Almost a tl;dr. Instead it's tl;cqia.
Gillipig wrote:There's nothing in our existence that could not be explained without free will so assuming that free will exists purely out of habit or doctrine has to be considered at the very least a lazy thing to do.
First of all, establishing something as a postulate is not a "lazy thing to do." We would have never gotten off of the geometric ground without the parallel postulate, for example.
Second of all, given any X there must also be a NOT X. What is the logical negation of "Free Will?" How difficult is it to prove that logical negation?
Gillipig wrote:If a phenomenon has not been observed scientifically why should you assume that it exists?
See parallel postulate.
Gillipig wrote:It is only because of our culture and our instinctive, and as often demonstrated, faulty perception of how our brain works, that you believe we have free will, it's not rooted in logic or science, it's rooted in emotion, and emotional arguments tend to be pretty weak.
That we have predetermined will is rooted in the notion that it is possible to know the entire state of the universe and all past states in order to know precisely the result that would be generated. Apart from the fact that this is scientifically impossible to know, it's also practically impossible to know.
Gillipig wrote:For example the whole idea that we are free to choose what to do is grounded in a feeling we have when our conciousness is active, we feel like we are completely free to do what we want at any given moment, but when scientists monitor the brainwaves of test subjects and ask them to make simple choices such as pressing one button or the other, they can predict some seconds before a person makes a choice what choice they are going to make, the test subject at this time is not even aware of what he's going to choose yet, he still thinks he's free to choose what he want, these kinds of experiment show how faulty our perception is, and it does not appear natural to me that in light of research such as that arrive with a positive assertion that we have free will.
You are monitoring the brain waves and you can predict what the brain will produce before the actual action is transmitted? Bravo. If I put a camera under the card table I can see the card before the person flips it for everyone to see. It doesn't mean that the selection of the card wasn't random in any way.