Free will? What do you think? (Page 3)

Corwin: Mmmmmm.... stinky pizza. Is it too late to add a side of fries and gravy to dis order?

Zanjan: Orkanen: “I can see how you, raising one son with ADHD, knows more than professionals that went to school to learn this”

At the time my son was assessed by medical doctors for his neurological damage, science wasn’t familiar with it – they hadn’t even invented a name for it yet. When they did, it was just ‘ADD’ – they left out the hyperactivity part because they saw no connection between the two at the time.

Where do you suppose those professionals got their information - a vacuum? They studied our kids and asked US about it. We told them; they told the schools.

Clearly, it doesn’t matter to you that every one of the kids I’ve fostered over the years were medically diagnosed with that disorder; this counts for nothing - you’ll continue to cling to your perspective. I suppose that’s your right.

“I'm sorry, isn't denial also dishonest?”

Read above - maybe you can figure that out for yourself.

“When did asking you to be honest, translate to 'slaving for a man'?

That’s not what you were asking – you asked me *to do a favour for you*. When did you get the notion you deserved any token from me or that I’m obliged to you? Then, to emphasize the urgency of your request, you added a neck-hug emoticon….a HUG, Ork?
Ick, Ork….ick..,,ICK!

“The rest of what you wrote made no sense to me”

Wow, no kidding!! That means at least something I did say made sense to you. Looks like you’re cracking.

Zanjan: Illuminatist: “Does anyone BESIDES me seem to notice how many new disorders are popping up over the recent years?”

Well, there certainly are more environmental disorders, particularly from various kinds of pollution, both urban and rural. A lot of that is easily preventable but money talks louder than conscience.

CoIin: Below are the divergent thoughts of three very smart dudes ( ) on the issue of free will. I enjoyed listening to their ideas and thought you guys might too.


1. Michio Kaku - TV's most famous physicist

He tries to open a window to let freedom slip in by invoking the Uncertainty Principle. I can't say I'm convinced insofar as quantum effects are negligible in anything as large as a neuron. And even if they weren't, "randomness" doesn't seem compatible with what we would regard as "freedom". Perhaps I'm misunderstanding him... Anyway, great guy




2. Steven Pinker - among other greatness, the writer of a marvellous book called "The Language Instinct" which I read recently.




3. Daniel Dennett - Philosopher, writer, all-round genius. Love this guy

He seems to defend the position known as "soft-determinism" (which contrasts with the hard-determinism of my opening post), apparently the only sensible (i.e. no fairy godmother) defence of free will. Yes, you CAN have freedom, but at the price of trading in the conscious "you" as captain of the ship for a reconceptualization of "you" as the entire organism - yes, all that gooey sticky white 'n' gray mess is YOU



Enormous respect for Prof Dennett notwithstanding, when I get dragged into court, my defence is still gonna be - "Don't blame me. My brain made me do it!"

Illuminatist: Gee, my comments regarding free-will must have really irked you, for you to go all out like this.

Did I hit a nerve?


But thank you for your posts, anyway. I enjoyed them.

DawnGurl: My Two Cents

Zanjan: We're ALL GONNA DIE! Even the little birds the cat catches and the trees, the fetus in the womb and civilizations...even the sun. It's not about our hurts, diseases, spilled milk and deaths. Life isn't weighed or measured by time.

How we live is what makes a life, for whatever time is allotted to us in this realm.

Zanjan: Commenting on Colin's videos:

Video #1. Most interesting statement: ‘every time you look at an electron it moves.” Just because you don’t understand the randomness doesn’t mean there isn’t a purpose to it. Could I look at an electron and guess which way it’s going to move? Yep…….I used to do that flipping quarters and calling heads or tails. I was so good at my calls, people stopped playing with me.

The *mind*, not the brain, has power to influence movement…. it’s a latent power, except in some psychics, and is fairly weak and rather limited in this life.

Video #2 Very shallow. He should stick to language. Who’s driving his brain? OMG, there’s a bunch of organic brains on the loose, telling people what to do!

Video #3 I agree the consciousness is a bag of tricks, partly because we refuse to have it agree with our subconscious, and partly because it sometimes fails to recall a memory when we ask it to. The eyes can be fooled. The brain is to blame for this, not the soul. He’s on the right track but didn’t follow through.

The power of Free Will goes beyond making responsible daily choices – it directs one’s love.

Many things are pre-determined but not all. God created us with the capacity to know Him; that said, if He hadn’t given us Free Will, we’d automatically love Him. But He didn’t want tin hearts.

