some implications of free will

Re: some implications of free will

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:46:07 -0700, Cheeby12 wrote:

> What is your faith?--

I am sort of like a Hindu


--
Dale
http :// www .vedantasite.org

Re: some implications of free will


"Dale Kelly" <dale.kelly@comcast,net > wrote in message
news:pan.2007.04.02.22.04.43@comcast,net ...
| On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:46:07 -0700, Cheeby12 wrote:
|
| > What is your faith?--
|
| I am sort of like a Hindu
| --
| Dale
| http :// www .vedantasite.org

vedanta sort of gives that away to those of us who take an interest in
comparative religion.

Re: some implications of free will

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 17:04:21 -0500, Dale Kelly
<dale.kelly@comcast,net > wrote:

> On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:46:07 -0700, Cheeby12 wrote:
>
> > What is your faith?--

> I am sort of like a Hindu

You are sort of like a LSD-addled moron. Why must you feel the
need to share your affliction in Usenet? Is it a cry for help?


--
http :// desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"I may be dead, but I'm still pretty." -- Buffy

Re: some implications of free will

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 20:31:43 -0600, Desertphile wrote:

> You are sort of like a LSD-addled moron. Why must you feel the need to
> share your affliction in Usenet? Is it a cry for help?--

I find the Hindu religion to be VERY close to my philosophical findings
in life, not perfect, but close enough to relate to the founders
philosophy

you seem to think that USENET should revolve around only your
philosophies, such is self-absorbtion and introvertion


--
Dale
http :// www .vedantasite.org

Re: some implications of free will

On Apr 2, 8:30 am, Desertphile <desertph...@nospam.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 23:20:22 -0500, Dale Kelly
>
> <dale.ke...@comcast,net > wrote:
> > let us define free will as the ability to respond to stimuli with choice
> > in a manner that is not determined by any factor but itself
>
> Please show evidence that free will exists. Thank you.
>
> -- http :// desertphile.org
> Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water

Did you deliberate with yourself before typing the words "Please show
evidence that free will exists. Thank you."? If so, and you hit the
"Send" button, then, yes, you had the freedom to do it, wanted to, and
acted accordingly. You also had the choice not to, but you rejected
it. More likely than not, you have free will.

W : )

Re: some implications of free will

On Apr 1, 9:20 pm, Dale Kelly <dale.ke...@comcast,net > wrote:
>
> let us define free will as the ability to respond to stimuli with choice
> in a manner that is not determined by any factor but itself
>

Then free will would necessarily be absent if nutrients replentished
exhausted molecules from the neurons which are involved in the
activities known as and identical with "free-willing," since by your
definition nothing but itself eliminates the possibility that the
activities of the nerve cells is all that we are.

> let us also define free will as the ability to have any response in with
> the same criteria above, under conditions of no stimuli
>

What about all the stimuli we have had since conception? Can we
somehow understand ourselves if we took that out of the mix? Plus,
people are known to go crazy very shortly when all stimuli are
removed.

> those who believe in emergent behavior, believe all of our responses are
> predetermined by biological means, in fact they believe all of our urges
> and desires result from biology
>

Some do not believe that cause and determination are always pre-
determined. How can you show that all is pre-determined or not pre-
determined?

> these two theories are in conflict
>
> I, for one, believe I have free will and that NOTHING determines my
> choices but myself, I am not saying we do not have conditioned responses
> to stimuli, but we choose based on will alone, what are conditioning is
>

How about if you free will can only influence [determine] about a
third of the activities within your brain and the determining events
outside the body? If every act of free will is a "shared power,"
shared with the current state of other parts of the brain and shared
with the percieved events external to the body then something
"partially" determines your choices. Hence you idea that nothing
determines you choices other than self is false.

> the implication of free will is that no determined system, like biology,
> which is determined by the rules of physics, can result in a free will
>

Science has a very strong case with much evidence developed over
decades that the activities of your brain alone is enough to
completely explain your subjective experience and will.

