Free Will.

[Rduke55]

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It's been argued that since neural activity has some noise to it that this can result in different behaviors in the same situations. Could this be construed as free will? Who knows?


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Of all the things that I have read, the one thing that could possibly lead me to believe in free will is the theory of Quantam mechanics. And, unfortunately, I don't think I'm cerebral enough to understand the full implications of this theory. I think that is what you were referring to in the above quote. How I understand it is that elementary particles behave in a way that is completely random and unpredictable. Since these elementary particles can influence the sub atomic particles that they create and since the sub atomic particles create atoms and our brains are goverened by small groups of molecules then it isn't a huge leap to imagine that the randomness of the elementary particles in our brains can lead to decisions that are independent from the decisions that preceded them. But even here, we're not talking about free will, but rather, the laws of Quantum Mechanics of which we are not free to change.

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I don't believe any physical theory thus far allows for free will. QM allows for randomness, but I don't see any way this allows for free will. I believe the lack of determinism may lead to the appearence of free will (i.e. the ability to behave differently under identical situations), but it is not occuring because you have a choice it is just because a random physical process occured differently in your brain. This is mostly my speculative opinion.

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A computer, when programmed with "if A then B" may feel that it chooses B, but doesn't quite know the reason why.

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Again, this is the all behavior is conditioning or selection idea rearing its head.