What evidence? Making the statement does not make it so.
That we don’t actually make choices and it’s just an illusion. I asked this somewhere else and got this answer:
" > If it’s just an event then it has no feelings or emotions and cannot love or feel pain. Only individuals do that.— Darkneos
“Individuals do that” because it seems that way, which is the second story, but consciousness makes no referral to the brain state processes in the basement of the first storey.
We are discovering that we are as ‘robots’, but hate to think of it that way."
The first sentence is me, it’s from a thread where I asked about process philosophy:
That is a case and what she is saying, also arguing there is no point to doing anything because it’s just gonna happen no matter what. Reminds me of Robert Sapolsky and just like him she doesn’t really know what a world without free will looks like.
All that is saying that in a car crash the cars don’t feel the pain it but the drivers do.
What you are trying to do is give some kind of meaning to random non-human events.
WE live in a chaotically dynamic universe where EVERYTHING is in constant motion and colliding and exploding. That is the nature of a universe what started in total chaos from a purely energetic singularity.
However the very dynamical nature of the universe has made it possible for life and humans to evolve and bear witness to the universal dynamics.
What you see is objectively real. How you interpret the date is subjectively interpretational.
Our brain translates certain wave fequencies as colors, but not every brain translates these requencies in exactly the same way. Colorblind people don’t see certain colors at all and live in a differently translated reality as most of us.
I have shown this before, but just look at a person who is suddenly transported into a world full of colors.
What you take for granted is totally unknown to some. If you can see colors, count your blessing that you are one of the lucky ones and stop worrying if it is real!
Can you appreciate the amout of free will vision affords ?
Listen to this totally blind person and you will begin to see how much free will comes with the ability of keen senses.
People with sensory impairement live in a different and functionally restrictive reality.
Good sensory perception affords more choice and greater free will to make choices.
I think it’s more like saying that humans aren’t individuals.
Well according to what some are saying there is no free will.
And apparently if the stuff on dreams I shared is true there is no point to doing anyhting because your “self” is just reset after sleep…
Making a case would be you explaining what a world without free will looks like. That’s how you do it, you state your theory and provide evidence for why you think it’s true. At this point, I would take just the first part, but explain what it means that we’re like “aliens”, or that people are just robots, and there is no point.
What they mean is that you cannot control your brain function. Thinking is a deterministic process. But what you are thinking is influenced by the superposition of choices that can be made.
You do understand that sensory abilities allow for choice. Making a choice is a form of free will.
If you ask for a chocolate ice-cream but the store is out of chocolate, you have a choice of selecting an alternative flavor from a range of other flavors. Your will is not stuck on chocolate. You have freedom to change your mind, even as the process remains the same , the available data has changed.
The aliens was from the psycology today one and that was more about how we don’t really know ourselves let alone others because any information we get about us comes after the fact. So that we only have stereotype of ourselves and others.
The robots is that there is no agent making choices or acting, it’s just cause and effect of everything around you, there is nothing extra making decisions and she explains that with emotions and reactions that we don’t choose. If so much is out of our control then what room is there for a self? There is no one, just action. At the end of this she says how there is no point to any of this if there is no choice being made ever in all our lives:
Not controlling your brain function means you have no free will.
That does not necessarily follow.
You cannot control your car’s function, but you can steer it where to go based on choice.
Let me explain;
Taking the old example of regularly ordering a particular flavor of ice-cream as a deterministic brain function, it is assumed that the store has a variety of other flavors beside you favorite flavor.
Can it be said that in reality there is a “superposition” of available flavor choices in that store?
Thus, when ordering chocolate and told that the store is out of chocolate, forcing you to make an alternate choice, does the ability to make a “considered” choice of an alternate flavor, from the range of available flavors, introduce a measure of free will in the decision making?
Your brain is a biological machine (form of computer). It processes data in a deterministic way. But the data is variable and often creates the neccessity to choose from several options, which introduces a certain form of free will (choice) into the equation.
