The guy with the philosophy degree sitting next to me suggests any of the Existentialists (esp. Sartre, Schopenhauer or Karl Popper) and for a contemporary take, Robert Hofstadter (Godel, Escher, Bach, etc.)

That's the guy with the fez, right? I'll try Hofstadter again.

No, the guy with the fez is Scoundrel and he don't know jack about philosophy.

I think I use a similar approach as Alex but come to a different conclusion in that I seem to experience of free will, the ability to make choices and direct my life, and have no reason to suppose the counter-intuitive, that my conscious decisions are an artifact of some deterministic process.

But I'm existential/phenomenological in this thinking - that is, regardless of whatever the metaphysical reality is, it is essentially unknowable and consequently irrelevant to how I perceive or act in my life - to Alex's last paragraph, even if there is no free will, it's stupid to claim it as an excuse. To me that's about the same as shrugging and blaming God's will.

We get to the same place but I use the same process of rejecting the counter-intuitive. It is just that for me given the fact that free will requires some element of the supernatural I have no reason to suppose the counter-intuitive that just because I perceive it is a reason to think it real.

But yeah, definitely not an issue of any great import. If someone figures out how to prove it one way or another (scientifically, for my satisfaction) then great. But similarly, if it does turn out that we're in a holograhpic universe it doesn't really matter one lick as for as our experience of life goes.

Stick with older Hofstadter. He's gotten all "We have souls that can persist"y since he lost his wife to cancer.

This would all be very interesting if it weren't all part of a big solipsistic projection.

Then it is just interesting in a different way. Why did you create this projection?

Seems to me that Alex and € are on the same page, really.

I don't see any reason to believe in anything else. It's the only thing that makes sense. We are a collection of chemicals that thinks. The thoughts are manifestations of the chemicals. We have layered up enough that we don't see the hardwiring anymore. But we are still "mechanical" in nature.

Thought of this way, it seems inevitable that we will create "intelligent" robots eventually.

I am flabbergasted that anyone truly believes chemicals can think, or that the influence of chemicals or any other natural substance can determine precisely what thoughts a living being can think or what actions a live creature may take. Poppycock on its face.

In a way, a conversation about this seems as useless to me as would a conversation with Sarah Palin about compassion. There is no common frame of reference on which to base a discussion.

So if you think "you" had no hand in deciding what socks you put on today, there's no frame of reference I can imagine to refute that - it is simply completely off base to my entire framework of knowledge and experience.

It's one thing to assert we don't consciously assist our heart in beating, but quite another to allege I had no option but to type the word "zebra" just now.

I typed and erased four other words before settling on "zebra." Was that a chemical process entirely physical in nature? Of course, we can never know. But why anyone would have such a notion is beyond me. :rolleyes: