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Nuvendil on 24 June 2016
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Teeqoz said:
VXIII said:

Interesting read. Human self awareness and consciousness is still a big mystery so I don't think we are able to give a complete and comprehensive answer.

Personally, I do believe in free will. I have food in front of me. There are reasons why I should eat or not eat it. A conflict of two wills / needs. I'm hungry but I want to lose weight.

A simple situation, but it is enough for me get a sense of my ability to choose. I personally see no logical reason or superior power that could have prevented me from choosing either way. At times I ate. Other times I didn't. I prefer this kind of simplicity, but that is just me.

There being two options and you ending up on one of them doesn't mean you actually chose the one you ended up on.

 

You say there is a conflict between two wills/needs. You are hungry but you want to lose weight. Okay. But think about what those two needs/wills actually are; neurons and electrical signals and chemicals in two different systems. Whichever one wins is just the systems that is dominant there and then. Do you think you actually choose which system of neurons, chemicals and electrical signals ends up being dominant?

Well the issue question at the heart of all this is the existence or non-existence of the nonphysical side of reality.  Something that can't be examined externally.  We can't step outside of reality to examine it.  We do have what appears to be a sense of such an existence on some level, that we can feel effects beyond our usual physical instinctive stimuli but you have to choose to believe that sense.  In that case the physical aspects we examine in our brains are part of a set of systems, a two part relationship.  

 

And we also live according to that which makes sense.  As I already said, debate, science, reason, all that is nonsense without free will.  You asking about free will and trying to understand that is nonsense.  The search for understanding is nonsense.  It is all nonsense because reasoning of all kinds is predicated on free will.