|
Yes, this is a thread on TL that involves religion, but I hate to think that our policy should be to blindly close every such thread. Sam Harris is a writer whose books are both insightful and have sparked many good discussions in the past and as long as the thread doesn't derail I'd like to leave it open. This should be the basic premise for every such thread, no matter how high the odds of it derailing. In that light, these posts that just predict the downfall of this thread (whether it be pre-determined or not) are 1) Not contributing to the discussion 2) Backseat moderating 3) Annoying 4) Actually contributing towards derailing it. I'll keep 2 daying people for this. |
Here's my rather unimportant take on it.
Suppose for a second we have free-will, then, well, we have free will, and what we do is of our own doing, and it's our fault.
Okay, now assume that everything is determined, and that that initial "Big Bang" event set off a chain reaction that led to me typing this now. We have no control, except that provided by the illusion of power, which is inconstant and nonexistent.
Now that we've outlined our possibilities, let's go for a scenario! You wake up one morning and have (or you appear to have, at least) a choice ahead of you. You must decide to wear a red shirt or a blue shirt. Here's where I lose the ability to concisely articulate what I mean, but let's try anyways. No matter what, be it by your choice, or by some divine (or mundane) intervention, you will pick what you pick. You will ALWAYS pick one option, and that option will ALWAYS be the one you picked.
"So the outcome is the same, you're not arguing for either point. Seriously, wtf, noob, pick one or gtfo"
I'm getting there. In my opinion, the crux of the argument comes down to how you perceive time itself. Now, there are two very commonly held views on time, one being a single timestream, symbolized by a line, and the 'multiverse' idea, symbolized by a branched line (or tree). In the line, there is only one way for events to play out, but in the tree, you can go down one of a million different routes, and that leads to many (seemingly) different outcomes.
"Wait, you just contradicted yourself"
Nope, not really, in the tree model, even though there are many different avenues that time could go down, you will only ever SEE one of them, so you will still have only picked one shirt. Even if there is a "Doppelganger" you who picked the other shirt, you will never know or experience it.
Okay, so basically, in the multiverse idea, you can choose your path, but in the universe, it's set (I use these terms out of lack of better ones, I apologize). So, really, it depends on how you view the inner workings of the way the world proceeds.
Personally, I believe in a hybrid of the two, where the branches exist only as stubs (as if the tree had been trimmed), and there is only one path to the present, but there WERE choices along the way. But I'm weird, so....
Have a lovely day, guys!
|
On March 29 2012 04:03 Superliquidity wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 11:53 itkovian wrote:
Ok, this is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. So I'll drop my two cents in here.
Does free will exist? No. We make millions thousands of choices every day, but these choices are already pre-determined. We make decisions based on two things, genetics and past experiences. You can not control your genetics and you can not control you past decisions, therefore you can not control your decisions. When you make a choice your brain is recounting experiences that have happened in the past that relate to your current decision. Using the outcomes you've experienced in the past, and your general feeling towards each choice (again determined by outcomes and results from the past) you "make" your decision. You are not out of the blue making some kind of "arbitrary choice", the choice has already been made based on million and millions of stimuli you've experienced before that point. And each of those stimuli was predetermined as well, because if you trace it back the people in those positions before you, like your parents, would have encountered the same "choice" evaluations as you have before, which in turn were affected by previous stimuli beforehand.
In my mind a choice comes down to this:
Presented with option ----> remember similiar/applicable situations from the past ----> determine if they benefit you or not
------> choose most beneficial, or least harmful option
Everything you do comes down to selfish desire.
Some might try and argue, "well what about a mother who sacrifices herself for her child, how is that selfish?"
A) Because the mother doesn't want to endure in the pain, regret, and agony of having lost her child.
B) Motherly instinct, it is how our species has survived.
So if everything comes down to making the choices that are best for ourselves, it simply becomes a matter of deciding which option is best for ourselves after evaluating past experiences. There is no choice. One option i simply better than the other.
What about situations where there is no clear benefit? ie choose a number, 1 or 2?
