what makes me do what I do?

[blazeofglory]

I love asking for I will broaden my perspectives, but there are basic questions in life that never can be answered, maybe that can be answered but I am unsure about it.

Why are we here? no answers can satisfy us perfectly. We rack our brains and dig into big philosophies, but we will return uncontented.

Life is a mystery.

God is a mystery too.

Materialistically speaking, there is no god and everything is in flux, and matter is the ultimate truth. But still questions, buckets of questions go unanswered. How did that matter come into being, into existence, and delving into deeper realms of truth, where is the end of the matter or the bottom or the very fountain of it. I bet this question can never be answered even if all scientists and materialists or materialistically bent scientists put their heads together.

Spiritually or theologically, speaking, God cerated this universe and we are all from Him. There is destiny, and yet man is given free will. Clouds of doubts envelop this notion. Free will hold people accountable for their acts, but if we dig at the very root, no one has free will. It is all his environment that sets his will. If there is cold he wants warmth and it is not his will that he wants warmth, it is the environment he is in that determines his necessity. If you see a beautiful girl and you may fall for her and falling or getting tempted to a an opposite sex tabooed by many religions, and celibacy is spiritually celebrated.

To delve into still deeper realms, our thoughts, our beliefs, all our ideas and even our dreams have been inherited or learned and what we call our own does not exist save the body, and the body is also not fully our and all inherited from others.

Tell me honestly where is free will?

More and more questions will follow and I am very enthusiastic and sharing views we can broaden our horizon.

For truth is not fully revealed to us, and we are perpetual seekers.

[Remarkable]

You know, we all end up the same:we die.But until that day comes,we live our lives entirely on our own choice.If we are victims of society and social clishes,our lives are certainly determined,but not by fate.They are determined by the choices of our ancestors.What you are talking about are instictual responses to enviroment but what of our decisions about profession,music,clothing,philosophy,sport and criterias of partners?What about our friends and the books we read?Certainly,some of these are sometimes determined by society,but that is the expression of some other human's choise:after all,a choice was made.And,what about that beautiful,difficult art of choosing words when writting?

[sandracollin]

I guess on this matter we should not debate at all about the questions we have in mind because we can never be satisfy with our own answer. We should believe that we have a purpose and whatever it is we cannot tell unless we realize so many things in life. Let's appreciate life which is gift from God. We should be thankful enough that we are able to do so many things freely.

[cacian]

we are not perpetual seekers we perpetual annoyers. humans like to take on monumental tasks and go where hey have never been before.
space exploration is the ultimate sign that men wants to climb the unclimable and prove to themselves something they are not sure of.
ultimately as a result of it they hit depression of the biggest kind. for example the credit crunch that is one hit that occurred recently amongst other depressions the world suffered in the past wars is another and weather occurrences. these are signs that mankind is ill and extremely disturbed.
I can only predict one end to it.
so do not beat yourself up about what could be that could not be. it is best to look the day in the face and learn to appreciate time for it gives you or what it is. the next day is another day and so on and so forth.
to live in questions is mentally challenging and so instead of reaching for what is not there reach out for what is already there. it is there for a reason. to go looking somewhere else climbing the Everests swimming the seas of the worlds diving from peaks into the nothingness is teasing danger. it is saying one is desperately seeking to go. running for the sake of running is running away.

[108 fountains]

I'm reading a book now, The Problem of the Soul, by Owen Glanagan, professor of philosophy and psychology at Duke University, that discusses these questions in great depth. In fact, it is a book more about the concept of free will than it is about the problem of the soul (which he pretty much dismisses by the end of chapter one). He talks about two ways that people view the mind - one is that the mind is a non-physical entity that receives information from and directs the brain in the performance of physical functions through a mechanism we may never fully understand; the other is that the mind is the product of or (perhaps more correctly) simply is the mass agglomeration of the billions of neurons and trillions of synapses in our brain and nervous system. If you take the second viewpoint (which is where the science of neurobiology is tending to lead), then there really can be no such thing as what we generally think of as free will. Rather, every choice we make is the product of our biology and environment, including the culture we grow up in, the vallues we are taught as a child, etc.
The book promises to reconsile the two points of view, but I haven't finished it yet, so I don't know how he is going to do that. Possibly, he will look at our current understanding of quantum physics where events cannot be predicted with complete certainty, but only with probabilities (for example, the location and velocity of a quantum particle cannot both be determined with 100% accuracy at the same instant), and apply this Uncertainty Principle to the concept of free will. It's an interesting topic for discussion and beyond my abilty to give it the proper examination it deserves in a short post. But I think it ultimately boils down to whether one believes in God. Personally, I tend to feel more comfortable with the scientific vs. the religious point of view, I feel more comfortable talking about genes and neurons than about souls and celestial spirits, and I also feel that life can have meaning and purpose, and even morality, without belief in God. However, I respect differing points of view and am open to discussion and exchange of ideas.

[mal4mac]

Is that Owen Flanagan, rather than Glanagan? He has a starring part in Daniel Goleman's "Destructive Emotions", a neat book on negative emotions and how we might control them.

... the mind is the product of or (perhaps more correctly) simply is the mass agglomeration of the billions of neurons and trillions of synapses in our brain and nervous system. If you take the second viewpoint (which is where the science of neurobiology is tending to lead)

Surely it's stronger than that! Mainstream neurobiology, from what I've read, seems to take this as as a basic starting point, not a "tendency". Just as in Newtonian physics there are only rocks under the influence of gravitational & impulsive forces, no angels pushing the planets, there is no room for magic stuff like "free will" in neurobiology.

then there really can be no such thing as what we generally think of as free will. Rather, every choice we make is the product of our biology and environment, including the culture we grow up in, the values we are taught as a child, etc.

