Free will

[nuke]

It's a mix of both order and chaos, it cannot be one or the other. Order would insist that the universe not be created in the first place because there is not a reason for its creation, as far as I am concerned.

This is exactly what we find when we try to investigate our reality; probing may lead to an explanation, but inevitably that leads to a thousand more questions. This is a fractal, organised chaos which we are born into.

 

[Dyno_oz]

What is consciousness? Is it a property that somehow transcendes logic?

That strikes me as dubious.

YES! Consciousness could be considered a higher level process.

Consciousness proceeds thought and action. - 'I am - therefore I think and act.'

One can sit in their own awareness, thinking and doing nothing.

Consciousness transcends logic in much the same way the intuituon works. Intuition can reach a correct answer without logical steps.

Like to understand ourselves, logic can only explain things upto a point. Language is a construct - limited. Consciousness allows us to understand things directy by contact or absorbtion.

I agree with the idea that the more aware one is - the more freedom they have.

Yes, free will seems logically impossible - yet all logical arguments so far don't deal with consciousness.

 

[PsyGhost]

Nope, no free will. Determinism for sure.

 

[doesntmatter]

maybe asking some questions about determinism will help clear up some points.

1. are determinism/indeterminism 100% accurate in predictions?

2. you say that you only need a small amount of data to use the deterministic theory and thus predict a future event. is there some sort of example, or maybe the necessary data needed? i didn't follow that statement.

3. does determinism require that everything (the calculations, the data basically) be able to be understood by man.

4. does determinism allow for there to be forces that don't follow anything that we as humans can begin to make calculations regarding its behavior, say something that acted in a way that allowed for free will, something that doesn't act on logic, but is a part nature anyways?

5. is there any proof that what we are experiencing is a deterministic system? wouldn't you have to be out of the system to find out?

 

[Psychedelics_r_best]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhh.

What ever happened to thoughts and awareness?

What is this "philosophy and spirituality."

I am an animal and wary of change!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

[Medatripper Tates]

Medatripper, science does not have to take place in the laboratory.

Yes I understand that, science can exist in the mind, lab, or everywhere..

The type of science I am talking about is any use of the scientific method. You use this all the time without realizing it, i gave an example of a light switch not working earlier. I assume you integrate your experiences into your normal life? If the knowledge gained during your meditation did not line up with your experiences in the real world, then you would not continue to hold those beliefs. You came to believe those things through a type of science, this is what I was reffering to.

In the state that I experience, there is nothing, emptiness, space of mind. Through this state, realizations and understandings manifest, because the gate is open. An idea can flow into my consciousness and I can choose to interpret it and reduce it to the size of a pea, or I could continue with the experience and let more realizations and knowledge engulf me.

Now my scientific method is creating space so that new realizations and understanding arise. I can then interpret and express these realizations and understandings, but I risk creating ignorance and this is when the science is lost.

 

[Medatripper Tates]

This is basically the same as someone's earlier argument. Experiencing something doesn't make it so.

the interpretation of the experience doesn't make it so.

For your argument to work here you need to somehow claim that consciousness (or alertness or whatever) would make you immune from:

1) All physical laws (if they exist).
2) Randomness (should there be no physical laws.
3) The laws of causality (so that you can cause your own mindset).

You haven't done this.

man, you are thinking wayy too hard about all of this, it is much simpler. read back at my previous posts a few times.

Free will is logically impossible.

so if its logically impossible than its ultimately impossible?

I don't see how you've argued against any of my previous arguments at all here.

it is because you are bound within logic, and you are not "thinking outside of the box" i am trying to convey here. if you let go you would probably understand what i mean.

Until you can formulate an argument that there is some mindset possible that makes you immune from anything that governs the way anything works then your argument fails.

why would i have to be immune from anything that governs the way anything works?

 

[Medatripper Tates]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhh.

What ever happened to thoughts and awareness?

What is this "philosophy and spirituality."

I am an animal and wary of change!!!!!!!!!!!1

we got sick of you mundane boring bigot.

