IGX

Turdacious wrote:

odin wrote:No free will here. My brain is made up of atoms, protons, quarks and other sub-atomic particles which obey the laws of physics. It thinks using a language it didn't choose or invent, and lives in an environment it has little control over.

There is no personal ghost in my machine, there is only the continuous interplay of phenomena, underpinned by conciousness.

Descartes was wrong.

Good luck getting a jury to believe that.

They accept diminished responsibility on the grounds of demonstrable brain damage/mental condition, so why not extrapolate this idea?

Turdacious wrote:
Stop your nonsensical. Napoleon Hill demonstrated most of the things you should be looking for decades ago. The rest, unless you care about some greater metaphysical meaning of life, is just noise.

Did you really just counter a reasoned argument with that huckster- Napoleon Hill?

My brain already told me it prefers the illusion of conscious free will so I can't take sides even if I wanted to...but seriously Napoleon Hill? Where's Lil Tommy Aquinas?

odin wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

odin wrote:No free will here. My brain is made up of atoms, protons, quarks and other sub-atomic particles which obey the laws of physics. It thinks using a language it didn't choose or invent, and lives in an environment it has little control over.

There is no personal ghost in my machine, there is only the continuous interplay of phenomena, underpinned by conciousness.

Descartes was wrong.

Good luck getting a jury to believe that.

They accept diminished responsibility on the grounds of demonstrable brain damage/mental condition, so why not extrapolate this idea?

I don't know what institution you're in.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Turdacious wrote:
Stop your nonsensical. Napoleon Hill demonstrated most of the things you should be looking for decades ago. The rest, unless you care about some greater metaphysical meaning of life, is just noise.

Did you really just counter a reasoned argument with that huckster- Napoleon Hill?

My brain already told me it prefers the illusion of conscious free will so I can't take sides even if I wanted to...but seriously Napoleon Hill? Where's Lil Tommy Aquinas?

The idea is Augustinian. And this isn't a religious argument.

can the pro-free-will people explain to me the process by which they create an original thought from scratch?

Turdacious wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Turdacious wrote:
Stop your nonsensical. Napoleon Hill demonstrated most of the things you should be looking for decades ago. The rest, unless you care about some greater metaphysical meaning of life, is just noise.

Did you really just counter a reasoned argument with that huckster- Napoleon Hill?

My brain already told me it prefers the illusion of conscious free will so I can't take sides even if I wanted to...but seriously Napoleon Hill? Where's Lil Tommy Aquinas?

The idea is Augustinian. And this isn't a religious argument.

Augustinian wtf?

Try again. Your oblique references are @tian

You may feel that you have conscious free will to do, think and choose as you see fit, but there isn't much "free" about it since whatever choice you make or 'origianl thought' you have is the inevitable outcome of your prior experiences, genetics, enviroment etc.

If we could create a billion universes similar to ours where the entire history of that universe is identical to this, and we gave you a choice,
whatever you think or any conclusion you take on what to do would be the same every single time in every single universe.

But it doesn't really matter. The illusion of free will is still there.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Turdacious wrote:
Stop your nonsensical. Napoleon Hill demonstrated most of the things you should be looking for decades ago. The rest, unless you care about some greater metaphysical meaning of life, is just noise.

Did you really just counter a reasoned argument with that huckster- Napoleon Hill?

My brain already told me it prefers the illusion of conscious free will so I can't take sides even if I wanted to...but seriously Napoleon Hill? Where's Lil Tommy Aquinas?

The idea is Augustinian. And this isn't a religious argument.

Augustinian wtf?

Try again. Your oblique references are @tian

Let me put it in terms you can understand then:

odin wrote:can the pro-free-will people explain to me the process by which they create an original thought from scratch?

Did you come up with that idea yourself?

Libet's instructions to his subjects in the experiments were to:

"let the urge [to move] appear on its own at any time without any pre-planning or concentration on when to act".

I would consider that more a case of generating a motor reaction from underlying subconscious mechanisms rather than an act that is strictly of the "free-will". I don't buy the extrapolations he makes to assume that he has "proved" that free-will is an illusion at all.

Turdacious wrote:

odin wrote:can the pro-free-will people explain to me the process by which they create an original thought from scratch?

Did you come up with that idea yourself?

No. On many levels.

YID, I would agree. One guy and one experiment does little to sway

Turdacious wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Turdacious wrote:
Stop your nonsensical. Napoleon Hill demonstrated most of the things you should be looking for decades ago. The rest, unless you care about some greater metaphysical meaning of life, is just noise.

Did you really just counter a reasoned argument with that huckster- Napoleon Hill?

My brain already told me it prefers the illusion of conscious free will so I can't take sides even if I wanted to...but seriously Napoleon Hill? Where's Lil Tommy Aquinas?

The idea is Augustinian. And this isn't a religious argument.

Augustinian wtf?

Try again. Your oblique references are @tian

Let me put it in terms you can understand then:

again. cunt.

state your cause or piss along.

Nappy Hill is not a Christian reference. Dumdass.

Turdacious wrote:Nappy Hill is not a Christian reference. Dumdass.

No Fucking Shit, you idiot.

I don't just hate the religulous things you say, I hate all the other stupid ones, as well.

Kind of fits into this discussion. There is definitely a delay between when we sense something and when it makes it to our brain, and then next into our awareness. Because of these delays, by definition our awareness is living in the past. Whatever it is we are aware of already happened and something else is going on.

Where you can really see that is when you get two people interacting directly. Any time delay in a closed loop system will be destabilizing, and so you get those deals where both of you talk at the same time repeatedly until one of you just keeps talking over the other one. If you get into one of those moments and are mindful of it, you can kind of directly feel the delay at work.

Try it with the wife. Ask her a question, pause for about how long before she'd answer, then start talking again. Do it about 10 more times and enjoy. It'll annoy the hell out of her, but you've got her under contract so no biggie.

nafod wrote:Where you can really see that is when you get two people interacting directly. Any time delay in a closed loop system will be destabilizing, and so you get those deals where both of you talk at the same time repeatedly until one of you just keeps talking over the other one.

I can attest to this. I've taught through translators on a few occasions, and it was very disorienting.

An experiment to add... please read below:



VOMIT






EGGS





When you read the first word, unless you are a statistical anomaly, then you reacted with disgust. This could have been measured physiologically, but perhaps you were vaguely aware of this also.

Upon reading the second word, your mind confabulated a back-story about how the eggs may have caused the vomitting. In the absence of further stimulus, (such as this) chances are your 'conscious' mind would have readily accepted the stance that the unconscious mind made up, motivated by pure self-preservation.

If someone offered you some eggs immediately after reading these two words, you would have also felt some resistance to accepting them.


I think perhaps Libet's experiments show another aspect of this phenomenon. Perhaps we can exercise free-choice over some things, perhaps we can't, but there are demonstrably a huge number of scenarios and environments in which our brain really do make the decision for us. I suggest many of our opinions and judgements are also mostly the preserve of unconscious activity, unless we are accustomed to thorough introspection on a regular basis. But still, what is doing the introspection?