"Everything happens for a reason" and Free Will.

When you create a god, you must have all these associated topics, like whether shes given you a free will or not. Keeps the masses busy for centuries.

Also fits with predestination and free will. Two self cancelling concepts.

ttf

I hadn't realised you switched so I guess this belongs herttf-

I'm not arguing anything at all.It isn't a question of arguing.

There are either non-physical states or there are not.The possibilities of non-physical states are probably infinite and beyond our grasp.The possibilities of physical states are biological,chemical and physical(in the physics sense) and very large.These are currently under investigation,and will remain so if there are no reactions,and they are in their early stages.There is no room for argument in this field,though there may actually be some,and there is plenty of room for argument in the field of non-physical states.In the latter case rhetorical skill and the fitting together of a reasonably consistent body of thought
commensurate with prevailing conditions are the main considerations.You get what happens.

In the study of physical states you get what nature has put there. e.

When I reassure myself or someone else with the phrase "everything happens for a reason,' God or fate has no part in it.

When I say that, I mean that it will somehow better my/themself down the road. Struggles, obsticals, etc, it always somehow has at least a minute positive effect, even if it is knowing how to handle it better the next time disaster strikes.

Everything happens for a reason!

Things happen to you that might be at first considered
as obstacles, may be painful and hurtful - but in reflecting
back on them, you realize that in overcoming these
obstacles you have gained strength and learned more
about yourself.

People come into your life for a reason, to either help
you trying to figure things out, teach you a lesson or serve
some sort of purpose in your life that is crucial at this
point in time. Sometimes you know that these people
are meant to be there to change your life in a profound way.

The people you meet will affect your life - even the ones
that hurt and betray you, ultimately help you understand
about trust, forgiveness and being cautious the next time
around.

Everything happens for a reason, we just need to
recognize it.

CJ:-

There are millions of people who don't overcome the obstacles and they gain nothing from them.

The question seems to be between there being a reason behind things or is it blind fate.The former can be subdivided into divine reason or biologically determined reason.As fate and determinism don't make good bedfellows with egotistical individuals the divine reason gains sway.

I don't believe in that. Though I did couple of years back. We can make our mistakes into a reason for fixing the mistake and our state of being, but I don't think that there is such a thing as fate. Maybe there is a direction, but as a part of the system, it is best that we don't think like that.

Maybe we should resurrect free will thread!

I'm a bit surprised with that Ray.

We were discussing free will.We don't necessarily think there's anything we think it best we should not think like.We are on a philosophy thread after all and philosophy doesn't involve us only thinking things that you think it is best we should think about and hiding away from things that you think it is best we don't think about.

I don't remember anybody saying that there was such a thing as fate but it is nice for us to know that you don't think there is such a thing.Are there any other things you don't think that we should know about.

And do you think you could be more precise than "maybe" on our direction.If maybe there is a direction then surely maybe there isn't.I happen to think that there is definitely a direction and am a bit dubious about you opening up the possibility that there isn't.

What changed your mind from two years back to this mystical position you seem to be in now.

Two hundred years ago people were arguing that electricity was something we shouldn't think about.
That should give you an idea what dead ducks look like.

Spendius, just to clarify, I was stating my opinion on "everything happens for a reason." The first sentence was suppose to reflect my opinion on whether or not everything happen for a reason. Seeing as "reason" of this phrase, in the colloquial form of the phrase, is defined as having a divine cause, I don't agree with it.

Cause and effect do exist, yes, but this is not what "fate" is. Fate implies a predestiny, which I don't believe in.

When we are discussing the subject of free will, no doubt determinism and free will will be contrasted in juxtaposition. What I meant by "since we are part of the system..." is that our actions and being is a part of the process of the system, the universe, and thus to think that we are determined, that we have no free will, would generally imply to many that we have no choice.

Since we are part of the system, we can't say how the future will exactly turn out, and we can't decompose our being into pawns of the past. What I meant by it's best to not think about it like that, is to imply my opinion that we can't think of ourselves as pawns of the past or pawns of a divine plan. An extreme person who thinks that he has no choice would probably think that whatever he does, is justified. Thus, if one were to accept "everything happen for a reason", that means that every action can be interepreted by strict consequentalists as a justified means, and thus it makes no difference whether or not I'm responsible or irresponsible. Of course I disagree with this view and that is why I denied the argument that everything happens for a reason.

Do you see my line of reasoning? I meant not to dictate anyone to believe what I said. BTW, I usually use "maybe" or "probably" to assert that I don't know for sure. I've been taught that to write an expository essay I shouldn't use "maybe" or "probably", but I feel uneasy in that it's sort of like trying to hide the fact that it is only what I find to be true.

CJ:

It seems, then, everytime I make lemonade out of lemons out of my own free will that I could say that "Everything happens for a reason".

