Free will. Free will?

[Skybird]

Exciting thing. Isd there a free will, are we free to decide? Or not? What are the consequences of any of the two possible answers? An american writer I just have read getting quoted with this: "Of course I believe in free will - I have no other choice than to believe that!"

By now I am out of contact with psychological research, for the most at least, and neuropsychology never was one of my primary interests anyway. But I know that since some time they can scan the brain and understand brain activity patterns in parts of the brain that precede the display and announcing of intention and behavior by seconds.. In other words: the brain already has flipped switches before you become aware of your "free will's" choice or decision for this or that option. Your brain already has decided . seconds before you even get the idea that now by your "free will" you have decided something, have made a choice. Sorry, but neuroscientists have busted this idea. The brain decided, and later the "free will" follows.

In other words, I camp with those claiming that free will is an illusion.

This is a big, tough pill to swallow. However, this must not be a reason to turn fatalistic or to give up trying to differ between right and wrong, good and evil. The following essay I found to be very insightful and humane. I like what he says and I like the way in which he says it.

Life Without Free Will

The author is philosopher and neuroscientist himself.

[Sailor Steve]

Nice article. Even ignoring psychology, Free Will is something thinkers great and small have discussed since there have been thinkers. I myself could write on the subject for hours, or at least a lot of minutes. I do like the comment you quote.

[Armistead]

They're 1000's of factors that form our brains, enviroment, culture, education, religion, genetics, etc. Our choices and will aren't totally our own for sure.

[geetrue]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Nice article. Even ignoring psychology, Free Will is something thinkers great and small have discussed since there have been thinkers. I myself could write on the subject for hours, or at least a lot of minutes. I do like the comment you quote.

I think you should give it the old college try Steve, seriously.

You think you can, therefore you should ... what happens after you have collected your thoughts is up to fate and a publisher. Don't go the wiki route though.

Look at all of the time you already spend reading or absorbing life itself when you could be writing and sharing your soul.

Writing is like a race worry about the finish line when you get there.

I use to be a writer, but I have fallen by the wayside so to speak, in my good days I found that you have to keep at it ...

four or five pages a day, precept upon precept, rule upon rule, inch by inch is a cinch, yard by yard is hard.

Back to sky's wonderful topic, "free will" this is a great history leason for how the United States came into being and then fighting for it's freedom from England.

by the way sky I thought the was about LSD and free will ( LSD is not for me nosiree), but you had a typo of isd in the first sentence lol

[Sailor Steve]

I meant I could write all that right here, boring everybody to tears, if not to death. Write a book? No desires in that direction.

Of course getting paid to bore people is tempting. Mostly I just write music.

They're 1000's of factors that form our brains, enviroment, culture, education, religion, genitals, etc. Our choices and will aren't totally our own for sure.

That works

[Betonov]

But if my brains does the decision before me, without direct influence and completely on its own, that still makes it ''my free will'' since we are talking about MY brain working FREELY

[geetrue]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Your brain already has decided . seconds before you even get the idea that now by your "free will" you have decided something, have made a choice.

Sorry, but neuroscientists have busted this idea. The brain decided, and later the "free will" follows.

In other words, I camp with those claiming that free will is an illusion.

This is a big, tough pill to swallow. However, this must not be a reason to turn fatalistic or to give up trying to differ between right and wrong, good and evil.

free will can be made captive by others thoughts, but where do those thoughts come from?

I disagree completly with this expert opinion in favor of my own free will thinker Oswald Chambers:

The first great psychological law to be grasped is that the brain and the body are pure mechanisms, there is nothing spiritual about them; they are the machines we use to express our personality.

We are meant to use our brains to express our thought in words, and then to behave according to the way we have thought.

A man’s spirit only expresses itself as soul by means of words; the brain does not deal with pure thought.

No thought is ours until it can be expressed in words. Immediately a thought is expressed in words, it returns to the brain as an idea upon which we can work.

Chambers, Oswald: The Moral Foundation of Life : Hants UK : Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1996, c1966

Oswald goes on to say that these real thoughts come from the heart, the soul of man not the brain.