Newborn animals and humans bond by attachment, called ‘imprinting’. Attachment doesn’t carry a true understanding of love – human kids will love their birth parents no matter how bad and cruel they are. Later, they’ll despise them. We’re not puppets.

God wanted us to know and love Him of our own accord – this is authentic. We’re permitted to discover, on our own, that all other loves are limited and fickle because those are the self-serving loves. We’re capable of a better, wiser, more beautiful love – what most people don’t understand is that unconditional love isn’t a feeling - it’s an intelligence.

Corwin: Freewill is an illusion.

I didn't want to post that..... but I had no choice.

Zanjan: If there were no free will, our individuality wouldn’t be unique. Here’s why:

The spirits of animals fall within very narrow parameters. If you’ve spent time with enough wildlife, you’d see there is very little variation. If you’d also spent time with enough domesticated animals, you could make a comparison to their fellow creatures in the wild.

The domesticated specimens appear to have more distinctive personalities; we’ll admit this is mostly because we’ve trained them to do something WE want. They might also have shown a preference for interacting with an object that wouldn’t be found in a natural environment.

You can recognize someone by the sound of their voice. If you were shown a letter that same person wrote (with no signature/names), you’d likely be able to identify them by their language.

Now, if you hear a story about an anonymous person, you might recognize who that person is by the described behaviour. Gee, that’s sounds exactly like the sort of thing Ralph would do - that’s one of his stamps. Add another stamp, and you’ve got a positive ID. Oh yeah, that’s him alright….the one and only.

Suppose you died and moved into the afterlife but had nothing more to go on than the last scenario to find all the people you ever knew and loved in your life, could you do it? Yep. Could you do it for all the wild animals you had spent time with? Nope.

With your favourite pets, maybe, but you’d have great difficulty because you’d be searching for a peculiar habit, not a personality or special love they had expressed – unlike humans, there’s not enough variation in the species to single them out, in a crowd of many thousands.

There’s no one exactly like me – no one can fill this space and purpose in the same way I do. In my teens, I wanted to know: “Who am I?” I could mimic others but really, that's just pretending - who am I that makes me unique? Thanks to Free Will, I discovered I could create who I want to be.

Corwin: And that person you wanted to be was the person you created... you would have not created any other except the one you did create...... therefore you had no freewill to do that... you were compelled to do that because of your nature. You could do no else...... therefore, no free will.

Freewill is only an illusion.

Aura: Sorry but I'd have to call bs on 'animals don't have personalities'. They do. Maybe you're too arrogant or maybe you just didn't spend enough time with them to see it. Ofcourse it is easier to identify the animals of your own species aka humans, because that's who we are trained to recognize and respond to. But who says animals don't recognize each other by voice? There's even some evidence that okras dolphins and whales do just that. And with every video of any group of animals you can see the differences, some are curious, some are shy, some are grumpy...
Train them to do something you want. You must be talking about dogs. I've only had one dog but even then, it had moods. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
Try keeping a few cats. You can't simply train them. They will all have their different personalities and I'm pretty sure I could find every cat I have ever owned if there were such a thing as heaven when I get there.

Illuminatist: Crows also, morn the loss of loved ones for weeks after one is killed, too.


They have more love/respect than most people.

Zanjan: Coffee: "I'd have to call bs on 'animals don't have personalities'."
" who says animals don't recognize each other by voice?"

Nobody said either of those things. "Arrogant"? How about you read the post?

This topic is about Free Will.

CoIin: "God, the Arch-Hypnotist" - by Jonathan Harrison


Once upon a time Dr. Thomas Svengali was walking by the side of a lake when he saw some children playing with their boats. They were model boats of course, but it was possible to control them by short-wave radio. In this way they could be made to go through all the manoeuvres which life-size boats could execute, but in an unrealistically jerky way, like mice pretending to be elephants.

This gave Dr. Svengali an idea. It was not an original one. Even some twentieth-century philosophers had had it before him. Had he not spent so much of his life immersed in his study of the human brain it would probably have occurred to him before. He had recently been experiencing a great deal of trouble with his housekeeper, a Mrs Geraldine O’Farrell. He had never liked the new-fangled practice of having his house run by a computer, but being as unversed in the ways of the opposite sex as he was knowledgeable about brain physiology and electronics, he had not the faintest idea how to manage a woman. And the fact that Mrs O’Farrell considered that she would not have been compelled to occupy her present poorly paid position had it not been for the deplorably inequitable way in which her sex was treated made her quite exceptionally and quite often deliberately incompetent.

