What aspects of fate, if any, do you believe in?

[DougShrapnel]

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One point arising from your post though; you seem to have a clear definition of free will but I doubt it is universally adhered to (one poster mentioned Dennett as a combatibilist - even if that is true, I doubt he is using the definition of free will which caused you to claim "Free will states that a world line can be changed by some metaphysical process (will/soul/what-have-you).")

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Every free will position I've heard is pretty much the same:: the process of human decisionmaking is one that does not adhere to natural/physical process. If there's another definition please share because I'd be interested.

[/ QUOTE ]Mine is that Free-will is the term given to consciousness being useful. Nielso has a couple podcast's on free will that uses a different definition. NN Teleb believes that there can be no experts on human nature, and thus free will is indistinguisable from what we can know. Dennett considers free will like chess pieces, the have certain moves that can be made, with no process to determine what move will be made. Also there is a definition where the causal chain is looped, or side by side. That is freewill is the start of a separate causal chain.

[DougShrapnel]

Let's take priming and you can tell me if it supports freewill or determinism. A study was done where subjects where given jumbled up sentences. Make a sentence with out using all words but one.
Florida Drove to She 4clock
Jim orange juice poured glass a walker.
And so on. The sentences are designed to illicit feelings of oldness. You are being primed to act old. So the measure the waling time of subjects down a hallway. And people that were primed to think "old" were much slower. You can pretty much prime people in various fashions, and notice significant changes in measurable criteria. However once you tell the subjects that they are being primed, the gig is up, and the priming has no noticed effect. Certainly the priming aspect counts against free will. But the immunity of informing the conscience lets me hold out for a better theory of free will.

[m_the0ry]

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Mine is that Free-will is the term given to consciousness being useful. Nielso has a couple podcast's on free will that uses a different definition. NN Teleb believes that there can be no experts on human nature, and thus free will is indistinguisable from what we can know. Dennett considers free will like chess pieces, the have certain moves that can be made, with no process to determine what move will be made. Also there is a definition where the causal chain is looped, or side by side. That is freewill is the start of a separate causal chain.

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This is too semantic for my liking. Some of these are metaphysical and some are not, but all attempt to redefine free will as something different and atypical. I cannot differentiate this from everyday appeasement of the feeling that humanity should be somehow divine and thus exempt from the natural world.

[DougShrapnel]

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Mine is that Free-will is the term given to consciousness being useful. Nielso has a couple podcast's on free will that uses a different definition. NN Teleb believes that there can be no experts on human nature, and thus free will is indistinguisable from what we can know. Dennett considers free will like chess pieces, the have certain moves that can be made, with no process. to determine what move will be made. Also there is a definition where the causal chain is looped, or side by side. That is freewill is the start of a separate causal chain.

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This is too semantic for my liking. Some of these are metaphysical and some are not, but all attempt to redefine free will as something different and atypical. I cannot differentiate this from everyday appeasement of the feeling that humanity should be somehow divine and thus exempt from the natural world.

[/ QUOTE ]Free will is atypical, for certain. There are a growing number of "freewillers" in different suits, that have no desire to invoke the divine. A simple statement that a freewiller might make is that our understanding of the natural world is incomplete. Others might make the statement that our understanding of the natural is forever hidden, and semantically freewill exists. Personal my biggest hang up is predestination. Provided you aren't a predetermanist, you and I won't really disagree and anything to significant. I take some issue with the uncertainty principle. Not that i doubt the principle, just that I'm wear of the willingness to agree with uncertainty for subatomic particles, yet no willingness for more complex beings. I personally would need a full theory of consciousness to reject freewill. As that is where it, if it exists, is likely to reside. I'd be perfectly happy with, we don't know enough yet suspending judgement on the issue. I do tilt toward the freewill side tho.

[JackAll]

Free will can not co-exist with either fate or karma.

Here is why.


Person A does something bad to person B.

Either person A chose to do it, or it was fate or karma that person B deserved and person A didn't have control over.

