andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2006-09-01 09:32 am
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry

Free Will

Following an interesting discussion I had here I'm intrigued to see what other people think about Free Will:
[Poll #811650]
Threaded | Flat

[identity profile] ninox.livejournal.com 2006-09-01 08:42 am (UTC)(link)
The main aspects of free will is choice and ability of action. In a legislative society this is prohibited. There also incurs problems if your free will intrudes of that of others. Nice concept - good philosophical debate.

[identity profile] dalglir.livejournal.com 2006-09-01 09:21 am (UTC)(link)
I want to believe in Free Will.

I had, previously, supported romantic notions of free will but after spending some time researching this topic for essays at Univ, I became slowly more and more horrified by the arguments put forward by the mechanists because, well, they simply made more sense. Mechanist arguments boil down to describing human 'choices' as being wholly governed by a brain that is simply an extremely complex electrochemical machine. We have no 'mind'. What we think of as 'thought' is a byproduct of electrical and chemical reactions to stimuli.

If this is true and if one were able to know the electrical and chemical state of the human body and brain and if one were able to know the electrical and chemical thresholds required, throughout the body and brain, for various reactions to take place - then one could exactly predict the action of that person given certain stimuli. i.e. their action could be pre-determined.

Of course, given our current abilities, you'd have to be God to know this and to know the thresholds of stimuli but this doesn't detract from fact that it could be predetermined...

Like I say, I want to believe in Free Will but the mechanists have the most compelling arguments. I'm happy to dig some of this stuff out the bookshelf if you want some more info.
darkoshi: (Default)

[personal profile] darkoshi 2006-09-01 04:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know. I neither believe nor disbelieve. I generally do think that if you get down to it, everything is caused by other things.... but then again, in thinking about times when I waver between actions... not knowing what I want to do... this, or that, or neither... even very simple things like whether or not to get up right now... perhaps there is some randomness to it.

I guess to me, Free Will does boil down to randomness, though.
Threaded | Flat