free_will kx21 The Spark or Fire of Passion... 011201 ... dust devil or the façade behind which lurks predestination 011201 ... kx21 Gift or more precisely Gene from God or something else (please specify)? 011201 ... kx21 Gift or more precisely Gene from God or something else (please specify)? 011201 ... kx21 Momentum of Soul 020111 ... ever dumbening " Each of us A cell of awareness Imperfect and incomplete Genetic blends With uncertain ends On a fortune hunt That's far too fleet ... " 020111 ... cube Free will or freedom of choice is what Lucifer wanted to take from us - that we might all come back to God. Of course, he wanted God's power as a reward for this neat hack. So, the whole war in heaven thing was fought over this issue of free will. If it can cause that much discord, it must be worth something... ³ 020112 ... kx21 Increase of one's Free will (e.g. Tribe) is equal to decrease of Free Will of Other(s)? 020113 ... j_blue only if you take more than is yours to be had 020116 ... CheapVodka oh...this is good...i just thought up the perfect rant for this earlier today at work (in all my boredom) Some guy told me the other day, "We all should be thankful that God gave us free_will. And I asked him why. He said, "because he wanted us to make our own decisions and be our own people." Ok...so yes, if there is a god, that was really cool of him to hook it up with free_will...but then it got me thinking... what kind of sick_fuck would create beings and a world and NOT give us free_will... wouldn't that be wrong...he would have created a world of zombies wandering around and eating forbidden fruits all day. So... what does this prove? Once again, if there is a God...he's fucking us all in our ass.. he's not great and forgiving... he's a big asshole who obviously enjoys watching us struggle and rewarding those that don't need shit... he is more like a big, cruel, unfair obstacle that we can't get around if this offends anyone...please, just ignore me 020117 ... cube The KEY reason for having free will at all is for US to decide whether to come back to God or not.God obviously wants us all to come back to him or Lucifer wouldn't have presented the 'Zombie Plan' in the first place. The Zombie Plan would have taken away our free will. Every action would have been mapped out for us. We would have become little more than biological machines. Prisoners... ³ 020117 ... PATCH YOU DON'T HAVE FREE WILL. IF YOU DID YOUR POSSIBILITIES WOULD SEEM ENDLESS AND YOUR CHOICES WOULDN'T INEVITABLY END IN DISAPPOINTMENT. THE NARROW LITTLE RUTS DOWN WHICH WE ALL DRIVE ARE PREDETERMINED, AND THE ONLY CHOICES WE REALLY HAVE ARE LIMITED BY THE CHOICES OF THOSE AROUND US AND THOSE COUNTLESS MILLIONS WHO CAME BEFORE AND SET UP ALL OF THE RULES. 020119 ... patch ooops, did'nt mean to shout. 020119 ... Malachite ... is selfishness personified. 030619 ... User24 yup patch, tis true we only have the freedom to do what is socially acceptable and feasable within our society. 030619 ... stork daddy why is this always looked at so either or? yes we are determined but we are determined to seek freedom. that is, we are determined to become aware about the world, to increase our knowledge about the options. of course the relevance of any given thing before us in the tableau of an earth moment is all relative to a goal that has to at some level be inborn. So you could argue that there must be some inborn goals of ours which are determined, our hunger, or comfort levels or so on and so forth. to make it seem as if we are just a complicated domino rally set though is a tad inaccurate as there is information being exchanged and circuited back and forth. trajectories are not just embarked on, but changed. if you look at it all after the fact as one large trajectory you could say it was all pre-determined, but certainly not in any predictable way, nor is there anyway to prove that it couldn't've been different. a good decision is one in which we are clearly informed of which choices bring us most directly to whatever goal we have. that is what decision making consists of to me, awareness. We are configured to increase awareness and find freedom. One of the awareness' we've inevitably come across is that of "free will." Just being aware of it we could arbitrarily choose something or draw it out of a hat. There's no reason to suggest this is the best way of making a decision, but we are free to do so, in the sense we are aware of it and can if we so desire. We can even go against our own desires if what we want more than anything is to be free. Of course we cannot at some level escape our circumstances, but why would we want to? The very reason a decision is worthwhile to waver over is because it matters to us. For the most part, the human mind is free in that it isn't chained to any one sort of action, and awaits relevant information. we are trapped by our clamoring for new options and new possibilities. freedom is the ability to make choices in my opinion. any other definition needs lots of metaphysical claptrap. i do hold, however, that an actual choice is made since the very executive function that we say is impotent, a figurehead, does play a large role in configuring the self that makes these choices. We can veto choices which go against our larger desires, we can ennact a larger action which contains many subdecisions (to study a language or to learn how to play guitar for instance). The very responsibility we feel, the awareness we feel is not needless ornamentation, it is a key part of the decision process, it is our user interface between ourselves and our decision trees. You cannot say it is just awareness of something which is happening without us, because we are the happening, the freedom we feel is our mind's way of telling us that there is a decision to be made which requires our attention, our further orders. We are not only given access to relevant parts of ourself as well as the world which it must involve itself in, but are then asked to find the best path between the two, the best actions. Of