http://www.toddhester.net/rantings/2006/09/05/free-will/ Random articles, thoughts, ideas, musings, rantings, and more from me!! Sun, 20 May 2012 00:39:42 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.1 http://www.toddhester.net/rantings/2006/09/05/free-will/#comment-1199 Tue, 02 Jan 2007 23:31:14 +0000 http://www.toddhester.net/rantings/2006/09/05/free-will/#comment-1199 [...] There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times on free will.  It seems that the scientific evidence is starting to build up showing that we don’t really consciously make our decisions, more likely they are made by the brain in the subconcsious somewhere and then our consiousness is informed of it.  This has led to a debate over what free will is and whether we have it.  In my earlier post I said that although our decisions may be made by deterministic processes and the brain and could be predicted if we understood it, since it is our brain making those decisions, isn’t that still free will?  In the article there are some interesting mathematical discussions of Godel’s theorem and how even if our decisions are made through a deterministic process in the brain, it may remain too complex for us to ever predict what decisions we’ll make. [...] […] There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times on free will.  It seems that the scientific evidence is starting to build up showing that we don’t really consciously make our decisions, more likely they are made by the brain in the subconcsious somewhere and then our consiousness is informed of it.  This has led to a debate over what free will is and whether we have it.  In my earlier post I said that although our decisions may be made by deterministic processes and the brain and could be predicted if we understood it, since it is our brain making those decisions, isn’t that still free will?  In the article there are some interesting mathematical discussions of Godel’s theorem and how even if our decisions are made through a deterministic process in the brain, it may remain too complex for us to ever predict what decisions we’ll make. […]

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