incorrect Concider this This statement cannot be proven. How can you be so sure that we have free will when you haven't taken both "choices" when you came to a cross roads. I'm not saying that we do not have free will, but I'm not saying we do. All I'm saying is that its a possibility that we don't. <HR> You on the other hand believe that we do have free will because...? ... We just do? sounds convincing to me (grins at the screen)
hmmmmm. interesting. but isnt the notion of free will proven simply by the fact that we CAN stand at the cross roads?
Yes you can stand at a crossroads but which crossroads are you standing at and which fork will you take. Take for example (yes this is a corney example but its the one which poped into my head) Im walking along a street passed a bar I decide to walk on or go in I walk in and meet the girl i eventually marry i don't i am still single Fate or Luck - samething
We have no free will about the past. We can't change what we did yesterday... the past, as soon as it becomes the past, becomes deterministic. We only have free will for the particular moment. So, I'd say that our perspective of being at a point in time is essentially what defines the notion of free will for us.
Concider this If you are at a crros roads, you can only take the path that you choose. Right? Why did you choose that path? Free will, or was choosing that path a rireect effect of something else you ,or someone else did before? In the debate of free will, nothing can be proven, nor diproven. So we can never knoe if we have free will, but it might appear that way to you.
Mmmmm Concider this It would appear that fate and destiny are the same thing. Saying that Is contridicting itself. Sorry ismu.
ok. i understand what your saying, but i find the idea of a 'guiding hand' to be very unplausable. i mean, sit at you computer and pick up either your left hand or your right hand. the choice is there for the making, and its YOU who makes it. our actions are brought about as a result of our reason, and reason constitutes free will. if a guiding hand were to be present, then this would signify some divine presence mediating humanity. if the divine is present, why would it guide adolf into slaughtering 3 million jews or and of the other atrocities mankind has suffered? i dont believe it. but yes i will concede that it is inevitably unprovable either way. you are right. but really. EVERYTHING is unprovable if you want to be scroupuless. for the sake of an analysis you have to make a distinction.
would you consed that its posable that there maybe something that gives us a little nudge every once in a while (like the pub thing)
no i will not Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! i think its a random lottery of meaninglessness and beyond my hopes there are no reasons.
Re: Mmmmm Not exactly contradicting. See this way: My fate is have A,B,C and D choices. I have a chance to choose my destiny to be A,B,C or D. But not E -- Z. Your fate could be C,E and G. You can't get into destiny like i have. If we choose one of our destiny, lets say B, there are others fate prepared for it. Just like a structure of folders in your Windows Explorer. My fate is drive C, your fate is drive D, and so on...
ismu Concider this ismu, fate is the endpoint of your life or an endpoint of a set of decisions. Having a set of decisions, is not fate. What you call destiny, I refer to as fate. Really it comes down to a matter of opinion. Asguard, Are you refering to a god? I'm an athiest, so I think that there is nothing that gives us a "nudge" in either directione. Bohemian Nightmare, The reason that I lifted my hane was because you told be to lift my hand. Therefore it is an example of "Cause and Effect Will" if you don't nudderstand what i mean by this "Cause and Effect Will" read some of my earlier posts.
No i wasn't refering to a god although is you belive in god that would explaine fate, all i ment was that somethings maybe MENT to happen. I don't know how cause and effect would work with my example.
The two best justifications I see for determinism are that science seems to presuppose it and make use of it, and also that if you treat time as just another dimension then it seems almost necessary. We apply determinism to the interaction of planets and stars, molecules, atoms, essentially everything around us. We presume there are causes for all their actions... we don't say they have free will. We're made of the same stuff they are, so why should we have free will in a true way? As Einstein said, it's more an illusion of limited perspective. If we had a higher view we could see causal reasons for why we want to do the things we want to do. From a four dimensional perspective, things are certainly deterministic. The 4-D world would be static. We'd look at the 4-D world and see no gaps anywhere, no moment of time that didn't follow logically from the previous moment in time, and that would show determinism correct. If free will were involved there'd have to be gaps where certain parts of moments in time -- namely the parts around people -- didn't directly follow from the previous moments. It's rather hard to conceive of how that could work, considering there aren't any gaps in the other dimensions we know. (Imagine if height or width became discontinuous in certain areas around people. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) In a practical limited perspective sense we have free will, but since our choices are all part of the deterministic reality that leaves us without any real sense of free will.
Say I were to look into the future and see that I had become a millionaire. I have only looked at that perticular moment in time so I have no idea how I became a millionaire. If I were to go back to my own time period, quit school, quit my job and spend my time sleeping and watching TV would I still become a millionaire? If fate were to exist, I would become a millionaire no matter what I did. However, what if I were to go forward in time a few minutes and see that I lifted my left arm. If I were to go back to my own time period and at the moment I was suppose to lift my left arm, lift my right arm instead, would that be considered free will? And if free will were to exist, traveling forward in time would be not possible. Not "not possible" in the sence that we don't have a conceivable way of traveling forward in time but not possible because the future does not exist. If free will were true then the future would not exist because it has not been determined yet. There would only be the past and the present. Unless of course the future were like that episode of Star Trek the Next Generation in which there are an infinite number of futures, each with its own little changes.
