Fate & Other Thoughts

[WilliamDell]

Well despite what was said above, I still stick to my thinking that free will does exist. The definition of free will differs from person to person because the concept is not something that is concretely taught to everyone, mainly because it is an abstract thought, and many abstract thoughts can never truly be defined because people will still interprut them differently. Sometimes it is defined differently so that they can exploit the word for their own use (example - saying you are patriotic to say it is OK to take away rights and whatnot - hiding behind the word patriotic).

In reality words can never really be defined because they take on so many different meanings and sometimes it is hard to tell which meaning of the word it being used in a particular situation unless certain things are made perfectly clear. Anyways, in that context, I can say that some explanations given above are close-minded in that they assume that they're view is right and no one else's should even be considered. Now, I'd like to make a point on the topic of free will and influences of your environment (or the system in which you are a part of). A person, given any particular situation, can make several choices, rarely are there ever only 2 clear cut choices, usually there are many choices to what can be done. A person CAN choose to ignore all mind orientated boundries caused by prior experience and conscious and learning. For instance, a person can commit suicide even if they are told that suicide is wrong and that socially it is frowned upon and the person themselves looks down upon suicide. If give the right frame of mind, they may be tempted more than other times (for instance when in a state of depression the chances of suicide are increased). That beings said, the mental state of someone does affect their decisions, but they can also choose to ignore those preconceptions and feelings they are feeling. Back to the suicide example, give all of the information up above (the state of mind, feelings, and preconceptions the person has given to them by their personal thoughts, experiences and society's thoughts on the subject), the person can still choose to not commit suicide and simply get some water and go to bed or do many other things like talk to a friend or something about it suddenly.

The fact is, the human mind has many aspects to it, and many times decisions that we perceive as irrational are still made simply because humans can and do perceive different situations differently. The mind deals with different things in different ways for each individual person. The key word is individual, we are all individuals and we act as individuals even when we seem to be acting as a group, we have consciously decided to follow the groups decision.

I could go on and on, but I think I will stop for now. I might need to clarify my points for some of you, but they are made generalized because my statements are made to fit into several situations that can possibly happen in real life.

 

[Korittke]

Free will can be defined, you're just being ignorant.

"Free Will: Freedom of self determination, expression, and actions. The ability to make free choices, voluntarily, unconstrained by outside forces, and based on free thoughts and feelings within the mind."
Don't use the word free in the definition... And tell me how it works... with an example.

And William Dell, your example is useless. If one decides for commiting suicide instead of deciding against it, he does this because the thoughts that are going against it are stronger than the ones going for it.

Edit: Before you come up with more useless arguments, I might aswell repeat: 'Free will' in the way it has been defined cannot exist when the human mind is part of the physical system because then it is 100% influenced by action-reaction schemes. 100% because the action-reaction system works in the 100% way. If an apple drops, would you ever say that 50% reason is gravity, and the other 50% are just random? I think so not. If you think different, tell me the goddamn percentage because you seem to know so ****ing good.
If the human mind is not part of the physical system then decisions are not decisions because human actions would happen for no reason. And by no reason I mean 0% reason, 0% random and 100% nothing. Thus a decision such as killing yourself when your life is the best of them all, would be as probable as trying to spell 'gdfdfgdfg' loudly in public at any given moment.

William Dell, by saying that free will cannot be defined you're just neglecting the fact that you can't argue for something that is defined in a way that it cannot be argued for because you contradict yourself automatically. Something such as free will, that is, as you suggest, part of this world, doesn't even exist if you can't define it.

 

[cxoli]

Okay, sorry to post again since I'm probably getting repetative, but I've been thinking about this lately thanks to Rygon....

I guess I believe in free will to some extent. I believe in fate -- that we're destined to make certain decisions based on our personalities and what happens around us. Basically, I see the human mind as a computer program, like virus-scanning software. It's results are set, but you still have to choose to run the program.

Hmm, I don't know, though. I'm kind of confused, and am not really sure if that made sense. At any rate, I'm looking forward to Korittke's response.

