Baron, I think we agree on the concepts, but disagree on the terms.
Which terms?
Baron Max
Baron, I think we agree on the concepts, but disagree on the terms.
How about "self-determination", or do you think that will not work either, because other influences "help" you determine, so you are not doing it all by yourself?
You can "will" it, but every single "will" is influenced by what we've learned or been taught in out lives.
So, we are influenced in our actions, but have the ability to choose among the options available to us.
In other words, what I have been saying.
Correct?
Or did I misunderstand you?
Come on Baron, you know I'm smarter than that. Just cause you feel like you have to put down every 12 year old who thinks he's figured out the answer to everything doesn't mean that everyone who disagrees with you is one of 'em.What? Because Joe does something differnt to Mike in the same extreme sitution is proof that there's free will???? All it means is that the two learned different things over their lives. Joe learned to quickly get the fuck out of the way ...while Mike learned to first stop and gather up all the available info, process it all, THEN act. Don't prove shit about free will.
Quantum wave? Is that a new kind of Tex-Mex food or something?? What the fuck are you talking about? Or are you just using those high-sounding terms to make someone think that you know something? Or you just watched too much Star Trek?
Baron Max
Non sequitur.That every analogous scenario demands the same flowchart of apparent decisions indicates that no individual one may be made without any conscious or unconscious regard for all those that preceded it; it is therefore a slave to historical influences.
I'm not convinced at all.We have only the illusion of 'options'. The one we ultimately will choose is pre-determined by the totality of our historical and external circumstances. In this sense nothing is minutiae, only misunderstood.
We, on the other hand, are not trees.If a tree falls in the middle of a wild forest, the universe will never be quite the same, whether anyone hears or cares or not. What is equally interesting is that the tree did not fall in a vacuum, nor did it 'choose' to fall: it was felled by its history and environment.
Non sequitur.
You have shown how we are inflenced by our surroundings - not enslaved by them...
Influenced is not the same as controlled.
Life is a series of interconnected coincidences all created by the choices you make, the self-determination of others and the world around you.
We can choose to chop a tree down if we wish.
So, we are influenced in our actions, but have the ability to choose among the options available to us.
I don't think you adequately supported your assertion that we are compelled to follow a specific course of action, as opposed to openly selecting from the available array of options.As Oscar Wilde made Lord Henry Wotton say, 'All influence is corrupting'. History and environment serve up banquets of apparent choices. These choices are mutually-exclusive, as they may not be engaged simultaneously. One is compelled to select one 'choice' over another. The route of this compulsion is owed entirely to the exquisitely precise state of one's mind at that moment.
...
It is a tough question, I know that our choices can be altered,
The only way that one can actually and truly be free to choose between the options is to be totally ignorant of the options themselves ...as well as the consequences! Otherwise, his choice is is/will be "influenced" ...which is the same as saying "not free"!