Sending myself crazy!

Is there such a thing as true choice?I want more the people who construct there thoughts through scientific backing as I already know what most others will say. Seriously, I cannot make sense of this 'choice', it baffles me. Does it exist?

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Originally posted by RetroCrono:
Is there such a thing as true choice?

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I want more the people who construct there thoughts through scientific backing as I already know what most others will say. Seriously, I cannot make sense of this 'choice', it baffles me. Does it exist?

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Choice? I might be able to answer if you were to define what this choice was between.....Are we talking choice to believe or not? Or free will? Or what?

Just choice in general, does it even exist? If everythings bound by structural naturalistic laws than how can such a thing exist? Even for the incredibly complex human mind, how can it work out of the realms of what it's bound by?I need some insight...

Interesting question. If you ask me, I believe that there IS free choice. I back this up from several points. First, I hold a deist view of creation, and while I may differ from traditional deism in that I do not believe that God is dead or doesn't care, it is pretty evident that He does not interfere in this clockwork universe. The arguement may be made, then, that a clockwork universe is just working out it's mechanisms according to the laws that run it, and all our actions and decisions are just manifestations of the cooling of the universe, and as such we do not have free will any more than a cog in a clock chooses to rotate and interact with the other components of the clock.I think the key to free choice is found in quantum physics. All of the macroscopic universe is just a manifestation of average probability. On the most microscopic level, physics operate under different laws and is much less clockwork. Many studies that can be repeated in laboratories show that the state of the universe and reality is dependent on human perception/choice. Light is inherently both a wave and a particle, a paradox, being that one cannot be both. If you do an experiment, and look for a particle, light will be found in particle form only. If you look for a wave form of light, only a wave form will be found. The state of the most basic form of existence, energy, is dependent on the choice of the human mind to decide what form it will take. This shows a property of the universe that is not clockwork and mechanical, but interactive with intelligence and choice. There is also a randomness to quantum physics that throws the whole clockwork universe theory into a ringer. As I mentioned earlier, the macrospopic universe is a manifestation of probability. At any given time, an infinite amount of random quantum actions are decided by chance. Does the electron move left or right, up or down, does it combine with a proton, does it exchange itself with another electron from another atom? All these actions are completely random. We can predict that out of probability, 50% of a radioactive substance will decay within a given time, (halflife). But the actual process of decay is far from clockwork and organized. Nothing is so set as to know that "this atom will give off one electron every 12 minutes." Instead, we know that on average, this particular type of atom will on average give off so many electrons over a period of years. They may be evenly spaced out, or they may all be released at the begininng or end of that time frame. With this randomness in the universe, the argument that our percieved choice is just a manifestation of the predestined workings of a machine falls apart.I know that was rambling and hard to follow. I hope I made at least a little bit of sense. If you want, I will get you some more concrete examples of the phenomena that I was trying to describe, or mabye describe them a bit better.Peace

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Originally posted by RetroCrono:
Just choice in general, does it even exist? If everythings bound by structural naturalistic laws than how can such a thing exist? Even for the incredibly complex human mind, how can it work out of the realms of what it's bound by?

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I need some insight...

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The clockwork universe died in the early 20th century at the hands of Heisenburg, Schrodinger and co......

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Originally posted by RetroCrono:
Just choice in general, does it even exist? If everythings bound by structural naturalistic laws than how can such a thing exist? Even for the incredibly complex human mind, how can it work out of the realms of what it's bound by?

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I need some insight...

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I can highly recommend the Determinism and Freedom Web site ...
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htmThis covers much of the most important historical and contemporary thought on the issue and is compiled by the brilliant if eccentric Ted Honderich.Of course, you may find that it just drives you even more crazy!

im not sure if my actions are choices but my faith in Jesus i am very sure is a choice because it isnt based on something that i can witness and have a visible effect on.------------------
"Overspecialize and you breed in weakness" -"Major" Motoko Kusanagi

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Originally posted by KingPenguin:
[b]im not sure if my actions are choices but my faith in Jesus i am very sure is a choice[/QUOTE]

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OK, if it's a choice, then stop having faith in Jesus for a day, or an hour, or even a minute.

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If your faith in him is really a choice, then you should be able to turn it on and off.

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[QUOTE]because it isnt based on something that i can witness and have a visible effect on.
[/b]

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Ah, but you weren't born believing, were you? You have years and years of parental influence and churchgoing and instruction which have heavily influenced you.You would have probably been indoctrinated in a similar way, but in a different religion, if you had been born in a different country, you know. You would have, most likely, been raised a Hindu if you had been born in India, a Muslim if you had been born in Saudi Arabia, Buddhist or Shinto if you had been born in China, etc.