Your brain can only make a best guess about the data it receives (Anil Seth), and the
previously posted examples of colorblindness, that alter one’s perception of reality, show the potential randomness in deterministic outcomes and expressions.
In the end the choice is still a product of deterministic function of the brain, but the very fact that between you and I there is a universe of different interpretation of reality that determines totally different choices when given similar circumstances.
Physics in nature function deterministically, but the variety of expression in nature speaks of a probabilistic aspect to all dynamical environments.
Note that a deterministic quantum event is only determined by the prior quantum event that came directly before, not by any event previous to that single instant.
Hence the term “superposition” of possible future outcomes.
Some deterministic events result in total chaos, such as a supernovae.
She says a lot more than that,
If someone tells me how wonderful the conference was and I missed it I won’t be angry that “I” made the wrong decision. It was made. That’s what happened and that’s how it is now. If someone is angry with me for being so selfish and mean for not joining the family event I will accept that punishment. That’s what happened, these are the consequences. Things just are the way they are. Whether they could have been different I do not know, but I suspect that even asking this question does not make sense. Stuff just happens.
Indeed the fingers are typing here right now. No one is acting. I am not doing anything.
What, then, is the point of it all? What’s the point in doing anything?
No point.
But I guess I didn’t ask the question correctly. You are still simply reporting on what others say. What is it that you think is wrong with it? What’s your opinion and how did you come to have that opinion?
Who’s fingers are typing all that you are posting here right now?
Has all that you have posted on this forum been out of your control?
You have not been doing anything in all this time? What are you talking about?
Right but that quote from that process philosophy page:
Pretty much pegs us as robots.
Do you want to be a robot?
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Man lives under natural law. Suffering and Death comes prematurely to those who choose (or a led into) a path of sowing and reaping of the natural world.
A different and better way is revealed in the teachings of scripture to warn of the natural man and the natural man’s tendency to sowing and reaping ignorant of natural law consequences.
This free will choice is then offered to live as natural man or to live super-naturally, being born again from above the world and world systems. One first becomes a slave to these principles obeying them blindly at the start, then recognizing their truth, a servant to the principles, finally in full obedience in understanding, the follower becomes a friend, not of the world, but as those born from above the world.
God doesn’t hates sinners. Sinners cannot believe. They need to be born-again first. “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” 1 Corinthians 2:14 (KJV 1900)
“For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” 1 Corinthians 2:11–12 (KJV 1900)
“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” 2 Corinthians 4:3–4 (KJV 1900)
Ezekiel 36:26-27Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments.**
Freewill existed before adam and eve and the devil had it he chosed to rebelled. You saw it exist does the plan of G-d involves love and choosing to be free. Choose to put you will in G-d’s will becuase it cause you conflict like everyone that it’s impossible don’t be in the box that is fate and destiny and what you decide is cannot be without god already planning it ?
The plan of God of giving thanks always is different of how he put the laws of physics and laws of probabilities in the world don’t go to conlfict everything is possible. Know that mistake was made with moses and huldah and eliajh shows that fate can be changed. But still to pray and pray and doing the impossible to change your fate your destiny of being shoemaker or being into a lawyer is possible if you want. G-d has moved the universe and the fate of our humanity in wars with assyrians when he sent an angel, he makes miracles everyday and moves time and universe. ungratefulness is what all say because they have cobnflict say it’s impossible God already plan for you everything but he’s plan of god about been thankful even when bad things and been faithful and obeying him in good and bad times isn’t about the future beenalready planned and impossible to avoid his soveriegn and he chosed the path already !
- what he planned premptively in how the universe wrks and moves the sun and you have night and day and you age and you were bron in A planet God wrote that. physics work and you do everyday on works and buy groceries and food he establish laws.
