free help: Free Will. - Help.com

No way to know for sure.

That depends a lot on your definition. But even if it doesn’t, isn’t better to think that it does?

wolfsilverwolf wrote:
But even if it doesn’t, isn’t better to think that it does?

Well… is it good to think you have freedoms if you don’t? Or think you’re smart when you’re not?

ongoing popular philo debate.

From the perspective of the an external object neurologist, it doesn’t. This a big new field and happy to share some links if interested.

From the perspective of “cause and effect” then it doesn’t.

from the perspective of most individuals going about their life, then yes it does.

Cool av btw, v for ven?

you can’t mix morals and neuroscience. If you are causal, then so are they. Its going to be a big shift one day, bigger than the death of religion at the dark ages/Renaissance

that was vauge. end of dark ages close-mindedness leading eventually into the renaissance

in large parts of the world religion is dead, and has been for a long time. But back to the free will…

any good neuroscience book/lecture in particular get you buzzing?

I’m actually interested now. What neuroscientists say free will doesn’t exist?

there is a huge middle ground between giving up a belief in a deity and giving up belief in free will.

resurgam wrote:
I’m actually interested now. What neuroscientists say free will doesn’t exist?

It not the task of science to preach from soap box about philosophical ideas like free will. There are whole research teams ( one at my uni :-) )working from both sides of the mind body problem.

Raul wrote:
indeed, I gave up the idea that god has infinite power long ago.

Many atheists look at the power ascribed to god and realise it in their heads, which for me does not discount it at all. But to say “you have no free will” threatens the sense of self as strongly as saying “um, god is like santa” to a christian.

I see free will as a useful anthropomorphism of your own mind. I had the unique opportunity of being presented with a reality too difficult for my mind to handle and carefully observing and documenting the process of going insane. I had worked in a AI for a while and now I can see that my real motivation for it was that same as why someone chooses to study psychology.

Raul wrote:
But then again, if there was no free will, it wouldn’t matter, I would just keep worrying because it would be beyond my control not to.

What would be the outcome of a fatalist view point? The great win of the human mind is that it is self aware. Is it able to handle the truth? I find it unnerving, but I also don’t really like relativity, or quantum mechanics, as I evolved in world where thinking about me as ME got my genetics past on.

To answer my own question ( as this has stimulated my brain which is now awash with happy drugs ) I just realised that I see that for me the outcome of seeing that free will is bogus is similar to surrendering yourself to a deity.

it has competing circuits, and the strongest one wins.

ramachandran has some good lectures.

I’m keen for some more if you want to recommend any

Raul wrote:

chunkymove wrote:
ramachandran has some good lectures.I’m keen for some more if you want to recommend any

Who? Some more what? Goofy questions? lol

Lots of people don’t understand me today, must be something wrong with lots of people… LOL

Who? ramachandran is a leading writer on the subject. He has several succesful books aimed at the general public and has been on ted.com.

Some more what? Some more lectures, or books, or websites etc.

Raul wrote:
I don’t know, on an impulse it definitely does. But for a prolonged decision making process…I don’t know.

They work in the same way. The inputs for the prolonged decision may be from earlier decisions stored in memory, or on paper when writing out a list. Emotions also amplify certain circuits.

Its certainly true that most action impulses don’t even past through the conscious brain, from how to walk and pulling away from a fire, the startle reflex in babies and when people are drunk etc, but its been shown that even choices like “move your arm sometime in the next 5 seconds” get made first and THEN appear in the consciousness. It seems the mind is just a complicated feedback loop that uses self awareness for learning and our minds are a happy coincidence. Weird! Totally freaking bent, and even most atheists tell you to bugger off or that the data is false.

Raul wrote:
I would be appreciative if you could show me some, I’m very interested.

ramachandran is one, but I’ll go find my other books and links to lectures and I’ll post them here

agument against the idea
http://mises.org/story/1943
makes about as much sense as intellergent design.

philo argument for
http://www.naturalism.org/Converse.pdf
pure gold with a happy ending

I can’t find the book which had the experiments referenced, but will find it and link it here.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Y…

Does free-will exist? yes and no. It is not a simple, one way answer. Depending on the perspective from you which you look, it can be both true and false.

From the perspective of relative truth, free will does exist. For example, if you have some color blind people who see red as green and green as red, can you deny that what they see as red, they are not seeing as red? It’s not a belief, they aren’t thinking it, they are actually seeing and experiencing it. But from an absolute sense, the ‘red’ object they see, and the ‘green’ object we perceive, is neither green nor red, it is a form of mass and energy that absorbs all spectrum’s of light except the one which is reflected back to us, which we interpret as red or green.

From a human point of view, free will exists, and we are accountable for our actions and crimes, not according to our perception of free will alone but according to our awareness of what is right and wrong, good and evil. If a feral human child was raised by wolves, and then one day he wanders close to human habitats and commits a crime.. would we prosecute and punish him in jail or find him not guilty by the fact he wasn’t aware of civilized society’s laws? Just like the mentally ill and deficient, they would not be punished but offered help through the relevant institutions of medical care - and if necessary for the public safety, their access to roam the streets being restricted.

