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philosophy
understand
Do humans have free will?
Here's a reminder that it's against Compesh rules to give an answer to a question that mirrors the same exact arguments that someone else gave. Any duplicate answers that say "we have free will because god gave us free will" or "we have free will because we don't just have a free will, we also have a free won't", will be deleted.
Rules: http://compesh.com/article/2
Rules: http://compesh.com/article/2
philosophyunderstand
Philosophy reason
We are our current thoughts, not our past thoughts. Our belief in free will is not just based on the feeling that it feels like we make decisions, but also that our decisions and thoughts make up our identity.We like to think that all the thoughts we've had up to this point in time, past and present make up our identity.
For example, I like studying computing, I won't murder, I am laid back, I put herbs in my dad's coffee for him stealing £8 off me when I was 11.
All decisions stem from a thought. We think that our thoughts make up our identity. If we can identify with certain things or not identify with certain things, we can make choices, right?
What happens if there is a distinct change in your thoughts? Then you would have lost your identity. You are at the mercy of your thoughts. You can't choose how you always chose as your new repertoire of thought is making you choose something else. You would behave out of character if this happened as your personality would have changed.
The only difference between then and now, is now you view your thoughts and actions as going against your identity, so you'll feel you've lost control of your actions because you're an anathema to your identity.
But what makes before the personality change any different to after it? It's just that before you had an identity but now you've got none or lost it, so your identity must therefore be an illusion as our thoughts take presidence over our identity. And if we are just our repertoire of thoughts, how can there be free will?
It's like playing blackjack. You're obviously going to choose the decision that makes the most sense to you at the time, based on what you believe in and assessing the risk around you (or the cards on the table). It feels like you have made a free choice, when really you chose the choice that was the most reasonable at the time based on what your mind presented to you. No real choice involved. Me choosing what to say in a conversation is no more different than me choosing to eat pizza rather than disgusting olives.
Free will is an illusion. Everything is predetermined. The Big Bang predetermined all future events.
Scientific reason
There is a scientific experiment by Benjamin Libet. He found that when a person makes a conscious decision to do something such a press a button, if you measure the brain activity, you'll find that the brain unconsciously geared up to make that decision BEFORE the person was aware of it.BBC Horizon found that scientists could predict what button a person was going to press, 6 SECONDS before they actually pressed it, by monitoring their brain, with 100% accuracy.
The scientist reading the brain scan knew what the person was going to press, before the person pressing the buttons knew themselves what they were going to press. https://vimeo.com/83831499
All conscious decisions start in our unconscious, and if we're not conscious, we can't choose to do it, especially if one can predict what we're going to do, before we decide to do it.