You that is the mainstream position, don't see how you gainsay it given the current state of knowledge.

Possibly, he will look at our current understanding of quantum physics where events cannot be predicted with complete certainty, but only with probabilities...

How can quantum physics magic up free will? It just suggests that uncertainty is basic to the physical universe, so an electron in the brain might go left, or it might go right, and we can't predict which way it will go, however hard we try. But how does this uncertainty magically conjure up free will?

But I think it ultimately boils down to whether one believes in God.

Buddhists believe in free will, but not God. I don't see why you *must* have some spiritual being involved.

I'm reading Daniel Dennett's "Intuition Pumps" at the moment. He's one of the "four horseman", so he's definitely not religious, and he's written a lot about freedom of the will, and such topics. I'm not convinced by some of his positions, like how he tries to explain away the hard problem of consciousness, but he's well worth reading.

[MorpheusSandman]

How can quantum physics magic up free will? It just suggests that uncertainty is basic to the physical universe,

Correction: QM suggests that uncertainty is basic to our perception of the physical universe. The Schrodinger Wave Equation is, on its own, deterministic; The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is what's probabilistic/uncertain.

I'm reading Daniel Dennett's "Intuition Pumps" at the moment. He's one of the "four horseman", so he's definitely not religious, and he's written a lot about freedom of the will, and such topics. I'm not convinced by some of his positions, like how he tries to explain away the hard problem of consciousness, but he's well worth reading.

I think Dennett is pretty dead on in his positions regarding THPOC. The entire "problem" is one of those philosophical quandaries created by a very imperfect understanding of the physical universe (in this case, our brains) and can't be "solved" by simply thinking about it or continuing to use ill-defined words with vague references.

[miyako73]

I like this question: Why are we here?

I, for one, feel I should not have been born. The world is too ugly that death seems beautiful an idea. Are we here to suffer? I think I am. So far, God has been a sadist entity to me. I still believe in him though. How could I not believe in something or someone not human when I have already lost my faith in humanity?

[mal4mac]

I think Dennett is pretty dead on in his positions regarding THPOC. The entire "problem" is one of those philosophical quandaries created by a very imperfect understanding of the physical universe (in this case, our brains) and can't be "solved" by simply thinking about it or continuing to use ill-defined words with vague references.

It may be solved by a better understanding of the physical universe, but it's difficult to see how it might be. Note this doesn't mean I recommend giving up scientific brain investigation. Dennett seems to think that "floundering under the hardness of the problem" is just giving up. It's not. You can still investigate the physical nature of the brain, with as much dedication and energy as Dennettites, even if you think the hard problem *is* hard.

[MorpheusSandman]

It may be solved by a better understanding of the physical universe, but it's difficult to see how it might be.

A better understanding of language is needed to. Asking "why" is a loaded question if we can't imagine either a causal or intentional answer. A question like "why do quantum fields exist?" seem nonsensical when you consider their existence underlies spacetime, the very thing through which we understand causality. What is "why" really asking in such a context? Much the same is true of consciousness. Why must there be a "why" behind, say, qualia, other than that it's the result of the physical laws that exist and how they interact with our brains, which are also physical things governed by physical laws? To propose anything extra on either end is to violate Occam's Razor and usually involves the avoidance of any possible falsification. Now, its perfectly fine to breakdown both those external and internal physical properties that are interactive, but I don't see the point of anything beyond that. Yudkowsky has a great (though lengthy and quite detailed) analysis of the Philosophical zombie. This article is also a good one that, I suspect, has a lot of relevancy regarding the issue of THPOC.

[free]

Free will... hmmm... maybe in making good contacts, creating a communication within communication...

[108 fountains]

I just got Dennet's "Intuition Pumps." Thanks for mentioning it. I'll read it once I've finished Flanagan's "The Problem of the Soul." Can anyone suggest some good books that address the problem of how the brain creates consciousness/self awareness or how human consciousness/self awareness differs from that of other animals? I've sort of half-heartedly looked in bookstores for something like that, but have not found anything that specifically addresses these issues (especially the differences between human and other animal conciousnesses).

[MorpheusSandman]

Can anyone suggest some good books that address the problem of how the brain creates consciousness/self awareness or how human consciousness/self awareness differs from that of other animals?

You'd do better to address the problem of why the brain creates questions of consciousness: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/ and http://lesswrong.com/lw/og/wrong_questions/

I don't want to be flippant, but let me say this plainly: Nobody, no matter how brilliant, can reason their way to answers about the questions of consciousness. Neuroscience is still an emerging field, and too many philosophers are preoccupied with trying to answer questions they can't possibly know the answers to given our current state of knowledge about the human brain. You'd be better off studying neuroscience, perhaps some kind of comparative neuroscience if it's out there (in regards to how human brains differ from animals). Anyone that proposes any non-materialistic answers to the question of consciousness are just fanwanking and talking out their posteriors, no matter how eloquent they are, how much they write, or how abstruse the words are that they use.

[desiresjab]

If there is an unconscious, our real motives are concealed most of the time, and we end up with theories about our own actions.

[Wrenn]

Great thread! Bump!