Do people have choices?

[Atheist-Lite]

Choice is in the small print of everyday life. You examine the small print and you'll find not much of that choice is coming your way.

[hiyymer]

Dawkins has no problem with anyone believing what they want as long as it doesn't interfere with reality

Is he not then a hypocrite. What's reality? Is it scientific physical reality, or the world of our experience created by our brain? Nothing in the latter is an accurate representation of the former. The latter has evolved to optimize survival in the former and nothing else. And it includes everything that appears in our consciousness and not just sensory experience. Do you believe that the tree over there is green in reality? Do you believe that the uncaused cause you experience as your "I wanting" exists and doesn't "interfere with reality"? Then you are a very poor scientist. Reality has nothing to say about extreme religion except that it is there as an expression of the life intention of the human form. In reality, what appears in the consciousness of religious extremists is a part of the mechanism of the biological organism. In reality, it is neither good or bad or should or shouldn't, and certainly cannot be judged by whether it "interferes with reality". From inside the mechanism you can feel whatever you feel and do whatever you do and stand for whatever you stand for. You can pretend that reality is on your side, but in reality it can't be.

[DRSB]

"As philosphers from Nietzsche to Galen Strawson have argued, we cannot be a causa sui, or the ultimate cause of ourselves. We had no say in the forces that produced us, and so we cannot be free in any ultimate sense of the word.

Free will is simply an illusion conjured by our ignorance of the causes affecting our behavior."

Zeno’s Paradox and the Problem of Free Will:
By Phil Molé in http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-04-27/#feature

[hadespussercats]

As Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, once wisely noted: " There may be more to me than just my body...but if you're looking for me, I'm over here!"

Now I'm not sure why I thought that quote was on-topic.

Ah, well. It's out of my hands, now.

[Coito ergo sum]

As Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, once wisely noted: " There may be more to me than just my body...but if you're looking for me, I'm over here!"

Now I'm not sure why I thought that quote was on-topic.

Ah, well. It's out of my hands, now.

It's a very wise quote, actually.

It's my contention that what we feel as "more" than just our bodies - that sense of inhabiting our bodies, but not being exactly part of our bodies - is an illusion. Our consciousness is analogous to an arm or a leg or a penis or skin. It's part of us. Our brains are an organ, like the pancreas and the brain creates what we call consciousness.

I'm over here.

[hadespussercats]

As Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, once wisely noted: " There may be more to me than just my body...but if you're looking for me, I'm over here!"

Now I'm not sure why I thought that quote was on-topic.

Ah, well. It's out of my hands, now.

It's a very wise quote, actually.

It's my contention that what we feel as "more" than just our bodies - that sense of inhabiting our bodies, but not being exactly part of our bodies - is an illusion. Our consciousness is analogous to an arm or a leg or a penis or skin. It's part of us. Our brains are an organ, like the pancreas and the brain creates what we call consciousness.

I'm over here.

Consciousness as extended proprioception. Cool.

[Coito ergo sum]

As Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, once wisely noted: " There may be more to me than just my body...but if you're looking for me, I'm over here!"

Now I'm not sure why I thought that quote was on-topic.

Ah, well. It's out of my hands, now.

It's a very wise quote, actually.

It's my contention that what we feel as "more" than just our bodies - that sense of inhabiting our bodies, but not being exactly part of our bodies - is an illusion. Our consciousness is analogous to an arm or a leg or a penis or skin. It's part of us. Our brains are an organ, like the pancreas and the brain creates what we call consciousness.

I'm over here.

Consciousness as extended proprioception. Cool.

Not exactly - but, the brain does the thinking, and our consciousness is thought. Therefore, what we perceive as our sense of self is a manifestation of the brain. annihilate the brain and body in a nuclear explosion, and we are gone. The molecules and atoms are scattered far and wide, and all consciousness is gone. There isn't anything else about us.

[hiyymer]

"As philosphers from Nietzsche to Galen Strawson have argued, we cannot be a causa sui, or the ultimate cause of ourselves. We had no say in the forces that produced us, and so we cannot be free in any ultimate sense of the word.

Free will is simply an illusion conjured by our ignorance of the causes affecting our behavior."

Zeno’s Paradox and the Problem of Free Will:
By Phil Molé in http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-04-27/#feature

Nice article. End seems like more obfuscation. To me there is a kind of answer. The real mystery is why there are material things that are "alive", that seek to maintain their state of aliveness by adjusting to changes in their environment, that cease to be alive in a proscribed manner, and which replicate passing on these behaviors. Science has a lot to say about how the life form has evolved on the planet, but it has little explanation for why what we call "life" should exist at all. Life is willful and the willfulness does not come from sapience but from the very form itself. A bacterium will ferociously maintain its state of homeostasis in the face of changes in its environment by various complex behaviors which can only be built into the form itself for they are certainly not "choices" of the bacterium's conscious rationality. The uncaused cause argument would seem to be saying that we are no different from a bacterium, although we are many times more complex and part of the mechanism of the form is consciousness.

