Free Will, Consciousness, Identity (Identity)

by dhw, Sunday, August 12, 2012, 18:13 (4485 days ago) @ dhw

A scond passage from the Guardian review of Tim Spector's Identically Different: Why You Can Change Your Genes reads as follows:-"Spector is able to attach some fairly reliable figures to the heritability of many traits. Where there is autism in an identical twin, there is a 60% chance the other will have it. More surprisingly, he reports "a 40%-50% genetic component to belief in God." But you don't live your life by percentages: your life is 100% yours ... genes, good and bad luck, roads not taken, all included."-At first sight this seems to be a vote for free will, since it suggests that regardless of the circumstances, you are in control of your response to them. (I must say I too am surprised, if not downright sceptical, about the genetic link to belief in God ... how the heck can such a thing be observed, let alone measured?) But "your" life yet again raises the question of who and what actually constitutes "you"? Our on-going identity is the sum of our physical selves, our experiences, and the unfathomable phenomenon we call the mind. So even those factors that have been imposed on us are still "us" and no-one else. In that sense, the quote is correct: our life is 100% ours. But no-one can possibly know where unconscious influences might end and an autonomous, conscious decision-making process might begin.