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Predestination or Freewill

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Do you believe in predestination or freewill

Predestination
3

43%
Freewill
4

57%
 
Total votes: 7
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stahrwe

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Predestination or Freewill

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Are we in control of our own destiny?
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Interbane

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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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I'm more of a compatibilist, which means that even though we don't have Free Will, our brains and past experiences are far too complex to know otherwise. We can maintain the illusion of free will, but it is only an illusion.

The majority of philosophers across the globe agree that free will is an illusion.
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stahrwe

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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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Interbane wrote:I'm more of a compatibilist, which means that even though we don't have Free Will, our brains and past experiences are far too complex to know otherwise. We can maintain the illusion of free will, but it is only an illusion.

The majority of philosophers across the globe agree that free will is an illusion.

Perhaps we need to agree on what free will is.

What is your definition?
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Interbane

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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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The idea that our choices are truly and utterly free. Not necessarily all choices, but most, or many.

Some redefine it slightly to say that to be "free" is that we can make choices free from external influence.
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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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13. Free will and Determinism
Jun 13 2005 08:00 PM | Hugo Holbling in Introducing Philosophy series
• You cannot edit this article
By Paul Newall (2005)

In this article we'll consider the problems associated with free will and determinism, starting by explaining the terms involved, the difficulty (if there is one), and then trying to understand the proposed solutions. The importance of the topic is plain enough: it comes up often, in many contexts, and is one that people can easily understand the relevance of; which is only to say that it isn't just for the philosophers.

The terms

What do philosophers and laymen mean when they start worrying about whether we have free will, or what the consequences of determinism must be? We'll begin by making sure we know what is at issue before we worry about the implications.

Determinism

The idea of determinism is easy enough to explain...
Edit by Chris O'Connor

The author of the above article contacted me and said he doesn't want his article reproduced in full as it was above. This is a copyright infringement. I am therefore editing this post and providing only the first paragraph or so. Please visit http://www.galilean-library.org/site/in ... minism-r29 to read the entire article.
n=Infinity
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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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Interbane was kind enough to make some suggestions for reading associated with this discussion. I must qualify this by saying that I have not read this material and am therefore passing on the information without a recommendation in favor of or opposed to this book.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/0262540428?&PID=31879

Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
by Daniel C Dennett



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ISBN13: 9780262540421
ISBN10: 0262540428
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Anyone who has wondered if free will is just an illusion or has asked 'could I have chosen otherwise?' after performing some rash deed will find this book an absorbing discussion of an endlessly fascinating subject. Daniel Dennett, whose previous books include Brainstorms and (with Douglas Hofstadter) The Mind's I, tackles the free will problem in a highly original and witty manner, drawing on the theories and concepts of several fields usually ignored by philosophers; not just physics and evolutionary biology, but engineering, automata theory, and artificial intelligence.

In Elbow Room, Dennett shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the andquot;family of anxieties' they get enmeshed in - imaginary agents, bogeymen, and dire prospects that seem to threaten our freedom. Putting sociobiology in its rightful place, he concludes that we can have free will and science too.

Elbow Room begins by showing how we can be andquot;moved by reasonsandquot; without being exempt from physical causation. It goes on to analyze concepts of control and self-control-concepts often skimped by philosophers but which are central to the questions of free will and determinism. A chapter on andquot;self-made selvesandquot; discusses the idea of self or agent to see how it can be kept from disappearing under the onslaught of science. Dennett then sees what can be made of the notion of acting under the idea of freedomdoes the elbow room we think we have really exist? What is an opportunity, and how can anything in our futures be andquot;up to usandquot;? He investigates the meaning of andquot;canandquot; and andquot;could have done otherwise,andquot; and asks why we want free will in the first place.

We are wise, Dennett notes, to want free will, but that in itself raises a host of questions about responsibility. In a final chapter, he takes up the problem of how anyone can ever be guilty, and what the rationale is for holding people responsible and even, on occasion, punishing them.

