Rockturnal wrote:Belinda wrote:Rockturnal wrote:
This is not my argument against Free Will. my argument is not that Free Will events are rare it is that Free Will events are not material events. Material events are events that are caused by other events either going back in time, or contemporary.This covers every event in nature. Free Will events, and God, if they are to exist, exist outside of nature. Both God and Free Will events are self caused. Nothing in nature is self caused, except possibly some subatomic events. We can for the time being dismiss those because our choices are conducted within the more macro world that we inhabit.
Perhaps you are mistaken. That quote; I never wrote that.
You are looking for H2ouse; they wrote that.
Yup, guilty as charged, I wrote it. Itappeared to be from Rockturnal because he was commenting on my post, and unfortunately wrote his comment in a scarcely visible color, at least for
my browser
This forum is continuing to boil with interesting arguments, but for now I'd like to respond to what you said, Belinda. I was interpreting another statement you made earlier:
I certainly think of Free Will as an entity, which is precisely why I do not believe in it. If Free Will existed it would be the only entity, besides transcendent God, that is uncaused.
I see now that this is simply a restatement of what you said before, when you used the word event, instead of entity. I believe you took my earlier use of the word 'entity' in its broadest meaning, as a
definable thing, which, as you pointed out earlier, is
less specific than the word event.
Instead, my intention in the posting you quoted was to use entity to mean 'being', which was why I also included the term
agent in that sentence. To me, being (in this sense) is quite different from an event. It refers to the subjective sense or existence possessed I believe by all humans and perhaps some animals as well (and by God??). As such, at least for us mortals, it appears subjectively to include both consciousness and free-will, with free-will enabling the entity to act as an agent and cause an event. Thus an entity, by my definition, is completely different from an event. OK, events can be caused by other events, which may be caused by other events and so on ad infinitum. But I'm asserting that events may also be caused by entities, and entities may not require a 'cause' in the same way. Not having a cause would therefore not be a reason for rejecting their existence.
If free-will is associated with entities/agents rather than events, then I would take the term 'free-will event' to mean an event (meaning a
material event) caused by the free-will of an agent, explaining perhaps the idea of events occurring because of contemporary causes rather than all being pre-determined by the past. Of course, we might say that we took a major action of our own free-will; but this should probably be broken down into minute chained steps, with free-will causing ripples in our brain molecules which lead to changing muscle potentials which lead to movement etc. etc. The key point would at the start of those 'brain ripples': do they appear to be caused by other material phenomena -- or do they seem to be spontaneously generated?
I'm sure that there are very many brain ripples that lead to action which
are caused only by hormones that come from instinctive reflexes, and many that are caused by or controlled by the potentials in other brain cells. But I still think it's possible that many such brain events, and thus material actions in the world, might be caused and/or controlled by this apparent source of agency described as free-will.
Finally, a quick comment on RHG's comment that he is
... searching for anything that might justify free-will, other than the 'feeling' that it exists.
Please consider that the "'feeling' that it exists" is something that could be important, and needs to be properly explained before the free-will position can be fully rejected.
Our awareness of the possible existence of free-will is subjective -- but then again, so is our awareness of the possible existence of the material world.
The architectures of human languages probably contain more understanding of the universe than all the ideas of science and philosophy combined.
good response (made me chuckle). Although I enjoyed your response, this is not an example of free-will, this was a purely causal response. You, in fact, had NO choice but to say "I settle on the third option" (--yes, I know this sounds strange).
I trust you will elaborate and put me right, from your pov.
