Free Will

[The Breaker]

On Free Will

I think of it like this. Do you choose what you like or dislike? Do you choose what you want to do? Certainly not. You enjoy something because endorphins in your brain are binding to receptors making it pleasurable. You desire things because dopamine is binding to receptors in your brain telling you it is in your interest to do it again. Every emotion has a corresponding neurotransmitter. We have not yet discovered the specific chemical or electrical signal for every emotion, but we will. Neurochemicals and electrical signals govern our every action and if this is true how can we have free will?

Studies have been performed where scientists have implanted electrodes in the Nucleus accumbens of rodents (I think this has also been performed with humans). The individual is presented with a button that, when pushed, sends an electrical signal through the nucleus accumbens. This electrical signal stimulates the rodents dopamine releasing neurons so that the neurons release mass amounts of dopamine. After the button is pushed the desire to push it again is so powerful that the animal will continue to push no matter what. The animal will continue to push the button even when being attacked and will not stop pushing the button to eat or sleep. I ask you, did this rodent have a choice? First post BTW.

 

[Quantum Quack]

I think of it like this. Do you choose what you like or dislike? Do you choose what you want to do? Certainly not. You enjoy something because endorphins in your brain are binding to receptors making it pleasurable. You desire things because dopamine is binding to receptors in your brain telling you it is in your interest to do it again. Every emotion has a corresponding neurotransmitter. We have not yet discovered the specific chemical or electrical signal for every emotion, but we will. Neurochemicals and electrical signals govern our every action and if this is true how can we have free will?

Studies have been performed where scientists have implanted electrodes in the Nucleus accumbens of rodents (I think this has also been performed with humans). The individual is presented with a button that, when pushed, sends an electrical signal through the nucleus accumbens. This electrical signal stimulates the rodents dopamine releasing neurons so that the neurons release mass amounts of dopamine. After the button is pushed the desire to push it again is so powerful that the animal will continue to push no matter what. The animal will continue to push the button even when being attacked and will not stop pushing the button to eat or sleep. I ask you, did this rodent have a choice? First post BTW.

in a way conditioning is a bit like addiction, just a matter of the degree of dysfunction caused by the compulsion to act.

Welcome to sciforums...

 

[Sarkus]

That is a comforting feeling for some, but it doesn't seem a justified assumption.

Arguing from personal incredulity? Also, if you don't think it seems justified, at least say why not so we can discuss it.

All I can say is I held this opinion to begin with but several physicists who understand quantum physics have explained to me that this just isn't how it works and the evidence that this is not how it works is very well established.

I understand this is disagreeable to some people, even other physicists, but I have to go with the current preponderence of the evidence.

I regret I don't have the math to discuss this directly, perhaps there are physicists hanging about who can do so in the physics threads.

Do you realise that this summarises to no more than: "I think you're wrong."
While I acknowledge that you might have a different view, I hope you can appreciate that merely telling me and being unable to support it makes it more or less irrelevant.
Or are you asking me to take your position as correct, based merely on faith and an appeal to authority?
If you feel that the evidence "is very well established" then it shouldn't be too difficult for you to provide some?

The speed of light makes it impossible to know everything at one specific time interval. There is an envelope of Cdt which will effect the next moment but is further than you can know about.

Irrelevant argument: determinism is a philosophical position: i.e. IF it is possible to know everything at a certain moment, THEN it is possible to determine the next (within the realms of probability).
A counter that thus negates the possibility of the assumption in reality is thus pointless, given that the premise is not requried to be possible in reality.

So you claim, but the evidence fails to pan out that way.

No offence, swarm, but you're going to have to offer more than "the evidence fails to pan out that way".
Please support your position, as I have done through logic.
Currently your "argument" is nothing more than a confidence statement of "you're wrong".

Choosing is not a chain of dominoes. It is the complex interaction of billions of living organisms with trillions of interconnections which have both standing patterns of activity, self reference, traces of previous experience, attention, awareness, and choice.

I agree to an extent with your description of choosing - but you misunderstand the analogy.
Each domino represents the state of all those things you refer to at a moment in time: the state of the interconnections, the state of each atom, quark etc.
Based on the state at that single moment, the next moment of each of those can be determined (probabilistically) through cause/effect - and this next moment is the next domino - again representing the state of all the things you mentioned at the next moment.

Just like formal logic cannot handle the self reference in the liar's paradox, your formal causality cannot handle free will. The doesn't mean there is not free will. It means your system of explaning behavior in not sufficient to the task.

So your entire argument is "formal logic can't handle liar's paradox, so free will exists"? Wouldn't you need to demonstrate that the liar's paradox can be shown to exist for this argument of yours to hold?
Your argument is further flawed, as logic CAN handle the concept of free-will, and it doesn't show it to be a paradox, it shows it to be false, whereas the Liar's Paradox can not be assigned a true/false value (hence the paradox).