> what follows is that we are not biology, but psychology, that has a
> relationship to biology
>

Science claims that human psychology is identical to various
activities of a human brain and thats all.

> this also means that are psychology cannot result from any evolution or
> physically determined process of creation
>

The genes direct the assembly of the parts of the brain whose
activities are psychological states and processes. If these genes
change so will the assembly of those parts of the brain, hence
psychology or at least psychological capacities can evolve.

> it means, psychology is separate from biology in the sense of life after
> death
>

It may mean that psychology is and was a possibility before particular
bodies and brains brought it into actuality. After the person dies,
all those possibilities continue to exist but are unlikely to reoccur
unless we can succeed at constructing resurrection machines, much like
the ones on our shoulders now.

> and in the relationship of psychology to biology, it means there must be
> an intermediate, since we do not consciously interact with our central
> nervous system, yet the will exhibits times of domain over the body
>

We do interact with our central nervous systems. As in grammatical
structure, paragraphs manipulate sentences and sentences manipulate
words, and words letters, but even particular paragraphs can promote
the change of letters in order for the paragraph to express the topic
better than the individually constructed sentences.

paragraph=some higher mental event
lettersÎntral nervous system

> those who believe in behavior that emerges from biology, emergent
> behavior, believe a mysterious subconscious mediates the relationship
> between the conscious and the central nervous system
>

The limbic system interacts that way and it is mainly where our
feelings and emotions come from.

http :// www .google,com /search?hl=en&q=triune+brain

> but a free will would negate a subsconscious, in that the conscious will
> makes the choices, not the subconscious
>

More evidence against you position of a completely free will.

> this leads to a disconnect in reality, if reality requires an
> intermediate, the subconscious, that does not exist, there is a hole in
> reality, and what we percieve is not reality at all, but an illusion or
> dream, that is driven into us based onn our motives and emotions, by
> higher intelligence
>

Not necessarily if these neural activities evolved by chance and
natural selection.

- Cogency and competition

An inductive argument thus always runs the risk of failing to preserve
truth, that is, of leading to error. What makes the risk of error
worth taking is the chance of accepting a hypothesis which is true
instead of some competing hypothesis which is false. We may obtain an
improved account of inductive cogency by noting the importance of the
concept of competition among hypotheses as & feature of induction.
Whether it is reasonable to accept a statement as true depends on what
other statements it competes with, as well as on the probability of
the statement on the evidence.

Let us consider an inductive argument that once led philosophers and
scientists to the conclusion that the universe was designed by some
agent. To appreciate the inductive reasoning leading to this
conclusion, recall that before the theory of evolution was conceived,
the existence of human beings constituted a fundamental intellectual
problem. Even if one had theories of matter adequate to account for
many features of the physical universe, the existence of human beings
remained puzzling. The existence of animals presented a striking
contrast to inert matter, but, although some philosophers were willing
to look upon animals as complex physical mechanisms, to draw the same
conclusion concerning human beings was repugnant. Perhaps the
principal reason for this aversion was the existence of conscious
thought and rational cogitation. A philosopher who willingly rejected
the idea that lower animals think and reason could not very well deny
that he himself was thinking and reasoning while engaged in those very
activities. So the existence of humans, thinking and reasoning beings,
constituted a problematic phenomenon indeed. Naturally, the question
arose how to explain it.

We can frame this question by asking what hypothesis it would be
reasonable to accept as true by induction from the evidence. To some
thinkers, there seemed to be only two competing hypotheses. One was
that human beings came to exist as a sheer matter of cosmic chance or
accident. The other was that human beings came to exist as a result of
some design or plan. Hence, as these thinkers considered the matter,
the following two hypotheses were the competitors for acceptance in
this context:

1. Human beings came to exist by chance.

2. Human beings came to exist by design.

Not surprisingly, given that these were the hypotheses from which to
choose, the second rather than the first was considered more probable
on the evidence. It seemed extremely unlikely that anything so
remarkably intricate and complex as a human being should come to exist
by chance. Indeed, the intricate and complex organization of human
beings appeared strikingly analogous to the intricate and complex
characteristics of objects designed by human beings. This argument by
analogy, which we shall consider again later (Chapter Five), was
inductive, of course, but it was also based on a rather limited set of
alternative hypotheses. With competition limited in this way, it is
not at all surprising that some of the most acute and critical
thinkers of the past regarded hypothesis (2) as the one to be
inductively inferred from the evidence.

