free will

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Originally posted by joz:
Busy at the mo so I'll get the rest later....

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That view would be fine if the those random events happened, disordered the system and then stopped and let purely deterministic forces take over, the problem is that the random interactions still occur so there will always be some random influence, in most real world systems statistical aproximations are very good at describing macroscopic effects and hence there is to a large extent causality in the macroscopic world, however other systems are chaotic and small fluctuations lead to increasingly unpredictable patterns...

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But the point is that the disordering randomness of QM can`t be switched off to let classical physics etc take over.....

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One of the aspects of free will is that it is unpredictable, but random? Free will also includes the ability to choose and randomness does not ‘choose’ anything, it’s just a probability distribution, no choice involved.Then comes the next question, why do we choose? There must be some reason, or else how is our choice rational/conscious?We make choices for reasons, if our choices are unexplainable then they are not rational or conscious. But if you can explain every choice that you make, how is your choice free? How can freedom exist?{Fixed quote box - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 12-26-2002]

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if somebody were to sneak up behind me and ballistically emplace a conical lead object in the fleshy, red, basal part of my neural net and therefore cause the entire construct to reach equilibrium with the outside environment, that wouldn't be murder would it?

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rather unmoving isn't it?As for free will, if there is nothing supernatural about the brain [i.e. it obeys a set of physical laws] then our decisions are by definition unfree.

You obviously need to spend more time thinking about this.

how true

It is true what you say, that without some 'supernatural' assumption, consciousness is unfree. but one might ask how it is possible for a 'free' consciousness to exist or whether the concept is merely a human misconception.

Freedom knows no laws and yet our minds are simply anomalies of the physical world. Therefore we are not free. If anyone tells me 'we have free will', i will ask them, which part of my thinking process is free? where is this 'free entity' that chooses? How does it work?
If they manage to figure out how it works, then they have found unintentionally that it is unfree. On the other hand it would be paradoxical to say, 'it is impossible to know its workings'.