You are wanting a "truth" value for free-will and, because logic provides a "false" value, you feel that a paradox gives you cause to ignore the logic??

If you start from the premise that "free-will exists" then you will reject every explanation that comes along that claims otherwise, ignoring the logic that supports the explanation, and rest on the laurels of the explanation not being sufficient. This is nothing more than arguing from fear of the consequence - the possibility that "free-will does not exist".

Your post has offered nothing to support the case that free-will exists, other than an appeal to nameless authority, personal incredulity and an apparent fear of the consequence, not to mention a red-herring of an analogy (otherwise known as a strawman).

If you wish to discuss, either find flaw in the arguments I made or posit counter arguments. But just to say "you're wrong"

 

[Tnerb]

Yeah QQ everyone has to act you know that right?

 

[Quantum Quack]

isn't it interesting how forum posts just seem to vanish?

 

[glaucon]

isn't it interesting how forum posts just seem to vanish?

Appropriate posts don't.
Irrelevant personal snipes do.

 

[Quantum Quack]

well I suggest you remove all of them and not display obvious bias If you don't mind me complaining...

 

[glaucon]

well I suggest you remove all of them and not display obvious bias If you don't mind me complaining...

Feel free to complain.
However, pursuant to my comment above, that should be done via PM.

 

[Tnerb]

He does mind you complaining. And since what you've said previous that you've now deleted which is:

Well then you're trying to become God? Your signature would be perfect.

Something like this (glaucon has it).

It isn't irrelevant is it?
if someone is dead they should die, if light cannot shine they should be hospilized. They should not torment this world and they never will. Just because someone can't see light. I suggest you go hide for a long while.

I am not God. Nor are you or any other person. You cannot and will stop or do, what you are trying to do.

In other words this entire thread is built around our relationship that we've had forever now and all of your getting close to me only to decieve me and in the end I find out...

Care to finish?

 

[Quantum Quack]

Glaucon, I ask you this.
How am I supposed to respond to the above post by tnerb?

 

[glaucon]

Well then you're trying to become God? Your signature would be perfect.

Something like this (glaucon has it).

It isn't irrelevant is it?
if someone is dead they should die, if light cannot shine they should be hospilized. They should not torment this world and they never will. Just because someone can't see light. I suggest you go hide for a long while.

I am not God. Nor are you or any other person. You cannot and will stop or do, what you are trying to do.

In other words this entire thread is built around our relationship that we've had forever now and all of your getting close to me only to decieve me and in the end I find out...

Care to finish?

And how is it that any of this is relevant to a discussion on free-will??

You don't think that discussing deities and eschatology isn't a tad off-topic??

 

[Tnerb]

Quantum Quack since you're on my advoid list I ask you this:

How am I supposed to respond to trickery and millions of sock puppets that proclaim the same thing?

Am I not right about what I have done with this thread from the START?

 

[glaucon]

Glaucon, I ask you this.
How am I supposed to respond to the above post by tnerb?

Good question.

As you can see, I don't see how it's relevant.

 

[Tnerb]

And how is it that any of this is relevant to a discussion on free-will??

You don't think that discussing deities and eschatology isn't a tad off-topic??

You are correct.
5 pages ago QQ has started the discussion on dieties (as humans) and I decided to discuss it... To find in the end what is true.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Good question.

As you can see, I don't see how it's relevant.

Obviously Tnerb has this intense fear that free will is being subjugated or in some way compromised by my self.

Thus he sees relevance to this topic of free will.
As yet there is no evidence logiclly or otherwise that free will even exists so I fail to see how something can be subjugated when it has no existance.

 

[Tnerb]

Or should I say what is wrong (sorry for the humor / silliness)

 

[Tnerb]

Obviously Tnerb has this intense fear that free will is being subjugated or in some way compromised by my self.

Thus he sees relevance to this topic of free will.
as yet there is o evidence logiclly or otherwise that free will even exists so I fail to see how something can be subjugated when it has no existance.

Do you see how abusive this is He's trying his best for once:bugeye:

 

[glaucon]

You are correct.
5 pages ago QQ has started the discussion on dieties (as humans) and I decided to discuss it... To find in the end what is true.

Fair enough.
From your OP I didn't think you wanted to include such an element.
If you'd like to discuss free-will and its relationship with deities, then that's fine. Do note however that such a change in scope will tend to change the direction of the discussion.

 

[Tnerb]

This guy has tried to crack my backbone and everything else. I'd say that warrents a discussion on what's free don't you Actually and quite honestly, hmm....I would have wished I have never started that.
Sorry. I will leave the discussion now.

 

[Quantum Quack]

for tnerbs benefit:

According to most religious thinking God is the only being that has free will. As all of his creation is subordinate to his will.

So maybe Tnerb has an intense fear of God.