Thought Experiment Alert!!!

Try to believe in something you don't believe in!?

This is obviously oxymoronic, so why do we 'feel' like we can choose our opinions? Can an atheist believe in God any more than a Christian can doubt His existence? Why does one take refuge in 'rationality', and the other in 'faith' when neither can 'choose' any different from that which IS . . .

What sets questions of religion/ethics apart from more prosiac considerations is our delight in mental proliferation. We like thinking, we like pontificating because it feels good - that 'Ureka' moment, that 'feeling' that we have cracked it, is very seductive.

Isn't the reality that we can no more choose our God than we can choose whether or not we like sugary tea?

Any thoughts welcome - but don't get seduced

We can't CHOOSE our opinions but we choose to act one way or another on those opinions.

I do see the point of the "there is no free will" stance, but I don't believe it. That could very well be because I'm not comfortable with the thought of not having free will.

Surely that's just opening up an infinite regress - if we can't choose out opinions how can we choose how to act on them? We act in the way we act and can not do otherwise . . .


and you couldn't even if you tried

Now this is an important point (in my opinion). We only feel like we have free will *when* we think about it, otherwise we just DO. Thinking doesn't create free will but it certainly creates the illusion of free will . . .

You have my brain working now

However useless this debate (it has the ability to be a perpetual motion machine. You could go in circles forever.), it certainly is entertaining


I have to agree with PT, except I think that sometimes we can change our opinions (ie, if we're faced with a revelation or some irrefutable evidence)

I wonder... if a certain pattern of thought becomes engrained, it might be impossible for a person to step outside of it. That is, if thinking a thought fundamentally re-wires the brain ... a person doesn't have direct control over this (anymore than we can choose to see red in place of green). The only solution I can see is a kind of mild to moderate, universal skepticism towards our own thought processes and perceptions. (Then there is little difference between "belief" and "assuming." One can assume anything for argument's sake)

Although, personally I think that humans do have some degree of free will.

I think a lot of the riddles about free will come from the classical idea of laws of nature ... and that these laws are deterministic and inpose one-directional control over all we do and think.

Although after studying quantum mechanics a bit, I noticed a problem with the idea of laws of nature in the classical sense. I don't think they really exist in the classical sense. Rather than a top-down law imposing control over the Universe, I think laws of nature emerge more in a bottom up fashion, coming from the interactions of nearly an infinite number of particles, in the system as a whole. Putting an object in the room fundamentally alters the so called "laws" of that room. Humans are part of the system, and can fundmentally alter these rules as can anything. There's no reason to assume control is one-directional, or out of our control.

LegoAddict: But then, we aren't changing our opinions just because we want to change our opinions. The irrefutable evidence puts us in a situation where we are unable to stop the changing of opinions.

Round and round the perpetual motion machine goes.

We're getting to the point in that mightely roundabout way that becomes us 'thinkers', i.e. humans. Which is not to figure out whether or not we have free will - you won't figure it out, the point is just to be, to dwell in the now, the present moment where the whole question of freewill or religion or tea doesn't arise. Be the doing . . . of course you have no choice in this

And tea may arise, just don't think about it and it may disappear and be replaced by beer and then it's time to act

Telling that is no free will is very comfortable,because that way you are not responsible for your acts and you can do whatever you wish without cosequences.Very good start point if you want to rid of any ethics and human behaviour.

Can you choose to be moral or immoral? Can a moral man suddenly choose to be immoral and vice versa? Simply saying the 'feeling' of freewill is just an illusion is hardly going to turn our 'moral' world into chaos. Is morality sewn into the fabric of the universe? i.e. is their a universal morality, or are we making it up as we go along? Even if we can choose to be moral (which I doubt) by what yardstick are we to be judged?

Previously I believed I had freewill, now I don't. There has been no noticable corruption of my morals The point of course is that whether or not freewill is a reality *is beside the point*, thinking freewill exists is simply a thought, and we can't choose our thoughts! Thinking freewill exists doen't make it so. And the reverse is true aswell . . .

