by Terry 159 Replies latest jw friends
Except when people do things that directly prevent passing on their genes, such as birth control, condoms and snip snip surgery. That proves that, just as much as there are inherent dispositions, we can choose to overrride them.
A cancer cell, by destroying its host, in effect brings about its own demise which is identical to preventing itself from continuing. Does a cancer cell engage in a suicide decision by your reasoning?
Well, you force me to explain!
It was meant to be a reductio ad absurdum statement! I was reducing the argument to the absurd by suggesting a boulder could "decide" anything or make a "choice".
You say that like it's a bad thing.
That is why I followed the boulder with the rhetorical comment
So NOW, after all this, you say it's rhetorical?
So, maybe to make things simple and clear them up, can you state, without any rhetoric, your hypothesis?
A cancer cell, by destroying its host, in effect brings about its own demise which is identical to preventing itself from continuing. Does a cancer cell engage in a suicide decision by your reasoning?
A cancer cell is not a person with free will. It is a cell that is growing abnormally. Since it is has no consciouness, it can't decide to divide or not. Suggesting that a cancer cell engages in anything is assigning anthropoligical properties (in this case, consciousness) that it doesn't have. You are asking the the wrong question again.
That's one of the ideas behind fuzzy logic and quantum computing, creating computers that can make decisions in a non-flowchart method, weighing criteria based on a host of factors and assigning value and making decisions (not following a flow chart) based on that. Of course, we know from the Terminator movies that this is what will eventually be our downfall when Skynet becomes self-aware, but still, interesting idea.
I use to be very engaged in the world of competitive CHESS as a game. I followed with interest the efforts of scientists and computer programmers to design and build a chess program that could outplay a World Champion.
Eventually, this was accomplished even though it was said with confidence for years it could never be done.
What a chess program actually does is amazingly simple, but, in a complex process of heuristic "decisions" amounts to a constant
"weighting" of this vs that scenarios.
A value system allows each step to "weight" by a certain amount a given "decision" for a move.
The ultimate value must never allow the "death" (checkmate) to follow.
Are these actual CHOICES being made by the machine (software program)?
I would proffer the comment that the ultimate value in life is to avoid checkmate (demise) as long as possible by weighting each move we make vis a vis alternatives.
Where it gets hairy is in our INABILITY to correctly or completely evaluate this behavior against that behavior.
BY OUR VERY IMPERFECTION and INABILITY we seemingly inject chaos into the heuristic programming OF weighting.
I suggest this may well be what appears in everyday life as DECISION MAKING FREE WILL.
In other words: What is "Free" is really inability to correctly assign weight. Thus, an arbitrary "decision".
Are these actual CHOICES being made by the machine (software program)?
Define "choice". According to you there is no such thing, so I am not sure what you mean by this question.
I would proffer the comment that the ultimate value in life is to avoid checkmate (demise) as long as possible by weighting each move we make vis a vis alternatives.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes the guy in the foxhole jumps on the grenade, though.
BY OUR VERY IMPERFECTION and INABILITY we seemingly inject chaos into the heuristic programming OF weighting.
I suggest this may well be what appears in everyday life as DECISION MAKING FREE WILL.
In other words: What is "Free" is really inability to correctly assign weight. Thus, an arbitrary "decision".
That would suggest that, given two alternative, we might as well flip a coin as to whether an individual would decide to do something. Is that what you are suggesting? If it is, then there is no reason to suggest genetic pre-disposition is what guides us because you just said decisions are arbitrary and chaotic due to imperfection, random, if it were.
But you've also said that decisions are genetetically inevitable and can be seen in our proclivities. They can't both be chaotic and arbitrary and inevitable.
What in the world has the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle got to do with human beings and their Free Will??
The act of observation affects the outcome of an experiment for tangible reasons. The observer must employ interference (electron microscopes, for example) which impact on the object of observation and disturb that object.
I thought I took care of this one in the time travel thread. This isn't what the uncertainty principle is. It was originally developed by heisenberg to explain this, but was later shown to be much more encompassing. The uncertainty is inherent in the system. Sub-atomic particles with BOTH definite position and momentum, DO NOT EXIST in nature. This can be shown mathematically and has nothing to do with any physical measurement or limitations of instrumentation.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is NOT an observer effect. That way of understanding was disproved over 75 years ago.
