Volconvo is a debate forum for the discussion of political, religious, and news-based topics.

Plasma Snake[D] · Oct 21, 2005, 08:14 am

OK, how do I explain the following... You know how when oil mixes with water you can pretty much count on it producing the same effects time and time again? well what if we had no say in what we do or say or think, cause its all controlled by physics, our minds have hormones and all different chemicals and electrical pathways that interact with stimuli based on pre"programmed" responses(like childhood environment and genetics), and that all our fears and emotions are to help us survive. Like, the moment is constantly here, but what is time exactly? I mean its all really about perspective, but it is my belief that we are pretty much strictly guided by our environment because we are chemicals and chemicals have a weird way of consistently interacting with other things consistently(if that sounds weird enough, its hard to describe reality with words).

SteveA · Oct 21, 2005, 08:46 am

Most people would agree that free will seems to obviously exist, so it would seem the burden of those who want to discount it to supply some concrete evidence.

If our actions are simply a product of unescapable physically predeterminable interactions, then people should be able to predict relatively accurately something as simple as how your arm is going to move a couple seconds ahead of time.

Until someone can tell you what you're going to do a couple seconds before you're going to do it, it seems almost religious faith that free will doesn't exist.

It seems like attempts to demostrate free will doesn't exist occur with examples of things where people don't feel they were exersizing free will either. It's not unlike applying an external force to move someones arm and then claiming that they weren't able to control their arm.
My guess is that consciousness and free will exist as the quantum mechanical energies we see that exist in almost everything. We know very little about how they operate but can see the effects. So even scientifically it seems that there's little evidence to deny that free will exists. You mentioned chemical reactions but chemical reactions, especially organic ones as they are relatively weakly interacting are influenced by quantum mechanics, which places strict limits on how much we can predict or how detailed a view of things we can get.

If someone jumps off a roof, they'll fall. If you shine a light in someones eye, the iris contracts etc., but these aren't things people generally consider they can control via. free will. They need to demonstrate that they can accurately predict what decisions and resulting actions a person will make in the future if the claims that free will doesn't exist are to have a stable foundation, but they can't do that ... and if free will exists as quantum forces, there's no evidence yet that it will ever be possible.

(Though I do agree that we're to a very large extent a product of our environment. Larger than most people intuitively recognize)

Plasma Snake[D] · Oct 21, 2005, 09:09 am

I know what you mean, but think about this. You said that no one can tell you what will happen, but that is only cause to predict something, I think you would have to consider so many different factors that our mind cant quite calculate and digest. Think about weathermen and how they consider certain things. Like a hurricane. Say a hurricane is a person. If you had knowledge of how these things are, then you could predict. But weathermen use computers and satellites that calculate things very rapidly, and without these things it wouldnt be nearly as accurate. So I think someone cant say what you will do cause of limitations in perception.

SteveA · Oct 21, 2005, 09:34 am

Quote:

Quote by: Plasma Snake[D]

I know what you mean, but think about this. You said that no one can tell you what will happen, but that is only cause to predict something, I think you would have to consider so many different factors that our mind cant quite calculate and digest. Think about weathermen and how they consider certain things. Like a hurricane. Say a hurricane is a person. If you had knowledge of how these things are, then you could predict. But weathermen use computers and satellites that calculate things very rapidly, and without these things it wouldnt be nearly as accurate. So I think someone cant say what you will do cause of limitations in perception.

I guess that's a lot of my point. If a weatherman can't even predict where a hurricane is going to hit a day from now, how can science claim to know much of anything about something as intanigble as free will, especially considering they can't even predict when a single atomic particle will decay. It's truly not much different than religious faith unless there's some concrete evidence demonstrating that something people obviously experience doesn't exist and they have no 'proof' other than to show that in some areas they can make some general predictions but none of these directly apply to free will.

To me the analogy is like building a flashlight and then claiming that explains how the sun operates. They can stimulate a muscle with electricity and show it moves but they can't backtrack the signals in the brain and determine where the conscious voluntary signals come from. For example, they might be able to locate the 'circuitry' that regulates the beating of a heart and even be able to generally determine how it operates but that's not really something that's governered by free will. Yes, people can learn to voluntarily alter their heartrate but that signal I'm rather certain comes from elsewhere and if they backtrack it, they'll find a source a they can't predict and this all makes sense under current scientific views because of the recognition in science that there are limits to what's observable/predictable in the universe.

Plasma Snake[D] · Oct 21, 2005, 05:34 pm

yeah but wouldnt you say that somehow you were predetemined to say these things in response to what I said. Would you say that a bird has free will? I dont know, but I risk sounding poetic if i try to explain it.

