If you have a point to make then just make it. Stop dancing around.

And by your answer I can see that you don't comprehend what I am saying at all, and probably don't want to. (You are not even in the same book so you can't be on the same page.)

So why don't you just get to the point and state what you believe about "free will" and save everybody a lot of wasted time dancing around with your questions while you show everyone how smart you think you are.

After reading a few of your posts it is clear you have some kind of opinion, and you are certain that you are right and everyone else is wrong. I'm just dieing to hear it.

I don't expect an answer until this afternoon though. Young whipper snappers like you usually sleep till noon.

Free Will:

Free = without cost or obligation
Will = verb, denoting motivated volition

Is there any volition in the universe that is not willed by natural universal law?
Is there motivation in which volition is not the outcome?

We are free to think. There is no cost or obligation to process cognitive thoughts. Thoughts, alone, do not require will and does not necessarily lead to volition.

Action, however are directly linked to cause and effect. Cause and effect are natural universal laws.

Therefore, can any action be totally consistent with the term “Free Will?”

We are animals with higher brain functions simply because of our physiology. When an animal is hungry it is motivated, by that hunger, to find nourishment. When sleep is required, there is only so long an animal can deny that need. We are animals equipped with instincts and genetics that take priority above “will”.

The freedom to think cannot be equated with freedom of action. Our motivation is not only related to universal laws, of cause and effect; motivation, action, is directly affected by intrinsic physiological qualities, of which we have no control.

Further, no matter how much information we include in the cognitive process, there is information outside the reach of cognition that also affects our course of actions.

Therefore, the words Free and will are two words that make no sense when put together.

Of course for those who believe that the physical world is a dream state, or that we are not a natural structure but rather a combination of simbiotic spirit and form my observance may not be acceptible. BUT to them I would say, there is little need of a spiritual entity, for science, research, language or any other institution the physical form is dependant on.

But as long as the spirits, you believe in, are BOUND to the physical world, you too have no free will in the matter.

In my opinion, its a little of both, with free will weighing in more heavily.

What is interesting, is that if we watch the brain work via FMRI we have began to get good enough in knowing how it works to see that your state of mind is outside normal parameters, and if we can map this we can tell you how you will respond in this "not yourself" state.

Great Post Di, I couldn't agree more. Context context context!

I agree that thoughts do not necessarily lead to volition, and they also do not "require" will. But if the will is not used to direct your thoughts with purpose, then you could simply become the effect of everything that happens to you, and the effect of your biological programing, indoctrination, brainwashing (mental programing) etc.

The will to direct your thoughts with purpose is the power of self direction. That is use of the will. If you do not use it, your automatic programming, training, brainwashing, learned behavior etc. kicks in.

The will is the power to direct your thoughts (your self) with purpose. One who does not use their will in this manner are simply pawns to be moved around by others and by circumstance.

So how is your self directed will any different then your programming?

If one action is programming, and another is self directed will what would show the difference?

Let me give you one example:

Our society and our religious establishments promote the idea that men and women should get married and .. raise children. That is the norm.

Our biological programing tells us the same thing. That is understandable and felt by both men and women by instinct.

When a person goes against their natural instinct and their societies programing to live their life differently, that is "the will" at work.

Using the will a person can choose to resist automatic programing and purposefully choose something else. Or by using the will, you choose to allow automatic programing to make choices. Only by use of the will can you reprogram the body and the brain.

Motor skills:
My typing into this computer is automatic. I don't look at the keyboard. My brain, in coordination with my fingers just type in the words. I don't think much about it. That is programing. It was something I learned to do in school.

There is a different keyboard arrangement that would allow me to type even faster if I wanted to retrain my brain and my fingers to learn that new keyboard. I have been told that the letters are easier to reach and a person who types on such an arrangement can type faster. But in order for me to learn that new typing method it would require my conscious and purposeful will to purposefully retrain my brain for that and to forget or put aside my prior programing for typing on the current keyboard.

