Can there be free will in a world where pre-destiny exists?

Once thorny philosophical questions have largely been reduced to physics.

Apart from thorny issues like what life is, what consciousness is, the nature of subjective experience, the placebo effect and other mind over matter phenomena ... we've learnt an incredible amount but there's some big areas where philosophy is needed to guide the science.
 
Being a music forum I'll leave this here ;)

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear-
I will choose Free Will.
 
'We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.'

That's a great quote.

Have you seen the future timeline website? http://www.futuretimeline.net

Some smart people have obviously given the future a great deal of thought. Obviously predictions of cyborgism at one end and total destruction at the other.

Whenever I talk to people about the possibility of us having a cyborg future, the usual response is "I'm glad I won't be there to see it". They assume that cyborg people of the future will be be less soulful and warm than we are today. Less human.

I imagine people from just 100 years ago would see today's society and people as cold and soulless too - sitting in front of our screens for hours, listening to electronic music, eating processed food from plastic packets, dependent on portable smart devices etc. Yet we feel perfectly warm and silly and compassionate and soulful and sensual and all those good things about being alive. So I'm sure that future cyborg people will feel just like us inside, no matter how remote, strange and robotic they might seem to us on the outside.

It would be amazing to see. Bring on the cryogenics!
 
I don't know who to quote, there's so much good stuff here. Some very convincing arguments for free will and no pre-destiny. I believe in pre-destiny, but I could be all wrong. It's just a belief that has no bearing on anyone else. It just makes more sense to me. It's more ordered. Has anyone ever heard the saying, everything happens for a reason? That seems to ring very true in my life. And if there really is a reason for everything, that suggests something behind everything we do, everything we are. But like I said, I "freely" admit I could be wrong because the fact is I just don't know. I am speaking from solely from my own thoughts and experiences. Life, even in it's most stupid simple form, whatever that is... seems too orderly to be a random occurrence.

Check out my idea for a movie plot that deals with how human life on earth came to be: Two loser alien pals who can't get laid on their own planet set out in their spaceship and eventually find our planet and start raping all kinds of apes. Incredibly, they manage to get enough apes pregnant to start a new species. Pretty cool right?
 
Check out my idea for a movie plot that deals with how human life on earth came to be: Two loser alien pals who can't get laid on their own planet set out in their spaceship and eventually find our planet and start raping all kinds of apes. Incredibly, they manage to get enough apes pregnant to start a new species. Pretty cool right?

That's the XXX version, I guess. My version would be that the aliens wanted the gold on this planet, but they couldn't survive in this atmosphere, it's not viable to their race. sSo they tractor beamed a couple of apes into the spaceship and spliced their alien DNA with the ape's DNA and created a human being. Then they put the humans back on the planet and made slaves out of them to mine the earth's gold that they needed on their own planet.
 
That's the XXX version, I guess. My version would be that the aliens wanted the gold on this planet, but they couldn't survive in this atmosphere, it's not viable to their race. sSo they tractor beamed a couple of apes into the spaceship and spliced their alien DNA with the ape's DNA and created a human being. Then they put the humans back on the planet and made slaves out of them to mine the earth's gold that they needed on their own planet.

Sex and money. The 2 most powerful motivators in the known universe, right? Hey Paul, maybe we could combine the plots, where the 2 losers actually conquer and create a new species by mating with the apes, and the losers end up being king of humans, which they enslave to a life of mining. They would have to be able to survive in the atmosphere though lol.

On a different note, I think I am coming around to the idea that free will exists within certain parameters.....that were established long before humans. Everything within that parameter, which is governed by the laws of physics, is up for grabs, but there is a larger perspective that we cannot possibly be aware of, at this stage in human development. There's a lot of possible ways for us to happen here, but the truth is, no one knows the facts. So have a good time and don't worry and be happy is my attitude.
 
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Has anyone ever heard the saying, everything happens for a reason? That seems to ring very true in my life. And if there really is a reason for everything, that suggests something behind everything we do, everything we are.

Everything does happen for a reason, but that reason does not have to be "otherworldly", or because there is something behind it. Its all cause and effect.

Example: You buy new tires for your car. On the way home you get a flat tire. Was it meant to be? Is some deity having a bad day and wanting to share it with you? NO. You ran over a nail. It fell out of the back of a construction truck. The truck hit a bump in the road (the same one you hit right before your tire went flat), and the nail flew from the bed and landed on the road. I could back this example 100 days into the past because every effect has a cause. Nothing happens with no explanation.
 
