Searching for GOD...

[Robbie]

Likelly, I've never had such experiences (& don't want them).

[Roses]

Likelly, I've never had such experiences (& don't want them).

You should have visited our previous property where we had at least one weird incident daily for 11 of the 15 years we lived there. Visitors had strange experiences including journalists and a well known author.

[Walter]

You should have visited our previous property where we had at least one weird incident daily for 11 of the 15 years we lived there. Visitors had strange experiences including journalists and a well known author.

give us some names , I'm sure they wont mind

[Roses]

give us some names , I'm sure they wont mind

No.

[Walter]

No.

then the validity of your claims are becoming very weak

[Roses]

then the validity of your claims are becoming very weak

My dear they have plenty of validity, even the Foreign Office commissioned a film about our previous property. Anyway the Mods are going to put us on the naughty stair if we get so far off topic. You can start another thread if you want, although I will only answer certain questions.

[Walter]

My dear they have plenty of validity, even the Foreign Office commissioned a film about our previous property. Anyway the Mods are going to put us on the naughty stair if we get so far off topic. You can start another thread if you want, although I will only answer certain questions.

my tea's ready now !

[Walter]

Lr

anyway we've been through all this a couple of years ago and I wasn't convinced then . So unless you give us more info now there's no point .

[Robbie]

Curiouser and curiouser.

[jeremyp]

But can you not see the absurdity in presuming you can do all this investigation without having the free will to do it?

No.

Why would it be absurd?

[jeremyp]

This has some points...

1. It creates a loop.

No it doesn't. If the researches have time to tell the person making the decision what decision they will make, they also have time to observe the results of telling the decision maker the new information.

If you observe yourself taking a decision that you have no choice taking, you can also change it.... which means you then have a choice....

Indeed I can at a high level. And if I change my mind as a result, that process is also deterministic.

It also shows that 'we' can be independent of ourselves and observe ourselves taking decisions (predetermined or otherwise). This is the 'observer' that many spiritual people talk about. You are getting there!

That supposes that there is a higher level observer to do the observing. This is false. The observer is the same entity as the observed and that creates complex and hard to predict feedback loops, but there is no need to suppose that these are not deterministic.

[jeremyp]

Just a tentative thought, so spare me the usual laboured sarcasm, but might consciousness and self-awareness, and the capacity for abstract thought, as emergent properties of the highly-complex human brain, offer a bit of wriggle-room between determinism and randomness?

|I would argue that randomness is also not free will. Imagine a man who made all his decisions by tossing a coin. You wouldn't argue that he is exerting free will.

It's quite possible that we make decisions based on some blend of determinism and quantum randomness but it's still not free will in the sense that Alan Burns seems to believe.

[Alan Burns]

No, you can do investigate simply because you want to.  Nothing absurd about that, we all do things that we want to do, all the time.

What is absurd, is to claim that we can be 'free' of what we want.  It is that notion that really makes no sense.

There are many things I want, but I have the freedom to choose which to indulge and how to indulge it.

Of course many people want to find out about the reality of our existence, but to do this we need consciously driven freedom to control our own thought processes.  To presume that it all just happens from uncontrollable reactions of material elements in our brain is just absurd.

[Sriram]

I think the idea of Virtual Reality is the most meaningful here.  There is enough room for determinism and for free will. Except that many of you can't accommodate or get used to the idea of a subject or self that is external to the physical world.

[torridon]

There are many things I want, but I have the freedom to choose which to indulge and how to indulge it.

I've debunked this simplistic thinking many times already. 

The choice of how or when to indulge a desire itself reflects a desire.  Minds have evolved a fundamental mechanism for resolving choice and the mechanism must hold at all levels of cognition otherwise we would be unable to decide things.  The mechanism is the rendering of all options in terms of emotional value and we always choose the option that has the most appeal; this principal holds at broad levels (shall I book a holiday) and at finer levels (shall I book two weeks in Sardinia flying out from Stansted on July 1st).  Minds are capable of resolving choice at all levels of detail through the same principal.  Your weird notion that we are unfree with respect to broad choices but we are free with respect to fine choice makes no sense to me.  It is the same fundamental process applied at different levels, is all.

