Thread: Fate

im gonna through in a quote from waking life here for u guys:

In a way, in our contemporary world view, its easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything youre gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because theyre so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. Were just physical systems too, right? Were just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. Were mostly water, and our behavior isnt gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything youre gonna do or whether its these basic physical laws governing everything, theres not a lot of room left for freedom.

So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, its just an historical anecdote. Its sophomoric. Its a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we dont really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.

Think about how it happens. Theres some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like its a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.

So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think were special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, thats really challenged by this picture.

So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know its not really like that. Its really a probabilistic theory. Theres room. Its loose. Its not deterministic." And thats going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, its not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we cant understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like its worse. Id rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.

So we cant just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.

One of the greatest movies of all time.

Originally Posted by Neruo

Like hitler?

Bit of a naive point of view. Do you believe in evolution? People don't have a goal higher then animals, and animals roll in shit all day.
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Why naive? We people decide what our life is gonna to look like... And if we are only to procreate, then yes we can compare ourselves to animals. Therefore we should take advantage of having the possibility to create the world a better place...

Science and mathematics are still the way to govern existence IMO... i.e. everything CAN be explained scientifically... just not entirely with words and concepts we can even relate to yet.

When it ultimately comes down to it though... humans won't HAVE to explain everything... because by the time we reach that pedestal, we'll be beyond the need to explain things etc...