 

[qwedsa]

consciousness, wakefulness, alertness, mindfulness, etc. when i am more of these, the more free will i feel i have. to reduce this to logic is to create an image, a shadow, around the real thing that consciousness is. for me, trying to figure out consciousness by using logic is only covering myself in ignorance and unconsciousness. from my experience, that is.

we are talking about different 'free wills'

your definition of free will seems to be making decisions entirely consciously, as opposed to simply automatically (performing any task can be done mindfully or automatically. we can go through most of our day automatically (in fact we do, it's hard to retain the mindfulness for extended periods, it comes and goes)

this is not the definition of free will that determinists are attempting to refute

1. are determinism/indeterminism 100% accurate in predictions?

well indeterminism means there's margin for error, which means there's uncertainty in the predictions. the farther in the future you go, the more uncertainty there is. there are numerous examples of indeterminitsic systems, but this does not mean that the universe is indeterministic itself. furthermore, if the universe is indeterministic, there's still no room for free will. everything i said in this paragraph has been repeated...repeatedly

2. you say that you only need a small amount of data to use the deterministic theory and thus predict a future event. is there some sort of example, or maybe the necessary data needed? i didn't follow that statement.

im not sure if you've had a physics class, but deterministic systems are all over the place, there are tons of examples. if you have a ball 10 meters off the ground and drop it at Time = 0s, you can predict its height until it hits the ground based off of a formula (to deduce the formula, just think about the fact that each second the ball's velocity will increase by 9.8 m/s)

now, the way free will comes in is this. every decision you make is a result of information processing in your brain. your brain is made up of atoms. atoms are made up of objects. these objects can be predicted with formulas. therefore, given sufficient data (positions, velocities) of the objects comprising your brain, every decision you make and change that occurs in the brain etc can be predicted. this is too large of a task for humans at the moment, but in the future powerful computers with very sensitive instruments would be able to do this

3. does determinism require that everything (the calculations, the data basically) be able to be understood by man.

whether man is in the universe or not, the universe is still a deterministic system. therefore why would the question of whether the universe is deterministic or not, depend on what's going on in mankind's head? just because we dont know everything doesnt make the universe non-deterministic... it just means WE can't determine everything that we want to

4. does determinism allow for there to be forces that don't follow anything that we as humans can begin to make calculations regarding its behavior, say something that acted in a way that allowed for free will, something that doesn't act on logic, but is a part nature anyways?

as long as every event in the universe has a cause, the universe is deterministic. if something happens for no real reason at all, or something exists for no reason at all, or if there are supernatural forces interfering, the unvierse isn't deterministic because these things are unpredictable

5. is there any proof that what we are experiencing is a deterministic system? wouldn't you have to be out of the system to find out?

i will concede the possibility that something could come up that would refute the deterministic model of the universe

however, i personally don't see a conflict between determinism and any known phenomena, including consciousness (we simply don't have enough information on what produces consciousness to say almost anything at all related to it actually), and we've never seen anything happen that would effectively refute the deterministic model (even if a cow sprouted wings out of thin air, there'd be a reason behind it!)

 

[Pegasus]

you are not "thinking outside of the box" i am trying to convey here. if you let go you would probably understand what i mean.

I'm sure he feels the same way about you.

That being said, how can logic 'bind' someone? What other method can you use to come to sound conclusions?

 

[Medatripper Tates]

im talking about individual free will and that of man kind..

i don't know how you could wrap so many concepts around free will.

every decision you make is a result of information processing in your brain.

in a state of heightened awareness, there is no "information processing" you are speaking of. the ego processes information, here it is observed and realized. in this state, we can see this information, and we can let it enter our ego or just observe it as it is. we can freely choose whether or not to have this information processed, then interpreted or made into decision.

 

[Medatripper Tates]

I'm sure he feels the same way about you.

well we both have faces here... im just trying to say that dropping mine is how i find my truth. right now i am inside of a box because im trying to deal with other boxes. so yes, that is true.

That being said, how can logic 'bind' someone? What other method can you use to come to sound conclusions?

you mean "blind"?

like i have said many, many times before, logic is a limited perception compared to the unified One identity which is all. if you realized you had another eye, couldn't you say that you had been blind?

