Information and free will (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, October 02, 2011, 19:31 (4779 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: David Deutsch of Oxford (Physicist) on information has a life of its own and free will certainly exists:-http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/38888?in=36:40&out=46:45-ROMANSH: It would have been nice if David Deutsch had clarified what our wills are free of.-DAVID: As I understand the problem, some studies of the brain show electrical activity before action, as if our brain or some other preprogramming tells us what to do. I don't believe a word of that thought. If I am going to move my arm I recognize that intention before I do it, and there has to be some brain activity to cover just the intention. I have free will. I think what I want to think.-I presume Romansh's comment relates to the constraints that are beyond our control, and during our discussion on the subject, we spent a lot of time on the internal constraints ... the most obvious one being the brain we're born with. David, you refer to "I" as if "I" were separate from the physical brain, and that underlies not only the problem of free will but also that of identity. It all boils down to whether we are entirely dependent on our physical cells or we have a form of energy within ourselves that is independent of them and is capable of directing them. That may also be seen as an analogy to the question of whether there is or is not a form of conscious energy that is independent of the material universe as we know it. Your old Greek buddies used to relate such analogies to microcosm and macrocosm. There are lots of routes back to your "first cause" ... and all of them lead to a T-junction!