| padib said: It's not arrogance, because the other way to look at it is that we are pre-programmed to act the way we do and that is illogical. So it's not arrogant to aspire to logic. If we are pre-programmed to do what we do, that makes our whole existence pointless. It makes all our emotions lies and illusions. For instance, if I am honest towards someone and choose to do the right thing, it was all just my synapses doing the work. So it was not my work at all in the end. I didn't do anything, and I have no merit. Therefore I shouldn't be thanked. So, if I shouldn't be thanked, why does the other person feel grateful? It seems illogical to have such emotions when all this is robotic. Why laugh that something is funny, if it was all just some synaptic trickery. The other person had it in their synapses all along, so why laugh? Everything becomes predictable when we rule out any possibility of personality and freedom. And thus there should be no excitement, no surprise. Then why laugh? Why love? |
I wonder where this sense of duality comes from? You are the sum of your synapses doing the work. You did do the work and the appropriate response to that is thankfulness. (reinforcing your good behavior)
There is no pre-programming (well there is a lot actually but not on a case by case basis) and while your behavior may be predictable up to a point, there is also the problem of not being able to fully understand/measure a system from within that system. To us, the future is unknowable.
Perhaps free will is simply a by product of the evolution of our brain. The main purpose of the brain is pattern recognition, identifying cause and effect, predicting outcomes while determining causes. Turn that onto itself and the brain comes up with free will and perhaps consciousness as an explanation of its inner workings. God made the earth, free will makes me choose. Could it be as simple as that.
Perhaps not believing in free will has been weeded out by evolution. If as you say not believing in free will leads to why laugh, why love, why do anything. Not a good recipe for procreation. Same as brains that believe there is no point to life are going to procreate as fast or even at all. We're all a product of millions of years of natural selection, which has very much shaped the way we think.
Back to the duality. Why is it not you doing the good deeds if free will is a myth. Why should you not be rewarded. It's still you weighing up the actions and deciding to do the good thing, whether it's chemicals and electrical signals in a neural network making the decision, or something else.
