Free Will: Egnor shows neurological proof (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 30, 2020, 14:01 (1454 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: This argument makes total nonsense of your concept of free will: “the soul can only think with the form of brain it has to work with”, so clever brain, clever thoughts; stupid brain, stupid thoughts; warped brain, warped thoughts. And these conditions don’t influence your decisions? You could hardly have a more devastating rebuttal of free will (we’ll leave dualism out of it for the time being)

DAVID: Exactly!!! Your bolded phrase is correct!!! They limit your possibilities/range of thought. Sick brains force sick thinking. Limited brain caused limited thinking. The free will expression of thoughts will be sick and limited in a sick brain. Full and 'normal' free will requires a normal brain.

dhw: Aside from the problem of what constitutes “normal”, you’ve almost got it! But if the sick brain forces sick thinking, the determinist will tell you that your thinking is dependent on your brain, and so there is no such thing as free will, and since the nature of thought depends on the brain, the materialist/determinist will tell you that there is no such thing as the “soul”.

DAVID: I don't care what a determinist thinks about the presence of the soul's relationship to the brain. I am answering from the viewpoint of my theory of dualism, and nothing more, and I don't care if determinists negate the soul. Egnor and I believe in the soul and present our thoughts from that viewpoint.

That’s no problem, except that your comment above does not even mention the soul, and presents a potent argument both for determinism and for materialism.

DAVID: […} We all have limits. I'm not the genius Einstein was. As I've noted in the past the complexity of one's concepts depends on the complex ability of one's brain to allow their production, etc. etc. […] So I will agree with you in a limited way. We all have limits to our desires about our possible accomplishments in life.

dhw: You are agreeing with me in a total way. All this is option 2 […] And what you are missing is option 1. And our conclusion will depend on which of these approaches we adopt.

DAVID: As I interpret both your options, both are valid and correct. You are forced to use the brain you are given or develop in illness or whatever circumstance alters its function. But free will is still exercised within the old or new limits that appear.

dhw: Yes, both are valid and correct, and so your belief or disbelief in free will depends on which of the approaches you adopt. Thank you for agreeing with me at last! Egnor has “proved” nothing, and I think we can now close this thread.

DAVID: Egnor's proof is totally valid in this discussion. His point still is if the brain is the lone creator of thoughts (sans soul), uncontrolled electricity from seizures entering the **** that are used for thinking should create thought and they do not. What is lacking is the driving force from the soul, the true originator of thought by using the brain circuits. I haven't seen you disprove that considering neither he nor I care about determinism's dismissal of a soul at work.

Unfortunately there is a missing noun (see ****). Do you mean the brain cells that materialists believe are used for thinking? If so, you have made the opposite point yourself: “sick brains force sick thinking”. Not no thought but sick thought. If the patient’s sick brain makes him think sick thoughts, how does that prove that the patient has a thinking soul and free will?

Egnor follows option 2, as does Aquinas: “My free will is inclination based on abstract reasoning that arises wholly from me. Nothing other than me determines my will.” But Egnor also says: “…these complex seizures always involve concrete thoughts and actions” but “There are no seizures that invoke abstract thought or abstract decisions—there are no free will seizures.” If the soul is responsible for abstract reasoning, then it should be able to reason about the concrete thoughts that occur when the brain is sick. BUT IT DOESN’T! So how on earth does this “prove” that there is a soul and there is free will? On the contrary, it supports the materialist equation of sick brain = sick thoughts, clever brain = clever thoughts, stupid brain = stupid thoughts. (However, this is contradicted by NDEs, in which abstract reasoning takes place when the brain is not functioning. Hence my own agnosticism on the subject.)

You have now agreed that whether we believe in free will or not depends on what we think the will is free from. Option 1: free from all influences beyond our control (e.g. the nature of our brain). Option 2: free from all constraints other than those imposed by the situation and by our own limitations. These options apply whether you are a dualist or a materialist.