Also, if EVERYTHING happens for a reason, then your "learning" happened for reasons that are not your own and thus you had no free will in the decision. If this is the case, you could call it 'learning' but it would not be any learning of your own volition and thus seem trite and unecessary to go through the trial in the first place.

Spend:

One could argue that the 'will' exists in one of the physical demensions that string theory is hinting at - the soul could be a demension 'mapped' over my physical body at all times, but we can not sense.

However, this is not (in my mind - and I am having trouble seeing the relevence of your statement) pertainant - unless you are saying the will cannot be physical. I don't understand how the brain cannot cause physical action in the body AND have that predicted by natural law (with a certain amount of probability) and not have that be free. If I have a 50 - 50 chance of performing some action, just because the percentages are known does not make it any less free when one or the other is chosen.

Predicting and determining seem to be two different things. However, as we can see, this is off topic.

TTF

Ray said this much better than I could Spendius, in relation to merely the phrase mentioned above and free will - they are incompatable. Free will and whether there is or is not free will is another thread.

TTF

The statement "everything happens for a reason" is a cop-out for people who tend to make excuses for things that they could not control and were negative. I have a question, what is the reason for a single leaf falling off of a tree in the middle of nowhere? There is none. It just happens.

Papperlapapp, if you take such trivial events such as
making lemon juice or falling leaves as an example for
"everything happens for a reason" than it won't make
sense, true.

Things happen for a reason, people enter your life for a reason - whatever you make of it is your choice. Even
experiences that are negative and cannot be controlled will teach us about ourselves, that is, if you're willing to
learn from it.

By the way CarbonSystem: Do you know the story of
"The last leaf" by O.Henry? It is quite remarkable and
a single leaf falling does matter, if put in the right context.

You're getting a little too philosophical, CJ.

Lighten up.

Look!

It was too dark around here without you gustav

Its always good to have Gus home for the holidays.
Diiid you handle the assignment Gus?

Gus-

It is a philosophy thread.What on earth do you mean when you say we are getting too philosophical?There are acres and acres of lighten up threads.Some of us play Trivia half our waking lives.
Are you saying there's no room for philosophy.Not even in one little corner.If it is too heavy for you what has that to do with us.I think CJ is quite capable of judging when to lighten up for herself.

CJ-I understood that TTF and Ray and myself were trying to shed a little light.The modern scientific quest is to shed light into all the dark corners.Gus seems in favour of keeping them dark.

There's nothing new in any of this.It's all in the library.Some people would like to burn it all but there's an obvious reason why that doesn't happen and it is that governments support these researches .

Carbon-It is only a "cop out" if you say it is.It may well be a fact.One of the strongest arguments against capital punishment is that it is immoral,also counterproductive,to take the life of mentally disturbed people no matter how much one condemns their behaviour.As you probably know CP is not resorted to in Europe.In fact Turkey has been told that they have no chance of entering the EEC if they use capital punishment or torture.

There are a number of explanations of why leaves fall off trees.Each is a reason.

TTF and Ray-

Are you allowing for non-physical states of the brain to exist or not?(The word brain is the same as the word mind and the word body for these purposes.)If you say,as I am saying,that there are no non-physical states then one can set about studying the physical states in a scientific way which you can't once you allow for non-physical states to be interfering.The non-physical state eludes our capacity to study it though it may be useful for other reasons to invent it.As I said earlier,such a state has infinite possibilities all of which are subject to speculation.The idea of free will is just such a speculation.It breaks down on reflex actions relating to food and drink and other physio-biological processes of which there are many.

Anybody really interested has Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind,Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and D.M.Armstrong's A Materialist Theory Of The Mind to go at just for an introduction.
The Genome project is probably on a whole other level.

There will be no medical breakthroughs once non-physical states are allowed.Some might say that the Roman Empire foundered on this very point.They had temples and shrines to anything anybody could think up.

Have we shed any more light with that?

Omigod.... EVERYTHING really does happen for a reason!!!

<whew>


Welcome back to the fold, Herr Ratzenhofer.

I was not asserting that there is a non-physical state of the mind. BTW, mind and brain are not the same in the semantic sense of the words. The brain is the thing which causes the mind to arise, which is a pattern of interactions that allows for phenomena to occur.

Free will, in everyday use, means the ability to choose. What is to choose? It is the ability for "a being" to decide between more than one possible outcomes. In this sense, since our brain is what determines our ability to think, all the causes which we talk about is at that moment in time a part of the person's brain, so in this case the person is "choosing" no matter how misguided he or she is, because the brain with effects of causes in the person's life, is ultimately a part of him. Am I clear here?

Off topic now,
look, you can study a brain and how it functions etc, but as scientists have noted, even if we do see how a bat's brain function, we don't really know how bats actually think, meaning that we know that they use echolocation, but we don't know what the experience is like. So I'm not going to dwell on the physical vs. non-physical for now.