RE: There Is No Such Thing As Free Will
ok, i'm going to weigh in on this....... your use of "studies" and "scientific data" really do not mean a whole lot. Anyone can come up with a study, or data that supports their theory....it doesn't always make it fact. After parsing your post i was left with a feeling of "is it possible we do not have free will?" and after giving it much thought i thought about what exactly "free will" is . i have come to the conclusion that "free will" is simply a conscious choice one makes, nothing more, nothing less.... A choice. sure there are many things that can influence a choice.... but does that determine that we do not have free will? certainly not. because "free will" is simply making a conscious choice, regardless of what may have influenced the choice, the choice was still made. See i thought about your theory that "free will" does not exist. now i had the choice to simply not comment on the post, or comment on the post... there was nothing compelling me to make either decision, to comment or not comment. I chose to comment, the reason why i chose to comment is irrelevant, i still had to make that choice....that reason alone shows that free will exists...as the definition of "free will" states "the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion." it was of my own discretion that i chose to comment, nothing more than influence does not make the action, but rather lends itself as a reason to choose to act, or not, upon it. influence alone cannot make the act, someone must consciously make an effort to act or react......
I used several forms of argumentations including scientific to support my argument.
how do you know which choices are yours then? :)
because i consciously made the choice. Regardless of influence i still had to make the decision...which is a choice. i mean bacteria didn't say "hey, buddy....you should comment on that shit", nor did all of your "several forms of argumentation" while they may have been influences which lent themselves to my choice, They didn't make the choice.. I did. it is somewhat of an insult to my intelligence to say that i am not intelligent enough to make a decision. it is tantamount to my saying you didn't author this post... for all i know a box of cornflakes wrote this and put your name on it.... But alas i am intelligent enough to know a box of cornflakes are incapable of doing such a task....
Sure you made a choice but the constituents for making it were not yours. If a computer prints something you wrote it doesn't mean the computer wrote it.
true, but the computer didn't have the free will to "choose" wether or not to print it .... that is where free will comes into play... it is the free will to decide wether or not to act.... but lets not fool ourselves into thinking we humans are alone in having free will, but we are alone in having the intelligence to know why we are making those choices.. An ape may choose to eat one fruit over another, but it does not necessarily know why it makes that choice....we humans not only know why we made the choice we have the ability to explain why we made the choice.... which is in a nutshell what free choice is, making a decision or choice, and knowing why we made that choice, regardless of consequence... it is like a theif who steals, he knows it is wrong, that it is against the law and that there are negative consequences to stealing...but he chooses to steal anyways. If our free will is predetermined as you believe, then there is no choice there is only reactions...which would also mean there is nothing out of sequence, or out of balance, that everything in the universe is already mapped out and that every action and reaction is already accounted for. If this were so then we would have the ability to stop crime before it begins...oh, but then that would also be a reaction and already planned out as it was preordained in your theory... Do you realize how rediculous that sounds?? by making the assumption that free will doesn't exist you are saying that we allow suicide bombings happen on purpose because it was already preordained... or that planes crash because it was meant to be... i'm sorry, but there are more instances that support free will than support preordainment...
Actually the computer (us) is programmed to print specific things at specific times....
the computer(machine) does nothing unless it is given imput from(us, the human being with free will and choice)to do a certain task.. whereas (us)the human being makes choices without having to to be given imput or be told to make a choice.... I know, it is hard for you to admit you are wrong, that my friend is the free will telling you that despite the evidence, you are still going to use your free will and ignore the imput and make your own decision....
The input comes from the environment. The choices a human makes are as free as a program choosing to print between RGB or CMYK color palettes. aka they are limited depending on what the environment provides. Sure the computer does have a choice, a limited one, but that set of choices does not belong or count as free will for the computer.