Your brain then picks one based on seemingly random or meaningless experience from the past.
-Maybe the last number you saw was 2 so you choose that
-Maybe your favorite number is 2 so you pick it
-Maybe your favorite number is 2 but you have recently been unhappy with yourself, so you choose 1
-Maybe you are disinterested in the question and pick 1 because it was the first number you read
-Maybe you pick 2 because it was the last number you read
There is a reason for every choice, and those reasons are what take away those choice and free-will altogether. Since the reasons already exist behind each choice, we are making no choices on our own. I should say that the above post is practically spot on with my own conclusions on the subject. Schopenhauer once remarked something rather similar in spirit: "You may do as you please, but can you please as you please?". Indeed, choosing to wear red rather than blue seems, at least naively, to be an irrefutable demonstration of free choice. One simply does what one wants. But, does one choose to want what one wants? It's clear that given a set of desires one will act in such a way as to fulfill them, but it's far from clear that one has the liberty to explicitly choose those set of things which they desire. Example: You choose to eat pizza rather than cabbage. Explanation: You chose pizza because you wanted to; it tastes better. The caveat is to understand why you desired pizza rather than cabbage. Are you in control of choosing to enjoy pizza more than you enjoy cabbage? Can you suddenly choose to enjoy cabbage more...at will... or is this an intrinsic desire, over which you have little to no control? Note that even if one had some amount of control to change their set of desires, that would require some other desire to invoke this change (for example, to prove that you have free will). As a result, we make decisions based on a set of (possibly changing) desires, over which we ultimately have no control. Hence, there is indeed a reason for every choice, and such reasons are very interesting to examine. It tells you what kinds of things influence your set of desires, or why you enjoy certain things. We are not a wholly separated entities existing independently of the world around us, as if in some vacuum. Instead, we are intimately coupled to our environment, being both affected and affecting. Ironically, believing in free will immediately closes the door and ends the conversation short on this kind of deep examination of the self.
I followed a similar thought process, however I disagree with your conclusions. In my opinion free will is the ability to make a decision despite previous experiences/other factors, not without previous experiences and other factors. If you use the latter explanation of free will, as you have, then it is impossible to attain because obviously there will always be something that influences your decision.
As an example of free will in the way I suggested, say you are in a food court, you are trying to decide whether to eat McDonalds or Subway. You have a craving for McDonalds but you feel like you should be eating healthier so you consider subway. Yes there are reasons for choosing either, but ultimately you can choose which reasons you want to listen to.
In your example, Superliquid, you may not be able to choose to like pizza more than you like cabbage, but you can choose to listen to your desire for pizza or you can choose to ignore it and eat cabbage anyway.
Free Will according to Google's define (because Wikipedia's first line is quite vague) is -The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion. To me this is not really in line with your definition of free will, if you chose pizza because you wanted to, not as a result of necessity or (unless you believe in determinism) fate, then it was still a perfectly free choice.
|
Schopenhauer actually believed the will was free. But not in the sense that you and I think of freedom, and for him the Will is actually a transcendental object. The Will is free in the sense that it is always free to act. But freedom to act is not the same as freedom to choose what one wills. Within presentation the principle of sufficient ground holds that all actions have a reason, and the world was completely deterministic according to him (within presentation, of course).
We can will what we want, but we cannot will what we will.
|
I'm having a problem understanding soemthing regarding this topic, and I was hoping someone could shed some light for me. First, I'll explain how I think about the concept of free will:
I believe that free will is an illusion, like many other people here. I believe that choices are determined based on chemical reactions and neural signals in the brain. These reactions and messages create our decisions, not the other way around. Therefore, every choice I make is predetermined. I also believe that the universe is predictable. That is, with enough computing power, one could calculate where an asteroid will be in 1 century, how deep the Atlantic Ocean will be in a millenium, or how many leaves my tree outside will have next year. In fact, the only randomness at all in the universe, in my opinion, is the precise location of electrons around atoms. Apparently, this can only be probabilistically estimated. However, I'm thinking that this miniscule amount of uncertainty won't affect anything larger-scale.