However, in an absolute sense, free will does not ultimately exist as a raw and true reality - just as one can see with their very own eyes the sun setting into the ocean, does not make it so in reality. Everything that has happened, is happening and is yet to happen is already determined. Some may struggle to comprehend how that is even possible, but like the color blind, our deficiency is that we look through the relative lens of a linear time and existence model.. that everything starts at one point and ends at another. If you want to know the truth, the reality is that the past, the present, and the future.. all of these have already happened. Like a storybook that was penned down in an instant.. We are already in our heavens and our hells. Our journey through this life is but our soul’s reflection of that experience that lead us to our final destinations.

So to answer the question: free will does exist, but only in a relative sense, inside the context of this world.. but ultimately, free will is better described as a ’sensation’ that we can feel or experience rather than an absolute reality.

Like the dreamer who is so sure of his mortal existence during his vivid dreams, running from his fears and demons, realizes not until he wakes up and feels safe again in the ‘real world’. But know that even our ‘waking life’ is just a reflection of our inner nature made manifest. When death comes, it is not the end, but the true awakening. The signs are already here to see.

Junaid wrote:
From a human point of view, free will exists, and we are accountable for our actions and crimes, not according to our perception of free will alone but according to our awareness of what is right and wrong, good and evil. If a feral human child was raised by wolves, and then one day he wanders close to human habitats and commits a crime.. would we prosecute and punish him in jail or find him not guilty by the fact he wasn’t aware of civilized society’s laws? Just like the mentally ill and deficient, they would not be punished but offered help through the relevant institutions of medical care - and if necessary for the public safety, their access to roam the streets being restricted.

I agree, in law enforcement, the model is free will exists, but that get eroded by things you mention.

Junaid wrote:
If you want to know the truth, the reality is that the past, the present, and the future.. all of these have already happened. Like a storybook that was penned down in an instant.. We are already in our heavens and our hells. Our journey through this life is but our soul’s reflection of that experience that lead us to our final destinations.

Nice picture, but you have no evidence to support that claim.

if you read about Hobbs in the following http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will, it shows a the different understanding of the term free will.

To Hobbs someone has free will if there isn’t an aggressor overriding the persons desires, thus their actions are free to meet their needs without concern for another person. I see this as elevating “other people” from other everyday restrictions like needing food, and the law of gravity.

chunkymove wrote:
Nice picture, but you have no evidence to support that claim.

Thanks for your reply. I am not asking anyone to believe and accept what I say, I acknowledge that my statements are borderline insane, but I felt compelled to share it because someone may consider or even recognize it.

In a practical sense, to prove something like that in this lifetime, would be like one 2D cartoon convincing another that a 3D universe exists. Since our physical and material existence is subjected to this linear time model of operation, the only way we can know for sure that it’s true is to transcend this world and see it with our own vision. But the part of us that is of this world will not leave with us in that ascension. It is not even with the mind’s eye that this can be witnessed, our intellect and reason will only lead us to the doors of heaven.. but it is our soul that must cross through it and experience the vision.

When we want to know something about the state of our cosmos, we ask the experts and the scientists and astronomers. Since we are dealing with the Al-Ghaib (The Unseen) who will you ask? This inevitably leads us back to the religions, the Books of revelation and the guiding saints & mystics who have already witnessed those things. Religions have an outward form and an inner dimension. Our world media is dominated by the politics of the outward form of religious extremists, but whoever sincerely seeks out truth will keep seeking it until that truth is revealed to them. Do souls seek out truth or does the Truth attract its seekers? In this life, the thirsty man pursues a pool of refreshing water, apparently to serve a personal need. How absurd it would be to think that water by its very existence, would instill thirst and attract its seekers. :)

Junaid wrote:
…. How absurd it would be to think that water by its very existence, would instill thirst and attract its seekers. :)

Good read. I am interested in what your saying here, but can’t see how this relates to free will. Drop that into a post and give my an invite if you want, as I love that sort of thing. I see the stars in 3D while most people don’t, and I like to try and imagine the other dimentions proposed by science, but is the mind plastic enough to understand more than our minds have evolved to require? Yes!

“one baby twin turns to the other and says ‘do you believe in life after birth’”

chunkymove wrote:
Drop that into a post and give my an invite if you want, as I love that sort of thing.

I have to go for now, but I’ve added you to my friends list. Hopefully we can continue the discussion later.

Being a star gazer, you have first hand experience of what it means to look beyond first appearances. What you see when you look at the night sky above, is not the universe as it currently exists, but a time portal into the past, the difference in time being the distance and duration of that light to visit us. When I remind people of that, I usually get a dismissive, oh ok. But if you contemplate on the implications of that.. “…”

I have free Wii, the joys of a having house mates! I believe in free Wii…

I did a philosophy unit at uni. Failed it in the end as I kept approaching it with the same mindset that I approched my engineering and law units. Looking back, I’m ok with that. If you choose to read any of those link and feel like sharing and opinion, then send me a shout.

This all was tl;dr cause I came in here from Raul’s link lol.

But basically from a standpoint of biology I would think it doesn’t, simply that everything you do is dictated by your past experience and your genetic makeup.

From a physics standpoint current theories suggest that all choices made will happen, simply in alternate universes. So in a way it’s free will and it isn’t, because you are making not one choice but all of the choices.

quantum is weird… I can understand it intellectually, but still, its totally freaking bent that stuff is. Minds are build to understand “rock goes up, rock comes down”