yes.yes you could of. so stop debating the obvious and go sit your ass down and watch the damn thing alreadyJaymesFogarty said:
But how do I know that? If I've made that choice, how do I know that I could have chosen anything else?AutumnGold said:
because theres always the option not to. see the way i see it if free will doesn't exist, why don't you just jump out of a tall building? If you were destined to do it, then there's no free will, and even if you weren't destined, there's little point in living a life where you believe you have no controlJaymesFogarty said:
America practically caused slavery. Just saying, but without America, slavery would never have escalated as it had.Downfall89 said:
There's no actual science in that quote. It's halfway decent prose, but that's about it. There's a poll included; how do you think people are able to vote without free will?Sad Robot said:
slavery was around many many many years before American's brought Africans to america as slaves or have you not heard of Sparta? or the ancient Egyptians? You sir are a idiot. your logic goes in circles and you fail to see any other logic other than your own. you lack the facts or the knowledge to back up your arguments, or what i like to call a dumbass. I hope sometime in the future you stop being such a ignorant tit and learn to actually hold a debate. Once you reach that point then contact me for a debate. Good day.JaymesFogarty said:
I'd say that I can't jump out of a tall building because I have no free will. It's not just my love of life, something is stopping me from doing it. Interestingly enough, I have been in quite a few situation where I felt like I have no free will. Sometime in my childhood, I refused to believe that I had no control over my actions, I thought that I could do what I believed was right to do. I ran away from home for several days, thinking that I was overcoming, "destiny," and, "control," by doing something I didn't expect to do. Then, I realized that I was probably destined to do that, to run away. I still think to this day, could I have not run away? I don't think so. I've got a pen in my hand as I speak. I've just dropped it, deliberately, without any inkling that I was meant to do that. Could I have not dropped the pen? I could have been destined to drop the pen from the moment I was born, did I have any real control over it?AutumnGold said:
I was referring to the African slavery, of course slavery had existed before America had even been taken over. I said that America practically caused popular slavery in the western world, because without them being as big a power as they had been, England would not have had as much of a reason to partake in slavery. I didn't mean that America started slavery, I would be a real idiot if I thought that, but America popularized it.AutumnGold said:
As far as scientific evidence, there is none in the quote itself, it is an expression of a belief, that much should be obvious. It is, I think, a logical conclusion of all the evidence said physicist has become familiar with. I regard the theory plausible, if not provable.funguy2121 said:
This point has been addressed several times in this thread.funguy2121 said:
I don't consider it "determinism" as such, at least not in the strictest sense. But very well, that may be semantics. However, I find it pointless to argue about the workings of the brain with someone who dismisses evolutionary psychology out of hand.funguy2121 said:
The point is that a huge chunk of evolutionary psyche has been found to be without foundation, and the rest is pretty much theory. As far as defining it as deterministic or not, there is no need to deconstruct into semantics. The very title of the thread would suggest determinism since an absence of free will necessarily involves that. If, however, something appears scientifically plausible or at least interesting, then I won't quite dismiss it "out of hand."Sad Robot said:
It's controversial in humans, yet without controversy in other animals. I have to admit, evolutionary psychology is not one of my strong points, so I'm going out on a limb here, but doesn't that sort of suggest that we simply aren't willing to judge ourselves by the same merits we judge all other animals? Granted, I don't know all the theories out there, some of them may as well be, and probably are ridiculous, yet that doesn't mean we aren't slaves to our genes and environment.funguy2121 said:
As far as I understand, determinism suggests some unbreakable chain of events that could be precisely predicted if one knew all the variables. I'm not suggesting that and I can't quite interpret the original quote as that. Merely that all our bodily functions are a result of molecular and sub-atomic movement we have no actual control over.funguy2121 said:
What makes the concept of free will so scientifically unshakeable? That we experience it?funguy2121 said:
I don't think it's quite as simple as that but I find no error in that trail of thought in itself.funguy2121 said:
True that, but I was referring to something else.. Doesn't matter though, I don't want to start a flame war.JaymesFogarty said:
