Friday, October 12, 2012

Do You Have Free Will?

I thought this was excellent. Enjoy!

3 comments:

Shane Atwell said...

quite the leap at the end. because we have something non-physical (a mind) there must be something non-physical that created it? is that a new twist on 'what created the physical world? had to be supernatural.'?

K T Cat said...

Not sure where the leap is. Chemistry and physics are quite deterministic.

tim eisele said...

I thought Shane was pretty clear on where the leap was:

1. We don't understand the relation between brain and mind, and so (preparing for the leap here) let's choose to believe that there is an immaterial, undetectable something that somehow[1] gives us free will.

[Leap]

2. Therefore, God!

The only justification given for that leap appears to be that he wants to make it.


[1] I think this is the big problem with the "immaterial mind distinct from the brain" hypothesis: If the mind is passing instructions to the brain, just how is it managing that whole data link without revealing its existence? To receive an instruction, the material chemicals and structures of the material brain have to be manipulated somehow. Which means, by definition, some force has to be applied to that material structure[2]. And forces and energy transfers are detectable. So why can't we detect the mind sending instructions to the brain? Why is it detectable only by brain neurons, and not by, say, sensitive EEG machines?