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It would only be a part of a larger causality.
EVEN IF (which it doesnt) memory before life exists.
Can you not see the many mental disorders you are making much worse.
Your god doesnt exist... sigh.
you dont have free will and spouting new age bull crap ISNT logic...
However, this does give us, as you say, be a tiny bit of wiggle room. If a choice has to be made that will result in equivalent outcomes, then you are free to make that choice without restriction. However, it is arguable - as I'm sure Wertdagf would point out if I didn't - that such 'free will' is barely worth having, because the decisions are about meaningless things - really trivial, really meaningless. Your example - what colours you choose to wear to a funeral - certainly doesn't qualify. Our clothes are highly efficient signalling mechanisms: both the colours you choose to wear and how you look wearing them will communicate stuff about you to the other mourners, whose opinion of you will be coloured - so to speak - by these perceptions. Not a meaningless decision at all.
Originally posted by Malfeitor
Free will is just as real as we are. Without it, there is no thought, no emotion, no identity, and in short, no us.
I shall never tire of underlining a concise little fact which [logicians] are loath to admit - namely, that a thought comes when 'it' wants, not when 'I' want; so it is a falsification of the facts to say: the subject 'I' is the condition of the predicate 'think'.
- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, I. xvii
The absolute basis of existence is the assumption of existence itself; at the end of the day, our reality is built upon our ego, nothing more. But I can't prove that, either.
The only real question is whether we're truly something or nothing.
The question will consume you; it will take your reason, your purpose, your hope, and everything you hold dear, if you let it.
Originally posted by organism315
reply to post by bigheadjay
Do we have free-will? My answer YES. Can we use free-will to affect the future, to alter the timeline? My answer NO.
Let me explain with a hypothetical story.
One day you meet a man who claims to know the future. He gives you sufficient proof to convince you that he does indeed know the future. Now, you being a person who believes in free-will and a smarta$$ to boot, you decide to use his knowledge to prove the free-will theory. You ask him tell you what you are going to eat for dinner, when you are going to eat etc. He tells you. You then go home and excercise your free-will to eat dinner at the wrong time, in the wrong place, the wrong thing etc. Now your getting all smug and thinking, Ha, you know the future, you think I have no free-will, I just proved you wrong! You run into the guy latter on that night and you're all ready to gloat about your proof of free-will. Before you can say a word he tells you exactly what you had for dinner. You say, if you knew then why did you tell me different? He says, if I had told you what you were going to eat, you would have used your free-will to eat something else. I told you what I told you so that you would use your free-will to eat what you actually ate, what you were fated to eat, what was hard determined from the moment everything was created.
Yes we have free-will, it could in theory affect the future, but in actuality we are always fooled into using our free-will to do exactly what fate/destiny has planned for us. Everything is hard determined, even how we use our free-will. There is only ONE TIMELINE. Get used to it. Don't be attached to any one out come for the future and the fact that your so called "free-will" is useless will not mater so much.
Make sense? I'm afraid it didn't come out excately the way I expected but thats life in a hard determined timeline.
In my view, our values are derived from our instincts as social animals.
You asked :
Do we truly have free will ?
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Source : Amazon.com
Originally posted by budski
In many respects it can be said that we don't have free will.
First of all we have societal constraints, and laws, and even religious constraints.
If a person acts outside of these laws they are locked up.
If a person acts outside of societal constraints and etiquette they may be shunned.
Originally posted by CA_Orot
Free Will is an interesting subject.
I like to believe that I make the choice to get up in the morning, eat breakfast, and head to class, and come home, ATS, eat dinner etc... I like to believe that I am in control of everything that I do..
However.
As far as my "Principles of Conditioning" Prof is concerned, all of our actions are actually a "reaction" to the environment and situations around us. Cause and Effect. I'm not saying that I believe this, but in some cases, it makes sense.
The example he used to prove his case was:
"How many of you chose to come to class today."
The entire class raised their hands, to which he replied:
"You did? Are you sure? You're in this class, because you need it to graduate, you have to come to class so that you can learn the material for the weekly quiz's, etc etc. So are you actually choosing to be here?
No. Not really. You've signed up for this class because you HAVE to. You NEED this class. You're sitting in my class today because if you weren't here, you would miss the mid-term outline, and if you miss that, then you're screwed for the exam, and if you're screwed for the exam then you're gonna fail this class and if you fail the class, then you don't graduate. Thus, you have reacted, you have been presented the opportunity to graduate from the program, and you have reacted to it by coming to class which wasn't really a choice at all, but a requirement.
Something along those lines. But I looked at it as "I choose to come to class because I chose to pass, and I choose to skip class if I choose to risk failing."
He hasn't convinced me either way yet - as I personally like to believe that all the decisions I make (right or wrong) are based on my own choice to do so, and that I am always in control of what I do.
- Carrot