rocketusa
Getting Fucked On
Posts: 29
Registered: 23-7-2009
Location: Arcata, CA
Member Is Offline
|
|
Freewill?
I have some pretty strong opinions on this subject but that isn't why I have decided to open this topic. I'm interested to read other peoples points
of view on if we have freewill or not and to start it off i'll pose these question:
1. Can you have freewill (the ability to make an unbiased choice between two equal options) and at the same time acknowledge the fact that every event
is caused by other events?
2. If God (in the western conception of God) is all knowing and can see all time simultaneously is there anyway for us as humans to make a free
choice?
i look forward to our discourse.
|
|
|
codyconners
Hella
Posts: 210
Registered: 12-3-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
I'd like to think we do, because it's an extremely comforting thought, but I have heard arguments otherwise that were pretty thought provoking.
On the one hand, it's very easy for me to look at the glass of water across the room and decide that I want to grab it. On the other, the entire
universe is governed by physical laws, so maybe I am too. Then again we're alive and things like gravity and black matter aren't.
Thinking (which I suppose is a prerequisite for free will) in general just kind of baffles me. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but I
don't ever really remember "thinking" ever. I just get barraged with a series of impulses and feelings, which are all carried to me through
electrical current, and then react accordingly. It's just too fast for me to really keep tabs on. In conversations I just tend to throw up
appropriate and relevant statements immediately, and it seems like almost everyone else does the same (most conversations just snap back and
forth).
Maybe we're just little machines. Here's an article from the NYTimes from a few months ago that pointed out massive patterns in all our city
building:
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the-city/
It'd be a really big coincidence if all this was just a big coincidence, and not something floating in subconscious.
|
|
|
rocketusa
Getting Fucked On
Posts: 29
Registered: 23-7-2009
Location: Arcata, CA
Member Is Offline
|
|
i want to reply to the part when you talked about deciding to grab the water glass across the room.
you wouldn't decide just oh i think i'll grab that glass for no reason. maybe you're thirsty or maybe your room mate is dogging you to get the dishes
done but no matter what the reason is there is a cause that then leads to the event of you getting up and grabbing the glass. keeping this in mind do
you really have an unbiased equal choice?
think about the things you are going to do today and then think about how many of those things you really chose to do and if or when you find one that
you actually chose to do think about why you chose to do those things and if you really had a free choice.
just food for thought.
|
|
|
codyconners
|
Thread Moved
23-7-2009 at 01:35 PM |
PacMatt
Getting Fucked On
Posts: 7
Registered: 26-9-2009
Member Is Offline
|
|
codyconnors, I would like to discuss something you said in an above post,
"Then again we're alive and things like gravity and black matter aren't."
What makes us alive? How are we more alive than the proteins that make up our bodies? We are certainly more complex, that's a given, but are we exempt
from the laws of physics, chemistry, biology? Every movement in our bodies and every thought we have is the result of millions of chemical reactions.
Did we cause those reactions with something outside of physics called free will? Or were those reactions cause by other reactions caused by...etc. If
we and our bodies are governed by the same forces that make a car run or a star burn, how are we more alive than anything else?
Just food for thought, and another little thinker: The medical difference between "alive" and "dead" is whether or not there is a difference in charge
on the outside and inside of our cell membranes. Everything else between a living person and a dead one is physically the same.
Before decomposition (gross tangent).
|
|
|
![[*]](images/black/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
