I think that the observational bias I mentioned before can be found in the way consciousness interacts with time. Time is essential to rational though. Without time nothing moves, the universe is static. It is only through the dimension of time that positions can become motions, objects become actions. In order to think the brain must think in time.
If you take the view that everything that can happen has happened then time becomes a series of frozen moments chained like images on a film strip. Free will then becomes ability to change the probability that a state will occur, not the exclusion of alternate pasts and futures via actions, but the inclusion of them in a timeless probabilistic environment.
Apr 9 2011: This has been a very interesting dialog to read, many of the points represented here mirror my own thinking on free will. I hope that my own options as written here differ in a beneficial way from what I would have written before exposure to the viewpoints in this TED conversation.
To begin with my position on free will is slightly paradoxical; I think that its existence depends on the perspective from which the question is asked. It exists and we act with freedom, but freewill is an emergent phenomena based in a deep rooted observational bias. So it exists as far as humans are concerned, but I do not think that there is feature that necessitates it as a universal principle.
Free will as I see it is this. A person is sitting at home, one hour later they could be at a coffee shop or they could be in a clothing store. Both states are equally probable, but one person cannot experience both. There is nothing except the X ingredient of free will that allows the individual to choose actions which will allow a selected physical state to occur.
Determinism I always think of in terms of dominoes set to collide in a massive chain reaction when a single domino is set in motion. If one falls the others must fall. Depending on the degree to which a person espouses determinism this view can be applied to everything from the interactions of electrons to human social patterns.
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A comment on Conversation: There is no such thing as free will.
I think that the observational bias I mentioned before can be found in the way consciousness interacts with time. Time is essential to rational though. Without time nothing moves, the universe is static. It is only through the dimension of time that positions can become motions, objects become actions. In order to think the brain must think in time.
If you take the view that everything that can happen has happened then time becomes a series of frozen moments chained like images on a film strip. Free will then becomes ability to change the probability that a state will occur, not the exclusion of alternate pasts and futures via actions, but the inclusion of them in a timeless probabilistic environment.
A comment on Conversation: There is no such thing as free will.
To begin with my position on free will is slightly paradoxical; I think that its existence depends on the perspective from which the question is asked. It exists and we act with freedom, but freewill is an emergent phenomena based in a deep rooted observational bias. So it exists as far as humans are concerned, but I do not think that there is feature that necessitates it as a universal principle.
Free will as I see it is this. A person is sitting at home, one hour later they could be at a coffee shop or they could be in a clothing store. Both states are equally probable, but one person cannot experience both. There is nothing except the X ingredient of free will that allows the individual to choose actions which will allow a selected physical state to occur.
Determinism I always think of in terms of dominoes set to collide in a massive chain reaction when a single domino is set in motion. If one falls the others must fall. Depending on the degree to which a person espouses determinism this view can be applied to everything from the interactions of electrons to human social patterns.
Continued...