Free Will does Exist When you can Identify yourself

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle
a reply to: MadLad

Prove you control your own actions by proving you can control all of your constituents parts.

You can't. If a stray gamma ray, for example intersected a neuron and triggered an electrochemical response making a decision that you are hungry or turning you into a murderer, what controlled the creation of the decision, you or the gamma ray?

Thinking that we have free will is like religious zealots in the dark ages thinking the entire universe rotated around the earth lol. Believing the fallacy of "free will" actually anchors you to this construct.

Cheers - Dave

I do control all of my constituent parts. Though a gamma ray could theoretically damage a constituent part, it takes a leap of absurdity to say it controls all subsequent actions.

Actually, studies have shown that people with a strong belief in free will perform better in a variety of contexts, such as in work and academic settings. Likewise, studies involving experimental manipulations of the belief in free will have demonstrated that weakening people’s belief in free will increases antisocial behavior, such as cheating, racial prejudice, and aggressiveness toward others, as well as decreases prosocial attitudes expressed in altruistic and cooperative behavior.

Like I said, prove it, prove that you have control of all of your constituent parts and that nothing can influence your ability in making decisions.

Cheers - Dave

That’s what the whole OP is about. I gave the example of the heartbeat. What besides yourself makes your heart beat? You could start there.

Your heartbeat, like your breathing is under autonomous automatic control. It is part of a neural/biological feedback system. It has nothing to do with you or anyone else making a decision to control the rate or efficiency of your heartbeat. Your or anyone else's heartbeat has nothing to do with free will.

When I said prove it, I really meant prove it, because I know with extremely high probability that you can't prove free will exists. In order to prove almost anything with 100% certainty, one would have to exist outside the observed reality (system being measured). The question of free will is not unlike asking what the length of a yardstick is on earth and in a deep gravity well because it's different depending on your point of reference. To the person holding the yardstick, it looks like 36" on earth and in the gravity well. To a person outside the system it might look like 36" on earth, but in the gravity well it would be compressed and would look to be some small fraction of 36".

So, inside our reality construct we have the illusion of free will. An observer outside our reality construct would see us like characters in a movie, reading our lines and going through the motions.

Cheers - Dave

It has everything to do with free will.

Whose impulses control your own heart? Your own. No other person, object or thing in the universe makes your heart beat. No appealing to imaginary “reality constructs” and “illusions” will ever cease your control over your own heartbeat. Only when you cease producing the impulse to keep your heart beating will it stop beating.

As I argued, this is a problem with identity. Opponents of free will refuse to believe that the so called “autonomous automatic control”, or subconscious, is a part of them and wholly regulated, generated, and controlled by them and them alone.

If an Apple Iphone could think it would be like saying it has absolute control over its battery charging circuit. Guess what, it don't lol. It has a little control, but ultimately the charging circuit has control over the charging current and voltage, dependent on a, get this..... feedback circuit. It's a good analogy of autonomous automatic control. The Iphone can appear to be completely dead, in a "coma," but damn, it will charge itself with no help from that little processor (brain) ;-)

And yes, some people can control their breathing and heart rate, hell, I have bio-feedback and brain entrainment equipment I designed and built myself, so yes, I know that it can be done. However, bop someone on the head and knock them out while they are controlling their heart rate and/or breathing and guess what? Everything fails back to autonomous automatic control mode, no decision making required lol.

Now tell me, how some drug or stray gamma ray won't effect a neuron in your brain forcing a decision not your own, because you have deflector shields or something. lol. Even if you sat inside a Faraday cage with a lead shield around that with no light, electricity or anything and Schrödinger was standing outside scratching his head contemplating your 50:50 alive:dead probabilities, there is still the very good probability that there would be BEC type interference via quantum entanglement changing the subatomic topography of your neural signalling.

If you can't isolate your brain from interference by outside sources and don't have the capacity to recognize interference from outside sources and self-correct, how is it you think that your thoughts are your own? Or at least the decision making aspects are your own? No, there is no free will, but, if it makes you feel better, then just believe there is. It doesn't really matter, we'll find out when we get off the ride, or maybe not. In any even, it is improbable we'll be bringing the information back with us on the next ride.

