free will

I've seen a number of arguments against free will but they seem to all include a definition that is self-contradictory. I don't really have a background in philosophy so perhaps there is a definition that does work that I haven't heard of yet. Even Harris' arguments seem to have an obvious...

The idea that you are a person, who goes places, is based on the belief that there is an objective world, and that you are something in that world. The idea that there is an objective world, is based upon the belief that there could be something that you're not aware of. The idea that there...

I think most Christians believe in free will and will argue against predestination, and yet I must have heard or read at least ten times today some statement such as "everything happens for a reason", "it's God's will", "it's according to God's plan" or some other variation of the same nonsense...

Transient global amnesia is a condition in which a person temporarily loses the ability to create new memories. One of the hallmarks of the disorder is that the patient's short term memory periodically resets, frequently resulting in the patient getting stuck in a loop. Unlike Phil, Bill...

In the free will and omniscience thread, a lot of attention is being paid to the subject of omniscience but very little to the nature of free will. Some definitions have been given, but many of them not very useful. Such as "the ability to alter events". So I thought I'd start a separate thread...

The subject of this thread occurred to me after perusing AvalonXQ's thread on omniscience and free will, i.e. the question of whether or not God's omniscience makes free will impossible. My feeling is that it would. However, I didn't bother posting on the thread, because others had pretty well...

I think the typical problem people have in reconciling these two concepts is that they have an idea in their head of how omniscience works and there's no reason to believe it actually works that way. Omniscience isn't conceptually any different than considering the past from the viewpoint of...

Ok, here's the problem I'm having, and I'll start by clarifying the propositions, as best as I understand them. Feel free to correct me. P1: A lot of suffering and injustice in the world is supposedly explained by God somehow needing to give people complete free will. I suppose so he can see...

The title of this thread is rendered in quotes because I've heard said thus many times by evangelical Christians. Along with this bit dogma is another: "There are no accidents." The ideas that God doesn't make mistakes and that there are no accidents are often used to attack not only abortion...

Is there such a thing as free will? The following hypotheses establish a framework within which the concept of free will is defined: Hypothesis 1: Reality is a deterministic process. Hypothesis 2: Reality is a computationally irreducible process. With hypothesis 1 and 2 as a foundation free...

Just wondering...

I would like to bring up an interesting point, and i have to start by relaying a bit of a story. A while ago i was going through an ancient laptop of mine, and i happened to be bored enough to read the old winamp documentation. (i don't know if it is still in there, but i assume it is. ) And...

Split from the thread - is free will an illusion, yet necessary for ethics. I would like a discussion, evidence for/against, suggested reading etc on whether free will is physically possible. Is the brain capable of producing a choice that isn't predetermined? To give some context - I'm not...

Slowly but surely, we find that every "choice" we make can be represented by some interaction of chemicals in the brain. I am wondering how this relates to ethics, and if "free will", however illusory, is a required component of ethics. -complexcontext

Can awareness, consciousness, thought effect matter? 1) matter inside your body 2) matter outside your body or only matter can effect matter regarless of inside our outside your body.

In the "Are You Conscious" thread FedUpWithFaith gave, what I think, is a pretty good description for the operational criteria of volition: My personal opinion is that consciousness is required for volition. Conscious thought involves subjective valuation which necessarily entails the kind of...

Part I: Over the years, I've asked various Christians why God, if he exists, didn't just create us as faithful people; in other words, why aren't we innately Christian? The usual response is often vague, but basically comes down to the idea that God wants us to have "free will," and by making...

Thought experiment.... Imagine we have two twins or clones. They are genetically identical. Both have lived exactly the same lives up to a point A in time. By 'exactly the same' i mean to say that all external stimuli have been equal for both twins. I know this is not really possible but lets...

Why materialism ? Well, a few days back our esteemed member UndercoverElephant implied that I cannot accept this dualistic ideas because I'm a materialist. Well, that's tautological, but what he actually said is that I cannot accept the idea that there is something as "free will" because I'm a...

In a chapter from his book "A brief tour of human consciousness" , V S Ramachandran writes about an experiment on free will, in which two scientists were experimenting on volunteers exercising free will by instructing them to do things like wiggling a finger. A full three quarters before the...

My first "new topic"... I'm really condensing this argument here as I've been writing pages on the matter. I've recently been looking into the idea of God and him giving humans free will. I initially was thinking, and I came up with the idea that, if he is omniscient, than this contradicts...

The JREF seems to be dedicated to exposing woo for woo and thereby, presumably influencing the beliefs of the consumers of woo. This would seem to suggest that the JREF, in principle, understands that beliefs are matters of decion or choice, and that people can change their beliefs about, at...

I thought this article was apropo to link to this forum. It turns out that believing we can control our actions leads us to take different actions. In particular, people are less likely to cheat or steal if they believe in free will. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080129125354.htm

Although the writings of atheist skeptics are interesting, they tend to be too long-winded. For instance, many apologists try to solve the problem of evil using free will. They say that because we have free will-a purposeful gift of God-we thus have the freedom to commit evil acts. Atheists have...

Is it not obvious to all but the insane that the very fact that you/we have 'free will', to choose between right and wrong, proves that God can not control everything. Ergo, IT is no omnipotent (QED). A possible [and usual] response would be that IT chooses not to control our decisions; but...

Is there anybody here that can satisfy both the below conditions? a) You believe that nobody has free will b) You can state what you mean by free will Both conditions mind you. Another 12 pages of arguing whether or not we have eight letters and a space is pretty useless.

To All: Please refer to the threads: a) Most atheists and agnostics too have faith b) Many atheists/agnostics are now in the path to be trapped It was my mistake to use the word “trapped” in the title. There is no trap or semantic play of words in the question. Do we have Free Will? The...

Reference: Most atheists and agnostics too have faith /forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=94238 I am glad to see 260 replies to the above post. Many of you have gone on the record to say "NO". Let's now proceed. In my above post "Foundational thing" mean something that has broad implications...

I don't begin many threads, but this is an issue that has been bothering me for a short while and I hoped that you might help me think through some of the issues. I don't have any real answers, only a feeling of how things may shape up. The common theist answer to the problem of evil is "free...

How “random” is “randomness”? Let’s start here, with the page that got me to start thinking about this question: Schrödinger's cat The idea, of course, is to tie the existence of the cat to a “random” 50/50 probability. In the Wikipedia article, four interpretations are given: The Copenhagen...