The will is often required when you want to learn new things. You must chose to want to learn and you must place your attention on that new thing you are learning. Being interested in it is very important. If I was not interested in learning to paint pictures, I would never have spend so much time learning and practicing. Nobody programed me or forced me to learn to paint.

Self directed action is a personal unique and individual choice that involves personal preferences. Programed action is following programing choices, either automatically, or just for the ease of convenience.

True creativity requires a strong purposeful (and well used) will.

Being strong willed is sometimes mistaken for being stubborn, because a strong willed person may have their eye on the goal and may be totally focused and will not be distracted or discouraged by other things, other circumstances or other people. These traits are what successful people learn to use.

It is the tarot energy expressed in the card "The Chariot."

I have said that the Will is the "Power of self direction" and while the self is you, some people have a limited view of "self."

Some will insist that "self" is the body and the brain and the personality, nothing more than that. They will say that the brain does all the thinking and decision making. But this is not true in my opinion. The brain and the body are programed machines. They are not the "self."

The Will is the self. It is the true non-material thinking center. It is who you are in the spiritual sense.

If this were not so, we would all be like programed robots, predictable in every way.

Your way off. I woke up about three hours after noon. I think my points already been stated. Its known more as Hume's Fork. Science has recently delved into the point that decisions are actually made in the brain before you are even aware of them (or your "immaterial mind").

See this article



The idea of free will was dead before it was even started. Itd be like arguing the animal racizcosis can fly. Not only is it silly that your arguing such a thing could fly, but its even more so hilarious because the thing doesn't even exist.

FREE WILL FOR NON-


YOUR WILL IS BROKEN


---MANIPULATED
---STEREOTYPED

And is never heard from again.

until a person understands the plastic hallow influences in the world, then one can so call"MATURE"

This is either one of three things I think.

A) Your trying too hard to sound deep/intelligent.
B) Your drunk/high.
C) Your crazy (brain defect).

;-)

Your still not making any sense man. How about this. You perform an action for me that isn't dominated by any process going on within this forum or dominated by any past event in your life, that way you can prove to me that you can create an action that isn't the product of the surrounding situations your in (ie this forum). Post a picture of someone nude, I'll just say you posted it because your trying to make a point that you can be random. Type a bunch of random "Z's" same reason. Do an action that is of this "different book" you speak of. Show us your not a "pawn" or a part of chess. You cannot escape it and the sooner you come to accept it the better.

You define "will" as "your self" then you define "your self" as your "will". And ants are black therefore black is ants. Start making some sense.

I am aware of these experiments and they do not prove that free will does not exist.

Neither do they predict what a person is going to do "a long time before" they do it. The time lapse is merely a few or fractions of a second.

But what these experiments do support is my theory of how the human "mind" does not exist inside of the "brain" (which is a holographic projection and merely a biological computer that processes information.)

I have even mentioned these experiments or other similar ones in support of my theory.

Instead, the mind of the individual exists within the non-material human energy field which has its own space-time environment and is the true thinking center of human consciousness. Decisions are made in the mind, not the brain. The brain merely processes them.

The mind is non-material and operates within its own separate space-time. That is my theory. The experiments you mentioned above actually support that theory.

There is a delayed reaction between the decision the mind makes as it has not reached and been processed by the brain yet. That has to do with the two different space-time environments, one physical, the other non physical.

I wasn't even responding to you I was responding to someone else.

I make no sense to you because you don't know anything and you have no idea what I am talking about. You are clueless.

In the Tarot card deck, your energy is the page of swords.

so desire is programming and choice is will?

Artists . . . shesh.

Is that honestly how you understood my post? Are we that disconnected?

Do I not write clearly enough for you to understand what I am saying?

Since you don't seem to understand my examples I will try to answer your questions more directly.

Q:#1
So how is your self directed will any different then your programming?

Programing initiates automatic responses and actions, self directed will requires creativity and imagination.

(Have you ever seen the movie "Short Circuit"? about a military robot that was struck by lightning and became "alive?") That is a good example. But...