 

[qwedsa]

in a state of heightened awareness, there is no "information processing" you are speaking of.

yes there is. in order to observe anything in any way whatsoever as a human there must be information processing. in order to have any mental content at all there must be information processing going on. otherwise you'd be dead or in a coma

logic is a limited perception compared to the unified One identity which is all. if you realized you had another eye, couldn't you say that you had been blind?

im gonna say this again


um.

 

[Medatripper Tates]

^ guess i died

 

[Pegasus]

you mean "blind"?

No, I meant bind, as you said.

it is because you are bound within logic, and you are not "thinking outside of the box" i am trying to convey here. if you let go you would probably understand what i mean.

---

like i have said many, many times before, logic is a limited perception compared to the unified One identity which is all. if you realized you had another eye, couldn't you say that you had been blind?

Huh? What do you mean by "unified One identity which is all"?

 

[doesntmatter]

ok, my questions did indeed clear some stuff up for me.

i didn't understand the point of it untill now.

so if something happens, it has a cause. therefor if you knew the cause, you could then make a prediction, aslong as you understood the cause and the outcome of it producing...say an action.

in my head i think there are things that have a cause but don't have an action related to it necessarily. i think this cause is what allows for free will. its less of a force/cause than a suggestion that is there.

i deffintately see the point of determinism. i mean obviously you can say that if there are two people who are exactly the same in every way possible, then you create two identical situations for them to run through, they'd act the same. where as i see it as its the same person due to the fact that they are not different in any way, you could also look at it as proof that we "choose" based on who we are.

now that i understand the concept a little better, it seems it would come down to believing something else over determinism. neither can be proved, so i guess its a

choice.

hahahha, get it .

 

[satricion]

Determinism does not require us to have any knowledge. It is just the existence of natural laws, whatever they are.

Indeterminism is not 'probability' or whatever. This is not what indeterminism is. Indeterminism is RANDOMNESS. NOT PROBABILITY. Probability works on natural laws and is a concept born of rational science. Just to reiterate, if you think indeterminism = probability then you are fundamentally misunderstanding the determinism/indeterminism dichotomy.

Medatripper: Your argument seems to basically be that consciousness is some sort of magical process that allows us to trancend the laws of the universe, be the determinism, indeterminism and causality.

Please explain to me how this is not what your argument is.

I really don't see how the fact that we can think about our own mental state can allow us to be immune from natural laws. If you really think you have provided a good (or even coherent) argument for this, think again...

So to clarify, yes if it is logically impossible then it is ultimately impossible. Like being a sheep and a cow at the same time...I don't see why you have trouble accepting this...

The reason you have to be immune from the laws of nature (and causality) is because all of them make free will impossible. So you have to somehow work outside them (which is impossible unless you can come up with an argument that nobody working on this question has thought of for the past few hundred years).

Your argument hasn't really progressed from "I think I have free will so it can't be impossible".

Doesntmatter:

...

I don't think you really get it.

That is all.

 

[satricion]

Also Medatripper:

I can't help but think you are arguing from some religious or pseudoreligious paradigm here.

All your talk about higher consciousness and what not...I mean, if you want to argue that something magical happens inside our brains that excludes us from the laws of causality when we think about our own mental state then that's fine, but that's basically a religious belief and in no way whatsoever presents an even slightly valid argument against free will being logically impossible.

 

[Medatripper Tates]

No, I meant bind, as you said.

when i say logic, i mean that voice inside of us trying to figure out existence. that voice uses logic to understand its existence. i just think materialists attract logic, and they are bound within it because its all they have to figure shit out.

Huh? What do you mean by "unified One identity which is all"?

a state of awareness free of duality.

 

[Medatripper Tates]

Also Medatripper:

I can't help but think you are arguing from some religious or pseudoreligious paradigm here.

All your talk about higher consciousness and what not...I mean, if you want to argue that something magical happens inside our brains that excludes us from the laws of causality when we think about our own mental state then that's fine, but that's basically a religious belief and in no way whatsoever presents an even slightly valid argument against free will being logically impossible.

stop using your imagination. nothing "magical" happens, it is a breaking away of the barriers of our ego so that cosmic consciousness can shine through our being and light our path.

well if you haven't experienced it, i guess you would have to use your imagination.