Now, the astute reader may have noticed that, strictly speaking, a
person who considers hypotheses (1) and (2) should, to be completely
judicious, consider one other hypothesis as well, namely, the
hypothesis that neither (1) nor (2) is correct. Thus, we could also
consider the following negative hypothesis:

3. Human beings came to exist by something other than chance or
design.

The omission of this hypothesis from the competition was justified
because of its uninformative nature. It offers no explanation at all
of the observed phenomena. Though it may well be true, if one is
seeking a hypothesis to explain the existence of man, hypothesis (3)
does not compete for that role.

A much smaller proportion of philosophers and scientists would today
consider cogent the inductive inference of hypothesis (2) from the
evidence. But one reason for this is that today we do not consider
these two hypotheses to be the only competing alternatives. There is
of course the evolutionary hypothesis

4. Human beings came to exist by evolution.

Here it is most important not to confound the informative hypothesis
(4) with the uninformative hypothesis (3). Hypothesis (3) is logically
implied by (4), but the justification of (3) depends entirely on the
cogency of inductive argument in favor of (4). Once the evolutionary
hypothesis was conceived, the competition included not only (1) and
(2) but also (4). Since many scientists and philosophers, perhaps
most, would consider hypothesis (4) to be the most probable of the
competing three, they consider the induction of that hypothesis from
the evidence to be cogent.

It is important to notice the difference between hypothesis (3) and
hypothesis (4). The former is negative and does not explain the
phenomenon in question, the existence of human beings. The latter, by
contrast, offers a very sophisticated and comprehensive theory, the
theory of evolution, as an explanation for that phenomenon. For that
reason, a person who would not consider hypothesis (3) as a competitor
would consider hypothesis (4) to be a competitor, and, indeed, a
successful competitor. The preceding arguments lead to a number of
important conclusions. First, the cogency of an inductive argument
depends, in part, on what other statements the hypothesis of the
argument competes with. Second, what statements a hypothesis competes
with itself depends on what hypotheses have been conceived and, in
this way, on the context of inquiry.

Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http :// www .amazon,com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/

> --
> Dale http :// www .vedantasite.org

Re: some implications of free will

On Apr 2, 5:19 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater 2...@yahoo,com > wrote:

> 1. Human beings came to exist by chance.
>
> 2. Human beings came to exist by design.
>
> Not surprisingly, given that these were the hypotheses from which to
> choose, the second rather than the first was considered more probable
> on the evidence. It seemed extremely unlikely that anything so
> remarkably intricate and complex as a human being should come to exist
> by chance. Indeed, the intricate and complex organization of human
> beings appeared strikingly analogous to the intricate and complex
> characteristics of objects designed by human beings. This argument by
> analogy, which we shall consider again later (Chapter Five), was
> inductive, of course, but it was also based on a rather limited set of
> alternative hypotheses. With competition limited in this way, it is
> not at all surprising that some of the most acute and critical
> thinkers of the past regarded hypothesis (2) as the one to be
> inductively inferred from the evidence.
>
> Now, the astute reader may have noticed that, strictly speaking, a
> person who considers hypotheses (1) and (2) should, to be completely
> judicious, consider one other hypothesis as well, namely, the
> hypothesis that neither (1) nor (2) is correct. Thus, we could also
> consider the following negative hypothesis:
>
> 3. Human beings came to exist by something other than chance or
> design.

Or human beings came to exist as a combo of 1 and 2.

Human beings came to exist by design through the operation of
existing laws of chance and probabilities, as it was designed ...

