Free Will

if the brain is "you," then what about when it ceases to operate? when you die, are you still conscious? your body still has a brain. or would a better physical definition of "you" be the electricity running through the brain? but electricity itself is not a conscious entity, so far as we know. now when you combine the two, and have the electrical circuits and neurosynapses and neurotransmitters and whatever else all working together to cause the body to function for a specific purpose, then consciousness arises. so would it be better to say that we are not the brain, but the result of a combination of ordered processes within the brain? still, we don't see ourselves as a process. we see ourselves as a unit, an individual. whether or not this is an illusion i cant be certain, but the self is not as simple as the brain.
as far as your question goes, if i was to go into your body, would anything change? well, identity as far as how we see ourselves is inside the brain. but the core of experience is the same within everybody who has the ability to experience--this is the ability to experience, which is the ability to be conscious. without this ability a person could not be conscious, and consciousness itself would not exist, just a brain and a bunch of neurosynapses. we dont experience our brain's movements, do we? we experience what we perceive as the world, which is nothing like how the world actually is. take color for example. a red object is not actually red at all, but is every color but red. this is because it absorbs all the colors and reflects the red wavelength into our eyes, which we perceive as red. this is why we cannot describe color to someone who has never seen it before. it is a part of experience and not the same as the wavelengths and molecular arrangements in objects that cause their reflections and whatever else. we cannot see the "self" because the self is the ability to see. "i think therefore i am." its the only truly provable thing in the world.

"You are reading this."

Angel of death-

That depends if we found a way to transport the soul. If not, then your sould would remain in the body, but your brain would basically be erased. The theology is that your mind would be transfered to another person's mind, and that would deal hardly with what you are in a sense. The mind is significant to each of us in the arrangement of neuron's and their links. If you sent your brain to that person, then that would be copying your neurons, then transfering that blueprint to that person. So that person would think, talk, and remember all that you did, but you would not be the same soul.
Now, if you have read the Worthing Saga, by Orson Scott Card (which I highly recomend), then you will know what I am going to talk about.
In that book, for a sort of chronostasis, they found ways to take a person's brain and freeze it outside of their body, (not literally). The people then go into stasis, and their minds are frozen in their mental time to await returning to their bodies again. What was imagined was what if they could rearrange the minds to different bodies. Here, it explains that this is how they found the existence of a soul in the book. When they attempted to do such the thing I had described earlier, they found their subjects went insane. They could remember the experiences of life as if they themselves had lived them, and think the thoughts of the person who would have thought them, but they could not believe that that was them. They rejected the mind in such a way that they killed themselves because they knew in their soul that they would not have made those choices or the such.

But, if we were able to transfer souls in bodies, that is theoretically like posessing a person. You have complete control, the only difference would be a different body.

Windupnostril-
[/quote]if the brain is "you," then what about when it ceases to operate?

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That is the point I was trying to make. If my free will was controlled by my brain, then, because my thoughts are my actions (as in saying I choose what I think or whatever), then my brain must control them. And because what I consciously think is my I self, and yet those thoughts are just signals of the brain, then the I self is the brain.
That is the problem with there being no free will. If the brain dies, that also means that we have no afterlife, because our conscious died with the brain.

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so would it be better to say that we are not the brain, but the result of a combination of ordered processes within the brain?

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"Fate is the shadow cast by the light of our choice. We can change our fate by altering that light."

well im not exactly arguing the existence of a "soul" in a theological sense. i am not assigning the "self" as i would like to call it, any special abilities beyond what is observable. i experience. i have a mind. my brain seems to govern what im going to experience. my experiences change, but in each experience lies this gesalt "self" that remains unchanged, and its only characteristic is its ability to experience. it experiences the sense of power perceived with a choice is made, as if the subject of experience is controlling the experience itself. everyone has a self, because they directly experience it. anyone who denies that they have one denies that they experience anything. i use the word "experience" a lot, but i really can't think of a better word for it. being conscious is another commonly used word. i kind of feel like people have a hard time understanding what i mean by "experience," or "mind," because it's really hard to describe. the reason that it's hard to describe is because "experience" is not made up of any component parts. it just is. it's what separates us from a rock. or any other object. we don't need to call ourselves the brain in order to deny free will. what we experience is not in the brain. it's in the mind. cut a person's brain open and you won't find what the person is seeing, or be able to look at their memories. these things exist transendentally. they're placed before an observer, and this observer is the self, with no other ability but to observe and feel. and feel in control.

"You are reading this."

A 'soul' of some sort must exist.
Consciousness is a totally subjective thing, it has no physical manifestation to others.
However to the person with consciousness it is absolutely self-evident.
The soul is that thing which is totally subjective and totally real to one person and unprovable to another.
It is what makes those electrical signals in our brain more then just chemical reactions, but actual and vivid experience.

But just because the soul must exist, it is only the window to experiencing to the universe. It is not necessarily a means to controlling this universe as well as seeing it.

"Durch Nacht und Blut das Licht"
[  Edited by Angelfire at   ]

yes, dumbteen, very well put.

