Crazy Bible Stories

[skepticalbip]

"The world at large" is only perceived by observers who know the difference between volition and compulsion. Who or what else comprehends something called... "the world at large"?

The unconscious lever doesn't choose to lift the rock. The unconscious fulcrum isn't thinking about what's gong on around it. It's not gravity consciously deciding to use one inanimate object to lift another inanimate object.

That is a non sequitur. No one has suggested that the lever acts on its own. The suggestion is that gravity causes mass to be attracted to other mass with no conscious intent.

ETA:
If someone consciously intends to move the stone then they may need a lever to overcome the unconscious natural force of gravity that resulted in that stone being in the low potential well it is in.

Or is it your claim that the stone is there because that is where god wants it? But that a human's intent can overcome god's will with the help of a lever or, if the stone is small enough, just pick that sucker up and toss it against god's will?

 

[DBT]

"The world at large" is only perceived by observers who know the difference between volition and compulsion. Who or what else comprehends something called... "the world at large"?

The unconscious lever doesn't choose to lift the rock. The unconscious fulcrum isn't thinking about what's gong on around it. It's not gravity consciously deciding to use one inanimate object to lift another inanimate object.

Nobody is arranging the presence and orbits of planets in solar systems, stars into galaxies, galaxies into clusters. Rivers need not decides where to flow or plants where to grow.

 

[Lion IRC]

DBT made it clear what zhe believes about invisible agency in the "world at large."

The physical world appears to work according to the attributes and principles of physics, not someone behind the stage pulling strings. It is matter/energy that manifests the physical world and how it behaves, gravity, light, electricity, chemical interactions, etc.

Gravity is agency (effecting matter/energy objects), so is the strong force, weak force, electromagnetism.....

 

[Lion IRC]

It would be a lot easier just to say "...I don't believe in free will."

 

[skepticalbip]

It would be a lot easier just to say "...I don't believe in free will."

I don't believe inanimate objects have free will. They react, without consciousness, to the forces of nature, like gravity.

 

[DBT]

It would be a lot easier just to say "...I don't believe in free will."

It doesn't matter what I 'believe.'

It's just a matter of evidence.

The evidence shows us that that material objects and processes can and do interact without will, be it 'free' or not.

Just like the fact that we do not grow our own brains, or decide how well or how badly they happen to function.

 

[Lion IRC]

In the rock, lever, fulcrum, person picture that I posted, do you see any agent with autonomous free will - volition?

The rock. Yes or No
The lever. Yes or No
The arm holding the lever. It's made of matter. Does it have free will?

Do you concede that (on materialism) you cannot make a scientifically valid prediction about the agent acting upon the mechanism?

 

[DBT]

In the rock, lever, fulcrum, person picture that I posted, do you see any agent with autonomous free will - volition?

You word your question with an assumption that volition and decision making are in fact examples of 'free will' It is a false assumption and a loaded question.

Your assumption ignores the process by which volition and decision making are formed through unconscious activity prior to your conscious experience, that what you see, feel, think or decide is determined by that underlying activity responding to inputs from the external world interacting with memory/experience, therefore not a matter of 'free will' at all.

Volition - the cognitive process by which an organism decides on and commits to a particular course of action

Abstract;
''An information becomes conscious, however, if the neural population that represents it is mobilized by top-down attentional amplification into a brain-scale state of coherent activity that involves many neurons distributed throughout the brain. The long-distance connectivity of these ‘workspace neurons’ can, when they are active for a minimal duration, make the information available to a variety of processes including perceptual categorization, long-term memorization, evaluation, and intentional action. We postulate that this global availability of information through the workspace is what we subjectively experience as a conscious state.''

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

It would be a lot easier just to say "...I don't believe in free will."

I don't believe inanimate objects have free will. They react, without consciousness, to the forces of nature, like gravity.

Technically speaking there is no such thing as an "inanimate" object. Everything is constantly in motion. But I certainly understand your meaning. This is what makes "free will" an "Angels on Pinheads" discussion.

 

[steve_bank]

To me philosophically free will and freedom of choice are two different things.

You go to buy a car and you pick one or another. Freedom of choice. However your choice is conditioned by advertising and how you think it makes you look to others.

We are all conditioned starring in the womb, plus our genetic conditioning and characteristics. Sex drive over rides choice chemically.

To the theists god and the bible tell you what to do. There is no choice.

 

[DBT]

I don't think that there is anybody who would argue that we don't have the ability to make decisions, it's obvious that we can. After all, a brain is an information processor, and as processor of information its evolved roles is to respond to environment by making decisions, which is not done by means of our conscious will.