By putting these two ideas together, I believe that, since the big bang, there was only one possible way the universe could play out, and this play-out could be calculated given perfect information and infinite computing power. Now here's where my problem comes in. Lets say, hypothetically, that such a machine existed that had infinite computing power, perfect information about the universe, and all knowedge of physics. A user could essentially use this machine to tell the future. What if this user used the machine to foresee what he will be doing in 5 minutes, then decides not to do whatever the machine foresaw in 5 minutes. This seems like a paradox to me. The only solution, in my eyes, is that either the machine will output "I don't know" to the user's query, or such a machine can only exist outside our universe. What do you think?
|
On May 30 2012 15:00 beamer159 wrote:
I'm having a problem understanding soemthing regarding this topic, and I was hoping someone could shed some light for me. First, I'll explain how I think about the concept of free will:
I believe that free will is an illusion, like many other people here. I believe that choices are determined based on chemical reactions and neural signals in the brain. These reactions and messages create our decisions, not the other way around. Therefore, every choice I make is predetermined. I also believe that the universe is predictable. That is, with enough computing power, one could calculate where an asteroid will be in 1 century, how deep the Atlantic Ocean will be in a millenium, or how many leaves my tree outside will have next year. In fact, the only randomness at all in the universe, in my opinion, is the precise location of electrons around atoms. Apparently, this can only be probabilistically estimated. However, I'm thinking that this miniscule amount of uncertainty won't affect anything larger-scale.
By putting these two ideas together, I believe that, since the big bang, there was only one possible way the universe could play out, and this play-out could be calculated given perfect information and infinite computing power. Now here's where my problem comes in. Lets say, hypothetically, that such a machine existed that had infinite computing power, perfect information about the universe, and all knowedge of physics. A user could essentially use this machine to tell the future. What if this user used the machine to foresee what he will be doing in 5 minutes, then decides not to do whatever the machine foresaw in 5 minutes. This seems like a paradox to me. The only solution, in my eyes, is that either the machine will output "I don't know" to the user's query, or such a machine can only exist outside our universe. What do you think?
How much space would a machine need to map every particle in the universe? A universe worth? What about quarks?
|
I can't believe this post got necroed. Anyway, continue...
|
Isn't quantum theory disproving the possibility of a (pre)determined universe? The thing with there is a tinytiny possibility that every single atom is everywhere and there is every single way possible to get from point a to b (although very very unlikely). There was this Feynmann double slit experiment, no?
I prefer to belive in Free Will from a philosophical stand-point. I do not like having my future (and all future) already determined. Simply because of the consequences involved.
|
On May 30 2012 20:07 Szordrin wrote:
Isn't quantum theory disproving the possibility of a (pre)determined universe? The thing with there is a tinytiny possibility that every single atom is everywhere and there is every single way possible to get from point a to b (although very very unlikely). There was this Feynmann double slit experiment, no?
I prefer to belive in Free Will from a philosophical stand-point. I do not like having my future (and all future) already determined. Simply because of the consequences involved.
While quantum theory does imply a non-deterministic universe, this doesn't mean that free will exists. Instead everything is fundamentally random, and the law of averages creates normal life. So your brain isn't deterministic, but nor does it have the capacity for true free will, its kinda on a cosmic RNG.
|
This seems to be an interesting question.
If we could create a parallel universe, where everything is set exactly in copy of the universe of the other, will the events in that universe plan out exactly the same as its original copy?
I don't have a terrific understanding of quantum mechanics, but can't the actions of the particles affect the events of the universe? (For example, a true RNG generates randomness by observing molecules at the quantum level). If a person wins a lottery through a true RNG, won't that change the event of the universe?
We can will what we want, but we cannot will what we will.
