Hey. *I’m having a very, very good discussion on free will and consciousness with some people on another forum, and this is the kind of stuff that we would talk about on this forum.
So I’ll link to the discussion. *Any comments, etc. just post here and we can talk about it on this forum.
gamingw.net/forums/index.php … 968andamp;
(WARNING: make sure you have HOURS on hand before reading this 
)
(Edited by ProbePhage at 10:21 pm on April 23, 2003)
The link is invalid, I’m being redirected to the main forum page.
Doesn’t the fact that Angroth from that website decided to write all of that prove that he has some amount of free-will?
Unless he was told to do it. In which case he still has creative freedom in how to word it which boils down to style and grammar he learned at a young age (or through formal education, if english isn’t his first language).
… but he did say he doesn’t know why he thought of it. While I’m sure that statement is an understatement, it does illustrate, to a point, that he had enough free-will to start writing it.
These “philosophers” need to get their definitions straight. But I can’t stay they’re the only ones guilty of it.
Angroth later states that everything we do is based on emotions which are fickle and erratic. Wouldn’t that go against his previous thesis that there is no such thing as free-will???
… Here I thought all along that everything we do is based upon chemical signals and processes in our bodies. Which are consistent from context to context, if you are a healthy generic carbon unit like me
Its odd but under hypnosis somone can be told to do something upon waking like crawling around the floor for instance. Now when that person wakes they will tell you why they are about to do what they are about to do, like andquot; Oh, what an interesting floor cover, I was thinking about going into the carpet business myself, let me just have a look at this hereandquot; andnbsp;and down they gaet and crawl around. Now to them they have acted out of their own free will, but seen from our viewpoint thats not the case, maybe we have a deeper part of our conciousness which controls our descicions and we only make up excuses for why we dcided upon that particular course of action. Free will is a wierd thing, i don’t think it will ever be solved.
I know a lot of women who are well versed in manipulating free will 
I read a magazine article about studies in voles, where the females were stimulating androgen (hormone) levels in males. Those males with the highest androgen levels were more likely to mate for life. The article speculated that women may be able to “persuade” a man to marry them by adopting certain character traits…
Heh, that’s pretty interesting… 
Any specifics? What traits?
Paul, that sounds incredibly fascinating.
Anywhere that I can dig into it?
There is a little bit on it in an interesting book by John Searle called andquot;Minds, brains and scienceandquot; but apart from that its just experience.
The article suggested asking your man to put up some shelves or mend something - the human equivalent of building a nest. It said it was important to make the man feel as though you cannot do these things yourself, and hence cannot live without him 
I know girls who act like this They also refuse to drive on motorways, or refuse to go out without company 
It seems to work for them 
It doesn’t work for me 
Sometimes I wish I could be SmallBecka Then men would find me cute and do stuff for me 
Maybe I could just obtain some androgen pills, and hide them in some cakes… 
However, I’m not sure how the magazine article deduced all this from the scientific report they cited.
I read another magazine article that suggested pretending to have a secret admirer, or pretending to have some terrible illness… This sounds like it could backfire quite badly
What about asking him to dig a cave?
Free will… it really is a good one.
Paul,
Is that ‘deeper part of our conscioussness’ contolled by us, or by something else apart from the individual?
LOL! No more rent! 
He might question the need for a cave… And I wouldn’t trust most of the blokes I know with dangerous tools
Now I am thinking of sweaty muscular men, with shovels and axes and dynamite… 
I will have to go and lie down… 
Actually I was thinking about bearded bandy-legged dwarves with pick axes 
Well, i dont really feel like reading all that, but if i had to say something about free will, i would say that there is no such thing. andnbsp;What we, as humans, define as andquot;free willandquot; is really just chemical responses and stuff programmed into us. andnbsp;We, as humans, have been chemically programmed to believe that we have some sort of control over what we do. andnbsp;I read somewhere ( i forget where) that there is a second consciousness controlling your mind. andnbsp;its like the wizard of oz saying andquot;pay no attention to the man behind the curtainandquot; and actually believing it.
Hehehehe Now I’m thinking of the video for Sonne (Rammstein)… Yay, someone put it on YouTube here
what a strange thought…
This philosophy to me sounds a lot like Descatres. This isn’t origional. But then again, Descatres had to remind himself that he existed. He’s the one that said ‘I think, therefore I am’. A very stange and confused man.
So we have limited free-will?
If those Enlightenment Period philosophes were correct, then we were born with a clean slate. But we have no knowledge, at birth, to act upon so there really is no will except survival instincts of… suck and go to the bathroom… and sleep.
But as we get older we are influenced by language and our personal observed histories. Then we can act upon our knowledge for whatever purpose we desire.
But then you can point out the physical laws that define us and prevent us from doing pretty insane things. There was that whole debate over language how we’re all just a continuation of our predecessor’s words.
… But we can still make some choices. We can change our minds again and again. We can do totally irrelevant things or attempt the most profound. Again, whatever.
I don’t feel you can reasonably deny having at least /some/ free will in your life. The question is not a matter of how much. The question is a matter of how to get around those limitations.
wink wink
I think this can limit us, too. I went to school with some girls from very… how shall I say… privelidged and narrow-minded backgrounds. Their upbringing prevented them from walking through a poor area of town (in some cases, from walking anywhere!) because they were terrified of being attacked. They chose “acceptable” careers, because they believed that they couldn’t work in a man’s job or succeed in science or technology. You get the picture…
What I’m trying to say is, knowledge only liberates you if you have enough of it! A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially if that knowledge prevents you from questioning or learning any further knowledge. 
I have to agree. In fact, an Existentialist would say that you are completely free: people only seek to impose structure on a random, meaningless world in order to negate their feelings of anxiety and dread. I’m reading Jean-Paul Satre at the moment: he noted that people will often relinquish their free-will. For example, the person who has an affair because they were “seduced,” instead of admitting it was their choice.
Dude, if you want to believe what the enlightenment philosophers had to say, then go for it. I personaly believe that they’re crack heads. I was just pointing out that the particular philosophy is not origional. But free will is what makes us human. Every other animal acts on instincts. And I agree with you.
This is normal behaviour, unless people always act like that.
Most people don’t miss a chance to get rid of responsibility which is a consequence of their choices. Or at least they try to push a part of this responsibility to other people, so those ones would share it with them.
This is a very controversial fact, but I can see an explanation of this.
If we look at the other extreme, there are people with a very high sense of responsibility. Those people don’t mind to accept some responsibility of other people, for sharing it with them.
But such people are a minority.
And even if there are some of them who manage to bear the burden of such a big responsibility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi, other ones just get crumpled by its weight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Fischer.