Conscious Will, being shaped and formed by unconscious processes, has nothing to do with it. Like perception and thought, it comes after input, propagation and processing of information, hence never free to alter the very underlying activity that shapes and forms it.

 

[Learner]

To me philosophically free will and freedom of choice are two different things.

You go to buy a car and you pick one or another. Freedom of choice. However your choice is conditioned by advertising and how you think it makes you look to others.

We are all conditioned starring in the womb, plus our genetic conditioning and characteristics. Sex drive over rides choice chemically.

To the theists god and the bible tell you what to do. There is no choice.

There's.... choose wisely, it's up to the individual.

I don't think that there is anybody who would argue that we don't have the ability to make decisions, it's obvious that we can. After all, a brain is an information processor, and as processor of information its evolved roles is to respond to environment by making decisions, which is not done by means of our conscious will.

Conscious Will, being shaped and formed by unconscious processes, has nothing to do with it. Like perception and thought, it comes after input, propagation and processing of information, hence never free to alter the very underlying activity that shapes and forms it.

Both of you have distinguished there are two differences.

Let us then define free will as the 'ability to make descisions' - making things a lot simpler.

I'm ok with that.

(at least for the sake of furthering the discussion)

 

[steve_bank]

As this is religion not philosophy, did god give humans the ability to freely chose between god and not god without any coercion or preconditioning?

To me choosing wisely is rejecting deities lacking proof to the contrary. To a Christian preconditioned by theology choosing wisely is faith in god.

 

[DBT]

Both of you have distinguished there are two differences.

Let us then define free will as the 'ability to make descisions' - making things a lot simpler.

I'm ok with that.

(at least for the sake of furthering the discussion)

In which case my computer has free will. I type a word and it provides a list of options related to my request. As has a fly choosing to fly in the direction of food, yet incapable of moral reasoning....which is not a matter of 'free will' but having the necessary neural wiring, something that not all people have.

 

[Learner]

As this is religion not philosophy, did god give humans the ability to freely chose between god and not god without any coercion or preconditioning?

Without coercion, love is unconditional with God. A perfect world or Heaven, so to speak.

To me choosing wisely is rejecting deities lacking proof to the contrary. To a Christian preconditioned by theology choosing wisely is faith in god.

It depends - on a case by case. People who were not born into the theology and became Christains later, for example, were not previously preconditioned.

 

[Learner]

In which case my computer has free will. I type a word and it provides a list of options related to my request. As has a fly choosing to fly in the direction of food, yet incapable of moral reasoning....which is not a matter of 'free will' but having the necessary neural wiring, something that not all people have.

Perhaps yes, we could go by that philosophy but we would be at a far more advance level, an emotionally-reasoned, self-reparing-cellular, computer (for lack of articulation).

 

[DBT]

In which case my computer has free will. I type a word and it provides a list of options related to my request. As has a fly choosing to fly in the direction of food, yet incapable of moral reasoning....which is not a matter of 'free will' but having the necessary neural wiring, something that not all people have.

Perhaps yes, we could go by that philosophy but we would be at a far more advance level, an emotionally-reasoned, self-reparing cellular, computer (for lack of articulation).

Attributes that are neither willed or chosen, but enabled by the complexity of an information processor....which makes the term 'free will' an ideology rather than a reality.

 

[Lion IRC]

Free will.
It's two simple words.
Nothing complex about the difference between wanting to do something and being forced to do something.
If I give DBT a hard push in the direction of Learner, and DBT subsequently injures Learner, would DBT be guilty of assault?
No. https://www.lexico.com/definition/mens_rea

 

[DBT]

Free will.
It's two simple words.
Nothing complex about the difference between wanting to do something and being forced to do something.
If I give DBT a hard push in the direction of Learner, and DBT subsequently injures Learner, would DBT be guilty of assault?
No. https://www.lexico.com/definition/mens_rea

The issue is related, not so much to the fact that you are able to act on your wants, but how they are formed. How you think and what you think being related to how your conscious experience of self and thought is being generated.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If I give DBT a hard push in the direction of Learner, and DBT subsequently injures Learner, would DBT be guilty of assault?
No. https://www.lexico.com/definition/mens_rea

Did DBT have free will that would have enabled him to resist your push? Did he see you and the push coming? Should he have seen you and the push coming and so is he guilty of making a bad "free will" decision before he ever got pushed? Should he be punished for making this bad decision that allowed him to be pushed?

After you pushed him he experienced a conditioned response. Is every conditioned response an act of "free will?" Clearly DBT made many, many decisions that eventually enabled you being able to push him when he was apparently unaware. I would think that if DBT knew you were going to push him he would have reacted somehow before the push ever occurred.