Free Will, Consciousness, Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 @, Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 23:43 (4277 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,
> MATT: The strongest drive causes us to act.
> 
> ... Of course there is no difference between what free and unfree will "look like", ...-Then we are done. I say this because I have no access to what's in your brain. You have none to mine. Even if we hook people up to brain scans, we won't know what scan corresponds to which thought. Which drive. -In absence of that kind of information, free will is a far greater "pie in the sky" than any deity man has worshiped over the aeons. -> By calling free will "a useful fiction" you have already predetermined that it is not real. -If you read me carefully, I'm pretty sure that I was explicit in saying "In the worst case its a useful fiction." This isn't a pronouncement. -You'll probably see me refer to it more offhandedly in the future, but to me, free will has been permanently relegated into the "normative" category: we will assume it because it is convenient. Not because it has any "truth." Truth is absolutely unreachable. -There comes a time when every mathematician, through logic, decides that a question is not just unsolvable, but the wrong question to begin with. -> I have no answer to these questions ... and it surprises me that by calling free will a fiction you seem to think you do. However, I am even more surprised that you consider the nature of our will (whether free or unfree) to be unrelated to the subject of our consciousness and our identity, and hence to be of no importance. But perhaps we simply disagree on what constitutes (ir)relevance ... which is why I keep asking you: irrelevant to whom, in what context, and to what subject?-Action is the only thing that can be observed. Therefore action is the only thing that's relevant. If you can't tell the difference between free and unfree, than there is no valid question to ask. From where would you strike a vantage? As I said before, even if you could map out a person's brain entirely--with or without consciousness--the entire question of free will itself is unanswerable in the most extreme degree. You said it yourself in the first thing I quoted you above: -> ... Of course there is no difference between what free and unfree will "look like", ...-We can never tell the difference. THAT is why its irrelevant, to everyone, in all contexts, and all subjects.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"


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