New Discovery

I gave a very valid and sound explanation that regardless of the potential choices the one ultimately made is the only choice that could have been made because it offered the greatest satisfaction in comparison, rendering any other choice an impossibility. I did not just say a decision is made. I also gave you page numbers to help clarify what he meant by “greater satisfaction.” You keep bringing up the issue of two equally satisfying choices, as if there has to be some kind of unusual deterministic mechanism to solve the problem. There doesn’t have to be. Haven’t you ever just picked a choice even though you liked both? You’re making much to do over this because of how you’re defining determinism, as if it’s an outside force trying to break a tie.

I think you need to explain why evolution granted such a useless trait to us.

Sorry, non of the chain is potential when related options are equally liked. So I should have written: Ok, we are on the right point in here now. You didn’t explain why one chain of causality vanishes at the point of decision when options are equally liked. In another word, what is the deterministic mechanism that terminates one of the chain exactly at the point of decision? You simply skip the problem by saying that a decision is made.

Logic is the mechanism of which it functions I’d say. Is it not logical thinking and testing of reason that determines what is satisfactory? Of course to a subjective or diverse perception. The pause is the attempt at pondering all possibilities to make sure there is no less or more satisfying idea, method, etc.

I don’t know for sure though, can one not make a dissatisfying decision not for self but in thinking for others? Or is that based on satisfaction too? What if I choose what is best for someone else but I myself am not satisfied with it?

I’m not sure what you mean by “deterministic mechanism” that terminates one of the chain at the point of decision. It doesn’t disappear. It just doesn’t manifest as the choice made, therefore if we wound back the clock the same choice would have been made. We are compelled to move from a feeling of dissatisfaction (from position “here”) to a feeling of greater satisfaction (to position “there”). For example, if I have an itch on my arm and leg at the same time and of equal discomfort, and I choose to scratch my arm first because I only have one arm available, that does not mean the other choice disappears. It just isn’t manifested at that moment. I may subsequently scratch my leg as the preferable choice in the direction of greater satisfaction. None of this is that important in regard to this discovery since it is the meaningful differences that matter when it comes to hurting others. I don’t know if we’ll ever get there.

I accepted your definition of determinism, moving toward greater satisfaction. By mechanism I mean a way of doing something.

This does not change the direction your nature is compelled to go. You may not be satisfied with having to give up some comfort, but you find “greater” satisfaction helping someone else.

Logic unfortunately does not work when options are equally liked and our approach for choosing an option is based on satisfaction.

Of course one can make dissatisfying decision.

There is no hidden deterministic mechanism other than our movement from dissatisfaction to greater satisfaction. A bird doesn’t say to himself: “Should I fly now or sit on the branch. I like them both.” The bird just does what it does from one moment to the next, according to the laws of its nature. If it stays on the branch, it is satisfied to be there until it has the urge to fly and suddenly it takes off. This is life’s constant motion. Winding back the clock the bird could not have done otherwise because “greater satisfaction” (although the bird wasn’t thinking in these terms) was the only direction it could have gone since flying was its preference after becoming uncomfortable or dissatisfied with its present position.

One can make a dissatisfying decision when the options are all dissatisfying. That is called the lesser of two or more evils. But if there is a choice between a good over an evil, you would have no choice but to choose good. Of course, good and evil are relative terms.

I can choose evil over good. I think everybody can.

Evil and good are relative terms. What others think of as evil, you may think of as good. That is why good and evil are relative terms. You may desire to shoot someone before they shoot you. In this case, shooting them first is good.

I just pinch my self hard now and it was not satisfactory. I knew that it wouldn’t.

Just now it gave you greater satisfaction to pinch yourself in an attempt to prove that it was not satisfactory. But it gave you greater satisfaction at that moment. Therefore, it did not prove what you think it did. Under any other circumstance it would not have given you greater satisfaction to pinch yourself.

No, I was not really thinking about having more satisfaction by proving that I am right. I believe that you can imagine such a situation.

You may get great satisfaction by trying to prove that you’re right, but you will never be able to prove it because you aren’t right. You can imagine being right all you want. When you see what this law can do to benefit our world, you will be happy.

but an explanation for the existence of the illusion is not necessary to logically deduce that there can’t be freewill. in other words we don’t need to know why the peculiar phenomena of ‘consciousness’, through which the ilusion occurs, evolved in this evolutionary process, to be able to definitively say that freewill can’t exist. these two arguments do not depend on each other.

but ‘consciousness’ is only a relatively new evolutionary feature. if what you are claiming is true, evolution wouldn’t have started until man became conscious… which is patently absurd.

there is no ‘deterministic mechanism that terminates’ because the causal process is seamless. the same natural ‘laws’ that work to affect the behavior of the electro-chemical activities that occur in your brain to make your volition possible, continue to work regardless of what kind of volition will result. ‘choosing’ to raise your right arm instead of your left does not suspend or terminate this causal process.

The point is that if everything is mechanically calculable then there was no need for conscious decision since everything simply could follow an instruction, what we assign to blind matter.

Materialists believe that consciousness is the result of matter activity, process (the process is the result of following an instruction). Therefore any conscious activity vanishes if only if at least one process stops in the brain.

i see how that point might seem curious, but you have to think of ‘conscious decision’ as something superimposed after the fact… as a part of the instruction given by the software being run by the hardware. consciousness isn’t part of another program that interacts with the program that is our body. it’s rather the last stage of a series of neurological protocols being advanced by a single set of instructions, you might say. the biggest problem the thesis of freewill is faced with is essentially ontological in nature. the thesis has to reconcile how some individual thing (e.g., the ‘will’) can exist in space/time along with everything else, and yet not be subjected to the same causal forces as everything else. and not just that, but also, at the same time, be able to apply it’s own causal forces on things in space/time. so for instance, you would say that your arm didn’t raise because of the causality affecting everything else in the universe. no, this was a special case/kind of causality. here, it was the ‘bahman’ causal force that raised the arm… and the bahman can do this because the bahman isn’t like anything else in the universe, and is therefore free of the causal forces that affect everything else.

starting to see the absurdity of the thesis of freewill?

here’s some searle for yas:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rZfSTpjGl8[/youtube]

Free will is just like the split beam experiment, where the observer changes the results.

Another way I try to explain this:

Are constrictions a bad thing? Not indicative of free will. Say that I want to smoke cigarettes forever…

I need a body with a mouth, good lungs, cigarettes and a lighter… all constrictions. But not a single one that my aspect of freewill is bothered by.