That sums it up for me
|
If we replicated the universe it would (as per quantum mechanics) turn out differently. I would suspect it has the potential to be quite different, as it would probably be very subjective to small changes early on. I think one would still expect a similar form, i.e. consisting of stars, planets, galaxies, etc, but much further speculation is pretty hard. :/
|
On May 30 2012 15:00 beamer159 wrote:
I'm having a problem understanding soemthing regarding this topic, and I was hoping someone could shed some light for me. First, I'll explain how I think about the concept of free will:
I believe that free will is an illusion, like many other people here. I believe that choices are determined based on chemical reactions and neural signals in the brain. These reactions and messages create our decisions, not the other way around. Therefore, every choice I make is predetermined. I also believe that the universe is predictable. That is, with enough computing power, one could calculate where an asteroid will be in 1 century, how deep the Atlantic Ocean will be in a millenium, or how many leaves my tree outside will have next year. In fact, the only randomness at all in the universe, in my opinion, is the precise location of electrons around atoms. Apparently, this can only be probabilistically estimated. However, I'm thinking that this miniscule amount of uncertainty won't affect anything larger-scale.
By putting these two ideas together, I believe that, since the big bang, there was only one possible way the universe could play out, and this play-out could be calculated given perfect information and infinite computing power. Now here's where my problem comes in. Lets say, hypothetically, that such a machine existed that had infinite computing power, perfect information about the universe, and all knowedge of physics. A user could essentially use this machine to tell the future. What if this user used the machine to foresee what he will be doing in 5 minutes, then decides not to do whatever the machine foresaw in 5 minutes. This seems like a paradox to me. The only solution, in my eyes, is that either the machine will output "I don't know" to the user's query, or such a machine can only exist outside our universe. What do you think?
Well you don't necessarily have to map out the universe. If you put someone in an enclosed room, with white walls, a table and a chair, and then two sandwiches that would do. Because you shouldn't need to know everything happening since the beginning of time, just everything that's happening in that room since the experiment starts.
The problem is once that machine tells you what sandwich you're going to eat, you're altering the experiment. You would have to ask the computer to make a new prediction given that additional factor - that this person is aware of the first prediction made. If that second prediction is kept secret then it should work as intended, by correctly predicting your choice.
Because a program can't model a situation that it is a part of and that affects the model...it could lead to an infinite loop of new decisions based on new predictions that in turn were effected by previous information given (etc.)
|
On May 30 2012 15:00 beamer159 wrote:
I'm having a problem understanding soemthing regarding this topic, and I was hoping someone could shed some light for me. First, I'll explain how I think about the concept of free will:
I believe that free will is an illusion, like many other people here. I believe that choices are determined based on chemical reactions and neural signals in the brain. These reactions and messages create our decisions, not the other way around. Therefore, every choice I make is predetermined. I also believe that the universe is predictable. That is, with enough computing power, one could calculate where an asteroid will be in 1 century, how deep the Atlantic Ocean will be in a millenium, or how many leaves my tree outside will have next year. In fact, the only randomness at all in the universe, in my opinion, is the precise location of electrons around atoms. Apparently, this can only be probabilistically estimated. However, I'm thinking that this miniscule amount of uncertainty won't affect anything larger-scale.
By putting these two ideas together, I believe that, since the big bang, there was only one possible way the universe could play out, and this play-out could be calculated given perfect information and infinite computing power. Now here's where my problem comes in. Lets say, hypothetically, that such a machine existed that had infinite computing power, perfect information about the universe, and all knowedge of physics. A user could essentially use this machine to tell the future. What if this user used the machine to foresee what he will be doing in 5 minutes, then decides not to do whatever the machine foresaw in 5 minutes. This seems like a paradox to me. The only solution, in my eyes, is that either the machine will output "I don't know" to the user's query, or such a machine can only exist outside our universe. What do you think?
You're arguing for the existance of free will by assuming that the person can "decide" to do otherwise. A proof where you start of by assuming that whatever you're proving is true is pointless. Also, to posses every piece of information in the universe you would inherently need to use the entire universe. You can't store the position, velocity, spin, charge etc. of the smallest particles on anything smaller than the smallest particles. They are, after all, the smallest  . And the place of all electrons in the universe is probably important to include.