Daniel C. Dennett is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Elbow Room is an expanded version of the John Locke Lectures which he gave at Oxford University in 1983.

A Bradford Book.
Synopsis:
In Elbow Room, Dennett shows how the classical formulations of the problem in philosophy depend on misuses of imagination, and he disentangles the philosophical problems of real interest from the andquot;family of anxieties' they get enmeshed in - imaginary agents, bogeymen, and dire prospects that seem to threaten our freedom.
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About the Author
Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.
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Product Details
ISBN:
9780262540421
Subtitle:
The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting
Author:
Dennett, Daniel Clement
Author:
Dennett, Daniel Clement
Author:
Dennett, Daniel C.
Publisher:
MIT Press (MA)
Location:
Cambridge, Mass. :
Subject:
Modern
Subject:
Cognitive Psychology
Subject:
Free Will & Determinism
Subject:
Free will and determinism
Subject:
History & Surveys - Modern
Copyright:
1984
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Series:
Bradford Books
Series Volume:
3
Publication Date:
November 1984
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
Professional and scholarly
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Yes
Pages:
210
Dimensions:
8.99x5.88x.51 in. .78 lbs.
n=Infinity
Sum n = -1/12
n=1

where n are natural numbers.
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DWill

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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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Interbane wrote:I'm more of a compatibilist, which means that even though we don't have Free Will, our brains and past experiences are far too complex to know otherwise. We can maintain the illusion of free will, but it is only an illusion.

The majority of philosophers across the globe agree that free will is an illusion.
It might be so that philosophers agree on this, but if you take a practical example, how can you deny that free will is real? An example: a plane crashes in the remote Andes. Some of the survivors resort to eating dead humans to avoid starvation, others don't. I can't see that it is an illusion that a truly free choice is involved here. Or, take two married men propositioned by beautiful women. One succumbs and the other doesn't. Was the choice they made a compelled one? Again, I don't think so.
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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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It might be so that philosophers agree on this, but....
What is your stance DWill?

It's a fun topic to ponder. Let's jump into your intuition pump about the stranded people becoming cannibals. You say the decision to eat or not to eat is truly free. Of course, we cannot know the specifics of the hypothetical person who is stranded, but let's pretend we can. Let's say there is a woman, who is religious, but not devout. Her heart is set against eating another human in part because it doesn't sit well with her religious beliefs. Another part of her is disgusted by the idea, since when she envisions eating a chunk of thigh meat, images of the person she is eating flash across her mind.

Such subtle thoughts, influences, and dispositions from past experiences are impossible with our current level of technology to unravel. But that does not mean they aren't real. What is a disposition, gained from a religious upbringing, other than a stored behavioral pattern within this woman's neurons? It is of course far more complex than this, but we can say with confidence that when she is thinking of not eating another person, neurons are firing. Why are those neurons firing? The set of circumstances that placed her in this position resulted from a previous set of circumstances ad infinitum. The chain of causality goes back to the moment she was born, with all the experiences along the way. Had she not been raised in a religious environment, her decision may have been different.

To understand why free will is an illusion, you first need to understand a bit about how the human brain works. You can do some research on your own. Every action we take is the result of firing neurons. Every though we have is the result of firing neurons. Can you propose a thought we have that does not involve firing neurons?

We know roughly how neurons work. They are cells, which work in a determined way according to different chemical inputs and depending on each cell's internal chemistry at a given point in time. When something new is learned, connections between neurons strengthen. The details are impossibly complex, but they can be analyzed on a neuron by neuron level.

In the same way that it's becoming nearly impossible to reverse engineer how a CPU turns electrons into a 3D movie, it is not yet possible to determine how all the neurons of a person's brain combine to form consciousness or to allow for speech or mobility. But we don't need to know how this happens to know that it does happen. From nothing more than the way neurons/transistors are arranged, a distinct idea/image is manifest.

