ChezGiven 0 Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Do we control our neurons or do they control us? If everything we do starts in the brain, what kind of neural activity would reflect free choice? And how would you feel about your free will if we were to tell you that neuroscientists can look at your brain activity, and tell that you are about to make a decision to move – and that they could do this a whole second and a half before you yourself became aware of your own choice? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article....ee-is-your-will Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Park Life 70 Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Free will has nothing to do with the brain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeys Fist 38893 Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Free as a bird Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChezGiven 0 Posted March 22, 2011 Author Share Posted March 22, 2011 Free as a bird Should have expected that, you've got form. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChezGiven 0 Posted March 22, 2011 Author Share Posted March 22, 2011 Free will has nothing to do with the brain. More to do with my cock tbh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkeys Fist 38893 Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Free as a bird Should have expected that, you've got form. Top punnery Sir Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Fish 9027 Posted March 22, 2011 Share Posted March 22, 2011 Do we control our neurons or do they control us? If everything we do starts in the brain, what kind of neural activity would reflect free choice? And how would you feel about your free will if we were to tell you that neuroscientists can look at your brain activity, and tell that you are about to make a decision to move – and that they could do this a whole second and a half before you yourself became aware of your own choice? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article....ee-is-your-will From a position of absolute ignorance. Does this mean that the brain takes a second and a half to process the decision, rather than taking a second and a half to receive the information? By that I mean does it take the brain a second and a half to read the letter, or a second and a half for the letter to get delivered? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Face 29 Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 (edited) Listened to a show on Radio 4 about this the other week... In Our Time In the 500th edition of the programme, Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophical idea of free will. Free will - the extent to which we are free to choose our own actions - is one of the most absorbing philosophical problems, debated by almost every great thinker of the last two thousand years. In a universe apparently governed by physical laws, is it possible for individuals to be responsible for their own actions? Or are our lives simply proceeding along preordained paths? Determinism - the doctrine that every event is the inevitable consequence of what goes before - seems to suggest so. Many intellectuals have concluded that free will is logically impossible. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza regarded it as a delusion. Albert Einstein wrote: "Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion." But in the Enlightenment, philosophers including David Hume found ways in which free will and determinism could be reconciled. Recent scientific developments mean that this debate remains as lively today as it was in the ancient world. With: Simon Blackburn Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge Helen Beebee Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham Galen Strawson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00z5...Time_Free_Will/ You can still listen to the show if you follow the link. Edited March 23, 2011 by Happy Face Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McFaul 35 Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 Too deep for me that. I'll let people like the Fish try and fail to say something intelligent and poignant about the matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snakehips 0 Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 Freeeeeeeeeee-eeeeee Nelson Mandela. Free Willy. Free Love. Free Microcloth with any purchase of Bidtv Cleaner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trophyshy 6434 Posted March 23, 2011 Share Posted March 23, 2011 went commando in 1998, never looked back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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