How can there be free-will when our Will is just a response to circumstances?

reply to post by obnoxiouschick


Whatever i WILL hehe, whatever i will

reply to post by Revolution9


You are ruining a good thread with your religious blabbering.

Originally posted by BcnDiamond
reply to post by Revolution9

 

You are ruining a good thread with your religious blabbering.

No! More like you are picking on me for being half Jewish and a Christian. That is who I am. That is my culture and Spirit. It is bound to come into much of what I write because it has the Highest Priority in my life.

You are adding nothing with a remark like that. It betrays your nature; hard I expect.

It is free expression here. I would never stoop to the depths of your tactics. I am self assured and confident enough not to have to put others down for their beliefs in such a blunt and brutish way.

I'll give you room to be who you are. You do the same for me, guy. Then we can call ouselves civilized and free, can't we!

Originally posted by aero56

Originally posted by ArchaicDesigns
reply to post by arpgme

 

Your "free-will" is you ability to choose. You can either choose to punch back or not to punch back... Or to even run away. You are free to choose whatever you like.

The only constant is changing circumstances, this is life.

edit on 11-12-2012 by ArchaicDesigns because: Spelinn

We can't choose our sexual orientation.

Oh yes we can! I did. In my teens I thought I was gay. Then I met my ex wife and I have never been gay since. Funnily enough she was gay, too, before we met. She is straight, too, these days.

On that score, I beg to differ in opinion.

reply to post by BcnDiamond


Not sure why religious believers are on this thread - for them the answer is, because God gave them free will it's there and they have it. Not a lot to add to the discussion really. They already have all the answers and just seem obligated to tell us about them.

Originally posted by Revolution9

Originally posted by Hopeforeveryone
reply to post by BcnDiamond

 

Not sure why religious believers are on this thread - for them the answer is, because God gave them free will it's there and they have it. Not a lot to add to the discussion really. They already have all the answers and just seem obligated to tell us about them.

Is that how you feel about me? Do I say I have all the answers. No, I NEVER say that.

You are just being intolerant and applying a blanket perception on all spiritual people. That is ignorant. I would never do that to you. I would never just fob you off as useless.

I think your attitude is childish and very immature. You need to grow up a bit and realise that humans are mind, body and spirit; not just mind and body.

I don't have any answers atall! God does not give me answers ever! I find them for myself. You are so ignorant of what it is to be a believer. I accept you in my world, but you do not accept me in your's.

Do you ever catch me bitching about you? No, never! Yet you do that to me. Why?

Is it because we frustrate you? Is it because we can hold our own in any debate and you can't make us look stupid in the way that you would like to.

Stop being so dismissive, derogatory, ignorant and discriminatory about Spirituality.

Inquire of us, challenge us, argue with us, but don't just sneer ignorantly with spiteful little one liners that are not in the "spirit" of ATS anyway.

Believe me i've tried and i always get replies like the one you've just supplied. I'm not ignorant of Christian's hateful doctrines, i was brought up within the COE. Rather than actually reply with any new information about free will or anything thought provoking you went full on into a personal attack. I have an opinion about christians and i'm allowed it in the same way you have an opinion about non-believers - it's all fair game. Now if you were a buddist then i might agree with a bit of what you believe. I've, at considerable length and for more years than you've probably been alive, investigated all aspect of belief, religion, philosophy and psychology, can you say the same or did you just get brainwashed by the first belief you came across.

All you're doing is defending your belief and derailing another thread that seems likely to become another victim of the Christian mafia.

No circumstance determines our reaction to it. We will determine our own responses. For instance, if a car comes down the road, I can always just stand there instead of moving to avoid it.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
No circumstance determines our reaction to it. We will determine our own responses. For instance, if a car comes down the road, I can always just stand there instead of moving to avoid it.

But if it's not your time in the physical to be over, the car is going to avoid you or hit you, leading to hospitalization or leaving without a scratch, depending on what milestone is next on your path.

There is no free will. Only strong and weak wills. The idea of a free will is only really being conscious of one's own actions, which are the result of passions, inclinations, striving for pleasure or pain, wants and desires etc.

The fact you felt the need to start another thread about free will after spending the time trying to convince my thread it doesn't exist is hysterical. What exactly did you hope to accomplish? All you did was prove my point once again...you had FREE WILL to start this thread, you had FREE WILL to write everything you wrote and will write...Why is it so hard for you to grasp this?


www.abovetopsecret.com...

I for one believe that free will does allow us to make decisions, but that sometimes no matter what decision we make the outcome has been determined. There are many factors involved; synchronicity, free will of others, environment, peer pressure, financial circumstances (limited resources, limited options), etc.

www.abovetopsecret.com...
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www.abovetopsecret.com...
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reply to post by BrokenAngelWings33


How is it free will if your thread is the cause of his inclination to start a new thread? Wouldn't a free-will devise a thread without any motivation?

