently the same thing as random- a choice devoid of any reasons. I fail to see why you would think this was how we operate or why you would want it to be so?
To make this a bit clearer, let me go on a bit more. All influences on our minds are external- internal influences develop from external influences (even instincts develop from external influences in our ancestors). All external influences are past events- influences from the future such as "If I don't do this, this thing will happen." are developed by past influences that lead us to that conclusion. So all influences on our minds are, at their core, past external influences. Therefore to be "not just directed by past events" we must make a decision based on nothing we have in our minds. If we make a decision with no parameters, constraints, considerations, etc, the decision is truly random. Either we make decisions based on no information at all, illogicly and randomly, or we are ENTIRELY directed by past events. Free will does not mean freedom from past influences, it means using those past influences to come up with an action and taking it. This is what the brain does, whether we have fates and destinies or not. Even if things are preordained, our brain works like this, so we still have free will. :)
 
  • #102
Yes, what's the point in having a brain if we don't utilize it?

While it also brings up the notion of an Omnipresent, Omniscient Being, who knows both our future and, at the same time allows us the capacity of free will.
 
  • #103
Sikz

Good points but...

Originally posted by Sikz

1) Direction by past events and predistination/predetermination of everything in no way negate free will. Predistination is more like being able to predict the future accurately than it is like controlling the future.
My prediction is that I'm going to write to to disagree with you about...now. Wow. I did. My brain states can tell the future of my brain states.

I get what you're saying but how do you explain knowing what you're going to do next?

2) "not just directed by past events". I'm afraid the proof goes in the opposite direction, my friend. Our thought processes and basis for decisions are learned through past events.
Thats' cheating. 'Learned' is not the same as 'directed', and neither of them is quite the same as strictly physically determined.

The decisions we make are based on past events. Even your post asking for proof only occurred because of a specific string of past events that had the result of you thinking about this stuff at exactly the time you did and the result of you choosing to post it and doing so.
What do you mean here by 'choosing to post it'?

If we cannot rely on external stimuli for information to make the decision, we cannot rely on internal stimuli (memory, etc) either, since all interior content is learned from exterior things.
That's impossible to prove and strongly disputed by many.

To make this a bit clearer, let me go on a bit more. All influences on our minds are external-
Perhaps, but it's a conjecture.

If we make a decision with no parameters, constraints, considerations, etc, the decision is truly random. Either we make decisions based on no information at all, illogicly and randomly, or we are ENTIRELY directed by past events.
Why does it have to be one or the other?

Free will does not mean freedom from past influences, it means using those past influences to come up with an action and taking it.
What do you mean by 'using those influences', and 'come up with' and 'taking it'.
 
  • #104
Originally posted by Bernardo
This is why I will never make a great philosopher, even though it's something I enjoy and is good 'exercise'. I like things that can be proven.

Philosophy was spawned to challenge all of the things that you will take for granted in your life. You believe that some things can be proven, and that we have the free will to attempt such proof, therefore philosophy challenges that nothing can be proven and that we may be predestined.
 
  • #105
Originally posted by Mentat
No, you can't prove one or the other (I've been saying that since PF2), but I can prove that determinism (whatever version you may use) is just a spin-off of free will, and is thus at odds with (and not a justification of) predestination.

I'd be interested to hear that spin off theory. I see what you're saying though. It's all based on perception. If determinism exists, it's so complexed that it has the APPPEARANCE of free will. It's Almost Matrix-esque in nature. We are living inside a dream world, etc.
 

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