 

[WilliamDell]

In talking about defining something, once you define something you are putting limits on something else. Defining something in itself is an action that is part of human cultures, cultures define different things in different ways according to many things and these definitions are putting limits on things according to what they know about the world. And I will say that in the context of *your* definition of the free will, it seems to work in most instances but I'm not going to go into that. The thing is, you are putting a definition on it and that definition is not the only definition of free will. For most people it means not having your will influenced by outside factors mainly by a "divine will" (divine being of some sort) or "fate." In this aspect the free will is constrained to different parameters than it is in your case, and who is to say that they are wrong, because defining words and giving arbitrary meanings to words is part of language and culture, and a person should be understanding of other cultures (and sub-cultures) because they are just basic building blocks for a persons way of life and some things (like the meaning of free will) don't even affect a persons daily life.

I can accept your point of view and say yes it does have its arguments, but I can also say yes to the other view point of the "divine will or fate" hypotheses. The fact remains that free will is an abstract thought, it is something that no matter what we say or do, we can't actually prove to some one. We can come up with many different hypotheses that work for the different situations that come up. Korittke's hypothesis involving the physical system makes sense and in that respect, free will is not something that can be seen to exist. I still think free will exists in that I do not define free will the same. Free will is the freedom to make your own choices. These choices are made by YOU personally and no one else. Once your ability to make a decision is taken away from you, you no longer have free will. A slave still has free will, they can choose to disobey and be punished or they can possibly fight back and either gain freedom or not or there are many other possibilities. But I still want to stress that no matter how many examples or what explanations anyone gives, free will is an abstract thought that is part of culture; therefore, it can and does have many ideas and definitions behind it.

 

[Korittke]

So if I define God as 'A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens.' I have proven his existance? Great. Maybe some of you haven't fully understood but only because your will isn't free doesn't mean he doesn't exist. That's the great thing about life as long as you're not mentally disabled.

 

[WilliamDell]

What you are saying is can be true for a person since God is abstract (or at least hypothetically abstract in that I haven't seen absolute concrete proof of His existence); however, you can just say that if you believe something that it is automatically proof very everyone. In your example of God being human, that is a still a definition that can be disputed but even if not agreed with, it can be someone's outlook on the subject and it can be part of their internal culture. And actually in the example, if you're saying God is a person, then that is more of a label of a person or maybe in that example, each person is their own God, in that they create (they create things through work and can make offspring) and can destroy. Anyways, that's all for now, it's time for some lunch.

 

[JeRkInS]

i dunno wat u guys r postin about cause im too lazy to read and class is almost over.. so imma just tell u that i belivein god and going to hevan and seein those u love and care for

and when i die by then bud and eric will have so there would b reuin concerts up in hevan with sublime back together and i can meet him up there and see all my family members that i loved up there and I would get to see my 2 dogs that died max and treaker... those guys always made me happy when i was down and i miss them.. and MAYBE if my "personal religion" is correct there will b tons of hot babes up there with white tees on and short skirts holding mugs of beer and seeing bradley sitting down smoking a bowl.. ya i worship women and the grounds they walk on.. and i jerk off to them thats pritty much it but most the time i consider myself a christan ANYWAYS im just babbleing on cause im bored and i want these things to come true and i dont know wtf this thread is about but i gotta go hope some1 reads this and gets a good laugh from it PEACE OUT

-anthony aka HORTY

 

[RoaCh of DisCord]

Nice fantasy.

 

[B~E]

What you are saying is can be true for a person since God is abstract (or at least hypothetically abstract in that I haven't seen absolute concrete proof of His existence)

I'd hate to interup your argument, but God is proved to exist. In a logical way, that is. Ever heard of Descarte's ontological proof ?

#1 Necessarily, God is perfect (true by virtue of meaning)
#2 If God didn't exist he would be less than perfect, for things that have the caracteristic of existing would be above him.
#3 Therefore God exists, since he is, by definition, above evrything.

The only true way to defet this argument is to prove that God is not perfect. Good luck. Now we can understand why the plot of the movie Dogma made sense.

i dunno wat u guys r postin about cause im too lazy to read and class is almost over.. so imma just tell u that i belivein god and going to hevan and seein those u love and care for

:hbut

Why should anybody bother to read your replies, when you dont bother to type properly ? Abbreviation where made for syllable extensive words, not for the verb "be", or "are". Your just being f.ucking lazy.
So please, at least type properly.

