Free will - have we polled this?

[arahant]

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But it's generally a semantic argument, and not worht the time discussing.

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If you consider responsibility to be a semantics issue, then fine, but I think it's much, much more important than that. At least the way our society works as of today and anytime in the near future.

See, when you understand that every human action is just as determined as the tides and the Earth's orbit around the Sun, when you understand that the universe is a whole bunch of particles bumping against each other, you see that the only reason to consider each human being a separate entity and adjudicating responsibility to it, is to alter it's future behavior, and other's.

No, I do not think discussing this is a waste of time.

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That was nicely put. Kind of a Zen Materialism [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

[Skidoo]

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every human action is just as determined as the tides and the Earth's orbit around the Sun

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Where's the Flying Spaghetti Monster when you need him?

[arahant]

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every human action is just as determined as the tides and the Earth's orbit around the Sun

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Where's the Flying Spaghetti Monster when you need him?

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If you can't understand analogies, don't try to use them.

[Borodog]

[Skidoo]

Has an illusion of free will ever been observed?

[arahant]

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Has an illusion of free will ever been observed?

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Yes. In a number of experiments.

Edit: For those of you not familiar with them, I'll summarize two...does this sort of thing make any of the 'no' responders feel any more ambivalent about their response?

1) When asked to sit in a chair and move one hand (either hand), right-handed individuals will choose to move their right hand 60% of the time. Transcranial stimulation (using a magnetic field on the exterior of the head) can induce these same people to 'choose' to move their left hand 80% of the time. In all cases, all subjects report that they were fully in control of their choice.

2) (less convincing, maybe). Subjects are instructed to look at a 'clock', and a point of their choosing, to move their hand. The time of movement is recorded, and the subject is then asked WHEN he made the decision to move his hand. The reported decision time always precedes the time of movement. HOWEVER...voluntary movements are always preceded by a preparatory electric potential in the nervous system...this potential is detected well BEFORE the subject reports that they decided to move. Hence, the conscious decision to move is, at a minimum, EXPERIENCED after the process has been set in motion.

[Skidoo]

Citations, please.

[valenzuela]

What about my question? Is there any moment in youre life in which you could have acted on a different way??

[madnak]

I think there's more, too, but it's pretty much irrelevant. Ah well, casual societal assumptions over reason ftw!

[arahant]

cites contained in this Wiki Section . To these and several other experiments.