geek talk II
Recall I blogged about how determinism is necessary for (meaningful) freewill? That is, if there is no general laws to hold that X leads to Y and so on, and if everything was purely random (indeterminism), then our freewill will have be random as well. But how meaningful is freewill if our willings are random? Surely, freewill is meaningful only if X is supposed to lead to Y but we consciously willed it to be otherwise. For example, I just exercised, I'm hungry and there is a chocolate bar in the fridge. But for some reason, such as the fact that I'm trying to lose weight, I decide not to indulge.
I was really adamant about the necessity of determinism as a precondition to meaningful freewill that I had not really considered the flipside. Something that I read made me do just that. You know the feeling when sometimes you cant make a decision, because these two options that you are choosing between are equally attractive because the reasons for choosing each almost equally compelling? Might that feeling of indeterminism within you, that uncertainty when you are choosing, and especially that feeling of consciously choosing, make the subjective feeling of freewill even more... tangible?
Granted, these are separate issues-- the first relates to the question of whether freewill exists, while the second concerns the question of what makes us feel that we have freewill. But it's still cool (for er, people like me) to think about these funny contradictions.
I was really adamant about the necessity of determinism as a precondition to meaningful freewill that I had not really considered the flipside. Something that I read made me do just that. You know the feeling when sometimes you cant make a decision, because these two options that you are choosing between are equally attractive because the reasons for choosing each almost equally compelling? Might that feeling of indeterminism within you, that uncertainty when you are choosing, and especially that feeling of consciously choosing, make the subjective feeling of freewill even more... tangible?
Granted, these are separate issues-- the first relates to the question of whether freewill exists, while the second concerns the question of what makes us feel that we have freewill. But it's still cool (for er, people like me) to think about these funny contradictions.