Searching for GOD...

[Maeght]

Not at all obvious if the process by which we make that choice is also dependent on our nature/nurture. It may reach a different conclusion than the sub conscious but is not necessarily any more free. Isn't that point obvious?

No, it isn't. The conscious mind is able to either obey its nature/nurture tendency or do otherwise. Always! You are never obliged to make a certain choice ... you can always do otherwise.

How can you say that? You don't know that at all.

We shall just have to agree to disagree.

So it seems

[Leonard James]

Not at all obvious if the process by which we make that choice is also dependent on our nature/nurture. It may reach a different conclusion than the sub conscious but is not necessarily any more free. Isn't that point obvious?

No, it isn't. The conscious mind is able to either obey its nature/nurture tendency or do otherwise. Always! You are never obliged to make a certain choice ... you can always do otherwise.

How can you say that? You don't know that at all.

There are very few, if any people who cannot act against their natural tendency. Do you know anybody who can't?

[Maeght]

Not at all obvious if the process by which we make that choice is also dependent on our nature/nurture. It may reach a different conclusion than the sub conscious but is not necessarily any more free. Isn't that point obvious?

No, it isn't. The conscious mind is able to either obey its nature/nurture tendency or do otherwise. Always! You are never obliged to make a certain choice ... you can always do otherwise.

How can you say that? You don't know that at all.

There are very few, if any people who cannot act against their natural tendency. Do you know anybody who can't?

Sorry Leonard but you don't seem to be getting my point. Of course people can act against what we might describe as their natural tenancies but if that choice is equally determined by nature and nurture then it is not free. Equally determined does not mean that the same decision/action results just that there is just as much of an influence on their conscious decision making as there sub conscious reaction.

[Leonard James]

Sorry Leonard but you don't seem to be getting my point. Of course people can act against what we might describe as their natural tenancies but if that choice is equally determined by nature and nurture then it is not free. Equally determined does not mean that the same decision/action results just that there is just as much of an influence on their conscious decision making as there sub conscious reaction.

Since there is no way of proving either belief, we will have to leave it.

[Maeght]

I just wanted you to understand my point. I agree we cannot prove it either way, which is another point I made earlier. At no point though have I said definitely that we don't have free will - I have argued that it cannot be demonstrated that we do and although I cannot see how truly free will would work I cannot rule it out. Some people on here have stated we definitely do have free will (including yourself of course) and used it to make a wider point (not you). 'Nuff said I think.

[jeremyp]

Not at all obvious if the process by which we make that choice is also dependent on our nature/nurture. It may reach a different conclusion than the sub conscious but is not necessarily any more free. Isn't that point obvious?

No, it isn't. The conscious mind is able to either obey its nature/nurture tendency or do otherwise. Always! You are never obliged to make a certain choice ... you can always do otherwise.

We shall just have to agree to disagree.

Do you accept that the human mind emerges from the structure and activity of the brain and that structure and activity obeys the laws of nature?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Not at all obvious if the process by which we make that choice is also dependent on our nature/nurture. It may reach a different conclusion than the sub conscious but is not necessarily any more free. Isn't that point obvious?

No, it isn't. The conscious mind is able to either obey its nature/nurture tendency or do otherwise. Always! You are never obliged to make a certain choice ... you can always do otherwise.

We shall just have to agree to disagree.

Do you accept that the human mind emerges from the structure and activity of the brain and that structure and activity obeys the laws of nature?

Who made the laws?

[Shaker]

What's to say that it was a 'who'?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What's to say that it was a 'who'?

Alright then....... an intelligent what.

[Shaker]

What's the necessity of invoking intelligence?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What's the necessity of invoking intelligence?

Is that a question or your general philosophy?

[Shaker]

The curly bit on the end should have told you.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

The curly bit on the end should have told you.

I wasn't going to mention it in the present company.

[Shaker]

Err yes, whatever.

So: why the need to invoke intelligence in the context of the universe?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Err yes, whatever.

So: why the need to invoke intelligence in the context of the universe?

No need ....why exclude it though?