Neglecting the size, it makes more sense to remove the person from the experiment. If the machine itself was built move an object to either the left or the right. If it foresees the object moving to the left it should move it to the right and vice versa. Assume that the machine predicts it moving to the right. If the machine does the calculation including it's programming to move the object to the left should something move it to the right it would then make it move the object to the right, wich would force it to move it to the left etc. An endless computing loop that cannot end.
Edit: seems I'm writing too slow.
|
On March 29 2012 08:50 askTeivospy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2012 02:56 Zanazuah wrote:
What does free will have to do with Religion? Religion is BS and all of it's ''truthfulness'' was debunked decades ago, you must have been brainwashed from your childhood by your parents or you've very stupid/non-critical/so open minded that your brain is almost falling out from your skull.
Please, it is the 21st century, not the bronze age.
User was temp banned for this post. While I am annoyed by religious people that try to push religion onto others, those are far less rare and less annoying than this "holier than thou" atheistic 12 year old attitude that makes me give my head a shake. Am I the only person who doesn't like atheists because of the attitude that they love acting like that they're better than everyone else (while ironically citing cookie cutter regurgitated wikiScience)? Its kind of like a vegan telling meat eaters that they're unhealthy or a religious people telling non religious they're going to hell. Same shit different toilet, agnostic is the best choice imo. Chill out while crazy angry people yell at each other If you want a group to troll, go tell atheists that you can't spell "atheist" without "a theist". They get really really angry and start throwing wikipedia articles about black holes or dark matter or w/e else at you. Personally I'd never take any group that is so fanatical/insulting to others/self righteous seriously.
If you live in a non-religious country and grow up without much contact with any religious people, it is sometimes very hard to not come up with the conclusion Zanazuah has (if he had not been trolling).Very few people will say this however as we are told to respect other peoples religious beliefs. But in quite a large minority (I think) of households you wont come across many datapoints pointing in other directions for quite a while.
And personally I think it is very hard to not think in the paths of brainwashing or people being very uncritical when they have positions with A LOT more details than "I don't think there is anything more" and "I think there is something more".
As far as the topic of the thread goes, I don't feel like I have free will. When someone asks me to think of a number, a number just pops up in my head I don't choose which one it is. And when I make a decision, the reasons I have to make that decision also seem to just pop in to my head. When I decide between several things that have popped into my head I can in all cases I've thought about follow the reason for why I decided as I did back to something else that just popped into my head.
|
I couldnt help but notice that many people here seem to think that free will can't exist (or at least is very unlikely). Here's why I think it can exist:
I think that free will is strongly connected to consciousness, and I'd like to start there. To me it seems evident that consciousness exists. And don't tell me that it is an illusion, that doesn't make any sense: In order to percieve consciousness, you must have consciousness. Cogito ergo sum, there's no way around that.
Assuming that consciousness does exist, it is really no big step to free will, as consciousness is a concept that cannot be explained by current physics (it is even unclear what consciousness means, from a physics point of view). So why shouldn't we have free will, too?
Of course, maybe some day science will show how consciousness works and prove the above statement wrong. On the other hand, maybe it won't. For now, I choose to believe that there is more to this world than just physics (and by that I mean free will, not god) and defy the utter pointlessness of living a predetermined life.
Note: "utter pointlessness" is a bit hyperbolic. Even if everything is predetermined, we could still just "enjoy the show", see this piece of the Colbert Report
|
On May 30 2012 22:35 MadeOfCotton wrote:I couldnt help but notice that many people here seem to think that free will can't exist (or at least is very unlikely). Here's why I think it can exist: I think that free will is strongly connected to consciousness, and I'd like to start there. To me it seems evident that consciousness exists. And don't tell me that it is an illusion, that doesn't make any sense: In order to percieve consciousness, you must have consciousness. Cogito ergo sum, there's no way around that. Assuming that consciousness does exist, it is really no big step to free will, as consciousness is a concept that cannot be explained by current physics (it is even unclear what consciousness means, from a physics point of view). So why shouldn't we have free will, too? Of course, maybe some day science will show how consciousness works and prove the above statement wrong. On the other hand, maybe it won't. For now, I choose to believe that there is more to this world than just physics (and by that I mean free will, not god) and defy the utter pointlessness of living a predetermined life. Note: "utter pointlessness" is a bit hyperbolic. Even if everything is predetermined, we could still just "enjoy the show", see this piece of the Colbert Report
Why does that make more sense than not believing in it?