Re: some implications of free will

On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:32:31 -0700, Forever Afternoon wrote:

> Or human beings came to exist as a combo of 1 and 2.--


have you ever thought for instance that there are NO origins, and
everything has ALWAYS existed? to think otherwise you must face the first
cause argument, and any first cause, is an effect that requires a cause,
therefore, there is no first cause, only an infinite continuum of cause
and effect


--
Dale
http :// www .vedantasite.org

Re: some implications of free will


"Dale Kelly" <dale.kelly@comcast,net > wrote in message
news:pan.2007.04.02.22.07.35@comcast,net ...
| On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 14:32:31 -0700, Forever Afternoon wrote:
|
| > Or human beings came to exist as a combo of 1 and 2.--
|
| have you ever thought for instance that there are NO origins, and
| everything has ALWAYS existed? to think otherwise you must face the first
| cause argument, and any first cause, is an effect that requires a cause,
| therefore, there is no first cause, only an infinite continuum of cause
| and effect

Nothing has always existed. A quantum fluctuation in nothing gave rise to
the big bang and then the space/time continuum. As there is no time in this
primal nothing or emptyness there can be no causality.
Words fail us; maths can help a bit but the equations are symetrical with
respect to time and thus effect can precede cause. Verbal thought cannot
deal with quantum wierdness but the fact is that it works and can be used by
those of us not limited to thinking in words and numbers.

Re: some implications of free will

On Apr 2, 5:19 pm, "Immortalist" <reanimater 2...@yahoo,com > wrote:

> Science has a very strong case with much evidence developed over
> decades that the activities of your brain alone is enough to
> completely explain your subjective experience and will.

Science? Does this consist of scientists who have made these cases
based on the evidence you mention?

Maybe they just had the subjective experience of these cases based on
the subjective experience of this evidence, in which case there is in
fact no case or actual evidence.

Not only that but your observation of these supposed strong cases
which you think are based on much evidence is equally entirely
subjective.

Therefore everything you have just uttered on this subject is utterly
worthless. Why did you even bother?

Oh, right, you didn't have any choice and you were just compelled to
utter it.

Fred Weiss

Re: some implications of free will

Fred Weiss wrote:
> "Immortalist" <reanimater_2...@yahoo,com > wrote:

>>Science has a very strong case with much evidence developed over
>>decades that the activities of your brain alone is enough to
>>completely explain your subjective experience and will.

> Science? Does this consist of scientists who have made these cases
> based on the evidence you mention?

> Maybe they just had the subjective experience of these cases based on
> the subjective experience of this evidence, in which case there is in
> fact no case or actual evidence.

In order for a case to be considered scientific, it has to be confirmed
by peer review, and the evidence on which it is based must be replicable
by all. Thus, the very fact that the case is scientific implies that it
is *not* based on mere subjective experience of individual scientists.

--
--Sean
http :// spclsd223.livejournal,com /
'Hey, take it easy on Foreman. He's playing with one lobe tied behind
his back.' --Dr Gregory House

Re: some implications of free will

On Apr 2, 9:09 pm, Sean Carroll <seanc...@hotmail,com > wrote:

> In order for a case to be considered scientific, it has to be confirmed
> by peer review, and the evidence on which it is based must be replicable
> by all. Thus, the very fact that the case is scientific implies that it
> is *not* based on mere subjective experience of individual scientists.

All true but it also implies that the belief in the case was not
compelled, i.e. that the scientists didn't *have to* reach the
conclusion they did, that they reached that conclusion...well...of
their own free will.

Fred Weiss

Re: some implications of free will

Fred Weiss wrote:
> Sean Carroll <seanc...@hotmail,com > wrote:

>>In order for a case to be considered scientific, it has to be confirmed
>>by peer review, and the evidence on which it is based must be replicable
>>by all. Thus, the very fact that the case is scientific implies that it
>>is *not* based on mere subjective experience of individual scientists.

> All true but it also implies that the belief in the case was not
> compelled, i.e. that the scientists didn't *have to* reach the
> conclusion they did, that they reached that conclusion...well...of
> their own free will.