Life intentionality exists as physical reality, the life form. But we must distinguish that intentionality from agency. In their book "the grand design", Hawking/Mlodinow mention experiments with awake brain surgery relative to this issue. By stimulating specific areas of the brain the perception will be created in the subject that they want to move specific appendages or move their mouth and talk. The experience of "I want" is created by the physical brain. Agency is wired into us. Damasio in his book, "self comes to mind", argues that consciousness is inextricably connected to the experience of the self protagonist. Even the consciousness of our animal relatives must have sense of a "core self" as it attends to objects in the world, even though it does not have the extended autobiographical self of the human species. Agency is an invention of the evolving brain. It's there so the organism can survive. It is a model of the specific outward manifestations of the life intentionality of organisms in the world, severally or in total (God). It's there because it works and not because that is what is really going on. What is really going on is so mind-numbingly complex and unfathomable that the brain really can't deal with it and predict what it will do in any other reasonable way.

So it seems clear that there is "will" and "will" exists in physical reality in a different way (with no willful protagonist) than it exists in our experience. But in what sense is will "free". Life intentionality as a general concept is very different from life intentionality in practice. A bacterium's repertoire of behaviors is already complex. Life intentionality in the specific is characterized by a huge number of overlapping mechanisms with a plethora of implicit motivations and drives that often bump into each other and come up against an infinite number of possible environmental stimuli. And the human organism's big brain is constantly updating the patterns and associations that inform those mechanisms. The protagonist of our own agency may be of an illusory nature, but it is nevertheless a window on the process of the specific organism responding to and surviving in the world and maintaining homeostasis; it's state of aliveness. We are free in the sense that the underlying organism surviving in the world and the protagonist in our consciousness are two sides of the same reality and are totally on the same team. We are free to want to survive; to fulfill our life intentionality. It is as it must be. There is no nihilism. There is a plethora of meaning and drama from inside the mechanism. Enjoy the ride.

[DRSB]

"As philosphers from Nietzsche to Galen Strawson have argued, we cannot be a causa sui, or the ultimate cause of ourselves. We had no say in the forces that produced us, and so we cannot be free in any ultimate sense of the word.

Free will is simply an illusion conjured by our ignorance of the causes affecting our behavior."

Zeno’s Paradox and the Problem of Free Will:
By Phil Molé in http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-04-27/#feature

Nice article. End seems like more obfuscation. To me there is a kind of answer. The real mystery is why there are material things that are "alive", that seek to maintain their state of aliveness by adjusting to changes in their environment, that cease to be alive in a proscribed manner, and which replicate passing on these behaviors. Science has a lot to say about how the life form has evolved on the planet, but it has little explanation for why what we call "life" should exist at all. Life is willful and the willfulness does not come from sapience but from the very form itself. A bacterium will ferociously maintain its state of homeostasis in the face of changes in its environment by various complex behaviors which can only be built into the form itself for they are certainly not "choices" of the bacterium's conscious rationality. The uncaused cause argument would seem to be saying that we are no different from a bacterium, although we are many times more complex and part of the mechanism of the form is consciousness.

Life intentionality exists as physical reality, the life form. But we must distinguish that intentionality from agency. In their book "the grand design", Hawking/Mlodinow mention experiments with awake brain surgery relative to this issue. By stimulating specific areas of the brain the perception will be created in the subject that they want to move specific appendages or move their mouth and talk. The experience of "I want" is created by the physical brain. Agency is wired into us. Damasio in his book, "self comes to mind", argues that consciousness is inextricably connected to the experience of the self protagonist. Even the consciousness of our animal relatives must have sense of a "core self" as it attends to objects in the world, even though it does not have the extended autobiographical self of the human species. Agency is an invention of the evolving brain. It's there so the organism can survive. It is a model of the specific outward manifestations of the life intentionality of organisms in the world, severally or in total (God). It's there because it works and not because that is what is really going on. What is really going on is so mind-numbingly complex and unfathomable that the brain really can't deal with it and predict what it will do in any other reasonable way.

