Free Will: a new study, with timed reaction (Introduction)

by romansh , Sunday, May 01, 2016, 21:42 (2916 days ago) @ David Turell

romansh: We can define free will how we like. Our thoughts, choices, actions etc are not independent of cause. (Unless someone can bring some evidence to the table to the other).
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> > We can be sceptical all we want. Defining free will as something else, is fine; we can carry on discussing angels on the head of a bin.
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> > But the problem of everything we do being a result of cause does not go away.
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> David: I agree. The cause of our debate is an interpretation of the time the brain takes to tell us what we are experiencing and it does fill in data to help us to make independent choices. But we seem to pursue knowledge of reality accurately, and I can choose which cereal I want at the grocery using a biological sensing and interpreting machine.-AGAIN ... no one is debating that we make choices. It is the nature of the choices that is in question.-As dhw has conceded, with respect to cause and effect our choices and wills are not free.-The fact you can or do choose rice crispies from a plethora of other cereals is not the issue. Never has been. It is a question whether (causal) determinism is true or not, is the issue. -Just because there is not a gun to your head or you have an embolism in the brain forcing you to choose rice crispies does not make your will free except there in the sense there isn't an unusual coercion in action.-Whether the chemical/physical processes in the brain are fast or slow is irrelevant. The fact that they are there and ultimately guide our decisions is.