I can see why you think that, but actually you've got it the wrong way around.D_987 said:Yet your brain had already decided to do that several seconds before you thought of the possibility.Uncompetative said:...but I did.D_987 said:Good for you, just a pity you didn't contribute anything...Uncompetative said:I'm exercising my free will by not reading the OP.
I demonstrated an alternative course of action that everyone could take... not to undermine the thread, but to champion free will.
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say, here? To clear up the chance of misinterpretation, I've been defining "conscious thought" as the process of thinking things in words, and "subconscious thought" as those vague, wordless concepts that appear, epiphany-style, from your brain. Since words are the only thoughts we have actual, conscious control over, I think that this is the intended definition?D_987 said:Oh, I see what your saying, decision making is also attached to the "Fight or Flight" ideaology, but that could be a result of the past (as stated in the second quote).
When you consider that we are basically organized bundles of molecules being formed and broken through constant chemical reactions, along with electrical impulses jumping through the nervous system controlling our every thought and action.... It's crazy. The only true identity I have is composed of a 5-ish pound lump of tissue. That's me in there. The rest is just a shell....fullmetalangel said:TL;DR, unfortunately. Anyway, I'm just going to throw out my view here that I think everything, and I mean absolutely everything is run by math at some level.
No, I'm not talking about numerology, I'm talking about the fundemental movements of atoms and such, and seeing how I believe the human mind is 100% physical, everything in it would have to follow the laws of physics, known and unknown.
That's the scariest thing. We really don't understand fully how our brains work.fullmetalangel said:Agreed. I'm always amazed at it when I really think about it, but even more amazing I think is how far along human beings have come in actually understanding this incredibly complicated piece of hardware.
Yeah, why kill yourself when you can just take some mushrooms and drop out of reality for a while, in a state of mind that just lets you appreciate the beauty and wonder of everything. It's fun. Hahah.fullmetalangel said:[walloftext] Wow, I couldn't help but smile more and more as I read what you were saying. I'm the kind of person who sometimes just stops for a moment, stunned, as I look at reflections on a car as the dappled shadow of a tree lightly plays across it on a sunny day. A super computer would probably overheat in about 5 seconds if it tried to run that on its processors at the same quality. Also, it's absolutely stunning how our eyes, extremely sensitive and fine tuned as they are, can last decades of wear and tear, not to mention the rest of our body. It's a miracle that we live as long as we do at all.
Everything we take for granted is always mind blowing if you think about it hard enough, and I like it. One of the reasons why I would never commit suicide. [/walloftext]
This is probably a better arguement of free will or not. At least the two arguements are in the same field. Lol. I have heard this one or not. And it really comes down to the same answer you would give to whether or not theres a God. "You don't know, and you can scientificly prove jack, so lets just keep it as an opinion thing."smokeybearsb said:When you think about free will you have to factor in something called predestination, if you don't know what that is, then it is the belief that it is determined whether or not you will go to hell (no I'm not throwing religious crap in here). What I'm basically about to say is that you either have free will, or everything you do is already predetermined-you have no real control over your actions since they are decided anyway. You can't really prove either one, though.
OK, so we're learning about Paradise Lost in my English class, which has to do with free will and what not. Our argument is whether or not free will exists, or are your actions predetermined (i.e. one knows what will happened, but the course you take is undetermined, which constitutes free will)
My English teacher (to illustrate to us free will and the concept of predestination) told us about how he would put something like a Snickers Bar on a stool in the middle of a room, and have a bunch of other candy lying around the room elsewhere. He would then tell his son, "Ok, you can eat any piece of candy in that room, you just can't eat the Snickers Bar." Then he would go away to watch what his son would do. He KNEW his son would take the Snickers, and he basically was proving the point that everything is predetermined, but what happens along the way is free will.
Of course, his son would take the Snickers, at which point he would jump out and be like "Aha! I caught you!" lol but anyway, I don't think you can prove that free will does or does not exist, so I would stay away from that argument. Well, I mean, say you think free will exists. How are you gonna go about proving that? You could just say, you have no control of your actions, that's all predetermined. You can't prove that either. It's just this really big chicken or the egg thing, which leads me to all these philosophical though processes that make me wonder "Why are we here?" (Which believe me guys, if you sit there and think about it, you will hurt yourself and you will never again understand why you do anything). It's fun though to.
Well the OP was pretty much in argument against that post.Uncompetative said:I still didn't read the OP, but I hope that stimulates the discussion.
Well the opening article is there to encourage disscussion - as they are the only experiments used to test free will.Flour said:I didn't read anything other than parts of the first post, but does it really matter if free will is just an illusion?
I have read the first article and couldn't find a convincing argument against free will in that brain scan experiment.
I'm not going to add a complete answer until I know the proper context of the question in the title.
This is because whenever I read "free will" I immediately think of a religious(mostly christian) reasoning for it.(my own fault, I've spent too much time on FSTDT and the Gamefaqs Religion board)