freedom

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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[i]maybe this topic has been discussed over and over in ILP and i have looked up information on this but i’m still confused.

where’s our freedom?

i think that a brain manipulates everything. (e.g. emotions,acts)
so, im afraid i have to say that we have no freedom?

[/i]

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I’d read up on the subject. There is a rediculous amount of material! I have approached it more from a philosophy of mind point of view. (At least that is what I have been reading a lot lately.)

I’m currently working on focusing on the “gaps” in a decision. (I’ll elaborate more later when I do an actual post on it and ask for input.)

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what’s "gaps"in a decision?
is this a good source to explain “gaps” in a decision?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Info-gap_decision_theory

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Sorry, I wasn’t clear in what “gaps” I was talking about. I’m not quite there in understanding it myself. :slight_smile:

I’m new to much of this material so I am trying to get my head around it. i was interested recently when I was reading John Searle’s Introduction to Philosphy of Mind. I am particularly interested right now in what he calls “gaps” in his theory of causation of action. Below is part of a review I found that mentions the gaps in a different book of Searle’s.

[b]John Searle
Rationality in Action
ISBN 0-262-19463-5
Reviewed by Raimo Tuomela, University of Helsinki

“…Briefly, the agent’s desires and beliefs do not cause the agent’s decisions and intentions - at least from the first person point of view (Searle’s standpoint until the last chapter). This is due to the agent’s free will: he is free to decide which desires and beliefs he will act on. This is the first “gap”. In Searle’s action theory an intentional action “normally” comes about due to an agent’s prior intention which leads causally, but not with necessitating causality, to action. The latter itself consists of the agent’s intention-in-action (“volitional” element) and the behavior caused by it. The second gap is that between the prior intention and the intention-in-action, and is dramatically exemplified by the phenomena of weakness of the will. The third gap is that between the initiated action and its completion. According to Searle, “ ’the gap’ is the general name that I have introduced for the phenomenon that we do not normally experience the stages of our deliberations and voluntary actions as having causally sufficient conditions or as setting causally sufficient conditions for the next stage” (p. 50). All of these gaps are familiar phenomena and have been extensively discussed in the literature.”[/b]

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Koto, You are in Japan? What an amazing history Japan has. Last night I watched The Last Samurai again. I love the culture in the movie. Not a bad film and beautifully done.

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Did you really watch last night? I did the same damn thing, funny. I cried the whole way through the end. Just the thought that men who are so greater than their killers and doomed for no other reason than scientific expansion and advancement.

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That film did not disappoint at all. I especially the scenes where Cruise was trained by the Samurai. Yes, the end was very tragic. What a waste. To anyone who liked the culture in that movie I sincerely recommend Shogun (the book, not the film)

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thanks for the description…:smiley: today i have been thinking about “freewill” all day and finally came to wonder what’s the purpose of knowing if there is freewill or not anyway. im sure there was somebody who created this concept. but now God is dead and why do we still want to know the answer? we are just part of the nature. we are just same as flowers. we don’t have freewill. we just live. and yeh we have brains to think but that doesn’t mean that we have freewill.
this is what im thinking right now…
:-k

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yeh, im a pure japanese.
im interested in Japanese culture because it’s unique and sometimes weird… :laughing: of course each culture is unique :wink:

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I own the DVD and haven’t watched it since when I first bought it. I swear I watched it last night. That’s rad you did too. :sunglasses:

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Some of the first people to write extensively and struggle with freewill and determinism were religious “Christian” philosophers. It created a rift in the Christian church. What I love about freewill vs. determinism is that it doesn’t matter what your theological convictions are. If you are an atheist, theist, whatever origins of the universe you believe in, have nothing to do with your stance on freewill vs. determinism.

Anyway, I’m still reading up on the “gaps” Searle talks of:

Searle-
"Part of this experience [the experience of freewill] is that you have a sense of alternative choices open to you. There is, in short a gap between the causes of your decisions and actions in the form of reasons, and the actual making of the decisions, and the performance of the actions… Our experience of the gap is the basis of our conviction that we have freewill.”

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I consider myself a free spirit. Of course our lives are determined by our genetic make up. The map of the human genome is almost complete. When it is we should know what our limitations are. Nietzsche says one is not free if one gives up more than 8 hours a day to someone or something else.

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You said that it was religious Christian philosophers that were struggling with freewill and determinism and this created a rift.
Then, why you think that one’s stance on freewill and determinism has nothing to do with one’s belief?

When I read your post, I thought the belief that each people had caused a rift in the church, so that means each people had had a firm idea (based on each religious belief) toward freewill vs determinism.

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I wish I knew [-(

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I apologize for being unclear. I was stating that Christians, like any other grouping you might make (Jews/Muslims/atheists etc.), have the same basic theological beliefs. They are labeled Christians. Yet, within their group, they can have totally different beliefs on freewill and determinism. Just as an atheist can fall totally on the right or left of the freewill vs. determinism argument. Do you see?

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In this sense, being a Christian or being an Atheist does not mean you will fall into a certain camp regarding freewill vs. determinism.

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I got it now! =D>

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i could argue for compatibilism but i don’t believe in it. so, long story short, i think the brain operates on the edge of chaos and quantum uncertainty plays a big role in its actions. quantum ‘randomness’ is not random, there is no random from a vacuum, but it’s not deterministically causal either, so it’s exactly what we want. it doesn’t have to be quantum uncertainty even, the spirit seems to be able to influence energy, especially electrical, and given that the spirit is energy too it may or may not be quantum, although the edge of chaos would still explain why a nervous system is the main juncture between the spirit and the material.

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How does quantum randomness lead to action?

Then what is it if it is not random or deterministically causal?

Did we just take a leap into Cartesian Dualism? Metaphysics?

Regarding randomness:
random

  1. proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern: the random selection of numbers.
  2. Statistics. of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen.

I sometimes wonder if there is randomness at all. When we label something as random, is it only because we are not able to ascertain its causes and behavior? If we could figure out the apparently random behavior we see in quantum mechanics, would it then no longer be random?

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Please, tell me more of how you are free.
What do you make of Searle’s statement below?
“Our experience of the gap is the basis of our conviction that we have freewill.”