It occurred to Dr. Svengali that if he could not make her perform her household duties in any other way he might insert a device into her skull which would enable her to be controlled by a short-wave radio transmitter, which Dr. Svengali prudently kept locked in a cupboard when not in use, out of Mrs. O’Farrell’s reach. Though this transmitter could, if necessary, be worked manually, doing so would save Dr. Svengali only labour, and no time. Hence, when familiarity caused him no longer to regard it as a plaything, he built into it a programme which, at the appointed hours, caused Mrs. O’Farrell to cook, shop and clean, without any further intervention on his part. When these things were not necessary the transmitter automatically switched itself off, and left Mrs. O’Farrell to do what she thought she pleased.

Dr. Svengali found, however, that this way of solving the problem presented by Mrs. O’Farrell’s intransigence had a drawback. Though her limbs went through the movements of polishing and bedmaking in a highly efficient and satisfactory way, the expression on her face was disturbingly resentful, and her language so appalling as to be quite unacceptable to someone as gently nurtured as Dr. Svengali. It was also extremely embarrassing to him when he had visitors.

To a man of Dr. Svengali’s ability the task of modifying the controlling device in Mrs O’Farrell’s brain in such a way as to produce a more pleasing facial expression and a less colourful vocabulary was easily accomplished. Dr. Svengali, however, was a sensitive man, and he found the mere knowledge of the resentment that Mrs. O’Farrell felt, but could not express, extremely disturbing to him. Though a very poor housekeeper, she had been a good companion, and resentment at being forced to do her work in such a humiliating manner made her extremely disagreeable to Dr. Svengali in the evenings. Most of these she spent in reproaching him bitterly for the way in which he treated her, and in trying to bring home to him how dreadful it was to find one’s limbs manipulated from without – just as if, as Mrs O’Farrell herself strikingly and originally put it, she was possessed.

Dr. Svengali took longer to solve this second problem. He reasoned that just as he could move Mrs. O’Farrell’s limbs, so he could produce or eradicate the desires which normally made her move them. Hence he thought he might make her a better housekeeper without at the same time making her a worse companion if he built a modified device, which would make her want to cook, shop and clean at the required times.

Promising though this idea seemed to Dr. Svengali when it first occurred to him, it in fact turned out to be a complete failure. Mrs. O’Farrell did, at the times the controlling device decided that she should, want to cook, clean and shop. But by now she had become so incensed that no such inducement would make her perform these duties well. However intensely Dr. Svengali’s machine made her want to do things, she regarded these desires so produced as akin to temptations from the devil. A Calvinistic upbringing and a naturally obdurate disposition aided her in her determination to resist, and she very rarely succumbed. When the strength of her wants became overwhelming and, for a short while, she did her work in a satisfactory way, she was subsequently so overcome with exasperation and remorse that she treated Dr. Svengali in the evenings in a way which he found nearly unendurable.

Cleary, Dr. Svengali though, he must modify his device a second time. He decided that the easiest thing to do was simply to combine the first two versions of it, and insert in Mrs. O’Farrell’s brain a dual instrument which both made her limbs adequately perform her external tasks, and which also made her want to do and enjoy doing them, though it was in fact the instrument, and not the wants, which produced the movements. But Mrs O’Farrell’s fanaticism was so impeccable that even the knowledge that in caring for Dr. Svengali she was simply doing what she herself wanted to do, did little, if anything, to diminish the hostility with which she treated him when the transmitter was switched off.

Since a remote ancestor of hers had once read philosophy in a twentieth-century British university, her mother had inherited some books and journals. One of them, she had been told, contained an article by someone called Harrison,2 arguing that a man was free so long as he was doing what he wanted to do. In a rare philosophical moment, Mrs. O’Farrell reasoned that, in cooking, shopping and cleaning she was doing what she wanted to do. Nevertheless, so far from being free, she was even more helpless than when she had been controlled by Dr. Svengali’s first device, which had made her look after him even when she did not want to. She at first thought that the reason why she could not be free, although she both wanted to keep house and did, was that she would still be keeping house even though she did not want to. A little reflection, however, made her realise that this was not so. For Dr. Svengali had so constructed his radio control that the only dial setting which made Mrs. O’Farrell want to make beds, for example, also caused the control to direct her to move her limbs to go through the external motions of making them. Hence had she not wanted to make beds, she would not have. Mrs. O’Farrell failed to find consolation in philosophy and efficiently though his household was run, Dr. Svengali’s evenings were as miserable as before.