[Shaker]

Bzzzzzzzt, nil points. Negative proof fallacy again. We need a positive reason to include it, not merely the lack of a reason to exclude it.

[torridon]

Not at all obvious if the process by which we make that choice is also dependent on our nature/nurture. It may reach a different conclusion than the sub conscious but is not necessarily any more free. Isn't that point obvious?

No, it isn't. The conscious mind is able to either obey its nature/nurture tendency or do otherwise. Always! You are never obliged to make a certain choice ... you can always do otherwise.

This discussion always founders because of the terminology. You use nature to mean your typical characteristics, and nobody would argue that we cannot act out of character sometimes, maybe just for the hell of it. We have enough degrees of freedom to be able to act out of character on occasion, but does that equate to being able to defy the law of cause and effect ? does that mean that humans, uniquely, can operate outwith the laws of nature ?  That is a much more profound consideration and it is a view from the theist stable that humans are different, have free agency. I am an atheist however, so I accept that humans are actually just creatures at the end of the day, and like all creatures of flesh and blood, we must be constrained by the overwhelmingly deterministic laws that govern flesh and blood. A belief in free-will is ultimately a belief in the supernatural.

[Alan Burns]

There is a need for conscious awareness, clearly, I agree with you there; my understanding is that it must form a part of the decision making process, particularly for complex decisions that require extended contemplation, like who to marry or what career to embark on.  It feels like our conscious self is the guy in the driving seat, making the decisions, but that is not really consistent with the more subtle insights from research which reveal that we should view the conscious part as providing a service, in effect, to enable better decisions to be made.

Maybe the interplay between conscious and less-conscious parts of mind is too subtle and too enmeshed to be disentangled easily, and so we live our lives day to day without the need to understand how minds work at this level of subtelty. We have apparent freedom, and that is good enough for most purposes.  It only becomes an issue to ponder on when we reach a desire to understand what we are to greater depth, and this entails a process of dispelling our working illusions, one by one, to gain sight of the deeper but truer underlying realities of life.

We can't fully understand or define the way our conscious awareness influences our free choices until we can define what conscious awareness is actually comprised of.  The big question to ponder is this: Will conscious awareness ever be defined by material entities alone?  The atheist point of view has to rely on some future revelation as to how this can happen.  Those of us who know God know it will never happen because it is ultimately the human soul which will be held to account for the choices we make.

[Leonard James]

This discussion always founders because of the terminology. You use nature to mean your typical characteristics, and nobody would argue that we cannot act out of character sometimes, maybe just for the hell of it. We have enough degrees of freedom to be able to act out of character on occasion, but does that equate to being able to defy the law of cause and effect ? does that mean that humans, uniquely, can operate outwith the laws of nature ?  That is a much more profound consideration and it is a view from the theist stable that humans are different, have free agency. I am an atheist however, so I accept that humans are actually just creatures at the end of the day, and like all creatures of flesh and blood, we must be constrained by the overwhelmingly deterministic laws that govern flesh and blood. A belief in free-will is ultimately a belief in the supernatural.

As I have already explained, I don't believe that. I believe that during the course of evolution a genetic combination occurred which conferred on its owner the ability to project forward, consider the result of its actions, and then make a choice on what to do. This would be a considerable advantage for its owner in the survive/reproduce battle which is life.

There is no need for me to recur to the supernatural to believe that.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Bzzzzzzzt, nil points. Negative proof fallacy again. We need a positive reason to include it, not merely the lack of a reason to exclude it.

Wrong again. Dawkins himself and Antony Flew cite apparent design and fine tuning as a possible and immediate hypothesis on observing the universe. Dawkins after all believes the God hypothesis is a testable. Whether these are right or wrong they are still positive reasons to include intelligent creator.

[torridon]

This discussion always founders because of the terminology. You use nature to mean your typical characteristics, and nobody would argue that we cannot act out of character sometimes, maybe just for the hell of it. We have enough degrees of freedom to be able to act out of character on occasion, but does that equate to being able to defy the law of cause and effect ? does that mean that humans, uniquely, can operate outwith the laws of nature ?  That is a much more profound consideration and it is a view from the theist stable that humans are different, have free agency. I am an atheist however, so I accept that humans are actually just creatures at the end of the day, and like all creatures of flesh and blood, we must be constrained by the overwhelmingly deterministic laws that govern flesh and blood. A belief in free-will is ultimately a belief in the supernatural.

