Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

* sigh *

YET AGAIN

So how does the "you" ultimately decide when, where and if to invoke its choice? It either does so entirely because of pre-existing causes/reasons or not. If not, then, to that extent, it has chosen for no reason, which means random.

Shifting the focus to consciousness makes no difference whatsoever to the basic logic.

You are totally wrong in this.
You exist in the present, as does your conscious awareness.  You have awareness of the past, but you are not entirely driven by it.  Your choice is invoked by your present state of mind, which certainly does not make it random.  It just means that your conscious will has the final say, not your past experiences, nurture and memories.

The alternative you espouse allows no possibility of freedom to choose. No matter how much you try to explain it, your version of freedom is entirely dictated by past events over which you have no freedom of control.  So you become the human boulder rolling down the predetermined slope of life with no freedom to choose your own path.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Our conscious experience is simply a memory of things which occurred in the present.

I know you're not a thinker, but do you even bother to look at the words you've typed before you hit "Post"? If you accept that conscious experience is a memory of something, then you can't be experiencing that something in the present can you?

I am consciously aware of each letter I type after I type it...

So not when you type it it after all then?

...but the invocation of my consciously driven choice to type that letter occurred in what was then my present state of conscious awareness.

Except of course something prior must still have given rise to that "invocation" - either that or it was invoked randomly. And no amount of asserting a magic man at the controls can change that.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

You are totally wrong in this.

No, you are. As you will always just ignore the explanation for why you're wrong though there's not much point in giving it to you again is there magic man.

[Alan Burns]

AB,

No, you are. As you will always just ignore the explanation for why you're wrong though there's not much point in giving it to you again is there magic man.

But you appear to have ignored the last point I made in the post you quoted, so I will give it again:

The alternative you espouse allows no possibility of freedom to choose. No matter how much you try to explain it, your version of freedom is entirely dictated by past events over which you have no freedom of control.  So you become the human boulder rolling down the predetermined slope of life with no freedom to choose your own path.

[Stranger]

* sigh *

YET AGAIN

So how does the "you" ultimately decide when, where and if to invoke its choice? It either does so entirely because of pre-existing causes/reasons or not. If not, then, to that extent, it has chosen for no reason, which means random.

Shifting the focus to consciousness makes no difference whatsoever to the basic logic.

You are totally wrong in this.
You exist in the present, as does your conscious awareness.  You have awareness of the past, but you are not entirely driven by it.  Your choice is invoked by your present state of mind, which certainly does not make it random.  It just means that your conscious will has the final say, not your past experiences, nurture and memories.

You said all this waffle before and you've completely ignored what I asked. Here it is again:

So how does this "conscious will" decide what its final say is to be? It either does so entirely because of pre-existing causes/reasons or not. If not, then, to that extent, it has chosen for no reason, which means random.

The alternative you espouse allows no possibility of freedom to choose. No matter how much you try to explain it, your version of freedom is entirely dictated by past events over which you have no freedom of control.  So you become the human boulder rolling down the predetermined slope of life with no freedom to choose your own path.

Look, as I said before, if want to insist that being free to do exactly as you wish and make choices that truly express your nature, nurture, experience, and personality, isn't really freedom because it doesn't conform to your incoherent, illogical, contradictory, and impossible ideas about what it 'should' be, then you are perfectly free to do so.   

However, your insistence doesn't make a jot of difference to the reality of the situation and doesn't make your notion of freedom any less contradictory or impossible, or any more believable.

Sorry.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

But you appear to have ignored the last point I made in the post you quoted, so I will give it again:

Are you seriously accusing me of ignoring something you said when you consistently and routinely ignore everything I (and others) say so as to repeat endlessly exactly the same mistakes you’ve had corrected?

Seriously though?

Good grief!

And speaking of repeating exactly the same mistakes, what you said was:

The alternative you espouse allows no possibility of freedom to choose

Flat wrong for the reason you’ve had explained scores of times and just ignore. You have the experience of choice all the time – what you can't derive from that experience though is an explanation for what the experience consists of. You know, the question you always run away from (and indeed won’t even tell us why you run away from it).

No matter how much you try to explain it, your version of freedom is entirely dictated by past events over which you have no freedom of control.

That’s called a non sequitur – one of the many logical fallacies on which you rely. Explaining it with reason and evidence doesn’t change the experience of apparent freedom of choice.   

Why is this so difficult for you even to comprehend?

So you become the human boulder rolling down the predetermined slope of life with no freedom to choose your own path

Another piece of stupidity you’ve had corrected already.

First, even if that was true it’d just be yet another be argumentum ad consequentiam. That you don’t like an implication of an argument tells you nothing at all about the validity of the argument that leads to it. 

Second it’s not true in any case because boulders haven’t evolved consciousness, so they don’t have the experience of choice.

This isn’t difficult stuff AB, it really isn’t. Even for you if only you weren't so terrified of thinking.

[torridon]

You are totally wrong in this.
You exist in the present, as does your conscious awareness.  You have awareness of the past, but you are not entirely driven by it.  Your choice is invoked by your present state of mind, which certainly does not make it random.  It just means that your conscious will has the final say, not your past experiences, nurture and memories.

Your 'conscious will' itself is a product of the things that led to your current state of mind at the moment of making a choice.  Goodness only knows why you struggle so much to understand this simple point.  We cannot choose our state of mind, our state of mind (and the choices that flow from it) are a consequence of the things that led to our state of mind.  This is, really simple.

[BeRational]

I think I am correct in saying that if you are walking your feet and your head will have different NOW. As things move they slow down and by our feet would swing at different speeds in different directions.
This would mean that your own body is not quite in the same time.
So where is the present then?