Plasma Snake[D] · Oct 24, 2005, 10:19 am

OK is like the cat in the box experiment... one guy said once that if you put a cat in a box and close the lid, then since you dont SEE the cat then it means the cat becomes a variable and goes into a state of being and not being. Einstein thought it was ridiculous... Think about it, if you had prior knowledge of things, could you not predict the outcome? I mean, since you know the cat was in there it means that cat is in there, not some random event. But to predict things like how a human would behave you would have to know how everything is at that moment in time. You would have to factor in everything. Like if you wanted to reproduce an event, if you could somehow manipulate everything and put everything how it was, wouldnt the same things happen? Like time and time again if you put a healthy hungry cat inside a box with a mouse, wouldnt you say that in general the cat will react to the mouse? (bad analogy but whatever)

Oct 21, 2005, 08:14 am	#1 (permalink) (top)
Plasma Snake[D] Cause for Concern Location: Planet Earth Posts: 664	Free will or what? OK, how do I explain the following... You know how when oil mixes with water you can pretty much count on it producing the same effects time and time again? well what if we had no say in what we do or say or think, cause its all controlled by physics, our minds have hormones and all different chemicals and electrical pathways that interact with stimuli based on pre"programmed" responses(like childhood environment and genetics), and that all our fears and emotions are to help us survive. Like, the moment is constantly here, but what is time exactly? I mean its all really about perspective, but it is my belief that we are pretty much strictly guided by our environment because we are chemicals and chemicals have a weird way of consistently interacting with other things consistently(if that sounds weird enough, its hard to describe reality with words).

Oct 21, 2005, 08:46 am	#2 (permalink) (top)
SteveA Anarcho-capitalist Posts: 1,972	Most people would agree that free will seems to obviously exist, so it would seem the burden of those who want to discount it to supply some concrete evidence. If our actions are simply a product of unescapable physically predeterminable interactions, then people should be able to predict relatively accurately something as simple as how your arm is going to move a couple seconds ahead of time. Until someone can tell you what you're going to do a couple seconds before you're going to do it, it seems almost religious faith that free will doesn't exist. It seems like attempts to demostrate free will doesn't exist occur with examples of things where people don't feel they were exersizing free will either. It's not unlike applying an external force to move someones arm and then claiming that they weren't able to control their arm. My guess is that consciousness and free will exist as the quantum mechanical energies we see that exist in almost everything. We know very little about how they operate but can see the effects. So even scientifically it seems that there's little evidence to deny that free will exists. You mentioned chemical reactions but chemical reactions, especially organic ones as they are relatively weakly interacting are influenced by quantum mechanics, which places strict limits on how much we can predict or how detailed a view of things we can get. If someone jumps off a roof, they'll fall. If you shine a light in someones eye, the iris contracts etc., but these aren't things people generally consider they can control via. free will. They need to demonstrate that they can accurately predict what decisions and resulting actions a person will make in the future if the claims that free will doesn't exist are to have a stable foundation, but they can't do that ... and if free will exists as quantum forces, there's no evidence yet that it will ever be possible. (Though I do agree that we're to a very large extent a product of our environment. Larger than most people intuitively recognize) Freedom - are you man enough to handle it? If so, join us in New Hampshire! The Free State Project ("Liberty in our lifetime!") www.freestateproject.com

Oct 21, 2005, 09:09 am	#3 (permalink) (top)
Plasma Snake[D] Cause for Concern Location: Planet Earth Posts: 664	I know what you mean, but think about this. You said that no one can tell you what will happen, but that is only cause to predict something, I think you would have to consider so many different factors that our mind cant quite calculate and digest. Think about weathermen and how they consider certain things. Like a hurricane. Say a hurricane is a person. If you had knowledge of how these things are, then you could predict. But weathermen use computers and satellites that calculate things very rapidly, and without these things it wouldnt be nearly as accurate. So I think someone cant say what you will do cause of limitations in perception.

Oct 21, 2005, 05:34 pm	#5 (permalink) (top)
Plasma Snake[D] Cause for Concern Location: Planet Earth Posts: 664	yeah but wouldnt you say that somehow you were predetemined to say these things in response to what I said. Would you say that a bird has free will? I dont know, but I risk sounding poetic if i try to explain it.

Oct 24, 2005, 10:19 am	#6 (permalink) (top)
Plasma Snake[D] Cause for Concern Location: Planet Earth Posts: 664	OK is like the cat in the box experiment... one guy said once that if you put a cat in a box and close the lid, then since you dont SEE the cat then it means the cat becomes a variable and goes into a state of being and not being. Einstein thought it was ridiculous... Think about it, if you had prior knowledge of things, could you not predict the outcome? I mean, since you know the cat was in there it means that cat is in there, not some random event. But to predict things like how a human would behave you would have to know how everything is at that moment in time. You would have to factor in everything. Like if you wanted to reproduce an event, if you could somehow manipulate everything and put everything how it was, wouldnt the same things happen? Like time and time again if you put a healthy hungry cat inside a box with a mouse, wouldnt you say that in general the cat will react to the mouse? (bad analogy but whatever)