Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

You certainly have, and will experience, a degree of freedom, but it isn't 'freedom' as you portray it.
 

There are no "degrees" of freedom in a physically determined scenario.  Where would such "degrees" of freedom emanate from?

[Gordon]

There are no "degrees" of freedom in a physically determined scenario.  Where would such "degrees" of freedom emanate from?

Simple: working within the constraints of circumstances and my preferences (whether I'm aware of them of not).

For example: I would love a drink of ginger beer right now but there is none in the fridge, so I can have something else, or nothing at all, or head towards the local supermarket and buy some - so I have a choice to make. There is pineapple juice in the fridge: my grand-daughter is staying tonight and she loves the stuff, but I've hated it for as long as I can remember.

I don't think I need a 'soul' to manage this state of affairs, but since you are the expert of 'souls' let me ask you if this is the kind of routine stuff 'souls' get up to?

[Stranger]

There are no "degrees" of freedom in a physically determined scenario.  Where would such "degrees" of freedom emanate from?

[Irrelevant word deleted.]

What is it you want to be 'free'? In order for something to be free it has to have desires, preferences, and ways of making choices. In other words there needs to be a set of reasons why it reaches one choice rather than another, based on what it actually is.

It makes no sense at all to suggest that freedom can only be had if all those things do not fully decide the choice. What the hell would it be that you are setting free, and what would you be setting it free from?

The only way I can be free is if what I am and the situation I find myself in results in the choice I make. If that is not the case, it isn't me that's making the choice.

You're defining freedom as 'escaping' from being oneself - which is plain daft.

[Alan Burns]

  That batsman swinging his bat, well yes, it is something we take for granted, we don't stop to think how awesome a thing is happening there that he can do all those equations of motion so effortlessly without even thinking about it. That suggests that we are the inheritors of mental skills forged in ancient times where our ancestors very survival depended on being able to calculate such things and act on insight as quickly as possible.  It suggests nothing of the sort, because the batsman's mental and physical skills were honed by lots of practice from an early age, not from anything inherited from cavemen swinging clubs.  In the arms races of perception and cognition, predators needed to identify resources and pounce, prey needed to identify threats and take evasive action as quickly as possible. To survive intense competition, the individuals that could summon executive action at the earliest point in the perception cycle would survive, others would get eaten or starve.  The ability to act on preconscious perception has been honed through the principal of survival of the fittest. Countless billions of creatures before us have struggled in the dramas of life and death such that we live our lives now endowed with mental abilities so sublimely honed that we have been traditionally inclined to imagine some divine magic must be responsible.  That we make choices and  act on preconscious perceptions, absolutely makes sense, in the bigger picture.  That batsman owes an awful lot to those that have gone before.

No he does not.  He owes it to the practice he did since he was young.

And you seem to be in a habit of picking irrelevant examples to make false generalisations.

Do you seriously think a brain surgeon relies on inherited preconscious perception during operations?  His work absolutely depends on his active conscious perception and control in real time.

[Sebastian Toe]

And you seem to be in a habit of picking irrelevant examples to make false generalisations.

Do you mean like saying that animals don't have souls because your dog is impervious to the smell of its own farts?

[Alan Burns]

Simple: working within the constraints of circumstances and my preferences (whether I'm aware of them of not).

For example: I would love a drink of ginger beer right now but there is none in the fridge, so I can have something else, or nothing at all, or head towards the local supermarket and buy some - so I have a choice to make. There is pineapple juice in the fridge: my grand-daughter is staying tonight and she loves the stuff, but I've hated it for as long as I can remember.

I don't think I need a 'soul' to manage this state of affairs, but since you are the expert of 'souls' let me ask you if this is the kind of routine stuff 'souls' get up to?

If you relied on physically controlled determination there would no opportunity to make a consciously driven choice about anything - trivial or not, because we have no control over the laws of physics acting on material elements.

[Alan Burns]

[Irrelevant word deleted.]

What is it you want to be 'free'? In order for something to be free it has to have desires, preferences, and ways of making choices. In other words there needs to be a set of reasons why it reaches one choice rather than another, based on what it actually is.

It makes no sense at all to suggest that freedom can only be had if all those things do not fully decide the choice. What the hell would it be that you are setting free, and what would you be setting it free from?

The only way I can be free is if what I am and the situation I find myself in results in the choice I make. If that is not the case, it isn't me that's making the choice.

You're defining freedom as 'escaping' from being oneself - which is plain daft.

Quite the opposite - I define freedom as the enablement of consciously driven human will which is free from uncontrollable physically defined determinism.

[torridon]

No he does not.  He owes it to the practice he did since he was young.

