Free Will (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Monday, September 06, 2010, 13:07 (5191 days ago) @ romansh

Romansh has defined free will as "the ability to act or to make choices independently of the environment or of the universe."-ROMANSH: Which part of my internals are not part of the universe? ... joke: sort of.-Well, it's not really, because you then quite rightly assume that my reference to "uncontrollable" includes our unconscious, "which controls much of our behaviour", and yet you're not sure how your definition "limits these possibilities". Your definition quite specifically entails a separation between the ability and the environment/universe (how else can it be independent?), so how does your definition include the entity's ability to act independently of elements of the entity itself?-You say that locking a person up in a box limits his freedom of action, not his freedom of will. Any confusion here is purely of your own making, since your definition of free will includes the ability to ACT independently of the environment ... which in this case would be the box. Your definition therefore conflates freedom of action with freedom of will (the "crime" of which you accused George). In terms of my own definition, the man in the box clearly can't decide that he will leave the box (so even if there is such a thing as free will, it can't be exercised), but he can decide what to do while he's in the box (scream, contemplate the nature of free will, play with the spiders). The environment will elicit a decision, but we don't know to what extent the decision will be determined by factors of temperament that are beyond his own control.-You write: "If by constraints you meant genetics, evolution, chemistry and physics ... then fair enough." These, and more besides (e.g. the subconscious, the effects of disease). -You still object to the inclusion of consciousness as part of the definition. I'm afraid I can't see the relevance of the Pinker quote. The "zombie" Georges Rey's loss of sentient experiences does not stop him from being conscious of the loss, from communicating his consciousness of the loss, and from living his life. However, it may well have had an effect on the decisions he has made during that life, in which case the quote proves my own point: that our freedom of will may be limited by internal factors as well as external.-You ask: "Should our definitions be in our image?" I'm not sure what you mean by definitions "in our own image". We have created the terminology. Consciousness, intelligence, free will do not come in neatly labelled packages. We have given these names to things we observe in ourselves, and we then look around to see if there are similar phenomena outside of humanity. We ask if a brick, an amoeba, or a duck-billed platypus has the same mental faculties as we have. Do you envisage any other procedure?-You are able to dissociate your reasoning from your pragmatic existence. I suspect that all of us on this website play the same game, which in fact is essential if we are to keep our sanity. We know virtually nothing for certain, but we act as if we did because the alternative would indeed be to become a zombie. "Most importantly, pragmatically speaking, I can identify with myself." Yes, sir. You have discovered the reality of the self ... even if your reason tells you there is no such thing.