The intractable nature of his problem caused Dr. Svengali also to engage in unwonted philosophical reflection. After all, he thought, Geraldine (he was not a man to insist in superficial ways upon the superiority of his position) must want not to be made to do the housework, for whatever absurd reason, or she would not resist any attempts to make her do it. So if I can make her want to do the housework, why cannot I eradicate those more central and recalcitrant impulses which make her want not to do the housework, and which motivate her prolonged and determined resistance to all my efforts to manage her? Perhaps if I could learn to control those impulses which lie at the very core of her being, I might be able so to manipulated her that I can get my house looked after and some agreeable conversation and pleasant companionship in the evenings.

Trial and error showed that he was right in his surmise. The correct dial setting on his radio control blotted out Mrs. O’Farrell’s sense of her duty to the community of women, and she happily did everything Dr. Svengali wished to his entire satisfaction. But success had whetted Dr. Svengali’s appetite, and Faustus-like he looked about for more worlds to conquer.3 In the days when Mrs. O’Farrell was controlled by Mark I of his device, he had made her steal the notes of some experiments from a colleague, to whose study she, but not he, had access. A man naturally prone to make other people bear the guilt which he incurred by his own actions, Dr. Svengali had tried to put the blame upon her, but without success. She had not, she always insisted, stolen the papers. Her feet had gone to the study, and her hands taken them against her will. She had even threatened to inform the police of what she considered Dr. Svengali had done, and at one time only doubts about the possibility of convicting him had prevented her from doing so. Now, however, Dr. Svengali saw the chance of having a willing accomplice to his schemes. He did not consider that Mrs. O’Farrell would make a very effective criminal, but at least, if she were found out, his machine could eradicate any inclination she might have to turn informer.

After a surprisingly successful criminal career, Mrs. O’Farrell was eventually apprehended, tried, convicted and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. The sentence proved not to be nearly as onerous as intended. She died a week after entering prison from a brain tumour caused by Dr. Svengali’s insertion of the control. She herself felt, as was only to be expected, no inclination to blame him, or to feel anything other than that she was herself responsible for what she had apparently done. No-one, she now argued, had compelled her to do it. She had simply done what she herself pleased, and, had she not wanted to steal, it was by no means outside her power to refrain. She had simply not tried. The remote causes of her want to steal, she thought, were irrelevant. For her wanting to steal must have been caused by something, and the fact that it was actually caused by Dr. Svengali, though highly relevant to what moral judgment ought to passed upon him, was quite beside the point when it came to passing moral judgements about her.

The prison chaplain, with whom she discussed the matter, agreed. He did not try to get Mrs. O’Farrell pardoned, but instead informed the police of Dr. Svengali’s complicity, if one could call it that, in the matter. The latter, however, had by this time vanished.

He reappeared a few months later, a changed man, in a country whose police force had the reputation of being weak and internationally unco-operative. But Mrs. O’Farrell’s apprehension, conviction and subsequent demise made him realise that he was in fact deeply fond of her. Remorse at the way in which he had treated her overcame him, and he was consumed by a desire to be a better person. To a man of Dr. Svengali’s outlook and training, the obvious way to accomplish this difficult feat was to alter the physiology of his own brain in such a manner as to secure the desired improvement. He found an assistant to insert Mrs O’Farrell’s control into his own skull, and himself set the dial on his short-wave radio transmitter, which he had prudently taken with him, in such a manner as to eradicate from himself any further desire towards similar misbehaviour.

Unfortunately, however, his hand slipped, and the dial fell back to the slightly worn place where it had been set to control the behaviour of Mrs O’Farrell. From that time forward Dr. Svengali stole for himself, and his exploits became progressively more and more dangerous.

Though he, unlike Mrs. O’Farrell, had the knowledge to alter the dial setting so as to eliminate his desire to steal or, at any rate, so as to produce a counter-desire to avoid prison or a stronger dislike of his addiction to such dishonourable conduct, the machine itself, by causing him to be quite satisfied with his behaviour, brought it about that the had no motive for doing so. His very desire to steal prevented him from ordering its own extinction. Inevitably he was eventually apprehended, and the laws of his new country, which tried to make up by their extreme severity for the inefficiency of its police force, condemned him to death.

The imminence of his decease did what the death of his now beloved Geraldine had been unable to do, and he became at last overwhelmed with a readily effective remorse. Even the knowledge that he would not have been in his present plight but for a quite inadvertent slip of his fingers on the control could not prevent him from deciding to hang himself. A stool and a piece of rope had been left in his cell by thoughtful and economically minded prison authorities, but Dr. Svengali had always been a little clumsy, and in climbing on to the stool his foot slipped, and his consequent fall jolted the control in such a way as to make it function in a highly erratic manner, and Dr. Svengali to behave as one demented. The cell, of course, was not padded, and he so damaged himself against its stone sides that the prison authorities, perhaps a little inconsistently, took him to hospital to prevent him doing himself any further injury.

