A Sense of Free Will: the consciousness quagmire (Introduction)

by romansh , Tuesday, September 15, 2015, 22:37 (3139 days ago) @ David Turell

With a minimal background in philosophy, I find from your discussion my position, which I have placed in bold letters. I don't understand your strong determinism which seems to imply I am not in control of my intentions, despite the fact that I understand my source of being comes from the energy of the universe. I have been given my control of me.-So we seem to end up in some sort of semantic misunderstanding. It would appear a hard determinist's definition may be fair enough after all.-Nevertheless the problem remains, regardless of what name we give it. The problem being if cause and effect is true, then every fundamental particle that makes up the thing called me is a consequence of prior events then this has certain consequences for how I might view myself. And this will be true for every larger structure that is composed of these fundamental particles. This should even be true for psychological events that we and most co Paton lists might point to.-For instance if I went to get a psychologist's help, I would fully expect that she would fully expect my current condition is a result of past events - experience or physical. And she would try to nudge me in a future direction, her advice would be based on her past experience. Whether or not I take on her advice would depend on my past conditioning.-So what are the ramifications for you, given that you believe that every particle within your body responds in a deterministic way?-Looking forward to you considered reply.