OK, if it's a choice, then stop having faith in Jesus for a day, or an hour, or even a minute.If your faith in him is really a choice, then you should be able to turn it on and off.
--- i cant turn off love and faith but theyre are still times when i have less faith.Ah, but you weren't born believing, were you? You have years and years of parental influence and churchgoing and instruction which have heavily influenced you.--- i was born a child of god and i cant deny that. Those years of church going and parenting have only strengthened my faith and love and assured me that i was being a good person and one worthy of my existence.You would have probably been indoctrinated in a similar way, but in a different religion, if you had been born in a different country, you know. You would have, most likely, been raised a Hindu if you had been born in India, a Muslim if you had been born in Saudi Arabia, Buddhist or Shinto if you had been born in China, etc.
--- not really id know that there was something missing from my life i can feel Jesus's love for me.------------------
"Overspecialize and you breed in weakness" -"Major" Motoko Kusanagi

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Originally posted by joz:
The clockwork universe died in the early 20th century at the hands of Heisenburg, Schrodinger and co......

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No, that has nothing to do with that. Doesn't everything in energy work by cause and effect? Some things are unpredictable, however every effect still came from a cause, whether we understand it or not. Therefore how can humans exist in energy but function differently. Every single action you take and every single choice you seem to partake in comes from some sought of cause. Seriously, is this choose, or an illusion of choose?

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[This message has been edited by RetroCrono, 03-12-2002]

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Originally posted by RetroCrono:
No, that has nothing to do with that. Doesn't everything in energy work by cause and effect? Some things are unpredictable, however every effect still came from a cause, whether we understand it or not. Therefore how can humans exist in energy but function differently. Every single action you take and every single choice you seem to partake in comes from some sought of cause. Seriously, is this choose, or an illusion of choose?

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Seriously the answers to your question can be found by picking up any decent introduction to QM. cause and effect only exsists as such in large systems at small levels things exsist as probabilistic wavefunctions, you can`t tell where they are and how fast they are moving with any real certainty due to Heisenburgs principle, and thats the sort of scale that decisions are made on in the brain, ergo thought is not a result of cause and effect as such and choice does exsist....

Thanks for your thoughts joz, I'm going to have to look into this more before I can properly get my thoughts together on the subject. However, if free choice is real, you do realise that allows God to be an all loving God.

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Originally posted by RetroCrono:
Thanks for your thoughts joz, I'm going to have to look into this more before I can properly get my thoughts together on the subject. However, if free choice is real, you do realise that allows God to be an all loving God.

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WTF do you mean? When you say free choice do you mean free will?

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Originally posted by joz:
WTF do you mean? When you say free choice do you mean free will?

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Ah...yea, that's what I meant, just don't bite my head off now.

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Originally posted by KingPenguin:
[b]OK, if it's a choice, then stop having faith in Jesus for a day, or an hour, or even a minute.

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If your faith in him is really a choice, then you should be able to turn it on and off.
--- i cant turn off love and faith but theyre are still times when i have less faith.[/QUOTE]

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I didn't ask you to turn off the "love" that you feel. I also didn't ask you to feel "less" faith.

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I asked you to turn off yourfaith.

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If you are in the group here which thinks that believing in God/Jesus is, indeed, a choice, you basically just said that you can't choose to not believe.

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So, if you can't turn your faith off by choice, why do you think anyone can turn faith on by choice?

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You actually sidestepped answering that question directly by changing "faith" to "love", but I hope you will answer the question directly eventually.

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Ah, but you weren't born believing, were you? You have years and years of parental influence and churchgoing and instruction which have heavily influenced you.

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--- i was born a child of god and i cant deny that.

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Buddhists do all the time, so I don't know why you think it's a given.

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Like I said, you have had years and years of influence by family and churchgoing to infuence you. Why else would you think you are a "child of God", or what have you?

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You were taught to think this.

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If you had been raised a Buddhist, thinking that one is a "child of God" is just a wierd concept and you wouldn't think that way at all.

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Those years of church going and parenting have only strengthened my faith and love and assured me that i was being a good person and one worthy of my existence.

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Right. You were trained to be a Christian as well as all of the moral training that accompanied the religion. That's my point. It was training, and you were rewarded for believing in a certain way.

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[QUOTE]You would have probably been indoctrinated in a similar way, but in a different religion, if you had been born in a different country, you know. You would have, most likely, been raised a Hindu if you had been born in India, a Muslim if you had been born in Saudi Arabia, Buddhist or Shinto if you had been born in China, etc.
--- not really id know that there was something missing from my life i can feel Jesus's love for me.
[/b]

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No, you don't know that at all.That is like saying if I had been born into a vegetarian culture I would have known that there was something missing in my life; eating meat.How would I miss something I had no knowledge of?Come on, now, can't you see that you are fighting against reason and logic by reaching to "I would have" type statements?Isn't it quite reasonable to imagine that you would have been a Muslim if you had been raised in a Muslim country, or a Shinto or Hindu or Buddhist in an Asian country, etc.? Do you not think that most of the people following those religions are doing fine and probably don't feel like there is anything "missing" any more than most people in other countries and religions?After all, there are a lot more non-Christians in the world than Christians.