And you seem to be in a habit of picking irrelevant examples to make false generalisations.

Do you seriously think a brain surgeon relies on inherited preconscious perception during operations?  His work absolutely depends on his active conscious perception and control in real time.

Aargh, you're still not getting it.  It would help if you read the entire post and understood the gist of it rather than just picking up the final sentence and talking to that in isolation.

The point I was making is not of particular relevance in slow moving situations, it is not an important factor for a surgeon at the operating table or a chess player considering his next move.  But in fast moving situations, think table tennis or motor racing, then reaction time does become a relevant factor in our success.  Our reaction time is a measure of our consciousness lag, amongst other things.  People like to ask why do we have consciousness at all if we make choices in subconscious mind, and the answer lies in understanding the evolution of consciousness. Our ancestors did not have the luxury of sitting around playing chess in the shade, our very survival depended on being able to react quickly to events.  No one ever has full knowledge, this is a fact of life, we have to make choices based on partial information, and the creature that can recognise threat and respond more quickly is less likely to get eaten than one that sits around waiting for full information.  So there is a selection pressure there which operates to favour a perception / response cycle running in advance of full consciousness.  Full consciousness is like a luxury and our minds are always running ahead of it, this is how minds have evolved.

[Gordon]

Quite the opposite - I define freedom as the enablement of consciously driven human will which is free from uncontrollable physically defined determinism.

Must be lovely to be able to 'define' things to suit yourself, especially when you can chuck in redundant, illogical and misleading terms.

[SusanDoris]

No he does not.  He owes it to the practice he did since he was young.

And you seem to be in a habit of picking irrelevant examples to make false generalisations.

Do you seriously think a brain surgeon relies on inherited preconscious perception during operations?  His work absolutely depends on his active conscious perception and control in real time.

Oh dear. I thought I'd seen a post of yours recently which could not be dafter, but this one is.

[Stranger]

If you relied on physically controlled determination there would no opportunity to make a consciously driven choice about anything - trivial or not...

Foolish irrelevances deleted and what remains is a baseless assertion.

...because we have no control over the laws of physics acting on material elements.

Totally irrelevant.

Quite the opposite - I define freedom as the enablement of consciously driven human will which is free from uncontrollable physically defined determinism.

[Foolish irrelevance deleted]

You don't seem to be even reading the posts any more, just blindly repeating the same old phrases.

The "consciously driven human will" has to refer to a something and it has to make a choice somehow; it has to have contents. If what that will is, which must be who you are as a result of nature, nurture and experience, does not fully decide the choice based on the circumstances, then it can't be you that makes the choice.

You are something and that something has to be deciding the matter or it isn't you that is free.

[Maeght]

No he does not.  He owes it to the practice he did since he was young.

And you seem to be in a habit of picking irrelevant examples to make false generalisations.

Do you seriously think a brain surgeon relies on inherited preconscious perception during operations?  His work absolutely depends on his active conscious perception and control in real time.

It relies on skills learnt and practiced until they become automatic. At any moment the batsman's or surgeon's actions are predetermnined by their training and previous experiences. Do you think at each moment the batsman or surgeon considers every action and determines what to do as if starting from scratch without influence of previous events?

[Alan Burns]

Foolish irrelevances deleted and what remains is a baseless assertion.

Totally irrelevant.
[Foolish irrelevance deleted]

You don't seem to be even reading the posts any more, just blindly repeating the same old phrases.

The "consciously driven human will" has to refer to a something and it has to make a choice somehow; it has to have contents. If what that will is, which must be who you are as a result of nature, nurture and experience, does not fully decide the choice based on the circumstances, then it can't be you that makes the choice.

You are something and that something has to be deciding the matter or it isn't you that is free.

You are absolutely stuck in perceiving our freedom to consciously choose as just a mechanistic, unavoidable reaction defined entirely by physical pre conditions.  And I freely choose the word "physical" because you seem determined to not admit to any difference between the concept of physically determined events and spiritually determined events.  The difference is obvious, in that the only determining factors involved in physical events are pre defined laws of physical science.  The determining factor involved in conscious choice is the conscious will of human beings, for which there is ample evidence beginning with the cave drawings which prehistoric humans chose to make because they wanted to do it.

[torridon]

... The determining factor involved in conscious choice is the conscious will of human beings, for which there is ample evidence beginning with the cave drawings which prehistoric humans chose to make because they wanted to do it.

 .. and since we cannot choose our wants they were merely acting out the desires that had arisen in them.  We don't get to choose which desires to have, remember ?

[Alan Burns]

Aargh, you're still not getting it.  It would help if you read the entire post and understood the gist of it rather than just picking up the final sentence and talking to that in isolation.