2.probablitlies that everything changes and destiny moves constantly even when you don’t know and G-d gives you every day to change you lifespan choose a better path by eating vegetables and changing your course of life not making the bad decison going to war and decided to go have job in kentucky and you change routes. everyday people the universe makes cracks in its fabric of how the destiny and chances are made by faith by believing by praying know God hears ya and God moves it all. Everything is possible God has used jews and did incredible things like making kings out of ordinary people makins miracles and making man into prophets and moving the universe for them. God does more thinsg we don’t know he does for us becuase he loves us.
3.Don’t be like the scientists who say everything is already planned he is a dictator god because he already decided everything for us and didn’t let us choose. know if you decided things out of nowhere and you popped out of the planet and God ceases to exist you became God you wouldn’t know what was the last things God did, then you will decide everything and you will make so many errors because you can’t do what God does, and realese finally he was right and he put things all for A reason. Those scientist agnostic thinks if they were God decided everything realized how hard God life is deciding everything and he gave you all but you made the bad decisions in life. You had all the freedom you woulnd’t know what to do with it and just make mistakes and if you were free to do everything and be A god you wouldn’t find true love you woulnd’t do things you just be the same individual looking for things and think having all the freedom and you decided everything you woulnd’t find that special thing God has for youa t the end in heaven. You will be lost and still be unperfect those scientist just blame and if they had everything they will just mess up and realize didn’t go their way either and mess up.
Does it matter though?
It’s in the quote, stuff just happens, nothing matters. It renders life points and all pursuits meaningless because there is nothing to praise, or punish, it’s just events. Just robots and chemical reactions, no wills or anything else like that happening.
It robs life of any reason for living or doing anything. Everything becomes meaningless just like she says.
How can you not see how bad that mentality is?
I do understand your interpretation that what we see and experience seems to have some higher origin and in a way I am of the same belief.
My objection to a biblical god is that it is a man-made invention without any hard proof to show any kind of benign motive other than as a continuation based on some fundamental laws of physics. And it appears that most of these physical laws are the emergent result of growing complexity as the universe evolves via the process of “natural selection” that does not require a higher intellect other than logical mathematical processes, which have proven to be eminently suitable for analyzing the way things work. Note that the number “pi” is a quantitative equivalent of the concept of an infinite God taken in its most general non-human form.
“Pi is everywhere and somehow connected but shrouded in a mist of between mountain peaks”, and also found in nature as the Fibonacci Sequence.
There are theories that the Universe itself is a mathematical object emerging from an original state of pure chaos (chaos theory).
But one can make an argument that if humans have free will, a codified system of moral tenets can be effective in the shaping of human psyche as humans are born without knowledge of moral behavior in a social setting. Scriptures that address fundamental “secular values” can be helpful in the teaching of social graces.
Unfortunately IMO, no such spiritual guide exists as almost all previous scripture were taught as exclusively associated with a specif belief system (religion) and are taught as the exclusive path toward enlightenment under the assumption that humans have a measure of “free will” andare subject to corruption if taught by philosophies other than “my religion” (witness the many interpretive religious wars)
I believe that humans and some other higher order animals do have a measure of free will when presented with a range of choices for a solution to a complex problem. The ice cream example is but one example of a multiple choice solution.
It is the flawed representation of all known gods that ever existed which led to their demise. Note that most gods in history were representative of being causal to natural phenomena. But as science has explained a lot of the true impersonal causality of physical interactive processes, the need for these individual demiurges was rendered moot, until there was only the concept of a single divine causality.
But the concept of a mathematically ordered Universe can be used to substitute for the concept of an infinite but “motivated” logical God as well.
Not directly used as a god
The term “Logic” is not directly used as a god12345. However, in the Christian worldview, laws of logic are seen as reflecting the way God thinks and are rooted in His nature124. Logic is not merely a human invention but is part of the nature of God24.
But IMO, a god is not necessary to explain that part of the nature of the universal geometry and spacetime. The answer lies in the day to day physics of “elemental interactions” (see table of elements) and impersonal forces such as “gravity”.
This process gives the appearance of"intelligence", but is really a form of quasi-intelligent mathematical interactions between relational “values” (potentials).