Khalivarsha²'s shout trail with Commander Ikari - Help.com

Hehe, not really. I agree with you that my argument just doesn’t feel right. In the end, I want it to be wrong and I treat it as though it is wrong.

However, philosophically and logically I can’t counter it either, so I present it as being right. Who knows?

well than i have no argument that you cant defuse. your defense is iron clad.
somehow, it still seems at the base incorrect, but i can not articulate or find a way it is.

kudos, your win

Of course people can completely change themselves. If our behavior is the result of our experiences and desires, wouldn’t it make sense that we change when our experience is constantly changing, and when our biological drives and our desires derived from experience are constantly changing?

than what about when people completly change themselves?

how would you explain that?

Yes, conscious thought. You desire sleep, but you also desire to get your work done. How do you choose between the two? You remember from previous experience that if you go to sleep instead of doing work then you get fired or get a bad grade or whatever you’re working on. You couldn’t make that decision without the experience to know what happens when you skip work. So, with the previous experience that informs you of the possible outcomes, you desire to finish your work more than going to sleep. That conscious thought decision is based on memory and desire, both of which are already in place when you make your decision. Cause and effect.

it would come from concious thought.
say that you desire to sleep, but if you do, than you would not get your work done, and would get in trouble. RAther than being like “screw this i wanna sleep”, hopefully, you would process it all, and say, “well, though i would like to, i cannot, i must do something else.

And, if memory and desires don’t dictate your decisions, what other factors are involved? Where do your decisions come from?

We still have desire when we are first born. All mammals show biological desire for milk when they are born. Most animals show inborn aversion to extremely bright light when they first enter the world. You don’t need memory for desire.

if its previous memory and desire that dictates that, than what about when first born?

What we have done before allows us to choose and think out what we will do, it doesnt dictate what we will do, we make that choice freely.

Free will is the ability to make our own choices, right? How do we make choices? We see a situation in front of us, and we decide what seems like the best choice in that situation. What seems like the best choice will depend on our memories of previous experiences so that we can imagine what the outcomes of actions will be, and also our desires for specific outcomes. By the time we make a choice, the memories and the desires concerning that choice are already there. The things that mandate which choice we will make is already in place. So, we make our own decisions, but we can only make one specific decision when it comes time to decide.
We live in a cause and effect universe. Our decisions are just effects of previous causes in our lives, which are effects of previous events before them, so on and so on since before we were born. As long as we can’t go back in time, we can’t effect which choices we will make.
Basically, as long as this is always a cause and effect reality and time always moves forward, it’s just simple logic that events will only be able to turn out one way, effectively eliminating free will.

Anyways, that’s my theory on it. I still walk around and pretend that’s not how it works because life’s better this way. =)

i am very interested in what would make you think that free will is an illusion