Non sequitur. In fact, it implies almost the opposite -- it implies that
they reached the conclusion because they had to, because that is what
the evidence demonstrates for anyone who looks at it. If their
conclusions were pure free will, then they wouldn't agree on the
conclusion in the first place, unless everyone somehow magically made
the exact same decision despite all their different, independent wills;
and why would they do that if they had completely free choice?

--
--Sean
http :// spclsd223.livejournal,com /
'Hey, take it easy on Foreman. He's playing with one lobe tied behind
his back.' --Dr Gregory House

Re: some implications of free will

On Apr 3, 8:05 pm, Sean Carroll <seanc...@hotmail,com > wrote:
> Fred Weiss wrote:
> > Sean Carroll <seanc...@hotmail,com > wrote:
> >>In order for a case to be considered scientific, it has to be confirmed
> >>by peer review, and the evidence on which it is based must be replicable
> >>by all. Thus, the very fact that the case is scientific implies that it
> >>is *not* based on mere subjective experience of individual scientists.
> > All true but it also implies that the belief in the case was not
> > compelled, i.e. that the scientists didn't *have to* reach the
> > conclusion they did, that they reached that conclusion...well...of
> > their own free will.
>
> Non sequitur. In fact, it implies almost the opposite -- it implies that
> they reached the conclusion because they had to, because that is what
> the evidence demonstrates for anyone who looks at it.

Equivocation. You are confusing logically compelling with biologically
determined. They are obviously not the same thing or people wouldn't
believe in nonsense - and they obviously do.

> If their
> conclusions were pure free will, then they wouldn't agree on the
> conclusion in the first place,...

Now you are confusing/equating free will with "causeless". The fact
that scientists agree on many things, i.e.that there is a cause for
their agreement, is certainly not a denial of their free will.
Scientists aren't robots. And of course there are many disagreements
in science, if not on most basics, then certainly at least on many of
the details.

If scientists agree on things because they are (biologically)
compelled to, then what is the status of *the truth* of their beliefs?
All you could say is that a lot of them agree on it - and because they
had to. You have no way of knowing if any of it is actually true
however. The same applies as well to all of your own beliefs.

Fred Weiss

Re: some implications of free will

On Apr 3, 6:19 pm, "Fred Weiss" <fredwe...@papertig,com > wrote:
> On Apr 3, 8:05 pm, Sean Carroll <seanc...@hotmail,com > wrote:
>
> > Fred Weiss wrote:
> > > Sean Carroll <seanc...@hotmail,com > wrote:
> > >>In order for a case to be considered scientific, it has to be confirmed
> > >>by peer review, and the evidence on which it is based must be replicable
> > >>by all. Thus, the very fact that the case is scientific implies that it
> > >>is *not* based on mere subjective experience of individual scientists.
> > > All true but it also implies that the belief in the case was not
> > > compelled, i.e. that the scientists didn't *have to* reach the
> > > conclusion they did, that they reached that conclusion...well...of
> > > their own free will.
>
> > Non sequitur. In fact, it implies almost the opposite -- it implies that
> > they reached the conclusion because they had to, because that is what
> > the evidence demonstrates for anyone who looks at it.
>
> Equivocation. You are confusing logically compelling with biologically
> determined. They are obviously not the same thing or people wouldn't
> believe in nonsense - and they obviously do.
>
[...]
>
> If scientists agree on things because they are (biologically)
> compelled to, then what is the status of *the truth* of their beliefs?

Obviously, the truth of their beliefs would be determined by the
consonance
of those beliefs with objective reality, same as if they agreed on
things for any
other reason. It does not matter how those beliefs were derived.

> All you could say is that a lot of them agree on it - and because they
> had to. You have no way of knowing if any of it is actually true
> however. The same applies as well to all of your own beliefs.
>

And this is also true if scientists agree on things because of a free-
willed choice.
All you can say is that a lot of them agree on it - and because they
chose to do so.
You have no way of knowing if any of it is actually true however. The
same applies
as well to all of your own beliefs.