| jason1637 said: Well, i cant is sure of that but it's hard to comprehend an idea that free will doesn't exist because its like saying people are going to do this and that no matter what. |
It seems we're wired to be under the assumption of having free will. It certainly feels like you're in control of you own actions, but could it all be an illusion. What is the benefit of conciousness and belief in free will in evolution. Better focus and faster reaction time?
Sometimes you get these odd moments when it really seems we're only simply reacting to stimuli is a set way. For example, watching back home video of our own kids, it's creepy to realize we're making the exact same verbal reactions to what our kids do as is captured on the video, pretty much synchronized. But maybe that's just part of reliving a memory. Did I have a choice not to respond or respond differently. There was no concious choice. Most of our lives we're simply reacting to stimuli without being fully aware of it.
Conscious choice is usually weighing a set of alternatives and eventually the scale tips to one side. What makes that scale tip. Is it simply the result of a neural network tallying up pros and cons or do you have influence on it. Yet you are the neural network doing the tallying. A biological machine that became aware of itself. At least that's what I saw happening in my kids from birth until now. And similarly I have seen self awareness slowly disappear again by Alzheimer's disease. Is that the same though? Nobody can remember being concious at birth. Yet we can't ask late stage Alzheimer patients either whether they are concious locked up in an unresponsive brain. As long as memory and sense of time keep working we have a graps on the continuity of our existence in which we can think about free will. I have no idea where I'm going with this, except that I believe conciousness is very much tied to the biological brain and I have no clue how that could leave room for free will.