From my terribly insufficient explanation I hope to show that the "emergent complexity" of our behavior is, at it's core, mechanical. The argument then becomes; the sum of the parts do not equal the whole. But is that truly the case? Is there some mystical "soul" that intervenes at some point in our though processes, or is uniformly existent within us? We could hypothesize that, but there is no need, because we have enough of the picture pieces to work out the puzzle without that hypothesis.

We all know the stories, where scientists stimulate certain parts of the brain to invoke emotions or memories, or limb movement, or what have you. This is analogous to tweaking a transistor to make your computer screen show alienesque images, or static, or make it all green.


A truly free choice is one that has no prior cause, no influence whatsoever(internal or external). In the case of the woman, a web of neurons were strengthened from past use(reading the bible perhaps), so the association she makes after the plane crashes is a matter of inevitable chemical(mechanical) causation. She may think that she freely decided to decline the meat, but the decision could not be made without neurons firing. Since the function of neurons can be explained mechanically, we can see that the chain of causality stretches back in time, to far before she was even born.
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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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Will is free. Our brains have evolved to make random choice an adaptive trait. The causal path from quarks to decision is too complex for determinism to make sense. However, we are a bit like water in a river, guided by the banks. Complex eddies are chaotic and cannot be precisely predicted, but we know the water flows downhill so the general path is predictable. Many more things about human conduct are predictable than people often imagine. People think they are making free decisions when their choice has been guided without their conscious knowledge. We are predestined to be free.
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Re: Predestination or Freewill

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I am a fan of freewill, but realize for the most part that it does not operate in our lives and perhaps fortunately so. Would you want to drive down an Interstate where all the other drivers were under the influence of absolute free will? Should we deny one free spirit the right to wind up his Ferrari at 160 mph? And what of the gentleman who feels that 35 is a good speed in order to enjoy the scenery?

The fact that most of our decisions have consequences is the banks and the gravity of the downhill flow of our free will that Robert spoke of.

I am not sure I buy the argument that our brains are nothing but a mush of firing neurons and ergo they are completely mechanistic. At what point does complexity enter into the argument. The brain of an insect or frog may very well be a predictable example of an mechanistic brain. Is there a point where the physical complexity of a brain, the layering of brain structures, reptilian, paleo-mammalian, neo-mammalian, the interactions of brain chemistry, the ability of neurons to make new and extremely complicated neural pathways aid in the development of the brain's software? And does the brains software...the recognition of the self from others, the discerning of past present and future, the discernment of color and tones, the ability to make rapid visual compositions, and sense of aural patterns allow us to make tools, language, writing, mathematics, art, music that then allow us to create ever more complex webs of information, literature, poetry, paintings, science, history, and symphonies. Do these things only throw more smoke and mirrors into our lives to make it appear as though we have free will, or do they genuinely allow us some modicum of free will?

This morning I fired up my computer and looked at some art work, some new books, several different forums and blogs. I could have read a book, or went Geocaching. Did I exercise free will? I am not sure. But it seems that I exercised something that my grandfather 80 years ago would not have been able to do. He would wake up at dawn and tend to the farm. He may have decided whether to milk the cows or feed the hogs first, but he was not going to be looking at art, books, music, or blogs. Did he have a choice? Was it free will on his part to occupy his life with 12 to 14 hours of work 7 days a week? Am I a far more complex human being than my grandfather? Yes and no. I doubt my grandfather ever heard of Sartre, Gustav Mahler, or Paul Gauguin. But left to our own devices of basic survival, my money is on my grandfather.

I have done absolutely nothing productive this morning. A guy at work will have by now put 5 hours of work in his rental houses that he owns on the side. Why don't I have rental houses? Why do I find sitting my ass looking at a bunch of stuff on the Internet and writing an inane post on a forum so preferable to working on rental properties, playing softball, or preparing tax returns? Am I exercising free will or just deciding that laziness is preferable to the pursuit of additional income. I don't know if it is free will or not, but many people in this world seem to have a need for activities and possessions that are beyond my understanding.
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