Has anyone ever heard the saying, everything happens for a reason? That seems to ring very true in my life.

Hindsight is always 20-20. It very easy to justify and reason through past events, especially ALL past events. For some reason, humans have a innate tendency to do this well and often ( - was there a reason we evolved that way??). But when trying to predict future events using the inducted reasoning, this theory falls apart, and that's why it doesn't do it for me.

Why did Jimi Hendrix have to choke on his own vomit? Probably because he was laying on his back so when he started to expel what was in his stomach, it stayed in his mouth and inevitably flowed into his wind pipe as he gasped for breath. Yea, but why did he choose to lay on his back? Why wasn't he on his side with a pillow holding him up? As we all know from Breaking Bad, that what you do when you do heroin.. more than likely he knew better. Did some deity spark that decision in his mind? Was there some force that prevented him from taking that preventative measure? Was he an angel whose time on Earth was up? or does god just really not like secular music? Is there such thing as luck? Did he run out? Or was he just really high, and we have to accept that sometimes sh*t happens.

EDIT: Disclaimer: I'm not exactly sure that heroin was invovled in Jimi's death. I'm half assuming it was. I'm not as familiar with the circumstances of his death as some people, so I'm sorry if that puts some people off. The above paragraph is just an example of a thought process.

Everything does happen for a reason, but that reason does not have to be "otherworldly"

I see what you are saying, but the implications of "otherworldly" intervention in our "serendipitous" lives is the gist of what we are discussing, otherwise there would be much to discuss. I think we can all agree that events can be broken down to cause and effect (unless we are talked about quantum occurrences, in which case we have to talk about the probability that the effect would or would not occur..)
 
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I see what you are saying, but the implications of "otherworldly" intervention in our "serendipitous" lives is the gist of what we are discussing, otherwise there would be much to discuss. I think we can all agree that events can be broken down to cause and effect (unless we are talked about quantum occurrences, in which case we have to talk about the probability that the effect would or would not occur..)

I guess my problem with the idea that some deity or whatever has intervened with our lives lies in that if the deity has decided for us, then they have also made a choice. They have chosen to interfere with our lives. Why, who knows? To think about it like that would be like me stepping on an ant. That ant didn't choose to be stepped on, I chose for it. But the choice made by me definitely had a reason behind it, I wanted to, it bit me, I don't like ants, whatever. The effect is still linked to a choice, even though it wasn't the ants.

Now putting that into a supernatural aspect, I don't buy it. Something that is outside of time and space, that has the infinite knowledge of the universe and beyond, doesn't choose, it doesn't have to. It just does. So how can something that does not choose, choose for us? Or allow us to have the freedom to choose, then judge us by our choices?

My wife thinks that if god and the devil exist, perhaps we have their ultimate rolls backwards. Why would something that is supposedly all good and loving tell you how to live, and expect you to worship it? Isn't commanding someone to worship you selfish and wrong? Sounds like a major superiority complex to me. On the flip side, the entity we look at as bad wants us to live our lives as we want, cares not if we worship it or not, and plays on the fact that we are humans. It knows how humans act, and wants us to do so accordingly.
 
I guess my problem with the idea that some deity or whatever has intervened with our lives lies in that if the deity has decided for us, then they have also made a choice. They have chosen to interfere with our lives.

What about instinct, Mr IP? That's not just intervening, it's downright controlling. Who or what is driving that?

Art, science, religion and philosophy are our attempts at achieving some kind of dignity and self worth in the face of being squishy breathing, eating, drinking, shitting, pissing, farting, belching, sleeping, screwing, breeding, fighting, killing, menstruating, masturbating, breastfeeding, suffering, stumbling and transient meat machines.

And we exist as part of a thin film of squishy stuff we call "life" that forms a thin coat around a 12,700 km diameter spherical rock that is hurtling around a vast void at around 2 million kms per hour.

I think most of us suspect something funny is going on ...
 
What about instinct, Mr IP? That's not just intervening, it's downright controlling. Who or what is driving that?

Evolution and the learning process. Animals present us with this all day long. For example, just about every domesticated dog understands when a human points at something. They instinctually know what it means because they have learned over thousands of years of domestication, and it is passed on to each generation. Wild dogs, and even the most highly trained apes don't understand pointing.

As far as philosophy and religion, ever notice how it changes to adapt to modern times? Philosophers are always coming up with thought experiments to challenge what was once accepted. The church is always changing its position on issues to be more accepting of what we learn as we develop as humans. I firmly believe that we even have religion and philosophy because as early man we had very little answers. It was a way to try and explain what was happening in the world, especially in a time when we had very little knowledge of science and how the world works. Placing a deity into the equation is an easy way to say "I don't know" without having to actually say it.

With bodily functions, show me someone who can survive without them and I might be less skeptical.

Ever notice that animals just live? They have minimal intelligence, but yet they don't have any of the issues that humans do. One would think that in a world driven by intelligence, the most intelligent would outlast everyone else. But yet humans have wars, serial killers, racists, elitists, and a sense that we are better than everything else. What drives this? We are some of the newest residents on this planet, yet we are the worst thing to happen to it. It almost always comes down to one thing: ideas and our ability to choose our own paths based on those ideas.
 
Ever notice that animals just live? They have minimal intelligence, but yet they don't have any of the issues that humans do. .

Everyday!
I have something called squirrel theory - squirrels just go about gathering their nuts. day in, day out. Nothing seems to bother them, except crossing a road or a natural bird of prey, of which they are oblivious. No destiny there - cause and effect. But they seem quite content (who knows maybe they are starving).

Humans do not ascribe to squirrel theory. They have to pick everything apart. There is an upside to that, as we are possibly the most adaptable species ever. But it may be only human ego to think that. In paleontology the billion year rock record shows many species rise to great success, to even dominate......and then fall. Tens of examples.
 
That's a great quote.

Have you seen the future timeline website? http://www.futuretimeline.net

Some smart people have obviously given the future a great deal of thought. Obviously predictions of cyborgism at one end and total destruction at the other.

Whenever I talk to people about the possibility of us having a cyborg future, the usual response is "I'm glad I won't be there to see it". They assume that cyborg people of the future will be be less soulful and warm than we are today. Less human.

I imagine people from just 100 years ago would see today's society and people as cold and soulless too - sitting in front of our screens for hours, listening to electronic music, eating processed food from plastic packets, dependent on portable smart devices etc. Yet we feel perfectly warm and silly and compassionate and soulful and sensual and all those good things about being alive. So I'm sure that future cyborg people will feel just like us inside, no matter how remote, strange and robotic they might seem to us on the outside.

It would be amazing to see. Bring on the cryogenics!

Agreed. And, thanks for that link... I've never seen that one before. I can get lost on that one for days....
 
Ever notice that animals just live? They have minimal intelligence, but yet they don't have any of the issues that humans do.

I would say that animals share many of the issues we have. Put yourself in their paws for a moment. Think of all the fears you had as a child because of your limited understanding of cause and effect, eg. animals and small children are afraid of the thunder - they sense the power but don't realise it's harmless.

We hear birds singing and the chances are that it's a bird telling another bird to f* off. We say "Isn't that beautiful?".
 
Agreed. And, thanks for that link... I've never seen that one before. I can get lost on that one for days....

Yes - I've spent hours on it. I find it incredibly mind bending and exciting but it seems feasible given how quickly things change in just 20 years, let alone 200 or 2,000 or 20,000 or 200,000 years. Imagine ... music in 2,000 years ... would love to know.
 
Ever notice that animals just live? They have minimal intelligence, but yet they don't have any of the issues that humans do.

I wrote a lyric that touches on that a few years back:

"we're all just animals anyway
equipped with self-awareness
that we'll never learn to use..."
 
Everything does happen for a reason, but that reason does not have to be "otherworldly", or because there is something behind it. Its all cause and effect.

Example: You buy new tires for your car. On the way home you get a flat tire. Was it meant to be? Is some deity having a bad day and wanting to share it with you? NO. You ran over a nail. It fell out of the back of a construction truck. The truck hit a bump in the road (the same one you hit right before your tire went flat), and the nail flew from the bed and landed on the road. I could back this example 100 days into the past because every effect has a cause. Nothing happens with no explanation.


How about the butterfly effect? Sort of like a butterfly fluttering in China results in mass floods in Texas. Cause and effect on a scale that could only be attributed to cosmic confluence.

The universe has an attitude.
 
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