In the course of his treatment doctors discovered the controlling device inside his skull and removed it. His behaviour instantly became as normal as it had ever been. His solicitor appealed against the conviction on the ground that the person who was to be hanged was a different person from the person who had committed the crimes and, alternatively, on the ground that Dr. Svengali was not responsible for his actions, which were caused by the control, not by Dr. Svengali himself. The appeal court found in his favour, though one judge disagreed, on the ground that Dr. Svengali had himself put the control inside his own skull.

Dr. Svengali thanked God, whom he imagined in his own augmented image as a supremely powerful brain physiologist without much moral character, for his good fortune. Since his belief in the deity manifested itself only in moments of stress, he did not notice the impropriety of ascribing anything at all to luck. On his release from prison, he returned to his own country, where Mrs. O’Farrell had cached most of their booty.

His first act upon retaking up his abode in his former lodgings was to advertise for another housekeeper.

Zanjan: All that just to get out of doing his own damned housework!

CoIin: Well, well, well, quite a mindbender of a story, eh folks? My head's spinning

Poor Mrs O'Farrell. And poor Dr Svengali even. That dang device in their head made them lose control.

Or did it?

Did they really have less control over their actions with the gadget in their brain than without?

Well, I think we can all agree that with the final, perfect version of the chip inside their heads all their actions and desires (and will ) were "caused". Caused by that dang chip, of course.

But what about their actions/desires/will before the chip business? Were they "uncaused"? What does it even mean to say that an action or a decision or the will is "uncaused"?

And if they were "caused", where's the freedom in that?

Eg 1. Why was Mrs O'Farrell working as a housekeeper? Before? After? Was she less "free" afterwards?

Eg 2. How did Svengali get the idea for his dastardly device? Did he "freely decide to have an idea"? And why would he decide to do something so awful? A free choice in line with his devious nature? Could he have done otherwise? (Perhaps another mad scientist had already implanted a nastiness chip in his head long before ... or deity? )

Compare with {after the chip gets jammed in his head}...

"Though he, unlike Mrs. O'Farrell, had the knowledge to alter the dial setting so as to eliminate his desire to steal or, at any rate, so as to produce a counter-desire to avoid prison or a stronger dislike of his addiction to such dishonourable conduct, the machine itself, by causing him to be quite satisfied with his behaviour, brought it about that the had no motive for doing so. His very desire to steal prevented him from ordering its own extinction."

I invite you to read through the whole macabre episode again and see if you can find a single decision or an action that either of them made that was not caused.

Then I invite you to think back over the events of today, all the decisions you made and all the things you did. Were any of them "uncaused"? Could it have been otherwise? Or has that dang Svengali implanted his dastardly device in your free head too?


P.S. Anyone who spots the cunningly concealed fairy godmother "free will" intervention in the story (or your own story) wins a night dancing at the ball with a prince.

P.P.S. And why are we trying so hard to salvage "free will" anyway? All that just to cling onto your own damned guilt, pride, shame, condemnation and superiority!

DawnGurl: Colin you're so damned dumb; we hang onto free will because its FREE! Now where can you get anything these days for free? Huh? Tell me? Well I got free french fries once at a picnic I wasnt invited to. So OK thats counts. So does free will. Ha!

CoIin: Who takes french fries on a picnic?

DawnGurl: Tsk! They made them there Colin. Unlike your bizarre house maid some people actually cook food. And all without a controlling chip. Althought there_ were_ potato chips....hmmm.....

CoIin: @ CoffeeMonster - "No really 'to do something in free will' to me means no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to do it. The action is yours and so is the consequence."

Well, think of Svengali on his stealing spree. He seems to fit your criteria above. Was he acting "freely"?

I think one of the points of the story was to point out such difficulties with the "soft determinist" (aka "compatibilist" ) position. How would you respond? (coz I've no idea how I would LOL)

Or we could ask Daniel Dennett. Bet he's got an answer. Dang wiseguys

DawnGurl: We could try to ask BF Skinner; anyone know a good medium? Or is that Beyond Freedom and Dignity and WireClub?

CoIin: What dignity? Try the pets forum >>>>>>>

DawnGurl: lol

Corwin: Free will for sale!!

Only $10 a choice... and if you act now, I will include a free side order of manifest destiny.