So it seems clear that there is "will" and "will" exists in physical reality in a different way (with no willful protagonist) than it exists in our experience. But in what sense is will "free". Life intentionality as a general concept is very different from life intentionality in practice. A bacterium's repertoire of behaviors is already complex. Life intentionality in the specific is characterized by a huge number of overlapping mechanisms with a plethora of implicit motivations and drives that often bump into each other and come up against an infinite number of possible environmental stimuli. And the human organism's big brain is constantly updating the patterns and associations that inform those mechanisms. The protagonist of our own agency may be of an illusory nature, but it is nevertheless a window on the process of the specific organism responding to and surviving in the world and maintaining homeostasis; it's state of aliveness. We are free in the sense that the underlying organism surviving in the world and the protagonist in our consciousness are two sides of the same reality and are totally on the same team. We are free to want to survive; to fulfill our life intentionality. It is as it must be. There is no nihilism. There is a plethora of meaning and drama from inside the mechanism. Enjoy the ride.

Wow! I repeat, wow!

[Aos Si]

Dawkins has no problem with anyone believing what they want as long as it doesn't interfere with reality

Is he not then a hypocrite. What's reality? Is it scientific physical reality, or the world of our experience created by our brain? Nothing in the latter is an accurate representation of the former. The latter has evolved to optimize survival in the former and nothing else. And it includes everything that appears in our consciousness and not just sensory experience. Do you believe that the tree over there is green in reality? Do you believe that the uncaused cause you experience as your "I wanting" exists and doesn't "interfere with reality"? Then you are a very poor scientist. Reality has nothing to say about extreme religion except that it is there as an expression of the life intention of the human form. In reality, what appears in the consciousness of religious extremists is a part of the mechanism of the biological organism. In reality, it is neither good or bad or should or shouldn't, and certainly cannot be judged by whether it "interferes with reality". From inside the mechanism you can feel whatever you feel and do whatever you do and stand for whatever you stand for. You can pretend that reality is on your side, but in reality it can't be.

No he is not a hypocrite because he is fighting for what he believes in, and what's more what he can know, given the limits of science. Reality is on your side if it obeys a general standard of objectivity, if you want to believe in subjective things that other people can't see it is your right, but it is also our right to say you are full of shit, if we can't see your ghosts. It is our right to tell you why it is not our belief when you challenge us, just as it is for you to explain why you are right. This is what makes us human, the ability to discuss, and this is just what might save us from extinction. They are equal rights: you have the right to believe what you do, we have the right not to labour under thousands of years of religious oppression.

The only thing reality stands up to, like truth is an objective standard, it cannot be complete, and only religion claims it is absolute; hence why we criticise absolutism and divine right, for the stupidity it is; We have outgrown absolute terms in philosophy just as we did in science, when it became science not philosophy exactly. Religion is still labouring under: I must be right because someone says so because he saw God, or God supposedly said so, it is so far in the past that it cannot evolve. It is a stagnant area of thought that most people have outgrown at least in my neck of the woods: don't ask questions, don't believe things that are contrary to our faith or we will burn you in fire, holy or otherwise. Religion has damned itself not solely by claiming absolutes but never living up to its own standards of morality. Hence Church schisms.

"I do not believe that God has given us the faculty of reason, only to forgo its use."

Voltaire.

We are not evolutionary in the same way as animals, get that out of your head, religion exists because it was evolutionary useful at a time in our infancy. Now though these self same conditioned and unreflective beliefs we call memes can be so damaging to society that millions can die for them over and over again. This is the 21st century and Darwin had little to say about human society anyway as he said in his books. When he wrote later books it was usually to challenge Eugenecists and other idiots, who could not understand what he meant about how we differ from other species; human evolution and animal evolution are not the same thing, he did so to simply explain why religion was often not in contention with Darwinism in his time except to those who believed in literalism. Of course we have parallels to animals, Darwin was clear on that, but to compare us equally and without regard to civilisation is to forgo science itself and reason.

Reality is certainly only on the side of objectivity and nothing else, it isn't on the side of faith, for faith means you do not need objectivity.

[hadespussercats]

As Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, once wisely noted: " There may be more to me than just my body...but if you're looking for me, I'm over here!"

Now I'm not sure why I thought that quote was on-topic.

Ah, well. It's out of my hands, now.

It's a very wise quote, actually.

It's my contention that what we feel as "more" than just our bodies - that sense of inhabiting our bodies, but not being exactly part of our bodies - is an illusion. Our consciousness is analogous to an arm or a leg or a penis or skin. It's part of us. Our brains are an organ, like the pancreas and the brain creates what we call consciousness.

I'm over here.

Consciousness as extended proprioception. Cool.

Not exactly - but, the brain does the thinking, and our consciousness is thought. Therefore, what we perceive as our sense of self is a manifestation of the brain. annihilate the brain and body in a nuclear explosion, and we are gone. The molecules and atoms are scattered far and wide, and all consciousness is gone. There isn't anything else about us.

But if we write or create art or computer programs or what have you, and they survive us as objects (of a sort), isn't our consciousness surviving in some way, too? I mean, It's no longer perceptive, but other humans can still inter-act with it...

