I encourange you to leave a short summary of your reasoning.
[u]Free will-The abilty to act without an external cause. [/u]
No: Humans are not exceptions to the laws of nature, all events have a cause.
Yes: Humans are above the laws of nature, and show the only examples of events without a cause in the universe.
Some videos of talks: fixed
https://youtu.be/KiNaF2UMHDo
https://youtu.be/_FanhvXO9Pk
https://youtu.be/wGPIzSe5cAU
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Every choice we make is a function of genetics and our environment, neither of which we control.
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Edited by Masque of Night: 3/23/2016 3:04:02 AMI think we have the "illusion" of free will. We are able to make our decisions in reality based on our own perceptions, moral code, intuition, and emotional state at the time, but these are all factors that can be linked to influences beyond our control. Our perception is imperfect and easy to trick, especially when dealing with other people, since they can weave falsehoods to mislead and influence our decisions. Morals are ordinarily learned and established during childhood, based on our environment and how we're raised. Intuition can be largely affected by subconscious knowledge or subtle suggestions, which are both gained from external sources. And our emotional state is essentially dictated by our every day encounters and environmental settings, plus many other subtle nuances, but all external. To summarize all of that, we're essentially the product of everything we encounter and learn over time, so while we're free to use our collected information to make decisions, they're still decisions influenced by external forces (i.e. the actions, intentions, and suggestions of other sentient beings) based off of information (i.e historical data, facts and figures, etc) that's entirely gained through external sources. To be honest, I quit caring whether my thoughts and actions are my own. I acknowledge that my current awareness is extremely limited in the scope of things, and that it's possible i'll never truly know that "I" am "me" or what of "me" is actually "mine". I just do what seems right and hope for the best.
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Penis
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its a tricky one because you never can know if the decision you made is because of you or because of events leading up to that point which cause you to make that decision
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Chapter 11 summary from above link. Free Will. Discusses the experimental investigations into the Neuroscience of free will by Benjamin Libet of the University of California, San Francisco and others, which show that the brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them and discusses the implications of these findings on our conception of free will. An interesting read. The other chapters are fun too.
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Penis poll is penis poll
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Nice links.
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[i]You can choose in phantom fears or some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.[/i] [spoiler]Cue Rush sing-a-long.[/spoiler]