STRUAN
JC, you are still setting up a false problem. One doesn't choose to believe
things, one is required to believe them by the evidence or by one's
emotional disposition.
JC
Struan, how is this "requirement" enforced? I get to choose the evidence
that supports any assertion in a selective process so we're back in the
realm of choice.
I may not feel that I can always choose my emotional disposition, but when
I examine myself in the matter more deeply, I can rationally frame my
concepts to support almost any emtional state. And the wide diversity of
human emotional dispositions over any question supports my assertion that
humans exhibit free will. I can choose to believe that space aliens are
real. I can choose to believe they are not. If I was abducted by a real
space alien, then I'd have a harder time choosing to disbelieve, but it'd
still be possible. In fact, I heard a woman on our local radio station do
this very thing. She reported the experience of being confronted with
George Bush's alien identity while he was in the oval office. But instead
of believing that Bush was an alien, she came to the conclusion that he was
using a holograph machine to appear as an alien to her. She didn't want to
accept the implications of one conclusion, so she CHOSE another. Evidence
don't really matter when it comes to what people choose to believe or
disbelieve.
STRUAN
I can't choose to believe that my computer is green, because the evidence
suggests otherwise and my believing would be a sham.
JC
I agree that once you have chosen your evidence, your belief will follow.
But I don't agree with you at all that the evidence you find is forcing
itself upon you. You have an active part in _deciding_ which evidence is
supportive of your conclusion. That part of the decision-making process is
usually unconscious, but can be brought into consciousness with thorough
self-examination. Dig a little deeper and you'll find your free will.
STRUAN
I can't choose to love my wife, I just do. Therefore to set up a
contradiction by claiming that we can choose non-choice misses the point.
JC
My statement about "choosing non-choice" was sorta tongue in cheek, but you
bringing love into the equation absolutely astounds me. What is love if
not choice!? If you take choice away, love is slavery.
Being unaware of the level at which you choose, does not in any way obviate
the fact that you have made a choice. You're using your own ignorance of
your unconscious choices to make the argument that you have no choice.
Once again I wonder why you choose to do this?
STRUAN
The man in the locked room was an analogy to show how it is possible to
make choices and to believe that those choices are free despite the fact
that they may not be. It was intended to do no more than that and it
succeeded in doing precisely that.
JC
The choice to believe was free, the mind that made the choice made it
freely. The fact of contradicting circumstances doesn't force the mind
into any specific belief. In fact, if free will were dependent upon
circumstance, then the man locked in a room would never be able to believe
in the illusion that he was physically free, his mind would be FORCED by
the facts to follow the pattern laid down by his environmental context.
The freedom to be wrong proves the freedom to think.
STRUAN
The stuff about conscious minds putting him in the room has no bearing upon
the point being made.
JC
Yeah, that was a sort of weak rebuttal on my part. I agree.
STRUAN
The will is able to prevail over all circumstance? I would love to be able
to will my best friend back to life, he died in a motorcycle accident. How
I wish your assertion were true.
JC
I should have said, "The will, rightly applied, is able to prevail over all
circumstances." But anyway, many people who have lost loved ones do
continue to believe they can communicate with them and believe that they
will see them again. This is also an example of free will working, even
against the plainest and most obvious evidence. How could people choose
such beliefs if their will was not free to do so?
You say that you cannot so believe. Very well. But that is also a choice
you have made and once again I assert that this choosing we do is the
fundamental cornerstone upon which all else depends.
But you go on to assert that you do believe in free will. So I'm not sure
exactly what it is you're arguing against.
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