The point I was making is not of particular relevance in slow moving situations, it is not an important factor for a surgeon at the operating table or a chess player considering his next move.  But in fast moving situations, think table tennis or motor racing, then reaction time does become a relevant factor in our success.  Our reaction time is a measure of our consciousness lag, amongst other things.  People like to ask why do we have consciousness at all if we make choices in subconscious mind, and the answer lies in understanding the evolution of consciousness. Our ancestors did not have the luxury of sitting around playing chess in the shade, our very survival depended on being able to react quickly to events.  No one ever has full knowledge, this is a fact of life, we have to make choices based on partial information, and the creature that can recognise threat and respond more quickly is less likely to get eaten than one that sits around waiting for full information.  So there is a selection pressure there which operates to favour a perception / response cycle running in advance of full consciousness.  Full consciousness is like a luxury and our minds are always running ahead of it, this is how minds have evolved.

I think you have lost sight of the point you were trying to reply to.

This was from my original post:
You are effectively relegating our conscious awareness to be just a spectator of what has already been done before we know anything about it.

The point I was making is that conscious awareness is an essential part of any learning process before it becomes an instinctive reaction which we do not have to think about.

[Stranger]

You are absolutely stuck in perceiving our freedom to consciously choose as just a mechanistic, unavoidable reaction defined entirely by physical pre conditions.

It would be really good if you'd stop misrepresenting what I am saying. There is only a given amount of information available at the moment of a choice - including the internal state of mind of the choice maker.

That makes no assumption that the mind is physical.

Either all that information decides the matter or not.

That is a statement that is either true or false and makes no assumption that the mind is physical.

And I freely choose the word "physical" because you seem determined to not admit to any difference between the concept of physically determined events and spiritually determined events.  The difference is obvious, in that the only determining factors involved in physical events are pre defined laws of physical science.  The determining factor involved in conscious choice is the conscious will of human beings...

The difference is non-existent. You're just trying to sidestep the question.

The question is how the "conscious will of human beings" reach their choices, not whether it's the "determining factor" or not. The "conscious will of human beings" is subject to the statements above, regardless of whether it's physical or not.

You aren't answering the questions, you're just avoiding them.

...for which there is ample evidence beginning with the cave drawings which prehistoric humans chose to make because they wanted to do it.

That is not evidence for the impossible, self-contradictory non-freedom you're are insisting on, and claiming it as such is basically lying.

[Alan Burns]

.. and since we cannot choose our wants they were merely acting out the desires that had arisen in them.  We don't get to choose which desires to have, remember ?

So you keep asserting.
And what I keep pointing out to you is that we have the conscious freedom to choose how, when and where to satisfy those desires.

[Shaker]

So you keep asserting.

There's no meter in the world capable of standing up to that degree of irony.

[Stranger]

And what I keep pointing out to you is that we have the conscious freedom to choose how, when and where to satisfy those desires.

Yes but that is just based on other wants, desires, or reasons that are all due to the person you are. You can't go on choosing the reasons for the reasons for the reasons, it's an infinite regress.

Your version of freedom is nonsense: you can't be free from the person you are.

[torridon]

So you keep asserting.
And what I keep pointing out to you is that we have the conscious freedom to choose how, when and where to satisfy those desires.

and that 'how, when and where' is itself a matter of desire; we choose the option for 'how, when and where' that most appeals and we have no control over how much something appeals to us.  There is no escaping this logic Alan.

[Alan Burns]

Yes but that is just based on other wants, desires, or reasons that are all due to the person you are. You can't go on choosing the reasons for the reasons for the reasons, it's an infinite regress.

Your version of freedom is nonsense: you can't be free from the person you are.

The reason for my actions starts and ends in my human will

[BeRational]

The reason for my actions starts and ends in my human will

Then burn your bible and stop believing in god.

Can you do that?

[Alan Burns]

Then burn your bible and stop believing in god.

Can you do that?

As I have previously said, we do not choose beliefs, we discern them.  I can't choose to stop believing what I know to be true - it is not a personal preference.

[torridon]

There are no "degrees" of freedom in a physically determined scenario.  Where would such "degrees" of freedom emanate from?

You could say, for instance, that a human has more degrees of freedom than a hedgehog; a hedgehog has more degrees of freedom than a potato plant.  It means we have the luxury of more options to choose from, basically.

[Shaker]

As I have previously said, we do not choose beliefs, we discern them.  I can't choose to stop believing what I know to be true - it is not a personal preference.

That's a smoother skate from belief to a knowledge claim than Torvill and Dean.