We just don’t do much with it.
From ScienceDaily:
A new study tested whether people believe free will arises from a metaphysical basis or mental capacity. Even though most respondents said they believed humans to have souls, they judged free will and assigned blame for transgressions based on pragmatic considerations — such as whether the actor in question had the capacity to make an intentional and independent choice.
Across the board, even if they believed in the concept of a soul, people in a new study ascribed free will based on down-to-Earth criteria: Did the actor in question have the capacity to make an intentional and independent choice? The study suggests that while grand metaphysical views of the universe remain common, they have little to do with how people assess each other’s behavior.
News: but issues of impaired capacity — similar to blindness or deafness — have little to do with denying the existence or potential for that capacity. Hence, for instance age of consent or age to drive or age to drink or vote or marry without parental consent. Hence, also, issues of retardation, senility etc etc. KF
Free will is a matter of common sense and reality, no belief required.
as to free will, the following experiments have shown that consciousness and free will are integral to quantum experiments.
You can see a more complete explanation of the startling results of the experiment at the 9:11 minute mark of the following video
In other words, if my conscious choices really are just merely the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in in the past (deterministic) how in blue blazes are my choices instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past?,,, These experiments from quantum mechanics are simply impossible on a reductive materialism (determinism) view of reality!
Further notes:
In the following paper, it is shown that one cannot ever improve the predictive power of quantum mechanics by ever removing free will as a starting assumption in Quantum Mechanics!
also related interest to Intelligent Design theory:
Needless to say, finding free will to be ‘built into’ our best description of foundational reality, quantum mechanics, as a starting assumption, is VERY antithetical to the entire materialistic philosophy which holds that free will, like mind, is merely illusory:
Since our free will choices figure so prominently in how reality is actually found to be constructed in our understanding of quantum mechanics, I think a Christian perspective on just how important our choices are in this temporal life, in regards to our eternal destiny, is very fitting:
I think C.S. Lewis sums up the ultimate ‘free will’ choice in excellent fashion:
If you think all this talk of an afterlife, heaven and hell, is just so much malarkey, well, number one, there are two very different ‘eternities’ revealed by physics:
and number two, the ‘observational evidence’ for life after death is far stronger than the ‘observational evidence’ for Darwinian evolution (which is none).
Verse and Music:
My cat has free will, so what is so special about it?
Acartia,
Does your cat contemplate how to use its free will in its own best interest? Or is it distracted by shiny objects?
Your question is ridiculous. Animals operate primarily on instinct, not thought processes like humans. Your cat cannot plot revenge, appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or refuse to use force to defend itself if attacked. Humans can do all those things.
@Barb: “Does your cat contemplate how to use its free will in its own best interest? Or is it distracted by shiny objects?”
There are plenty of people who are distracted by shiny objects as well.
What evidence do you have that my cat, or your dog, act primarily on instinct? My cat may not appreciate the beauty of a sunset, but he certainly appreciates laying on our patio in the morning when the sun comes up, soaking up the heat. How do you know that he does not perceive that as beauty in the same way that you can appreciate a sunset. Laying on the patio like he does certainly has no adaptive advantage.
I question anyone who claims that they know how another animals brain works, how they think, when we cannot even do this for another human being.
Free will has to do with brain noise?
Free will?
Charles in Charge (of Charles)
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....f-charles/
This is the alleged source of the information provided in post # 9:
Who isn’t?
At least sometimes, some of us, for reasons we can discuss later, can be aware of such a distraction, and even do something about it.
Please, allow me to replace this text:
with this text:
But yes, naturally we may not be capable of being aware that we are distracted by shiny objects. Perhaps a supernatural event must occur before we can be aware of our foolishness. That’s material for discussion outside this thread, if someone writes a related OP first.
Dionisio, materialists are always trying to hide ‘in the noise’ of the brain. This is about the third or forth study I’ve seen along this line. The falsification to these studies comes, as Libet himself pointed out, from our ability to ‘veto’ the noise. ,,, But, as I pointed out in post 3, we can bypass the rhetoric of materialists for we have far greater proof from quantum mechanics itself that gives unambiguous proof that free will (and consciousness) are foundational to reality.
Moreover, for materialists to deny they have free will is to undermine their ability to make the argument that they have no free will in the first place.
Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012
Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause.
By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.
per ENV