Are we nothing but "robots?"

[IMAMONKEY!]

Im not sure where this thread has gone and I am not entirely sure if I understand all of this correctly. I do know however, how i feel about the whole idea of us not controlling our own wills. The idea that our lives are merely cause/effect is a little beyond human comprehension. Or perhaps the idea is too barbaric for our minds and the reason we cant always comprehend it is due to the fact that we have outgrown it.

 

Now i dont like to think that our behaviors are controlled by a higher entity or that they are controlled by the environment, however when you look into it deeper you realize that everything has a cause and a purpose which leads to another cause although to the first observer (cause) that second cause is an effect of the first. So life is merely a series of cause and effects that started from one particular cause? Then why would things happen that deviate from the norm. If everything worked out in the beginning shouldnt it all keep working in the end?

 

I have to go now because im sitting here in seminar of school typing this (me, the little delinquent) so I will return to see how bad you will all flame it later. =P

 

TTFN

 

IMAMONKEY! =D

[Zythryn]

While I do believe every event has a cause, I do believe we have free will.

For example, a brick falls dead center in your path on a highway. You have a choice of steering left or right. With either result, it can be said that the cause of the action of you swerving was the brick in the road.

 

There really is no scientific proof one way or the other. The question is one of philosophy more than physics. Believe what makes you happier:)

[Chaos]

there's no free will, it just seems like it at times. anyone who still thinks we have free will does not know enough to understand why we don't really have it.

[IDMclean]

The Human machine is an amazing creation. What is often missed in these discussions is that the Human machine is not seperate from physical reality, and therefore is not seperate from the subtle (and not so subtle) influence of the matter around us.

 

Now both Einstein and Quantum mechanics says essentially that mass-energy shapes space-time. We are mass-energy machines, we therefore deform space-time around us. The resipication on this that space-time tells us how to move. True that our material being is influenced by the surrounding world/experience and the internal make-up of our sub-machines (DNA), but we are the sum of our parts. Our minds are part and parcel of our bodies and their state is determined by our geometric position relative to other mass-energy geometries.

 

So it would seem mistaken to me to assume that simply because we are material that we have no free will. A great number of things, which have evidence to support them, support an indeterministic universe, and us as Indeterministic machines. This chaos that can be found even in a strictly deterministic system could be concidered free will.

 

We maybe machines, but we are machines capable of altering our own state, and our world around us.

 

Also, an important distiction. Feelings are something that are felt, without regard to the intellect. Emotions are the synthesis of the feelings motivating intellectual conceptualization. You hit me and first it hurts, pain motivates thoughts of recourse, fight or flight responce. The intellect is many tiered and can if probably patterned, override any lower order response. That is thought can reshape our emotions and override feelings. It's not a clear hierarchy, but rather a cyclical system of input-output resolution.

 

I am not so cynical to think that I am above and apart from the workings of reality. Then again I do not believe in things above the sum of what is.

[IMAMONKEY!]

there's no free will, it just seems like it at times. anyone who still thinks we have free will does not know enough to understand why we don't really have it.

 

Bananaphone

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Chaos for such a name as yours i find it ironic that your position on this subject is one involving no chaos at all. :D

 

I guess that fact of the matter is we are not omniscient observers of our universe and as such we only see 1/1000000 x 10 to the (-1000000th) of the cause and effects that go on around us.

 

Since there are millions of billions of TRILLIONS of things that happen that we dont understand or cant see, then it is obvious that we have and never will have any idea as to whether our lives are merely a series of cause/effect events or if we have the decision as to what we will do in the next three seconds.

 

For example. I could rip off my shirt right now and of my own free will proceed to curse at every teacher in my school at this very moment! And yet even if i did, was it my own free will that administered such an idea in my head? Or was it the fact that as i was typing this i was -caused- for an example and so i thought as an -effect- to state something ridiculous.

 

Although at this moment i would love to do that no matter how random it may be.;)

 

Randomness does not seem to exist because in a sense you can always find a cause for it. Thus one thing leads to another and so on and so forth. So free will appears to be an illusion to the casual observer.

 

What really bothers me though and i would like to see this adressed is if we do not have free will and nothing else does, then how did it all start? What provoked what to form what? I cant comprehend something like that. The idea that from nothing, a completely random event happened to form and somehow that randomness caused more random events. Which led to order.. so from random comes order... sounds like hollywood.

 

So i guess if i had to choose a name for a god i believed in it would be Random! :hihi: (Notice you can take that two dif. ways)

 

Now that my brain is starting to hurt i will bid you all farewell. I can't wait to see how bad this post gets flamed.

 

Regards,

 

IMAMONKEY!

Bananaphone

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[IMAMONKEY!]

Science is a religion in drag, a set of religious beliefs cunningly disguised as axioms.

 

I am sorry but that has to be the most ignorant response I have ever heard. Axioms? How in the world can you link scientific fact to axioms?

 

Science- a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study

 

Religion-a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices

 

Religion is based upon faith. We choose to believe it not because of proof but because we (think if you ask me) sense it. I personally believe religion to be entirely empty and useless and it is merely an extension of the influence our deluded parents had on us as children, but barring that suggestion here is the basic thing that religion is based upon. Faith.

 

Religion-based on faith

 

Science-based on observation

 

Hard, tangible observation. Yes. That is a MAJOR difference between Religion and Science.