[torridon]

Why should the Unconscious mind be free of the relevant information?  I said it could be like a VR game.  In the VR game, the individual within the game is the Conscious mind and the one outside, playing the game, is the Unconscious mind.  It is all fixed and predetermined and yet quite free too.

For a person within the game it will seem as though some unconscious mind is making the decisions.

Locating the decision making entity somewhere else makes no difference to the fundamental logic; the unconscious mind, wherever it is, still needs to be in possession of the relevant information if it is to make informed decisions.  The location of the mind is irrelevant in that sense.

[Sriram]

Locating the decision making entity somewhere else makes no difference to the fundamental logic; the unconscious mind, wherever it is, still needs to be in possession of the relevant information if it is to make informed decisions.  The location of the mind is irrelevant in that sense.

Why can't the unconscious mind have the relevant information?  In a VR game the player does have all the required information that help him take decisions.

[torridon]

Of course many people want to find out about the reality of our existence, but to do this we need consciously driven freedom to control our own thought processes.  To presume that it all just happens from uncontrollable reactions of material elements in our brain is just absurd.

More simplistic thinking : the extent to which we can 'control our own thought processes' is itself a thought process.

To presume that our thoughts do not derive from something prior without being random is the plain absurdity here.  This is an unintelligible claim.  In reality, our thoughts occur as a consequence of something, they happen for a reason.   Clearly we cannot control what happened in the past.  Get over it.

[torridon]

Why can't the unconscious mind have the relevant information?  In a VR game the player does have all the required information that help him take decisions.

OK, well in that scenario, the player, if it does have all relevant information, can make informed decisions.  I have no particular reason to think that I am an avatar in someone else's reality game however; that looks baseless fantasy, with no reason to take it seriously.

[Sriram]

OK, well in that scenario, the player, if it does have all relevant information, can make informed decisions.  I have no particular reason to think that I am an avatar in someone else's reality game however; that looks baseless fantasy, with no reason to take it seriously.

What do you mean...'someone else's reality game'??   It is your game...networked in some way with others.  The common unconscious mind has been postulated by many philosophers and scientists.

[torridon]

What do you mean...'someone else's reality game'??   It is your game...networked in some way with others.  The common unconscious mind has been postulated by many philosophers and scientists.

sorry i thought you were proposing a VR reality game as analogy.

I don't see how a 'common unconscious mind' would work.

[Sriram]

sorry i thought you were proposing a VR reality game as analogy.

I don't see how a 'common unconscious mind' would work.

Why should you or I know how it works?  Do you know how parallel universes work or 11 dimensions or Strings or Dark Matter?  Whatever Is ...Is....regardless of whether it makes sense to our limited comprehension.   

Its just an idea that could integrate determinism and free will.

[torridon]

Why should you or I know how it works?  Do you know how parallel universes work or 11 dimensions or Strings or Dark Matter?  Whatever Is ...Is....regardless of whether it makes sense to our limited comprehension.   

Its just an idea that could integrate determinism and free will.

I don't see the need to integrate determinism and free will, even less the need to do so by proposing outlandish scenarios that are more unintelligible than that which whey purport to explain.

The first thing to understand about minds, is that they are subjective.  A 'common' mind would not be subjective.  'Common' is not consistent with subjectivity, so the notion falls on its first encounter with Mr Ockham. 

[Sriram]

I don't see the need to integrate determinism and free will, even less the need to do so by proposing outlandish scenarios that are more unintelligible than that which whey purport to explain.

The first thing to understand about minds, is that they are subjective.  A 'common' mind would not be subjective.  'Common' is not consistent with subjectivity, so the notion falls on its first encounter with Mr Ockham.

My goodness! You tie yourselves up in so many knots that you can't breath....and then quote Occum or a fallacy or something else. Reality is not decided by Occum or anyone else.   If we observe determinism and free will existing together, the VR scenario is a meaningful idea.  That is all I am saying.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

My goodness! You tie yourselves up in so many knots that you can't breath....and then quote Occum or a fallacy or something else. Reality is not decided by Occum or anyone else.

No, but your failure to validate a claim about reality is.

If we observe determinism and free will existing together, the VR scenario is a meaningful idea.  That is all I am saying.

We don't though. What we observe is will that's apparently "free" at an experiential level, but that cannot be at a rationalised level.