Free Will - the illusion

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but what caused the conscious thought?

I still have no idea how conscious thought, emotion, or any sort of judgment yields free will.

The way I came to think of this starting about ten years ago - there's no place for it to come from. We live in time, we process information in time. If there's any reach we have beyond linear one-way time (such as entanglement across time) then it would come as intuitions that are either strong enough or not strong enough to shape our reactions in the here and now. To make a decision in the here and now means your here at this moment exactly once with exactly one set of known variables for what you could do, an exact set of internal pressures toward or against doing certain things, so while the end result tends to be pretty reliable in certain ways it doesn't necessarily mean we had the ability to choose to do otherwise. No matter how often you might catch yourself slipping in one way or another and course-correct those catch points even don't count as free will rather they count as reassertion of core values which also in and of themselves aren't free will but rather a combination of genetics, life experience, possibly life experience from more lives than this one at the instinctive level but that's a longer conversation.

So if I get in the car and drive to the mall right now what caused me to do that if not my own free will?

A very short answer though perhaps - what would cause you to go to the mall is all of your needs or desires to go to the mall, your knowledge of what a mall is, why its useful to you right now, that you have a vehicle to get there, that in a human western culture it's a mall which fills that need best (Amazon perhaps not being quick enough), that being on Earth rather than in the system M98440S there's no EndlessXCenter or merchandise replicator that would fill your needs better than the mall, that you're able to go to the mall rather than being bed-ridden with the flu or being held in Kevin Spacey's basement, and you're also shielded, by the flow of time, from knowing of any disappointments you'd have at the mall like the department store being out of the thing you need, going to all the stores and not being able to find any clothing you'd want or in your size, etc.

It's everything you know, everything you don't know, and every need you hope to address economically, physically, and emotionally.

Some weeks ago i have visit a presentation from Jullian Baggini at a university in the Netherlands. Although my englisch is bad and my IQ is low/slow it was very interesting evening for me. It did feel like that my brain was full of serotonine. Baggini belief in a free will, but in his view that free will is very small. How that small part of a free will comes in his mind was not clear for me.

Einstein also said that in a very real practical sense, he had to behave as though free will existed.

You have make me curious Auntblabby.
Can you post a link from the internet where Albert Einstein says that free-will existed

I feel a paradox about it.

1. We dont have free will.
2. But we have to behave that we have a free will.

Iff Einstein accept that we dont have a free will, how can he have the free will to behave or not behave that humans have a free will Thats a contradiction in my view.



The relation between the planet earth and the moon

Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws. For that reason, he refused the chance aspect of quantum theory, famously telling Niels Bohr: "God does not play dice with the universe." in a 1929 Saturday Evening Post, he was quoted as saying, "“I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will…Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.” Despite that [disbelief in free will], or because of that, he felt he had to keep his doubts silent and conform in order to not make [too many] waves. to comment on your adorable little cartoon, he also said, "If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will."

An electron has predicable behavior.

It controls you, you don't control it.

Thank you for the Einstein quote Auntblabby.

With this topic I had to think about the Matrix.
After some searching I came across a beautiful one over a golden thread in a frozen matrix, and that golden thread runs in past events. How can humans freely move in something what is frozen



I do want to listen to people who say they have a free will, but when I taste something like "I don't like the absend of free will, so it doesn't exist" this person loses his credibility with me.
The illusion of free will will certainly have an evolutionary basis. Living with the feeling of a free will makes life more pleasant, at least I think so. I (my consciousness) now also think that my consciousness is on my keyboard
is ticking, but deep in the back of my mind is a voice ( my logical voice ) that says it's my subconscious mind that is now tapping my keyboard.

Patterns, a song from Paul Simon.
A song that nicely describes that man has no free will.

The night sets softly
With the hush of falling leaves
Casting shivering shadows
On the houses through the trees
And the light from a street lamp
Paints a pattern on my wall
Like the pieces of a puzzle
Or a child's uneven scrawl

Up a narrow flight of stairs
In a narrow little room
As I lie upon my bed
In the early evening gloom
Impaled on my wall
My eyes can dimly see
The pattern of my life
And the puzzle that is me

From the moment of my birth
To the instant of my death
There are patterns I must follow
Just as I must breathe each breath
Like a rat in a maze
The path before me lies
And the pattern never alters
Until the rat dies

And the pattern still remains
On the wall where darkness fell
And it's fitting that it should
For in darkness I must dwell
Like the color of my skin
Or the day that I grow old
My life is made of patterns
That can scarcely be controlled

^^^thank you for that, a nice bookend to his other metaphysical song, "Fakin' It."

When she goes, she's gone.
If she stays, she stays here.
The girl does what she wants to do.
She knows what she wants to do.
And I know I'm fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.
I'm such a dubious soul,
And a walk in the garden
Wears me down.
Tangled in the fallen vines,
Pickin' up the punch lines,
I've just been fakin' it,
Not really makin' it.
Is there any danger?
No, not not really.
Just lean on me.
Takin' time to treat
Your friendly neighbors honestly.
I've just been fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.
This feeling of fakin' it
I still haven't shaken it.
Prior to this lifetime
I surely was a tailor
I own the tailor's face and hands.
I am the tailor's face and hands and
I know I'm fakin' it,
I'm not really makin' it.
This feeling of fakin' it
I still haven't shaken it.

Paul Simon have made several songs with a deeper meaning. In combination with his sweet and soft voice i like his music very much. To make the spectrum of songs about "free will" wider this time a song from people who believe they have free will.

Does bacteria or virus have a free will Does it have consciousness

https://www.quora.com/Biology-Does-bact ... sciousness

The randomness -- the lack of inherent causality -- of the quantum realm belies the claim of predetermination in all things.  While our choices may be inspired by previous events, they are still our choices.  Only by arbitrarily limiting one's choices can free will be denied.  That's why I am not fond of most role-playing video games -- the choices are limited.

The shopkeeper greets you and asks, "What are you looking for?"

Select one of the following:
►• "Nothing really, just browsing."
   • "Do you have any camping supplies?"
   • "What do you know about the Purple Mage?"
   • "Gimme all your gold!"

What if I want to ask the shopkeeper why she is running a general store all alone in the middle of Nowhere?  What if I want to know if she has seen the Dancing Clown in the last three days?  What if I want to suggest that she close up shop and spend the night getting better acquainted with my character?

Choices, man!  I want more choices!

I've actually been back and forth on other forums with people over this one and the trouble with this:

1) You don't 'pick' your preferences.
2) Given five known possibilities you make the best choice that you have the liberty to make (you could be too lazy or tired for two of them, or too low in self-esteem for one of them, or too risk-averse based on recent failures, etc.). That sort of obviates the rest of the list.

Even if strict determinism weren't found to be true (such as Minkowski block universe) we're still in an awkward place where we can neither claim authorship of our actions nor disavow the consequences of our agency as it's of practical concern to others whether or not we had any free will to do other than what we do at any given moment.