Very good sofisam ,but sofisam only.If you think there is no free will it is irelevent to you if moral is universal or relative.You can not choose to use it anyway.If you stick with your opinion(and you have no choice,do you) you have to say that Hitler was not bad guy.And this bring answer to your question of yardstick of morality.I think we can start with basic humanity.

Doesn't the word "comfortable" in this quote sum it all up?
Our beliefs about ourselves and our (physical and spiritual) environment are what make us comfortable.
Unfortunately, many of these comfortable beliefs become untenable as our true understanding of our universe increases.
As an example, 500 years ago it was firmly held that the earth was the centre of the universe despite there being no evidence for this whatsoever. But, it sure felt good to think that. Then along came Copernicus and Galileo.
Then we also took it as an unassailable truth that we humans were made in the image of God until Darwin suggested it more likely we were made in the image of monkeys.
I've reached a point where I now believe that any beliefs that make us comfortable about ourselves are probably nonsense as we are simply too emotionally involved to look at ourselves with a cold, dispassionate eye.
Unfortunately, I am forced to include in this category the concepts of a caring, loving God and free will.

You very well may be right. Humans want order, and want explanations. And, want to be comfortable! Therefore, when you don't understand something, it's all too easy to just explain it with the explanation that makes you feel the most comfortable.

Of course if we can agree on a yardstick for judging the behaviour of individuals then I am as free as anybody else to say Hitler was a tyrant!!

Ok lets step back a minute. What is interesting is not the extent to which the question of freewill makes one moral/immoral/amoral, but what exactly is freewill, or perhaps more pertinantly given the direction of this thread, what exactly is morality. I believe they are both flavours of the same thing i.e. they are simply thought. Thinking we have freewill is as good as it gets, thinking an act is moral or not is as categorical as we can be. Perhaps we can reassess the *power* of thought and how it influences the world. We have brains, it seems that part of the functions of these brains is to think, it's just that thinking ain't that important!!

We can't think ourselves into believeing something that we don't believe . . .

(You can try this by trying to believe we don't have freewill )

panickedthumb from what you sed it is like we have more than one explanation at the time and we choose more comfortable to us.But it is not that way all of the time.We have constant need to understand world and we have to explain it to ourself with the knowlege we have at the given time.i can agree in one thing.We are feel worst if we don´t have explanation for something so we take any explanation as our start point.But that is not bad thingto do,because with the time we will corect our first position if we see it is wrong and replace it with more acurat one.

I'm actually saying that we make it up, not that we choose between two of them.

But I agree. It's harmless, and we'll correct ourselves if we see fit later on.

siloko you sed that thinking is not so important.Here is quick example of contrary option.If thinking is not important and influential we will not be in position to make this corespondence.

You are switching the context. The "Laws of Nature" apply to the atoms and molecules of our brain in a purely deterministic way. In the context of consciousness, which is a perceptual and rational faculty that processes percepts rather than simply a bunch of atoms strung together in a particular way.

In the context of consciousness, free will exists in that we have the ability to choose to think, or not. To recognize reality, or evade it. Man makes these choices, acts on these choices, and is ultimately responsible for these choices.

Hi uta!

If you say our brains are driven by purely determinstic factors, then so would our thoughts. Rejecting dualism, every thought or idea must map (or supervene) onto a particular set of physical states of the brain. A thought wouldn't correspond directily to a configuration of atoms, but a process involving them.

I'm actually saying: Our consciousness changes the so called "Laws" of Nature governing our brain (the cause and effect goes both ways.) At least, that was the conclusion I came to. Quantum mechanics is not deterministic ...

The claim that everything is deterministic is false (Quantum mechanics disproves it), so you can't claim that free will doesn't exist simply because "everything is deterministic". It's a persuasive claim until you come to that realization, though.

Psychology explains a lot, but once you know a bit of psychology you can easily avoid the common pitfalls.