Re:The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)
by WhompingWindows on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @09:28AM
(#26154131)
I'll provide some definitions, from Oxford:
individual: "single; separate"; "of or for a particular person"; "a single human being as distinct from a group, class, or family"
free will: "the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion"
From these definitions, we must question whether a single human, Homo Sapiens, can possibly act at their own discretion, without fate or necessity as the cause.
The history of studying free-will is extremely lengthy, everything non-biological that can be said has likely been said. We've been blessed by modern science to have a lot more understanding of organisms and neurology, so we know the "inner workings" better than Descartes or Locke or any of the old Christian theorists.
Re:The Libet experiment doesn't disprove free will (2019)
by byecomputer on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @09:08AM
(#26153966)
Yeah, but we're a bunch of unionized atoms. They all vote on what I should do and then I execute their will by going in the kitchen and making spaghetti or whatever.
Can someone provide a definition of a "individual"? Aren't we all just a big soup of atoms, where the boundary between two individuals is made arbitrarily based on convenience? Perhaps we should solve this problem first before we start talking about free will. Because when viewed like this, a bunch of atoms could have more than one free will.