"Can't be explained must be supernatural" just seems poorly reasoned.
|
On May 30 2012 22:35 MadeOfCotton wrote:I couldnt help but notice that many people here seem to think that free will can't exist (or at least is very unlikely). Here's why I think it can exist: I think that free will is strongly connected to consciousness, and I'd like to start there. To me it seems evident that consciousness exists. And don't tell me that it is an illusion, that doesn't make any sense: In order to percieve consciousness, you must have consciousness. Cogito ergo sum, there's no way around that. Assuming that consciousness does exist, it is really no big step to free will, as consciousness is a concept that cannot be explained by current physics (it is even unclear what consciousness means, from a physics point of view). So why shouldn't we have free will, too? Of course, maybe some day science will show how consciousness works and prove the above statement wrong. On the other hand, maybe it won't. For now, I choose to believe that there is more to this world than just physics (and by that I mean free will, not god) and defy the utter pointlessness of living a predetermined life. Note: "utter pointlessness" is a bit hyperbolic. Even if everything is predetermined, we could still just "enjoy the show", see this piece of the Colbert Report
You've said nothing more than there is somehow a relation between free will and consciousness, playing with semantics here and there.
Care to first define consciousness, then actually explain your point?
|
MadeOfCotton Germany. May 30 2012 22:35. Posts 3
I kinda do agree with you.
Manny scientists do argue btw that consiousness does not exists and that its merely and illusion/byproduct of our brain.
But when we asume that consiousness does exists, then imo that also implies at least the possibility that a god exists,free will en god are extremely similar concepts when look at it abstractly.
Our free will would then be a part of "God" or even a god of its own.
I realy have alot of problems with this btw, as i still strongly believe in a free will but the possibility that god exists i find extremly unlikely. I dont know wich one to choose now, as i cant see them as fundamentally different atm:s
Consiousness is near impossible to define,its so vastly complex, it is strongly related to the concept of free will and the concept of God, the similarities are verry clear to me though i find it verry difficult to explain them,
i guess you just "have to see it" (i might verry well see it wrong btw.)
We can look at what free will is not.
People earlier in this thread did this and it was determined that when everything is either caused or random (wich is our current understanding of the world, things are caused or random ) free will can not exists.
Free will per definition cant have a physical cause or be random. (since then it wouldnt be a free will but simply the logical result of series of events, or a completely random event).
His point was that free will can exist and that it does not automatically imply the possibility that god exists.
This is opposite of what my idea is and i find his post verry valuable.
His second point is less relevant for me and was that even when everything is predetermined, that that still would not take away the value of living our lives, its more an opinnion.
|
On May 30 2012 22:48 seppolevne wrote:
Why does that make more sense than not believing in it?
"Can't be explained must be supernatural" just seems poorly reasoned.
Sorry, should have been more precise about that. My point wasn't that believing in it make's more sense, but rather that it does make at least some sense. That it is possible to believe in consciousness / free will being supernatural without being completely unreasonable.
On May 30 2012 22:49 EngrishTeacher wrote:
You've said nothing more than there is somehow a relation between free will and consciousness, playing with semantics here and there.
Oh no, you got me^^ I'll try to elaborate a bit what I mean, but in the end i guess you're right, and it is more of a touchy-feely point I'm making.
On May 30 2012 22:49 EngrishTeacher wrote:
Care to first define consciousness, then actually explain your point?
