Free will a myth?

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19526154.200?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19526154.200

Discuss.

 

I'd think not, I'm purposely typing on this thread. Scientists have a bunch of thoeries most of them are false IMO

 

You are typing on this thread due to a combination of mixed environmental influences, though. Surely you cannot deny that.

Also, the mind is nothing more than the sum of your brain cells, physical objects that follow set rules, etc. If you decide to do something, that is the outcome of trillions of points of activity in your brain, these points of activity being influenced by chemicals, etc.

 

Yea, but you always are deciding between AT LEAST two different things, and usually you could easily do another thing than the thing you did do, it's just your mind and which thing it chooses... So free will is not a myth.

 

Yet you choose one thing above another because of variables that were a certain way from the beginning.

If you can agree that all thoughts occur in the brain, then you can also agree that they are all physical in nature. Each part of the universe has a particular position and velocity, if you were able to program them into a powerful enough computer, you could read the future.

 

That will never happen, because that computer being built, and people seeing what would happen, would change everything, therefore making everything change.

 

But if that happened, that would be how it was going to go from day one.

Honestly, though, it is quite impossible to record every single particle in the universe, and its position and velocity. That would require feats of realistically only possible to a God.

 

Yeah, but....
I see your point. We may not have free will, but, basically we do.

 

A different way to put that would be, Free will is real to ones person But In the scheme of things it would not be FREE WILL. Saying free will is a myth To a "god" but not to Humans. Its all the perspective you look at it with.

 

I think I sorta get what you guys are saying. But I believe that God gave man free will so that's what I believe.

 

Oh, yes, I completely agree. Technically, we do not have free will, but for practical purposes, it does not do to assume this mode of thinking.