 

[WilliamDell]

While it is true that your thinking above does provide an approach to proving God locially, it does not provide any definitive, concrete proof about the true existence of God, and in my post above I was talking about concrete proof of something seen as abstract because God will remain abstract until that definitive proof has been presented and shown to be reliable and true (proven). While I do believe in God as a being, I even moreso believe God to be a natural overall force in the universe, in other words, God would be all of the laws that determine how things work. This is something Einstein strived to find, he was determined to find one defining law that would work for the entire universe and show everything was interrelated and that chaos was not what the universe was based on, he was looking for a universal law. Quantum physics is basically what provides this problem, in that we are still trying to understand all of the small things that happen on the sub-atomic level because what happens at that level often times is somewhat unpredictable.

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with fate, well, if everything was to follow one common law, a universal law, then one could say that in some way, everything that happens can be predicted by equations and in that way fate would actually seem to be determined but not by what we usually perceive to be the guiding force in the universe. As I've said before, there are many ways to view topics, and in my belief in a universal guiding force, I can say that while it guides natural aspects of the world and of what our bodies do (natural processes like digestion and whatnot), does not necessarily guide what choices we will make in a given lifetime. It is possible that it does, and if it does, recognizing that it does can help us determine why things have turned out like they have.

 

[Magikarp]

I took the time to read all of your responses (With the exception of WilliamDell; try to break up your paragraphs, I hate reading giant blogs of sentences ... or maybe I'm just being anal >.<'') and I was quite surprised that some of you could relate to the point that I was getting at (Especially Koritkke, who seems to understand the fundamental problem of free will better than I do).

Originally posted by RoaCh Of DisCord
The future has not happened, therefore it doesn't exist...and it is definitely not already determined and can't be predicted (IMO).

I agree that it is true that the future has not yet occured, but that still doesn't mean that it isn't predictable... even Einstein claimed this to be true.

Originally posted by thebastardsword
ok, does anyone remember the game of chance where you dropped a coin into a machine from a given opening in the top of the machine, and when you did this, the coin would hit pegs(oh, its situated as a verticle drop with pegs stuck into it) and bounce in a certain direction. Depending on the machine, there will be several spots at the bottom, some ending in failure, few ending in success and winning whatever prize was in store for you(usually a fee taco )

well, what i want to say here is that destiny is much like that. you are the one that chooses where the coin will start at the top of someone else's machine. you didnt choose where the pegs are or where the succesful spot at the bottom is, but you do choose where you start. and once you commit with it, destiny pushes the your coin down and where it ends is result to where you started. You choose where you start, and destiny chooses where you end...i think...

That's a cute analogy, but isn't the starting point of the coin determined as well? What you are suggesting, in essence, is that the very starting point of anything is random, and everything thereafter is predetermined. The only real life application of this would be the beggining of the universe and all of the events that have occured henceforth.

Originally posted by RoaCh Of DisCord

Originally posted by Koritkke
Scientists have found out that maybe it is possible for certain atoms to virtually move without this movement being induced by anything which means that they are moving or changing constitution for no reason, though they are part of the physical system.

Oh okay! And that explains, what? Not much. We are talking about the human species here...not a single atom. The human mind is a VERY powerful tool, and it IS capable of freedom of thought. That's what seperates us from animals. The freedom to think leads to free will...it doesn't matter if things around us change or alter our course, or lead us to do certain things. We are still capable of thinking, and making decisions...despite what happens around us. Our decisions may be influenced by the actions and events around us, but they are not totally controlled by them. The human mind is capable of free thought...obviously.

Koritkke actually makes an extremely valid point here: if random events can happen at the quantum level, they should, logically, occur at any level. Of course, I think that scientists have yet to find the reason for these seemingly "random" events; the idea of action and reaction can be so easily tested that denying its existence would be idiotic.

RoaCh, as much as I love you, I have to disagree with you here. The way I see it, animals operate the same way we do, but at a much more fundamental level; since our intellectual levels are so much higher, our actions may seem a bit more... muddled. The only difference between man and animal exists on the intellectual scale, but both are subject to the same ties of predetermination.

Originally posted by Cxoli
It's results are set, but you still have to choose to run the program.

This is identical to what the thebastardsword said, but in another format. Choosing to run the program is exactly the same as the program actually running; both are already determined.

And, finally, a few extraneous points:

Koritkke brought up a very good example of what this entire thread is about with his fight microcosim. He also mentioned the factors that would probably play a role in the decision made by the big guy: peacefulness, bravery, and strength. I believe that all of these things are merely genetic, and that people merely elevate them to an exaggerated level.

The rest is silence.