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#21
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Re: Free Will
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#22
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Re: Free Will
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Last edited by TomJrzk; February 13th, 2006 at 10:10 AM.. |
#23
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Re: Free Will
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And, just one more 'clever point', just cuz my testosterone is acting up again: I've never heard of a clinical depression termed 'determinism'; I think anyone who can grasp determinism can also understand that it's not hopeless, they still have 'choice'. Can you imagine anyone actually thinking, "hmmm, my decision whether to get out of bed this morning is predetermined so it sounds like I don't really have a choice at all so why should I choose to get out of bed? I'll just lie here forever."? No, everyone still has to pee and then we get a bit hungry and then we start railing against the oppression by the capitalists! So, I see no reason, yet, to soften the language. Here are my thoughts on free will in a nutshell: Tom's current view: 1. All behaviors, personality, thoughts, feelings, and dreams come from our brains. There's nothing supernatural or spiritual. 2. Therefore, whatever choices we make are predetermined, they rely solely on the current conditions of our brains: memories/prior experiences, instincts/personality and what we sense from our environment; there's nothing else to tip the balance between 'yes' and 'no'. 3. Every individual's choices are essential to our collective predetermined future. My predetermined choice to post this has changed your 'prior experiences'. Hopefully, enough of us will realize that we humans are the only beings that can consciously change our futures, and do so for the better. We are all cogs in the machine, there is no omniscient being that will straighten out whatever messes we make. |
#24
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Re: Free Will & Tom's amygdala
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Keep in mind, Tom, that when you experience fear (your “scary†feeling), it often has little to do with whatever you’ve consciously perceived to be the cause (e.g., Fred’s “precept�). Fear is generated when stimuli subconsciously trigger your subcortical amygdala, which results in behavior, feeling, and then conscious interpretation—you don’t run b/c you’re afraid, you’re afraid b/c you run. Now some here may read that and say, “Aha, we do lack free will!†But I prefer to think of these biological realities in this way: While the primitive subcortical and subconscious motivational/emotional neural mechanisms do indeed have tremendous influence on our behavior and conscious perceptions, we nevertheless can consciously and willfully discern, at least to some degree, the influence of these neural mechanisms and exercise at least some conscious and willful control (downward causation). So anyway Tom, here’s Sigmoid Fred’s tough love diagnosis: Fred’s “precepts†are not what’s triggering your fear—you have other issues. Grow up, be more humble, become more self-aware of the influence of the subconscious primitive neural mechanisms on your conscious perceptions, and realize that you do indeed have at least some free will and that you can choose to be morally responsible (downward causation). Sigmoid Fred |
#25
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Re: Free Will & Tom's amygdala
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Certainly, instinctive, fight or flight fear is generated as you say. That's not what I'm suffering from. You are still scary but I feel neither compulsion, neither fight nor flight; I guess that's what you excluded by 'often'. I am glad that you're still reading, though. |
#26
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Re: Free Will
Fred, you said,
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I would maintain that our intellectual conclusion that we should stay in class today instead of running off to the beach with our friends (as our more primitive emotions are urging us to do) has only as much power to control the decision as the emotional strength we grant it. And that this is an involuntary event. i.e. we will automatically give it the emotional power that our identity (higher level beliefs in the kind of person we believe ourselves to be) allows. If we fancy ourselves to be serious about the profession we are pursuing we may feel bad (or less good) when we consider blowing off class. If we are going to school for less noble reasons we may not feel so bad at the prospect and may instead feel good. But that feeling is what is considered, not the logical alternative itself. I propose that our decisions are made as the result of a summing of these emotional forces. Our logical conclusions have no force themselves other than what our identity (higher level beliefs) grants them in a specific context that must have some effect on our happiness or survival. And in that sense, our decisions are still therefore "determined". If we are free we are only free to be ourselves, which means that we are free to consider whatever emotional value to our decision alternatives that our identity has established. And of course, the higher level beliefs of our identity were chosen in our past because they also felt good to our emotional computer. They could have been chosen with emotional inputs from our intellect but that's dependent again on identity. Some people may tend to harbor only intellectually logical beliefs in their minds. Others may prefer (automatically give more emotional weight to) irrational religious inputs as mandated by the surf God, for example. But freedom is hardly the best term to use for something that occurs subconsciously. Margaret Last edited by Margaret McGhee; February 13th, 2006 at 01:59 PM.. Reason: Typos |
#27
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Re: Free Will
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If you can't give me a link, maybe you or JimB can let me know how to find it. I did a search on the whole forum plus what I could see on the archives and didn't find Todd's post. Thanks!!! Never mind, I persevered and found his quote (and I had it backward): "A shift of strict atheists to secularist deism as in the case of Flew wouldn't bother me at all". It was the "secularist" that made it clear to me. Last edited by TomJrzk; February 13th, 2006 at 03:59 PM.. |
#28
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Re: Free Will
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Nevertheless, again b/c of the overwhelming evidence that we humans can and do discern objective truths to perceive and understand ourselves and our world, I’m also convinced that we do have at least some conscious/cognitive free will and some sort of objective moral discernment and choice/responsibility (downward causation). Otherwise, no matter how you cut it, we’re essentially automatons, all subjects of a blind determinism and/or randomness, creatures with illusions that couldn’t possibly have any real objective moral discernment or moral choice/responsibility. And if that’s how it is, and how you and Tom see things, fine. But then would you please try to explain to Tom (again) that with such a POV, there’s no rational reason for him to be whining about other automatons, that don’t share his atheism, being “scaryâ€â€”b/c in such a world we’re all ultimately, well, automatons . . . |
#29
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Re: Free Will
just a brief post (OMG!!!)
i'm really busy organising relocation this week... my tone was a little grouchy yesterday (sorry about that) i got a little worried... thanks for not getting pissed with me. more next week! :-) |
#30
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Re: Free Will
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Also, I deeply pity your apparent inability to express your points without insulting me ("whining", this time). I know that must have made your life very difficult and whatever caused you to be that way must have been very uncomfortable. For that, I am sorry. |
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