course we aren't like computers, it'd make no sense to evolve into something that searches out the very best possibility everytime because we evolved in a world with time limits with decisions that needed to be made right now, not years from now. So we make some decisions half blind, but that feeling of responsibility we have is what makes us seek out better choices next time, or learn to improve our turnaround time. There is even more freedom in this middle ground as we are not bewildered by possibilities or trapped by lack of them. We know the freedom of making a decision because it had to be made, and we often get to decide when that time is. Of course there are limitations, of course we are subject to the laws of physics, but to say that means we are necessarily automatons who must sit back and play no role in what happens to us is a totally unfounded conclusion. i'm not saying we're going to ferret out on blather a rhetoric that years and years of philosophy hasn't, but I will openly state that all of that philosophy as well as the common sense appreciation of it fails to capture the complexity of what is actually going on. 030619 ... User24 Firstly, just because it seems an appropriate answer to your argument; chaos_theory however, that's a surefire way to kill a discussion (and one of the most interesting ones on blather for a while, thankyou), so; ahem, (shuffles notes) (coughs) (sips water) (turns projector on) Free will. A discussion. From the moment we are born, we start making choices. At first, of course, we are not aware of them, it could be said that we have not yet developed our memory enough to store our experiences - a vital function for personal, social and evolutionary functions. So, as a young child, we make the simplest of choices, and after a short amount of time, we start learning things; cry, and get love. Sleep to get energy. And how do learn these things? By association. We learn over time that when we sleep we get more energy, so next time we are tired, we know to sleep. It could therefore be said that after a short amount of time 'getting to know the world' we realise how things work, and learn to manipulate ourselves and our environment to our own ends - that we develop our free will. However, that would be a simplistic argument, yes, we can excercise a choice to sleep, but we do not have the choice over the effectiveness of sleep. Often, sleeping does not produce the desired effect; we are still tired when we wake. Nor do we choose that it is sleep that renews our energy, it is simply a thing that is. We have no choice over what foods are good for us, or what music we like. We only know that sleep is good, and some music is nice; it appeals to our subconscious, a part of our self which we affect, and that affects us. The next stage in our development is to realise the existence of our subconscious, and along with it, the things in the world over which we have no direct control - the weather, gravity, our eyesight, the inner workings of our kidneys. Realising that we have a degree of control over some things, and none over others, we rationalise our environment. It has been said that there are 3 stages to an argument; first it is ridiculed, then vehemently denied, then accepted as being self-evident. We can see these stages very rapidly progressing in childhood; "it's silly! why can't I fly?" "I CAN fly, I did yesterday" "Of course you can't fly, it's impossible" So, the child accepts his environment, and learns what is and is not possible, and usually, not much thought is given to the impossible afterwards. In fact, we can identify 3 broad areas of humanity using the 3 stages above, we have the scientists who still want to know why, the paranormalists who believe that nothing is impossible, and the majority of humanity, who accept it with childish intuition. So, having rationalised our environment, we stop asking why we have no control. However, in order to explore free will, we need to look at those things over which we have no control, and ask why. First, then, let us decide what we do not have, or seem to have, complete control over. The Weather? Illnesses? Plants? The Weather. I cannot affect the weather directly, so it can be said that I cannot control the weather, however, my actions may affect the weather in subtle, random ways, so, while having a degree of control, it is not with conscious effort that I can control it. Then no, I do not contol the weather. Illnesses. Likewise, while I can take medications, I cannot instruct my white blood cells to attack a disease, even if I know the exact nature of this disease - A pioneer of reseach into the common cold will still need antibiotics to fight it. Plants. I have the power of life and death over plants, it is true. But, I cannot control how many leaves it grows, how much water it uses, or when it flowers, except by manipulating its external environment - I cannot instigate an internal change. What, then is meant by control? Is it the power to destroy? The power to affect in any way? Or the power to affect choice, for surely a plant must choose to grow more leaves in summer, and less in winter, to conserve energy? If a plant does not make choices, then surely we do not make choices, for we react to our environment in a similar way - people in the sun more have dark skin to protect them - was this through choice? no. So then, a plant makes no choices? we cannot tell. Is control only the power to destroy? The third law of thermodynamics is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If I burn a piece of paper, the paper has not been destroyed, it has been converted to light and heat. So control cannot be simply the power to destroy or to create, for that is impossible. The power to convert, then? It is a distinct possibility, that control is just the ability to convert a to b, to transfer energy. I can see no counter-arguments, and that which is not contradictable must be true. So, using the above definition, we can say every entity, sentient and otherwise, has a degree of