Do these objects become body-extensions? New containers of self?

[hiyymer]

We are not evolutionary in the same way as animals, get that out of your head, religion exists because it was evolutionary useful at a time in our infancy. Now though these self same conditioned and unreflective beliefs we call memes can be so damaging to society that millions can die for them over and over again. This is the 21st century and Darwin had little to say about human society anyway as he said in his books. When he wrote later books it was usually to challenge Eugenecists and other idiots, who could not understand what he meant about how we differ from other species; human evolution and animal evolution are not the same thing, he did so to simply explain why religion was often not in contention with Darwinism in his time except to those who believed in literalism. Of course we have parallels to animals, Darwin was clear on that, but to compare us equally and without regard to civilisation is to forgo science itself and reason.

Reality is certainly only on the side of objectivity and nothing else, it isn't on the side of faith, for faith means you do not need objectivity.

So when exactly did we part company with other animals? Was it at the hominid step or the homo sapiens step? What actual physical evidence do you offer for this supposed uniqueness? Is a "meme" a scientific theory? Does it exist in reality? Could it be that the millions (thousands?) dying are the victims of our biological nature; our territoriality; our aggressiveness as a species; and not because of the totems by which those territorial identities are expressed? Do you have any scientific evidence for what you claim? As smarter men than I have stated, the scientific evidence supports the view that our actions are determined by our brain following the known laws of science, and not by some agent acting outside of those laws. That's objectivity. Reason is a tool that produces nothing without the premise of the biological organism's implicit motivations. It produces a nuclear bomb or a nuclear reactor depending on the animal agenda of the moment.

[Aos Si]

We are not evolutionary in the same way as animals, get that out of your head, religion exists because it was evolutionary useful at a time in our infancy. Now though these self same conditioned and unreflective beliefs we call memes can be so damaging to society that millions can die for them over and over again. This is the 21st century and Darwin had little to say about human society anyway as he said in his books. When he wrote later books it was usually to challenge Eugenecists and other idiots, who could not understand what he meant about how we differ from other species; human evolution and animal evolution are not the same thing, he did so to simply explain why religion was often not in contention with Darwinism in his time except to those who believed in literalism. Of course we have parallels to animals, Darwin was clear on that, but to compare us equally and without regard to civilisation is to forgo science itself and reason.

Reality is certainly only on the side of objectivity and nothing else, it isn't on the side of faith, for faith means you do not need objectivity.

So when exactly did we part company with other animals? Was it at the hominid step or the homo sapiens step? What actual physical evidence do you offer for this supposed uniqueness? Is a "meme" a scientific theory? Does it exist in reality? Could it be that the millions (thousands?) dying are the victims of our biological nature; our territoriality; our aggressiveness as a species; and not because of the totems by which those territorial identities are expressed? Do you have any scientific evidence for what you claim? As smarter men than I have stated, the scientific evidence supports the view that our actions are determined by our brain following the known laws of science, and not by some agent acting outside of those laws. That's objectivity. Reason is a tool that produces nothing without the premise of the biological organism's implicit motivations. It produces a nuclear bomb or a nuclear reactor depending on the animal agenda of the moment.

Why ask me you can know that by studying anthropology and evolution. Or are you too lazy to do so?

You could know these answers, if you choose not to, then why should I care what you choose to do? Educate yourself, don't expect anyone to tell you what to think. I am not going to spoon feed you reason, reason is your own affair.

Any idea will kill people when they are fanatical about it, be it the atomic age, or religion, I don't place moral value on reason, only on the human compunction to abuse it. The best thing we can learn is what is right and what is wrong, we don't need science or religion to do that, we do not need to blame either for the times we choose not to think. Just ourselves will do. The simplistic approach is moronic, morality is pluralistic- it hangs on knowing what to take from all standards religious or not. What to say is ethical, and what to say is not.

We are just animals, how we choose to reason is the only thing that will ever set us above them. ATM we choose to sit squarely beneath them, animals who are less evolved have an excuse, we do not. We have something they don't, not much more but it is enough to damn us.

[hiyymer]

The best thing we can learn is what is right and what is wrong...

You can't "learn" right and wrong. If we could there would be a logical ethical system that told us what to do in every moral situation. We feel what is right and wrong. That's why reason only goes so far.

[Warren Dew]

Whereas if most people didn't believe in free will, I suspect the result of that would be, people creating a society as a system with more equal results, more equal output regardless of an individuals input - rather than judging unequal outputs to be evidence of an individual's worthiness.

I suspect if most people didn't believe in free will, the society would view results as predetermined and fated; with unequal outcomes the result of the inexorable hand of fate, the emphasis would be on accepting those results, not changing them.