(Sometimes it's still taught the old way in other science classes by non-QM professors, but it's misinformation.)
Thank you Razziel.
The real quesiton is.... are quantum events truly random? Or if we saved the entire state of the universe, restored to a previous point, would quantum events happen exactly the way they did before. This is the key to determining if the universe is truly a deterministic machine. ;)
So NOW, after all this, you say it's rhetorical?
Try noticing, first of all, where I place the quotation marks " " when I refer to a boulder that chooses.
A boulder shaken loose from a mountain top "chooses" to fall downward.
Smoke from a forest fire "chooses" to waft upward.
The oceans "choose" to move toward the moon as the earth revolves causing the tides.
So, maybe to make things simple and clear them up, can you state, without any rhetoric, your hypothesis?
I have no hypothesis! Look at my Topic heading: CHOICE may be a mere illusion. The "may be" suggests a discussion is in order.
Often a rhetorical question is intended as a challenge, with the implication that the question is difficult or impossible to answer. The subject of Free Will and Choice is fascinating and difficult to wrap one's mind around. I made suggestions in my original statement which provided substantive basis for ensuing discussions. I think you read my original statement in a way that was counter to my intention and we've been going around at cross purposes since then.
Notverylikely: A cancer cell is not a person with free will.
Terry: Really? And I suppose I somehow said that it was?
What if my statement about a cancer cell was not that statement at all---but, rather a response to something else by way of making an entirely counter point? In such a case might I not have preceded the statement by including the quote I'm responding to? Such as this:
Notverylikely: Except when people do things that directly prevent passing on their genes, such as birth control, condoms and snip snip surgery. That proves that, just as much as there are inherent dispositions, we can choose to overrride them.
Terry: A cancer cell, by destroying its host, in effect brings about its own demise which is identical to preventing itself from continuing. Does a cancer cell engage in a suicide decision by your reasoning?
Notverylikely. You are asking the the wrong question again.
Terry: Look at my last sentence. Is that a question or a rhetorical question?
Now I think you're just yanking my chain!
Terry: BY OUR VERY IMPERFECTION and INABILITY we seemingly inject chaos into the heuristic programming OF weighting.
I suggest this may well be what appears in everyday life as DECISION MAKING FREE WILL.
In other words: What is "Free" is really inability to correctly assign weight. Thus, an arbitrary "decision".
Notverylikely: That would suggest that, given two alternatives, we might as well flip a coin as to whether an individual would decide to do something.
Is that what you are suggesting? If it is, then there is no reason to suggest genetic pre-disposition is what guides us because you just said decisions are arbitrary and chaotic due to imperfection, random, if it were.
But you've also said that decisions are genetetically inevitable and can be seen in our proclivities. They can't both be chaotic and arbitrary and inevitable.
Terry: Sigh.....
Here is what I said previously:
Go back to the person who is deeply phobic about snakes who reads about a person having a heart attack from misidentifying a garden hose as a snake. Now the situation is RECURSIVELY informed and can never be the same situation again.
Why?
Because, while genetically predisposed, we are learning minds with the ability to adapt our contexts. This adds a new layer to our predisposition.
The boulder that sits atop the mountain cannot learn nor can the smoke in a campfire nor the ocean when the moon is nigh.
What makes humanity a singularity in nature is the recursive nature of our thought-framing and contextualizing of our genetic predispositions.
What in the world has the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle got to do with human beings and their Free Will??
The act of observation affects the outcome of an experiment for tangible reasons. The observer must employ interference (electron microscopes, for example) which impact on the object of observation and disturb that object.
I thought I took care of this one in the time travel thread. This isn't what the uncertainty principle is. It was originally developed by heisenberg to explain this, but was later shown to be much more encompassing. The uncertainty is inherent in the system.
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Funny, I thought I took care of this one in the time travel thread, too! Only humans require a concept such as CERTAINTY--not an observed or unobserved system. A system is what it is. A thing cannot be UNcertain. Only the human viewpoint can contain UNCERTAINTY. So, your statement is without actual meaning.
This is the statement that triggered my cancer cell example: (by nature a cancer cell destroys what makes its own survival possible.)
Along the idea of gene maximization is the idea that all organized entities strive to survive. The entity known as the WTBS is attempting to survive and uses various strategies to maximize its own interests despite the damage to any individual along the way. This entity lacks free will too.
