Mepalmer said:
You're assumption here relies on a naturalistic philosophy that you are unable to prove.
Naturalism would actually be the logically default position, and only is to be abandoned when we see proof that there is something more than the physical reality at work. There is no such evidence, and every day we are explaining more and more "mysteries" as mere consequences of the physical world. You're right to say that my argument rests on the assumption of naturalism, but you're wrong to think that that's an invalid or unwarranted assumption.
Further, as far as neurons go, what you are pointing out is that stuff happens in the brain when people think. That doesn't conflict with my idea that people have free will.
Let me propose that hair growth is the result of tiny magical elves that pull on your hair whenever you sleep, making it stretch longer and longer over time.
As far as hair growth grows, you are pointing out stuff that happens on the head when people sleep. That doesn't conflict with my idea that magic elves make this happen.
Perhaps this will help to illustrate how your argument isn't an argument at all, but rather an irrational assumption predicated on nothing more than mere possibility.
Why would there be an infinite regress of choices? Are you suggesting that this going back to before our conception? I didn't choose anything that I know of until I was born, so going backwards forever is invalid.
Exactly, going backwards forever IS invalid, which is why it has to stop somewhere, and that somewhere is going to be something we have no control over. Every choice, no matter how many subsequent choices we can attribute it to, will eventually trace back to something we did NOT choose, and thus it was an inevitable consequence of prior circumstances.
This is why I think we have free will. Because we can't determine what people will do based solely on the possibilities of what they can do.
Once again you're simply arguing from ignorance - that is a fallacy my friend, sorry to say. Your conclusion is possible (Actually that can be debated as I have shown) but just because its possible doesn't mean it should be adopted, anymore than the possibility that my hair grows because magic elves come into my room at night and pull on it: you can't prove that it doesn't happen, and the fact that my hair grows fits in with my theory, but does that mean its a viable position? Absolutely not, because you need more than possibility to support a proposition, and right now all YOU have for free will is "Well I don't feel like I'm compelled, so I must therefore have free will". Just like I don't feel like my hair is growing throughout the day, so magic elves must be pulling on it while I'm asleep.
Gravity could be controlled by some god or other force. Do you have any evidence that gravity doesn't have free will?
Before I see you make this mistake AGAIN, take a look at this:
"An appeal to ignorance is an argument for or against a proposition on the basis of a lack of evidence against or for it. If there is positive evidence for the conclusion, then of course we have other reasons for accepting it, but a lack of evidence by itself is no evidence."
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http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html
How many times do I have to say your argument is invalid before you stop using it? Its not an argument at all, its ridiculous.
You're saying, this stuff really gets complex, so we know we don't have free will.
Straw man. Neither Dave nor I are saying that, we are actually saying that since all the evidence, emperical and logical, suggests we don't have free will, and there's no compelling evidence that suggests we do, then the only rational position to adopt is that we in fact do not have free will.
You haven't given me any scientific reasoning as to why I seem to have millions of choices at any given second and can choose any of them.
So if I rewind your life over and over the point of a crucial choice with many possibilities, are you saying that you won't choose the same thing every time? If all the conditions are the same and you still make a different choice, then their is no reason at all for your choices and they are completely random! If you would make the same choice every single time, then your choice is a natural consequence of the conditions you are on and the state of your brain, which is not free will. This is a point I established in my very first post - either your choice is consequence of a reason, or it is not, and if it is not it is random - so the only to possibilities are determinism or indeterminism: the law of excluded middle itself says there's no other possibility, and since 'free will' doesn't fit into either of the two possibilities, it isn't even a sensabile concept.
We see a lot of activity in people's brains, but that doesn't imply that that's where the thought originated.
Yes, it does imply that actually. The same way if every time I hear talking I see my friend's mouth moving, that implies that the sounds are coming from his mouth.
It's still in the air as to whether or not we really have a soul/mind apart from ourselves.
Only as a possibility with ZERO evidence in favor of it - such a possibility is only adopted by irrational people.
There are a number of scientists who believe that we do.
Not as a result of scientific evidence, simply as a result of their religious dispositions.
But for the analogy, when we look at a muscle contracting, we see a lot of activity within that muscle, but we don't think it's command to contract came from itself -- we think the signal came from the brain. But similarly, when we see activity in the brain, we don't know if there is thought outside of the brain that is causing that activity. Some poeple think that the brain is like a radio that receives and acts upon transmissions sent from our minds or souls.
Fallacy = False analogy
You leave out the crucial difference that we can trace electrical signals from the muscle along nerves back to the brain - that is emperical evidence that the brain is causing the muscle to move. If we didn't see any such connection, then we would be reasonable to believe that the muscle somehow commands itself. However, there is NO such evidence for a connection between some mystical soul and our brain.
And why don't you address the problem with dualism I raised earlier - if the brain and the mind/soul are in completely separate realities, how can they interact? Like I said before, you can't throw a baseball (Physical object) at the Gross National Product (Abstract concept) because they belong in completely different realities and thusly cannot interact in any way whatsoever. If they are able to interact then they are not in separate realities at all, but are interacting through one single reality, and if the soul is in the same reality as the brain, it is a physical entity, in which case I ask you this: how come we haven't found it yet?
Why should a bunch of atoms have thinking ability? Why should I, even as I write now, be able to reflect on what I am doing and why should you, even as you read now, be able to ponder my points, agreeing or disagreeing, with pleasure or pain, deciding to refute me or redciding that I am just not worth the effort? No one, certainly not the Darwinian as such, seems to have an answer to this... The point is that there is no scientific answer.
As a philosopher, I am embarassed to share my name with Mr. Ruse. His entire statement is a little more rational if it is made to end with "... yet". For a long time there was no scientific answer for things like lightning, rainbows, disease, light, or life itself - that never made it okay to conclude that they must have supernatural causes. The same applies to the problem of conciousness - there's every reason to believe neuroscience and evolutionary biology will solve it soon, and there is no reason to assume that it must be supernaturally caused by the "soul".
I say tails because I like to live on the edge.