Wikipedia says this: It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind.[2] Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.[3]
I would define it as the ability to experience our existence. I hope that cleats things up a bit My point is, that physics (from my understaning) doesn't explain consciousness, it can't even define it. Imagine two things that look exactly the same (down to the atom), but one experiences, feels, lives what happens to it, while the other one doesn't. In physics, there wouldn't be any difference between the two (as far as I currently understand it).
Now comes the part where my reasoning actually is really weak^^ It goes something like "it's plausible that there is something supernatural, so why shouldn't there be more supernatural". I know it's bad reasoning, but htat's what happens when you want to justify your beliefs^^
The long version goes like this: Lets assume for arguments sake, that my consciousness is an entity seperate from physical reality (in other words, that the consciousness is distinct from the laws of physics that we know of). Then there is some sort of communication between it and the physical world: One direction of this communication would obviously exist, that is from the physical world to the consciousness: I can touch something and be aware of it, feel it. The other direction would be free will. Its existence would kind of contradict physics now though, so my argument falls apart here xD. Still, it only "kind of" contradicts physics, as we really don't know enough yet to be sure. Also, quantum randomness always leaves a loophole, that our free will might control the randomness somehow. Further, physics says that weird things can happen when we don't look. Finally, physics is only a model for reality, not absolute truth.
Sure, these points don't really cut it. I guess what im trying to say is that it doesn't look good for our free will, but there is still room for belief, and we can get really close to justifying it 
|
I've always thought of our lives be like a gigantic grid of lines that originate from a single spot and all converge on a single spot. Even though all the possible lines have already been mapped out for us, it's still up to us to choose which lines we wish to travel on. I think that each person's grid is different, but will have a lot of overlapping possiblities. However, we are limited to the possiblities that each grid is composed of. I don't believe we have free will to do anything, but I do believe we have the free will to travel down whichever line we want. I guess it's sort of a, "play with the hand your dealt with" philosphy.
|
On May 31 2012 02:26 MadeOfCotton wrote:I would define it as the ability to experience our existence. I hope that cleats things up a bit My point is, that physics (from my understaning) doesn't explain consciousness, it can't even define it. Imagine two things that look exactly the same (down to the atom), but one experiences, feels, lives what happens to it, while the other one doesn't. In physics, there wouldn't be any difference between the two (as far as I currently understand it). Now comes the part where my reasoning actually is really weak^^ It goes something like "it's plausible that there is something supernatural, so why shouldn't there be more supernatural". I know it's bad reasoning, but htat's what happens when you want to justify your beliefs^^ The long version goes like this: Lets assume for arguments sake, that my consciousness is an entity seperate from physical reality (in other words, that the consciousness is distinct from the laws of physics that we know of). Then there is some sort of communication between it and the physical world: One direction of this communication would obviously exist, that is from the physical world to the consciousness: I can touch something and be aware of it, feel it. The other direction would be free will. Its existence would kind of contradict physics now though, so my argument falls apart here xD. Still, it only "kind of" contradicts physics, as we really don't know enough yet to be sure. Also, quantum randomness always leaves a loophole, that our free will might control the randomness somehow. Further, physics says that weird things can happen when we don't look. Finally, physics is only a model for reality, not absolute truth. Sure, these points don't really cut it. I guess what im trying to say is that it doesn't look good for our free will, but there is still room for belief, and we can get really close to justifying it
Ok, I recently had a conversation that goes along these lines with a TAG apologist...
You can state that "for arguments sake" consciousness is separate from the physical world but that makes everything you just stated afterward meaningless. You must first demonstrate that any consciousness has ever existed absent of a brain in order for your point to stand. Every consciousness ever demonstrated has been a product of physical beings in a physical universe. If you want to demonstrate an "absolute truth" other than using physics and the real, observable, testable world then you must first demonstrate that something exists outside of it.
If I stipulate that consciousness is separate from physical existence then yes, you do have an argument to make. Your problem is, can you prove it can exist without the physical universe?
Edit - Spelling/Typo
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
