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Old 12-07-2012, 12:52 PM   #47 (permalink)
midnight rain
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Face View Post
I agree. But my point wasn't trying to separate us from animals.

It was that while we can appreciate that (maybe) we have no free will. We emotively treat it as their choice to hug us, otherwise why would we have an emotional response?

It's almost like suspended disbelief (which is what what makes us cry/fear when we are being told a story we know is fictional). In this sense, free will (of the characters) definitely doesn't exist, but we can respond at a veryt fundamental level (emotively) that it is.

At the end of the day, deciding we have free will or not changes nothing. Either we have free will and are all responsible for our actions, or none of us have it, so can't be "held responsible" for how we react to others actions. If a criminal's nature&nurture caused him to commit a crime then a judges nature&nurture will determine the sentence he gives and you can't "blame" either.
Ok, I see, so you're basically illustrating that any other emotion is just as illogical as pride in the sense that I was getting at? I won't deny that since humans are such an inquisitive species, and that we want a purpose in life, the illusion of free will in and of itself serves a purpose and keeps us going in life. If lack of free will was uniformly embraced it could potentially result in us regressing to our most basic, animalistic needs, because life is short and why live for anyone but yourself?

But not everyone is willing to concede that free will is just an illusion, and on the same token not everyone is willing to accept that free will is very real in humans, so the debate does continue to serve a purpose as it gets us to question our existence. So long as people are willing to maintain an open mind of course.

Me, I like to logically accept free will as a farce, while going about my life ignoring this truth because I too am human.


Quote:
I agree but that wasn't what I was going for.

In that analogy
Machine = individual's brain at that point in time, determined by genetics and all experiences up to that point in time.
Input = The particular situation each person is assessing.
Output = Their choice/reaction

If you take free will out of the equation, then the different outputs of each machine given the same input show simply what they are, judge them on that.

Maybe it's a weak anology. Whatever, I'm off for dinner.
Right, I understand. But I'm not sure what point you're trying to make off of it? I already agree with you that 'blame' is a misplaced concept. If you're talking simply about judgement, well we do that without knowing it sometimes and in full knowledge others. When you call someone "ugly" you (hopefully) realize that a lot of time it's through no fault of their own (assuming free will exists, people still don't have any control over say bone structure, so you'd be passing judgement over something that someone can't control), but you're still passing judgement. I think that can be applied to any physical or mental aspect that is judged on, only it's not as clear-to-see as something like physical features
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