Cheers - Dave

a reply to: MadLad

Hello it's me
I've thought about us for a long long time
Maybe I think too much but something's wrong
There's something here doesn't last too long
Is It You Or Me ?

a reply to: MadLad

Free will is an illusion of ignorance.

One doesn’t know the usually hidden processes that will actually determine one's choices outside of the facile determination.

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I’m not sure you understand what I’m trying to say.

You don’t have to be aware of every working process in your being to say it is still you controlling it. You are, whether you are conscious of it or not. Every process within ourselves is governed and regulated by the very organism they sustain: ourselves.

originally posted by: Willtell
a reply to: MadLad

Free will is an illusion of ignorance.

One doesn’t know the usually hidden processes that will actually determine one's choices outside of the facile determination.

What else besides yourself determines your choices? “Hidden processes”? What hidden processes?

originally posted by: MadLad
a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I’m not sure you understand what I’m trying to say.

You don’t have to be aware of every working process in your being to say it is still you controlling it. You are, whether you are conscious of it or not. Every process within ourselves is governed and regulated by the very organism they sustain: ourselves.

I perfectly understand and disagree based on simple logic lol.

Cheers - Dave

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle

originally posted by: MadLad
a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I’m not sure you understand what I’m trying to say.

You don’t have to be aware of every working process in your being to say it is still you controlling it. You are, whether you are conscious of it or not. Every process within ourselves is governed and regulated by the very organism they sustain: ourselves.

I perfectly understand and disagree based on simple logic lol.

Cheers - Dave

That wasn’t simple logic.

It’s a question of identity. Do you or do you not identify with the “automatic impulses”, conscious and subconscious, which govern every action and even your entire livelihood? If so, then you govern every action and your entire livelihood.

a reply to: MadLad

The soul make the choice, the command is sent to the brain which triggers the body’s response...
The soul makes the decision and is therefore that which has free will, since the brain and body both receive its commands they have no free will...
If anybody doesn’t like me using the term soul, because you feel you do not have one...
feel free to use consciousness...
lol

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle

originally posted by: MadLad
a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I’m not sure you understand what I’m trying to say.

You don’t have to be aware of every working process in your being to say it is still you controlling it. You are, whether you are conscious of it or not. Every process within ourselves is governed and regulated by the very organism they sustain: ourselves.

I perfectly understand and disagree based on simple logic lol.

Cheers - Dave

That wasn’t simple logic.

It’s a question of identity. Do you or do you not identify with the “automatic impulses”, conscious and subconscious, which govern every action and even your entire livelihood? If so, then you govern every action and your entire livelihood.

No, I, like everyone else am a rider in a meat puppet bus, my character. I don't drive it or steer it or control what that character does, I just watch where it takes me. So no, any autonomous automatic functions of this "bus," are of this "bus" and not of me. Because of the work my "character" has done in AI, for the military, universities and national research I think I can analogize this into a SCADA type system.

Your physical "bus" is a complex data acquisition and control system, that's your "brain" and body, you know the meat puppet. You get fed tons of information by watching the feedback loops, but you can't quite reach the controls, they're in another room, the door is locked and you don't have the key, something else is controlling the path of your life/observations/existence/character/the overall plot.

All this information you're getting is somehow communicated to what you actually are, or wherever you are, through some technology that might as well appear as magic, you know, sufficiently advanced to appear as magic. Possibly BEC quantum entanglement based, could even be monopolar communications using combining synchronous wavefunction within a paired null space which controls the entanglement, classical emulation of quantum EPR solutions, yada, yada...

I don't know how it works, even though my character has done some pretty strange work with BEC's, quantum entanglement, gravity interferometry and absolute temporal frames of reference used as measurement proxies to monitor gravity waves via changes in my time references (that's why I used a yardstick and gravity well analogy, you can't measure proportional expansion and compression from within a system that is proportionally expanding and compressing, you need a proxy).

Anyway, the architect/programmer didn't read me in to "the plan" so I can only analyze and theorize.