((That is something a computer (or programed robot) does not have. You cannot program a computer to have new ideas or to be creative or to have feelings, imagination or to develop its own preferences or opinions.))

Q#2.
If one action is programming, and another is self directed will what would show the difference?

A robot or computer does not truly think or imagine, it only responds to programing. The difference is imagination and feeling.

The difference is the creative faculty.

The creative faculty does not exist in a computer or programed machine, biological or otherwise. It exists with the will and the true thinking center of human consciousness.

No it wasnt fractions of a second. It was ten full seconds. Did you even read the article?

Secondly your idea that the will exist outside of the brain is fine, cause if we can map the persons decision before there even aware of it, (and awareness is what consciousness is), then your simply labeling your immaterial deity as being subject to the deterministic nature of the universe, and not actually a cause of any of the persons actions. For example if we can still map/determine a persons will (even if it goes outside our universe/space-time and then comes back to play a role in our universe) its still determinable in these experiments! You STILL lose! Even if the will is completely immaterial! Get over it already.

So what do I loose? You have only proven that my theory that mind exists outside of the brain and within a human energy field is more likely.

(I don't agree with your premise that "awareness is what consciousness is" but I have gone around and around about this subject on this club a lot with other people, so I'm not going into all of it with you.)

If you say they can map a person's decision before they are even aware of it, then you have identified "the self" as the brain. I can't agree with that premise either. The self is not the brain in my opinion.

What I assert is that the self is aware even before the actual brain processes the information in the physical world.
Also, that the self is the true thinking center and it is conscious and can be conscious apart from the brain and the body.

The will is still in tact. The will is the creative faculty of the thinking center that is the self. It is what sets you apart from a machine. I don't know why people want to spread the lie that there is no will or that it is not free, or that everything is determined. That is really absurd. We are alive. We are not simply programed machines. Even if we were, then you would have to answer the question.... who programed you?

Obviously that’s one perspective and this point has been inclusive in philosophical dialog. The self, in this philosophy, is able to integrate or synthesize but transcends the actual ‘process’ it’s involved in. This would fit some of the concept that JB is outlining. The stumbling block in this perspective is that “the self” and the physical being have time relational problems.

The physical being has a limited existence; it seems that evolution, in accordance with natural law, has endowed the physical being with memory. In a being of limited ‘time’ that memory serves as a survival mechanism. We can recycle memory for the purpose of envisioning the future and for planning and preparing for that future.

The self being transcendent of human nature, in this case, is the thinker utilizing the information being presented from the physical memory. This indicates that the self does not have time constraints and exists in the ever present “now.”

So the self has no memory, it does not have the ability to recall the past or imagine a future, it is inextricably bound to the ‘my’ present. It; the self, maintains a time center, it is as limited as the physical being, only in another way. While the physical being exists in a limited sequential time, the transcendent self can only exist in the present.

What this implies is that the self as a transcendent entity, has NO ABILITY TO CREATE because it has no memory, nor can it envision a future, therefore, it cannot plan nor prepare.

That leaves it sort of dead in the transcendental universe when it is not attached to a physical being.

This further implies that it is a simbiotic leech, of sorts, as it has no empirical ability or even reason to exist, unless it is bound to a physical being, but that physical being, in fact, nothing that is physical can be created by the transcendent self – it will not even REMEMBER anything that occurred while in its symbiotic position.

This sort of blows the rest of your theories, related to transcendent beings, right out of the water.




What sets the self apart from the machine, what value does it have unless it is tied to a being?



Is that an inferential statement? Are you inferring that the "we" that is alive must include a transcendent self? Can we not “live” without such an entity?



Evolution sets the program of all living beings and evolution is the effect of universal natural laws. Just like the idea of God, the transcendent self can not be empirically proven. We must initiate either inferential or deductive reasoning to come to a conclusion.

As a long history of philosophy indicates, inferential reasoning is much more easily argued and in light of new knowledge based on deductive logic, the inferential looses out.