[jjohnjil]

It is easily demonstrated by contemplating your own ability to make conscious choices.  You are consciously aware of reasons for making a choice before the choice is made, but these reasons do not automatically invoke the choice.  You still have control over when, where and if to invoke your choice.  And the act of contemplating this scenario aptly demonstrates you freedom to drive your own thought processes.  Can you honestly believe that such thought processes occur in your subconscious before you become aware of them?

If it is easily demonstrate it, Alan, demonstrate it.  The post above hasn't added anything or shown a case where your soul (not mine) has made a decision based on nothing that has gone before.

I can't see any way that it can, but you seem to think it's easily shown to happen.  Show it from your soul's personal experience.

[Alan Burns]

We cannot choose our state of mind, our state of mind (and the choices that flow from it) are a consequence of the things that led to our state of mind.  This is, really simple.

Your reality would appear to be far different from mine.
Your words effectively consign you to being a robot.

[Sebastian Toe]

Your words effectively consign you to being a robot.

As your replies do to you!

[wigginhall]

Oh the irony, from the ultimate Christobot.

[SteveH]

Oh the irony, from the ultimate Christobot.

Whatever AB is, he's no bot: you may disagree with him, but he's obviously a thinker.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Your reality would appear to be far different from mine.
Your words effectively consign you to being a robot.

1. Of course they don't, or at least not until we have robots with equivalent self-awareness to our own.

2. You (yet again) just tried an argumentum ad consequentiam. Just out of interest, why are you so indifferent to relying on arguments that are specious? I've explained the basics of logical fallacies several times to you now yet somehow you think it's legitimate to keep attempting them. Why? Can you really not see that when people read your posts they think at first, "this guy's using a wrong argument', and when you keep doing it over and over again despite being corrected over and over again they think much worse than that?

Look at me - asking old Magic Man a question like he's ever going to answer it. What am I like eh?   

[bluehillside Retd.]

Steve H,

Whatever AB is, he's no bot: you may disagree with him, but he's obviously a thinker.

You've got to be joking right?

Tell me you're joking.

AB is hard wired to churn out endlessly "your ability to write this post is evidence that you have my (impossible as it happens) concept of free will" no matter what the arguments that falsify him. That's the opposite of thinking - he's an algorithm stuck in an endless loop of misplaced certainty regardless of the reasoning ranged against him. 

[Stranger]

Whatever AB is, he's no bot: you may disagree with him, but he's obviously a thinker.

I literally laughed out loud at that. Have you actually been reading his posts?

[jeremyp]

Whatever AB is, he's no bot: you may disagree with him, but he's obviously a thinker.

In the sense he means it i.e. a deterministic machine, we are all robots.

[Roses]

I would much sooner be an evobot designed by the evolutionary process, than a godbot created for the amusement of the sky fairy.

[torridon]

Your reality would appear to be far different from mine.
Your words effectively consign you to being a robot.

You might not like it, but that is the reality of how minds work at a fundamental level.  Bad things happen, I feel upset; good things happen, I feel good.  I cannot remember ever an occasion when I received tragic news and just chose to find it hilarious, can you ?  This is what brains evolved to do, to mediate between perceived change and response.  If they did not observe this fundamental principle of information processing we could not possibly be here to talk about it.  You might not like it, but that merely betrays a preference for make-believe over reality.

[bluehillside Retd.]

jeremy,

In the sense he means it i.e. a deterministic machine, we are all robots.

Yes, but AB really, really doesn't like that so - um - that means it can't be true then can it.

[Alan Burns]

You might not like it, but that is the reality of how minds work at a fundamental level.  Bad things happen, I feel upset; good things happen, I feel good.  I cannot remember ever an occasion when I received tragic news and just chose to find it hilarious, can you ?  This is what brains evolved to do, to mediate between perceived change and response.  If they did not observe this fundamental principle of information processing we could not possibly be here to talk about it.  You might not like it, but that merely betrays a preference for make-believe over reality.

I agree that we have no control over the emotions our brain perceives. But I do have the freedom to deal with them as I wish.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I agree that we have no control over the emotions our brain perceives. But I do have the freedom to deal with them as I wish.

And what to your mind determines what that wish will be, and how?

[torridon]

I agree that we have no control over the emotions our brain perceives. But I do have the freedom to deal with them as I wish.

.. and 'as I wish' is itself an emotional response, over which we have no control, ultimately. The clue is in the word 'wish'.  We are emotional beings, ultimately, we do what we want, but we cannot choose what to want or how much to want things.

[Stranger]

I agree that we have no control over the emotions our brain perceives. But I do have the freedom to deal with them as I wish.

Yes you do, but you have to make your mind up somehow.

No matter what you say makes the choice (you, your conscious awareness, your soul, whatever) a choice still has to be made and then the same arguments apply; it must be entirely due to the past or not, and if not, to that extent, it's due to nothing and is random.

It's like you're making a basic assumption that there is a 'you' that must be totally removed from any possible description of how choices get made, and you seem blind to the fact that you're even making it.

[Alan Burns]

Steve H,

    Whatever AB is, he's no bot: you may disagree with him, but he's obviously a thinker.

You've got to be joking right?

Tell me you're joking.

AB is hard wired to churn out endlessly "your ability to write this post is evidence that you have my (impossible as it happens) concept of free will" no matter what the arguments that falsify him. That's the opposite of thinking - he's an algorithm stuck in an endless loop of misplaced certainty regardless of the reasoning ranged against him.

Whatever else you think of me, you surely can't accuse me of not thinking.  My thoughts go deeper than you could ever imagine.  Certainly deeper than anything which could be achieved entirely through physically predetermined reactions in my brain cells.