Cheers - Dave

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: Willtell
a reply to: MadLad

Free will is an illusion of ignorance.

One doesn’t know the usually hidden processes that will actually determine one's choices outside of the facile determination.

What else besides yourself determines your choices? “Hidden processes”? What hidden processes?

Things like your unconscious, subconscious, hidden biases, hidden programming, and things outside of your immediate awareness that impact on all your decisions.
But the good thing is we aren’t aware that were basically slaves to these hidden processes so people get the illusion and think they have free choice.
So it doesn’t matter as long as you think you do then you have it
In this case, ignorance is truly bliss

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I understand. But as I stated, your belief that you are just a little man or thing riding in a “meat suit” is a fallacy, simply because of the infinite regression. In other words, it’s poor thinking as far as I’m concerned. But it’s not uncommon.

originally posted by: Willtell

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: Willtell
a reply to: MadLad

Free will is an illusion of ignorance.

One doesn’t know the usually hidden processes that will actually determine one's choices outside of the facile determination.

What else besides yourself determines your choices? “Hidden processes”? What hidden processes?

Things like your unconscious, subconscious, hidden biases, hidden programming, and things outside of your immediate awareness that impact on all your decisions.
But the good thing is we aren’t aware that were basically slaves to these hidden processes so people get the illusion and think they have free choice.
So it doesn’t matter as long as you think you do then you have it
In this case, ignorance is truly bliss

But I am my my unconscience, subconscious, hidden biases and programming. Saying I influence my own decisions is redundant. I think that until you can prove you are in someway impeded by something other than yourself, you are a slave to the idea that you are a slave. Ignorance is bliss.

a reply to: MadLad

www.theatlantic.com...


As long as we don't know.

originally posted by: Willtell
a reply to: MadLad

www.theatlantic.com...


As long as we don't know.

You, like the author of that article, don’t believe you are your subconscious or your body. You are brains in vats. Solipsists.

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: MadLad

Ask Google....... Is there a thinker of thoughts?

And see what shows up.

I wouldn’t have to ask google if there was no thinker of thoughts.

Honestly... ask Google.....
Is there a thinker of thoughts?

Are you afraid to look?

a reply to: justbe

I began watching the video in which the presenter states 'it's all about the evolution of consciousness' and that you should be aware of your own consciousness.
He states that the core of you is what gives attention and be aware of that attention at work.......and that you should be aware of what it is up to.

But awareness isn't up to anything.... it is simply aware of what appears in it. Thoughts appear in it, colours, shapes, sounds, sensations and apparent objects.

The awareness that you are cannot change or become more or less.... without it being present no appearing thing (including thought) could appear.
No image can appear on the tv if there is no screen present.

Can it be recognised that you are the ever present space that unconditionally allows apparent existence to appear regardless of what thought says?
That space is never not here but gets overlooked..... somewhat like the screen on a tv when the moving image moves across it's face.

originally posted by: MadLad
a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I understand. But as I stated, your belief that you are just a little man or thing riding in a “meat suit” is a fallacy, simply because of the infinite regression. In other words, it’s poor thinking as far as I’m concerned. But it’s not uncommon.

Yeah, ok, lol. You do realize that you have to break a few philosophical eggs to make a metaphysical omelette, right?

Cheers - Dave

originally posted by: Itisnowagain

originally posted by: MadLad

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: MadLad

Ask Google....... Is there a thinker of thoughts?

And see what shows up.

I wouldn’t have to ask google if there was no thinker of thoughts.

Honestly... ask Google.....
Is there a thinker of thoughts?

Are you afraid to look?

There is a doer of every action. There is no need to ask google unless searching for a some convoluted nonsense saying otherwise.

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle

originally posted by: MadLad
a reply to: bobs_uruncle

I understand. But as I stated, your belief that you are just a little man or thing riding in a “meat suit” is a fallacy, simply because of the infinite regression. In other words, it’s poor thinking as far as I’m concerned. But it’s not uncommon.

Yeah, ok, lol. You do realize that you have to break a few philosophical eggs to make a metaphysical omelette, right?

Cheers - Dave

You do know what a fallacy is, right?