Is free-will an illusion?

very punny...very punny

...and some things that are thought of as problems aren't true problems at all

You're welcome to ignore ideas that are too big for you.

The environment is complex, because it's always in flux. The best man can do is provide estimates and guesses based on the past.

More is learned by asking questions than by pretending to have all the answers.

I could not agree more. The mind-body problem IS a question though, and bizarely it is a question that you refuse to ask.

A clear and simple desription of the problem:


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

Human intelligence is an oxymoron. How many with high IQ's developed the nuclear bomb?

The classical muse-artist problem was a question. Do you ask about it? If not, why not?

LOL. That's not a serious argument. You did not even care to frame the poet muse relationship as a question. Otherwise you might have produced an interesting question about it.

Being a muse is tough, there's no job security. I did have a muse once. Wonderful feeling of being artistically productive just because if love. I wrote a couple of decent poems for her. But then she was a bit crazy and i left her. Self-preservation cranked in. Years later I learnt that she committed suicide.

Virginie, if you read these lines, from your muse shelter on Mount Olympus, please forgive me.

By the same token, one could ask: How many people with a high IQ did NOT develop the nuclear bomb?

Intelligence is a natural force, not a virtue. It has the same morality as earthquakes and floods.

Yes and natural forces unfold naturally excuse me the need to restate the obvious...when one says naturally one means according to the rules of nature not magical out of nowhere chosing.

I anticipated that you wouldn't address the question in a serious way because in every case that I've posed a logical contradiction to you through example question, you side-step.

1. How does a person get addicted to scratch tickets?
2. If having free will allows one to choose what to do, and the scratch ticket addict truly wants to quit, then why does he not?
3. If the answer is that he has no will power, then where did the will power go? The scratch ticket addict could resist other over-endulgences, why not scratch tickets?
4. If he avoids over-endulging in other areas does that mean there are multiple wills of different types and he's just missing the scratch ticket will?

I don't know how addiction works. I would guess it's about short-term incentives trumping long-term ones.

You keep projecting onto me your own vices and turpitudes, Brian. I am not the one avoiding questions, you are. Like the mind-body problem, which you keep avoiding like cancer...

It's amusing to see people so confused and sheepish about themselves that they'd rather think of themselves as black box zombies rather as human beings. They would rather think that they don't think... And they are not very far from the truth here. :-) Their thoughts are worth zilch.

Here you go Ollie on your mind body problemo...

Yada yada yada. And OF COURSE you know exactly what the "rules of nature" are, and what they allow and don't allow, beause OF COURSE the Universe speaks through your mouth.... And those rules of nature do not allow quantum mechanics.

All the physicists of the 20th century were sorcerers I guess.... Burn them!

What is it about QM ??? You think Indeterminism gives you Free Will ? Chance or throwing dice PROVES you have none once what you want has no bearing on what happens at a quantum level.

I answered you months ago. http://able2know.org/topic/196759-42#post-6041702. You just don't like that I reject the premise of the question.



Okay...well...if that was true, then what happened to the will? How would symbols on a piece of cardboard make the will go away?

Here you Descartes shining idea:

What's this guy saying, in a nutshell?