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Thursday, February 13, 2014

Even more on free will

A comment if I may about mites making choices.  For that matter elevators make choices.  You push button three and it goes to the third floor.  These things are called reflexes and natural selection programs them as well as do engineers.

Evidence that we are loaded with such reflexes, some of them amazingly complex in the range of behaviors available, is not valid that we don't have free will.

We are also sentient beings, meaning that we experience much of our existence, through senses and emotions, and natural selection has also used these phenomena to arrange for possible subtleties of choice beyond what is possible with programming that nevertheless are by no means free will.  The sudden powerful anger of a parent when their child is harmed is built into us by natural selection and serves us, or at least the progeny.  Behavior in such a state is not free will either, but a demonstration of that fact would not constitute proof that free will does not exist.

Our minds are not "things" (as the Buddhist points out) but process flows and they can make choices.  They are usually determined by things like past experience and personality and habit, but not always.  I think it takes someone with a little training in mindfulness (mind being aware of mind) to see that it is indeed possible to deliberately and willfully do things of our free will, even whim, if you will.

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