Originally posted by aero56

Originally posted by ArchaicDesigns
reply to post by arpgme

 

Your "free-will" is you ability to choose. You can either choose to punch back or not to punch back... Or to even run away. You are free to choose whatever you like.

The only constant is changing circumstances, this is life.

edit on 11-12-2012 by ArchaicDesigns because: Spelinn

We can't choose our sexual orientation.

Some Djinn (jokers) are helpers we each have two helpers (types of angels) you think it's your preference it's theirs..... they want to feel the energy transference too.

women that is a no no TOO DIRTY waste comes outta there

Originally posted by BcnDiamond
reply to post by Revolution9

 

You are ruining a good thread with your religious blabbering.

This is just rehashed from another thread I started 2 weeks ago, the same OP was there trying to say the same argument over and over again...exhibiting FREE WILL....there are choices we all make that are affected by the choices others make...consequences for actions...reactions for actions...it's all started from the FREE WILL choice that we have...that we choose to exercise. Anyone that responds to this thread is exercising FREE WILL, there is nothing religious about it, but they have the right to offer whatever opinion they like...FREE WILL. Such an easy concept...made complicated.

The recordable cerebral activity (readiness-potential, RP) that precedes a freely voluntary, fully endogenous motor act was directly compared with the reportable time (W) for appearance of the subjective experience of ‘wanting’ or intending to act. The onset of cerebral activity clearly preceded by at least several hundred milliseconds the reported time of conscious intention to act. This relationship held even for those series (with ‘type II’ RPs) in which subjects reported that all of the 40 self-initiated movements in the series appeared ‘spontaneously’ and capriciously.

Data were obtained in at least 6 different experimental sessions with each of 5 subjects. In series with type II RPs, onset of the main negative shift in each RP preceded the corresponding mean W value by an average of about 350 ms, and by a minimum of about 150 ms. In series with type I RPs, in which an experience of preplanning occurred in some of the 40 self-initiated acts, onset of RP preceded W by an average of about 800 ms (or by 500 ms, taking onset of RP at 90 per cent of its area).

Reports of W time depended upon the subject's recall of the spatial ‘clock-position’ of a revolving spot at the time of his initial awareness of wanting or intending to move. Two different modes of recall produced similar values. Subjects distinguished awareness of wanting to move (W) from awareness of actually moving (M). W times were consistently and substantially negative to, in advance of, mean times reported for M and also those for S, the sensation elicited by a task-related skin stimulus delivered at irregular times that were unknown to the subject.

It is concluded that cerebral initiation of a spontaneous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is, before there is any (at least recallable) subjective awareness that a ‘decision’ to act has already been initiated cerebrally. This introduces certain constraints on the potentiality for conscious initiation and control of voluntary acts.

brain.oxfordjournals.org...

Before anyone chose to respond or not respond to this thread, their brain had already made the decision.

Ultimately, there is absolutely no free will whatsoever. However at the moment , in the human play, there is the illusion of free will.

The OP is correct in that every "choice" is a reaction to the perceiver's environment, Physically and psychologically.

It is the continually evolving (or repetitive) reactions that appear to be free choice and free will. In reality, it is impossible to act independently of ones environment. Both the outside world AND the inside world must Co-conspire. So since we cannot act independently of our environment, whatever we seem to do as individuals, is also being done by the environment. It is all one. So we, As individuals, are only a small component to a much larger act. It's a challenging illusion to transcend, because we truly believe that we can control our lives and choose what we want, all the while forgetting that 99.99999999999999999 percent of our actions, are controlled by the surrounding environment, including that of the physical brain. A lot of suffering comes from the illusion of this duality. Duality itself. Maya.

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip
brain.oxfordjournals.org...

Before anyone chose to respond or not respond to this thread, their brain had already made the decision.

The typical Libet experiment.. No.. The brain had not already made the decision. That's a logical leap, and a conclusion based on a biased interpretation of data.

Called the readiness potential, this has been interpreted as a blow to free will, as it suggests that the brain prepares to act well before we are conscious of the urge to move. This conclusion assumes that the readiness potential is the signature of the brain planning and preparing to move. "Even people who have been critical of Libet's work, by and large, haven't challenged that assumption," says Aaron Schurger of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Saclay, France. One attempt to do so came in 2009. Judy Trevena and Jeff Miller of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, asked volunteers to decide, after hearing a tone, whether or not to tap on a keyboard. The readiness potential was present regardless of their decision, suggesting that it did not represent the brain preparing to move. Exactly what it did mean, though, still wasn't clear.

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"Libet argued that our brain has already decided to move well before we have a conscious intention to move," says Schurger. "We argue that what looks like a pre-conscious decision process may not in fact reflect a decision at all. It only looks that way because of the nature of spontaneous brain activity."

