Young

Please offer your experiments, I'd like to be able to contrast it and better understand what degree of abstraction you're talking about.

Maybe this will help, and should at least help me see if my notion of the interaction of physics and free will is on track. Imagine you are the first homo sapien. In comparison to your parents you are probably not all that different in physical capabilities and even brain organization. What you do have is the addition of a sense of what your other senses are doing, you hunger, you thirst and you are aware of these needs and also some concept of what these feelings mean. As a conscious being you now have the capability to direct your focus. Yes there are biological roots to this focus; were you not of the species you are you could not direct your focus toward anything. But beyond that simple fact your ability to abstract is not dependent on any of those inputs (try closing your eyes and ears). Your ability to choose is built into this consciousness.

Just to clarify for those of us who have trouble with the bearing of physics on Free Will, is there some minimum amount of brain matter that is required for Free Will? Obviously 0 is too little but is there some cortical structure you would deem necessary if not sufficient for a person to have Free Will? Even if you were to leave out the introspection of volition, isn't determinism (in human will) not valid on the basis that it can't be falsified? Its entirely inductive and you have no evidence that (for instance) 10 identical people who act the same way are not actually [choosing to act in the same way.

This thread seems to be becoming more about animal concept formation than ethics. A similar thread just began in the science forum so perhaps there would be a better place to comment. I believe there is some evidence of this, though not to the degree that you're thinking. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19312192/ Basically chimps seem to have category for 'hard things that I can use at the end of a stick to get food'. Who's to say whether this or any class used would really be open-ended for them. Does anyone have any feelings about how interaction with humans might expand animal conceptual ability?

I didn't feel that Jackson did a good enough job of getting into the lore of the books which it seemed to me was one of the main draws of being sucked into the tolkien universe. I don't know how much positive or negative to really attribute to him in any case, it seems he couldn't go that wrong with a story so detailed already.

There are catholics in England? I often see that sentiment expressed even among religious people with some degree of rationality, hoping there child will choose their religion and at the same time not wanting to push too much for it or else they will be pushed away.

Then you're asserting that consciousness can not be granted by atypical means?

Big Bang doesn't necessarily say that "the universe" is expanding so much as all matter is becoming more distant from a central point, no one made the impossible statement that "everything" is becoming bigger.

5. Social Positive Reinforcement- Besides just the causes noted people feel that they "belong" in religion and it is very difficult to give that up or admit that friends/family are wrong.

Animals have been shown to "commit suicide" in various situation, from the puzzling behavior of lemmings to experiments in which under extremely stressful situations animals may seemingly stop their vitals with little explanation. While this does not fall into the category of determining one's worth as much as one's inability to deal with seemingly unbearable stress (also the source of human suicides), animals typically base their role in life on their immediate situation.

The point being made is that the current political status of the world in some cases allows for Saddams to be made, and that by being fated to live under an oppressive regime you do not sacrifice your rights.

Whether Consciousness is to be taken as a wordly truth does not negate the possibility of previous events dictating the future. That you are conscious about an event does not necessitate that you have control over it, mere awareness does not mean control. On a somewhat irrelevant sidenote, animals have all the abilities noted, the only thing stopping you from acknowledging their "volition" is their inability for as complex thought as you and linguistic barrier, which is some cases can be broken.

Alright, do address your first point, how and why do you propose to differentiate choice as acting without cause? Secondly, again, what makes you certain that you have "control" over your "mind", it undergoes many changes the likes of which you can't fathom or expound, yet because you assign logical names to it like "hunger" or "desire" you are certain that you own them.

It seems like it is becoming an issue of extreme minutia, whether my personal rights are being infringed upon by you smoking X amount of feet away or leaving smoke in the air X hours after you're done which I will then inhale, and avoiding the scope of business rights altogether, much like prohibition did. Because the anti-tobacco lobby group can't sue every individual who smokes for injuring others they're supporting this as the next best thing.

If that is the case then why have we not destroyed Iraq entirely without a second thought to any of its members. Although your argument would hold for workers in a munitions factory, a good majority of the people who live in baghdad do not directly contribute to Saddam's staying in power any more than people in neighboring countries do. That you live in a country with a dictator does not make you culpable for his crimes unless you are supporting him/her.

I searched through the forum for the word "smoking" and came up with nothing, so assuming this is a somewhat new topic I was wondering about opinions on the recent ban on smoking in restaurants and bars in New York City.

It comes down to the inability of a neuron to respond in a different manner than its nature dictates, when presented with a situation a neuron will react exactly according to what it is, as well as the structure of the brain. Effectively there is no "mind", no intangible force which we can not track, had I complete knowledge of the structure of your brain, and could control a situation presented to you, I could beforehand know precisely know exactly what you would do, there would be no possibility of you acting otherwise. Similarly in someone who is not receptive to your chosen philosophy it is useless to blame them for what they think or say, there brain itself has not been "wired" correctly to respond to what you will do or say in the way that you want them to. It's basically like telling a rock to stop being a rock.

If we are going to get accept eventualities in which we doubt the very content of our minds than we're going to have to rule out logic altogether. Your claim is just as valid to a mind which believes it has choice, how does it know it has choice? In short, instead of saying "how do we know we know" I'd appreciate proof more of a refutation of how a neuron's identity can be negated in order to propagate your assumed identity of the "mind".

I think my problem lies simply with understanding why actions are not all reactions, beyond that I think I understand your point.

Well I'm glad we're all in agreement, next topic.

Their civilians as well as ours, our soldiers have just as much a right to life as any of these ideal civilians of the foreign country who do resist. Moreover, those who understand the evilness of the regime should understand that to allow a regime to perpetuate further crimes is not an acceptable option. At this point it comes under the umbrella of what objectivism speaks of as suicide because there is no prospect of life without freedom. To sum up, I restate that the loss of civilians is a tragedy which must be avoided if possible, but if your life would be forfeit under the heel of the dictator or in order to promote freedom (and this is the question at hand) which would you choose?

I agree with that, but I think in less of an emergency, as per pre- 9/11 military, falling numbers of enlistees were hard to counter. I was thinking new measures should be taken to enlighten people to the benefits of military service as well as increase the monetary benefits to enlistees to allow them to continue in service.

Well it's good of you to be uprooting militants for me, however I'd think you'd know that not everyone in Iraq was supporting Saddam just by being there. They may have had no recourse other than denouncing Saddam in the streets (suicide), so please excuse me for finding it a tragedy that even one of these people, American or Iraqi, who believed in freedom, should have died.

By that logic, you are not searching for Osama right now, so I might as well take your money and give it to someone who is

Rather, the wager should be, If I don't believe in God and this Christian does believe in God, they will harangue me to no end, so should I tell them I do in order to avoid them affronting me with their prosletyzing until I am forced to commit murder