As I have already explained, I don't believe that. I believe that during the course of evolution a genetic combination occurred which conferred on its owner the ability to project forward, consider the result of its actions, and then make a choice on what to do. This would be a considerable advantage for its owner in the survive/reproduce battle which is life.

Yes, that scenario you paint acknowledges the superior decision making abilities humans have. 'Superior' does not equal 'free', it just means we are better at it. We can make more nuanced choices, better informed choices, more unpredictable choices, but all our choices are still made within the framework of law-driven deterministic computing, your brain being a flesh and blood decision-making computer. Any choices we make, could in principle have been predicted in advance given full knowledge of initial conditions,  but of course we never have that full knowledge, and the feeling of free-will is born in part of the insurmountability of that computation problem.

[torridon]

There is a need for conscious awareness, clearly, I agree with you there; my understanding is that it must form a part of the decision making process, particularly for complex decisions that require extended contemplation, like who to marry or what career to embark on.  It feels like our conscious self is the guy in the driving seat, making the decisions, but that is not really consistent with the more subtle insights from research which reveal that we should view the conscious part as providing a service, in effect, to enable better decisions to be made.

Maybe the interplay between conscious and less-conscious parts of mind is too subtle and too enmeshed to be disentangled easily, and so we live our lives day to day without the need to understand how minds work at this level of subtelty. We have apparent freedom, and that is good enough for most purposes.  It only becomes an issue to ponder on when we reach a desire to understand what we are to greater depth, and this entails a process of dispelling our working illusions, one by one, to gain sight of the deeper but truer underlying realities of life.

We can't fully understand or define the way our conscious awareness influences our free choices until we can define what conscious awareness is actually comprised of.  The big question to ponder is this: Will conscious awareness ever be defined by material entities alone?  The atheist point of view has to rely on some future revelation as to how this can happen.  Those of us who know God know it will never happen because it is ultimately the human soul which will be held to account for the choices we make.

That looks like circular thinking; you use your belief in God to justify your belief in God, ultimately. I prefer to be evidence-led, to be true to evidence, and that means keeping an open mind about what insights future research will bring.  It seems to me that your God beliefs have frozen you out of that possibility, you are locked into a circle of belief that already denies even the possibility of new insights from research even before they have had a chance to happen..

[Outrider]

And yet there must be a mechanism which leads to accuracy in catching but which we are not conscious of working.

And the mechanism is mathematical, but that does not make mathematics a thing that can be sensed, it still makes it a conceptualisation with which other sensory impressions can be categorised.

O.

Are you saying it is not a sense because it is not one of the five senses?

Five? There are a range of counts between twenty and thirty-five that I found in a quick search.

I'm saying it's not a sense because a sense is the body's measurable reaction to a quantifiable external stimulus.

In the absence of a means to determine if the stimulus exists, there's no way to determine if what you have is a sensory organ being triggered or an hallucination which you are interpreting as a 'sensation' in the absence of any conceptual framework with which to categorise that particular brain activity.

O.

[Outrider]

Not at all obvious if the process by which we make that choice is also dependent on our nature/nurture. It may reach a different conclusion than the sub conscious but is not necessarily any more free. Isn't that point obvious?

No, it isn't. The conscious mind is able to either obey its nature/nurture tendency or do otherwise. Always! You are never obliged to make a certain choice ... you can always do otherwise.

How can you say that? You don't know that at all.

There are very few, if any people who cannot act against their natural tendency. Do you know anybody who can't?

Where do they get that capacity from, Leonard?

Do they calculate, based on previous experience and acquired knowledge, that it's the better course of action to refute their underlying basic temperament at that moment? If that's so, are they capable of making any other decision, because that experience is already there?

Or are they simply having a 'random' moment - in which case it might be free, but how can it be described as will?

O.

[Outrider]

Who made the laws?

Who said they had to be made by someone?

O.