Lets look at those two situations separately (there are no other choices as far as I am aware of)

1. He chose to do it - so how is it fate (ie was going to happen anyway) if he 'chose' to do it? Either he chose or it was beyond his control and it was always going to happen. So if he chose to do it, then person B was just unlucky and this was a co-incidence for him hence karma/fate do not apply here. In this case, many bad (and good) things happen purely out of dumb ass luck and there is no "balance" of karma because good and bad things happen randomly.

2. He was meant to do it (fate) - so why should person A be punished by karma if he had no control and it was always going to happen? It also means that he had no free will and everything that happens is predetermined. Which means every bad thing anyone does is not their fault cuz it was 'fate'. So really no one deserves to be punished for bad things or rewarded for good things because they never 'chose' to do it.



Like make you your god damn mother fuggin mind. You can't have fate/karma at the same time as you have free will. Chose one and SHUT THE [censored] UP ALREADY. Or else prove me wrong. I have never heard a valid answer for this.

[m_the0ry]

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Others might make the statement that our understanding of the natural is forever hidden, and semantically freewill exists. Personal my biggest hang up is predestination. Provided you aren't a predetermanist, you and I won't really disagree and anything to significant.

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I also disagree with predeterminism but it is very important how one interprets the adeterministic world. I think you and I would disagree on a few subjects because of my background, and my less than common stance that physics has a large governance on how we should interpret the philosophy of consciousness and mankind.

Bells Theorem is perhaps one of the most shocking and powerful revelations of interpreting the natural world. It has shown both with rigorous theory and empirical evidence that there is no hidden variable behind our current understanding of the physical universe. We cannot possibly ever predict certain things beyond a probability distribution. Since every interaction in the observable universe is stochastic, the idea of determinism is effectively disproved.

I say that my mind is in state 'A' right now. The next state, state 'B' is random. If the set of possible states for state 'B' are - at least for a large majority - very similar in their observable properties, we can say that the transition from state A to B 'appears to be deterministic'. In the event that no significant number of the states can be clumped together by similar traits, the transition is more apparently random.

I think I'm going tangenty here. My point is the mind is probabilisitic in its actions. There is no room for free will because all states of mind and transitions between states of mind must obey natural law.

[DougShrapnel]

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I think you and I would disagree on a few subjects because of my background, and my less than common stance that physics has a large governance on how we should interpret the philosophy of consciousness and mankind.

I think I'm going tangenty here. My point is the mind is probabilisitic in its actions. There is no room for free will because all states of mind and transitions between states of mind must obey natural law.


[/ QUOTE ] I would agree, perhaps we would also agree that our current understanding of physics is unable to fully explain consciousness. Perhaps we can also agree that if free will is to exist, and exist here refers to a property of an existent object much like height not a separate divine entity, it is to be found as a property of consciousness. Perhaps we can also agree that consciousness is at least in part tied into current aspects of your immediate sphere of awareness.

As for bells theorem, I'm not really sure why consciousness needs, or is likely to be beholden to QM. And although from the limited amount I have read of end, it appears to be as you said the most important scientific discovery as of late. You would certainly know more about what BT means to the natural world then I do. But I'm not sure you can apply lessons learned from BT into a theory of consciousness, yet certainly into neuroscience.

TBH, I've tried reading and rereading your case, and I just don't really understand it. I'm not particularly concerned as It's likely to be a very difficult concept to grasp, requiring some time of dedicated study. Is a Bohm interpretation more in line with free will? Certianly, a many worlds interpretation of the natural world would be consistent with free will? I don't wish to put forth that any of these interpretations are correct or incorrect. As I don't have the background to do so. But my limited background is enough to state that the actual natural laws that free will must obey, is still speculation. Why exactly must consciousness obey QM? And in particular a subsection of QM that is inline with Bell's theorem?

Perhaps in a way you might make the case that the natural world forbids non physical properties. That is that consciousness is nothing more than the state of the brain. If we must find something to be disagreeable about, I would disagree with that. We may eventually get to the point that the term free will is useless, in so much that a person is free only in that he is able to suspend his actions long enough to ponder the outcomes and choose an outcome she prefers. I'd be OK with that too. When I speak of free will I simply mean that the consciousness is useful. And until we can actually observe other peoples consciousness I will hold out on what natural laws it must obey. Unless of course by some means it can be shown that consciousness is of no use.