"You are reading this."

Well, I've never looked at consciousness as being subjective before... but now that you mention it, that is pretty much spot on...

Or it could be that we're trying to hard to find a difference between choice and free will. What if it's the same? What if the meaning for things lies in the middle of our conceptions of them-the soul, the thing that you know exists has only the power you give it, but it is the exact same thing as everyone else. The question is not "is there free will", its closer to "what's your philosophy". Free will and purpose are the same thing.
The physical manifestion is a rational structure superimposed on emotion. What if the emotion was all one thing and the consciousness was what differs?
What's your philosophy?

Maybe if you compare yourself to an animal, you will discover you have a choice in more than they.
Animals live on instinct alone.

Humans make choices....example;
to eat meat, or not to eat meat..

However, a panther or bear will not think about the act, but will make prey of an animal. Only when it cannot kill the animal does it NOT eat the meat.

Therefore it makes NO conscious decision. It uses pure instint. You have a mind to think about choices. Not only if you will eat meat, but what sort of meat you will eat.

The decision making process we take so much for granted is free will. We have the OPTION to choose. Therefore we have a free will.

yeafish, cool.
Interesting Dumbteen.

"Even though is difficult, I can still dream."

you make a very good point, dreamer. there does seem to be a correlation between more flexible choice and what we experience as consciousness and free will. for instance, the parts of our psyches or minds that have a real rigid system of doing things kind of split off from our consciousness. our involuntary parts such as heartbeat and digestion are completely unconscious, and our more beastly urges and instinctual drives are for the most part unconscious. animals havent evolved to the point to where conscious choice is a clear as it is with us. the psychologist jung theorized that consciousness evolved in humans and only split off recently from instinct, during our days as hunter gatherers. so maybe consciousness can only exist in systems that are advanced enough to have an enormously flexible array of possibilities dictating how to act. i would say i agree with yeafish, that free will exists at one side but not at the other--the mental side has free will, but the physical side doesn't. basically the only thing that can be said for certain is that they both work together somehow, but as to which controls which, it can't be determined, if in fact there is one that controls the other.

"You are reading this."

I like the idea of consciousness only being possible in a society with multiple options to every situation. It kinda speaks to my theory that people are evolving by degrees, and the next step of human evolution is learning to develop our emotion to the same level of control and usage that it balances us out. If our instinct developed first to allow us to conquer our world enough to develop reason, and our reason has now developed far enough that we can use it to develop our human emotionness, the split is nothing but an awakening to our consciousness. Choice and purpose become the same thing.

Dreamer - Its true, are brains are very differents from animals. I like your example, being vegetarian is the perfect example of the will of the brain being over the will of the body.
The question is, is the will of our brain the same as 'our' will?
Some philosophers have noticed that the main difference between man and animals is that man is the far greater effect of environment/education/culture on the brain. Being vegetarian (or any other choice) if it has no origin in instincts can have it in culture and upbringing (for example, belief in Islam over christianity and vice-versa is fairly closely tied to the religion taught to you during your upbringing).

The effect of culture and upbringing on our decisions are omnipresent and undeniable, how it is impossible to tell if instinct+upbringing are the only things determining our decisions.

"Durch Nacht und Blut das Licht"

(to dreamer on first page) you were saying we have choice so we have free will" well no cause the choices are caused, sure we have choices and will that feels free (cause we cant analyze every factor of what were doing while were doing it) but whatever action you did from your choice, thats how it happened no matter what.. things also seem "free" when theres so many things going on moving around we cant analyze it all, like you did this cause of that outside influence.. but that outside influence came your way or you came its way and caused whatever and so many things "bounce off" each other like that (including mental events)

"no quote until i copyright it.."

There is no doubt that the mind and the body need each other, but when we break the whole thing up, we are just a bunch of atoms, responding with one another. Does the electron move randomly around the atom? -Is random just a mathmatical formula? IF we could predict the way atoms would respond to one another at a certain distance, then Perhaps, we as humans, would do the same thing.

Observation, experience and the conditions around us, make us who we are, our thoughts are chemical reactions, but remember, that unlike most robots, we are built to fault, we are not meant to be perfect, otherwise, yes things would not change, and this change gives us individuality....

Perhaps, there is a seperate force that also works together with these chemicals "heart", which once again gives us our "choice" which differs from what the reactions produce, swaying the reaction sideways. Maybe it is just another fault, allowing us to be stupid, like we all are.

"You wouldn't exist without me -myself"

how would you know a what a choice is if we r controlled ? to have the altimate choice we would hav to know the truth to be alble to comprahend the efects.

"ignorance is bliss"

because were able to notice we have choices (perhaps a different part of brain can obserb that) call that controlled if you want, beibng "controlled" doesnt stop you from obserbing or analyzing from whatever caused you to do that, its not really "controlled" antway cause we do what we WANT to do even if our wants are caused and our actions can be caused by our wants (i guess controlled in scense , but not really controled in o=aniother senase

"no quote until i copyright it.."