What is free will?

You're wasting your time with 'reasoning logic,' because he/she lacks logic, and is also wishy-washy in any opinion offered. It's like trying to find some solid in mush. Good luck.

I'm wasting my time, period.

Darwin is everywhere, inside your mind too

A Darwinian system uses randomness and selection to generate some (limited) form of order and progress. Of course, the likes of Fil will tell you this isn't possible but guess what? Nature doesn't really feel that concerned about his philosophical obsessions.

Darwinian systems are the only known type of systems which can self-organize. You don’t need God to explain evolution, because the trial-and-error, randomness + selection process and other feedback loops are enough.

That may be why Darwinian systems are everywhere, way beyond the evolution of species. The central point made by Popper in the first half of his life was that scientific research functions as a Darwinian system. Hence you don’t need an official, central academy or faculty to tell scientists what good and bad sciences are. He later looked at politics and concluded that “open societies” (democracies, basically) are Darwinian in their functioning while “closed societies” (tyrannies) aren’t.

A free market economy is another obvious example. You do not need a central economic planner to manage a capitalist economy, it can self-organize, to a degree, through a trial-and-error, invention-and-selection process. Not to say we can't regulate these capitalist economies a bit better than they regulate themselves, but they are endowed with some amount of self-regulation, feedback loops and the likes. I.e. the “magic hand” of the market, which is nothing magic really, just Darwinian.

Interestingly, your own immune system is also Darwinian. Your leukocytes don't actually engineer or design antibodies to neutralize a new virus or bacteria, they just try out millions of randomly produced proteins, and the single one that is proven to work best against the infectious agent gets mass-produced by your immune system. The process usually takes two weeks. Trial and error is how your body develops its own medicine.

My point is that the mind may well work in this way too: scores of ideas get randomly produced, and then screened and selected based on whether they fit a situation well. Doesn't even need to be a conscious process, for the most part. Such a Darwinian “thought engine” would correspond to our intimate, introspective insight of how we invent and chose stuff. It would also explain how the (animal and human) “selves” can grow and self-organize without requiring a “soul” or godly intervention.

I say “animal and human” because in this perspective, the capacity to think and take decision is not some magic stuff given only to men. It has evolved from lower life forms. The only difference between a chimp and you from that point of view is that he can’t verbalize and fully develop his intuitions and ideas. He can still act on them though.

Here's what I did yesterday - all by myself.
About 11AM, I went to a local cigar shop on Santana Row in San Jose, because they have a good write-up by their customers. I asked the clerk to choose a a robusto for me in the $15 to $20 range. He got me a Romeo e Julietta corona that he lit for me, so I sat on one of the leather chairs, looking out the big picture window to watch the world go by. After about 45-minutes enjoying the smoke, I headed towards Best Buy, because my computer room tv went blank, and bought a 29" Samsung LED. Got a good deal, because it cost only $281 including tax.

I brought it home, took the smaller-old Samsung off the mount, and mounted the new tv which took me over an hour, because I installed a wood block to distance the tv from the wall.

When I turned it on, the screen went through the auto process to select the tv stations, but soon afterwards, the tv just went blank. I called Comcast, and they forwarded my call to a tech who helped me get the tv on.

It wasn't the tv, but the Comcast tv box that wasn't working. I now have an extra small tv that I'll be putting in the garage today.

I'm not sure where the predetermination came into the picture, but this is only an example of how somebody can pick and choose activities during the course of a day. For all I know, it was my free will that chose these events.

That's trial and error for you...

It was trial and error, because all the tv's in our other rooms were working. I "assumed" my tv was old and just lived out its usefulness.

I watched "Siege" last night with Denzel Washington on the new tv last night, and I love it!

Now here is a good resume of what currently most scientists think on the free will subject !

That's bull ****! Our ancestors did not have the choices we have today. It's called "evolution" in how man has been able to create things that we "use" almost every day. Their idea of their world was much different than it is our's. Our ancestors who died before the 19th century could not have influenced our lives of today. They didn't know our world.

Living by oil lamp is not equivalent to living with laser. They had no idea about computers, and how we are now able to communicate with people half way around the world.

Information today is instantaneous. It took months for information to reach from one part of the world to the next - especially from continent to continent.

LOL. Fil has made a survey of all scientists and that's how he knows how 'most scientists' feel...

Any "scientist" who tells you he has no free will is basically saying: "science is ****." Because science is predicated upon the capacity of human beings to freely observe and reason.

More like "psuedoscientists." They can't even define their own choices in life compared to their own ancestors! What a bunch of crock.

"Sometimes?" LOL It's still the result of our conscious and unconscious self; what is he trying to say?

I didn't even bother clicking onto that video, because I don't depend on one crackpot to tell me about what I personally observe and perceive.

Man your a thick one....couldn't you even GET that he was speaking of DNA heritage ? you prolly don't have a clue on how you come off with your opinions in these forums...you see a video n totally miss the point being made...is like you just STOP thinking...PAY ATTENTION for Christ sake !

Did you notice that Fil is thumbing down all our posts? So funny...

Hey Fil, why do you f.....g care, if you're a puppet anyway?

Science is predicated upon free will, as is our entire society (judicial system, democracy, economy, etc.). So yes, what Fil peddles is pseudoscience.

What has DNA have to do with 'OUR' free choice? I've included GENES AND ENVIRONMENT as constraints to our free choice. DID YOU MISS ALL THAT?

Read my previous post on why our ancestors could not influence our lives of today.

You are an ignoramus you didn't care to notice or investigate who those scientists are..you again n again seam incapable of seeing the point being made...the question is not about if you have will acting the question goes before the moment you have a will and establishes that YOU were not taking the deciding factors that brought up whatever you willed...chance doesn't help either here, because if before you had a given will the causes were merely random then again it was not YOU who have brought up the conditioning factors for a X will to show up...you have repeatedly shown that you don't GRASP the argument being made !

So to show my impartial take I have posted in my last video the question which I think is the most sensible to be made for those who like myself don't believe in free will which is if consciousness is in fact useless why do we have it in our brains...it seams like I am doing your job better then you since I can post pertinent videos and questions against my own case...if you want to be taken seriously start to get the right questions by playing the devil's advocate to your own view n from there see where it leads you...I do it all the time.

The problem IS NOT that a set of random possibilities emerges n then consciously you decide which one you want to take n chose...the problem IS that in order to decide among a set of potential choices you MUST have a drive pushing factor either one side or the other, n that, that willing, is being constrained ALWAYS by unconscious predictable MACHINERY !

I have a looooong series of questions you avoided. You want to be taken as a serious poster? Answer them.

- Indeed, why conscience? hat purpose does it serves (I made this point a long time ago on this thread)
- Science being predicated upon free will, isn't your posture contradictory? (a point I made perhaps half a dozen times)
- Do ideas matter, and if not why do you post here?
- More generally why do you care so much? After all, you're just an impotent puppet. Why not shut up and enjoy the show?
- How do you know for a fact that randomness is lack of information, rather than "real" randomness?
- Why can't the world mix random and determined events?
- Don't Darwinian systems exist, and can't they explain our mind's capacity for discovery and self-organization?

Etc. etc. etc.

You on the contrary have no point whatsoever. That you'd be asking the same question AFTER IT WAS ANSWERED SEVERAL TIMES, and couched in that particularly shitty 'language' you use, just shows you don't pay attention. You fire away your self-contradictory pseudoscience, again and again, hoping to score this time. You won't. It's over. You lost.