Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 13, 2020, 07:24 (1254 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Brain seizures cause loss of control and in many cases loss of consciousness. I don’t find it surprising that someone who has lost control and/or consciousness does not think abstractly or make decisions! Sometimes these patients behave irrationally – as do drunkards – but this would suggest that seizures, like alcohol, change the way in which the brain functions, i.e. the state of the brain determines the mode of behaviour. Why would an immaterial, abstractly thinking, decision-making soul be affected?

DAVID: Seizures are burst of improper electricity. Egnor's point is they never produce immaterial thought which suggests the m Your bold makes the point.

Yes, my point being that since seizures affect the brain, causing loss of control or of consciousness, or strange behaviour, they do NOT suggest that there is an immaterial, abstractly thinking, decision-making soul.

dhw: Do you regard free will as meaning free from all the influences I have listed that have made you what you are? I don’t see how that is possible. Or do you mean that your decisions are yours and yours alone, free from constraints imposed on you by sources other than the situation and your own limitations? If so, then I agree with you and Aquinas that we do have free will.

DAVID: We are free to sort out our previous developed prejudice and biases and express new thought. My example: I was raised by parents as a liberal politically. I am now a Libertarian, very grossly different. Your last statement encompassed that approach with Aquinas, and in that I agree. I am completely free to change my mind, and so are you.

I have put both arguments across, depending on what you think “free will” is free from. You haven’t told us.

DAVID: As usual you draw a line in the sand and stand on both sides of it. My immaterial decisions may have to use the brain to create them, but the arise in my immaterial soul /consciousness under my sole control. They may be influenced by past learned concepts which are also immaterial.

dhw: They can also be influenced by past events which are material! Poverty, violence, physical disability, accidents, rape… And part of our identity is already formed by our genes!

DAVID: Genes help make IQ, but not concepts.

Of course. And I suggest that our IQ is a major influence on how we make our decisions, and our genes are what we are born with, i.e. a material influence which is beyond our control and which we cannot be free from.