So what does this say about free will? "If we are correct, then the Libet experiment does not count as evidence against the possibility of conscious will," says Schurger.

Source


Now, look at this from the same article..

Cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, is impressed by the work, but also circumspect about what it says about free will. "It's a more satisfying mechanistic explanation of the readiness potential. But it doesn't bounce conscious free will suddenly back into the picture," he says. "Showing that one aspect of the Libet experiment can be open to interpretation does not mean that all arguments against conscious free will need to be ejected."

That person had already concluded that we have no free will because of that experiment, and now he holds lack of free will as the default position and suddenly wants enough evidence to the contrary, while the interpretation of the experiment was not correct in the first place. Free will was the default position before the experiment. He is now still holding the old experiment as true, despite evidence being completely in his face. That shows you how closed-minded and biased scientists can be, completely shifting the burden of proof and basically maintaining a belief rather supporting the evidence. But when I say anything close to that anywhere on this forum, I get attacked because science is oh so precious and infallible...

Intelligence and awareness are concepts lacking in this debate about free will. The cleverer we are, the more aware we are then the more possibilities are open to us, more choices on how we act on given stimuli or received input. Now if you're an amoeba swiming around you'll just be reacting to your enviroment. Freedom of the mind and the ability to choose is the byproduct of our enlarged brains. We're always within constraints as if i will to fly to the moon on a rocking horse, odds are it won't happen, if i choose to have a cup of coffee then odds are high that i can achieve that.

Ultimately, as my philosophically inclined brother likes to say "you're as free as you think you are"

Originally posted by vasaga

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip
brain.oxfordjournals.org...

Before anyone chose to respond or not respond to this thread, their brain had already made the decision.

The typical Libet experiment.. No.. The brain had not already made the decision. That's a logical leap, and a conclusion based on a biased interpretation of data.

Called the readiness potential, this has been interpreted as a blow to free will, as it suggests that the brain prepares to act well before we are conscious of the urge to move. This conclusion assumes that the readiness potential is the signature of the brain planning and preparing to move. "Even people who have been critical of Libet's work, by and large, haven't challenged that assumption," says Aaron Schurger of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Saclay, France. One attempt to do so came in 2009. Judy Trevena and Jeff Miller of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, asked volunteers to decide, after hearing a tone, whether or not to tap on a keyboard. The readiness potential was present regardless of their decision, suggesting that it did not represent the brain preparing to move. Exactly what it did mean, though, still wasn't clear.

--------------------------------------------------------------

"Libet argued that our brain has already decided to move well before we have a conscious intention to move," says Schurger. "We argue that what looks like a pre-conscious decision process may not in fact reflect a decision at all. It only looks that way because of the nature of spontaneous brain activity."

So what does this say about free will? "If we are correct, then the Libet experiment does not count as evidence against the possibility of conscious will," says Schurger.

Source


Now, look at this from the same article..

Cognitive neuroscientist Anil Seth of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, is impressed by the work, but also circumspect about what it says about free will. "It's a more satisfying mechanistic explanation of the readiness potential. But it doesn't bounce conscious free will suddenly back into the picture," he says. "Showing that one aspect of the Libet experiment can be open to interpretation does not mean that all arguments against conscious free will need to be ejected."

That person had already concluded that we have no free will because of that experiment, and now he holds lack of free will as the default position and suddenly wants enough evidence to the contrary, while the interpretation of the experiment was not correct in the first place. Free will was the default position before the experiment. He is now still holding the old experiment as true, despite evidence being completely in his face. That shows you how closed-minded and biased scientists can be, completely shifting the burden of proof and basically maintaining a belief rather supporting the evidence. But when I say anything close to that anywhere on this forum, I get attacked because science is oh so precious and infallible...

edit on 12-12-2012 by vasaga because: (no reason given)

Thanks for bringing up the other point of view. While I agree that this leaves the experiment to interpretation, it by no way means either interpretation is right or wrong.

I too hold such disdain for science. But I also hold disdain for the false promises of free-will, immortality, etc. I am, by nature, inclined to question them.

The opportunity to utilize free-will is astounding: we can go do jumping jacks, we can run up and down the street and we can also leave to never return. We can even kill people. Now why wouldn't one do those things? Desire, laziness, passion, skepticism, law, physics, conscience, societal pressures etc. The will, being bound by these and existence itself, is not free.

reply to post by BrokenAngelWings33


I actually read that thread and I'm glad the OP made another thread.
I feel as if you think you are being attack personally when someone says there might not be such a thing as free will

I could quote a bunch of your posts from the previous thread and explain why your arguments fail every time, but I would advise you to read more on this subject elsewhere, because I don't think you understand the concept well enough.

A word of advise, the next time you post and say ''look you typed that because of free will'', try to argue why you think free will is involved.