The Thread of Philosophy
I was inspired by xboxplayer_12's thread going over history to start up a similar thread centering around philosophy.
Here you can you can question and gather the community's insight into the various topics regarding philosophy. I'm curious to see what you guys come up with. 
I'll start with a fairly common philosophical question: What is your stance on the concept of free will? Does free will even exist, or is our every action molded by external factors beyond our control?
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What is love?
baby don't hurt me
I was waiting for this and I wasn't disappointed lol
This is hard
For me in my everyday life my free will would be... the fact I have choice? Im lucky enough to live in a country and time where im given choice so I try to make ones that dont harm others where I can.
I don't necessarily agree that the definition that free will is just having choices open to you (though that is part of it) but also the ability to make choices without being completely influenced by past events, values or outside factors.
Let's say you are presented with three different flavors of ice cream, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. You are given several choices. You could choose a single flavor of ice cream to eat, choose two or maybe go for all three flavors of ice cream, or maybe refuse to eat the ice cream for whatever reason. Now if free will is to be believed then at the moment you are capable of making every single choice available to you regardless of your preferences, values, mood, etc. Of course not every choice will be of equal scale but they're all completely possible for you to make. Which means there are multiple possible universes that might exist of the choice of ice cream you did not make.
However if free will does not exist and your every choice is dictated by past events then that means despite the options provided to your choice will ultimately be governed by factors beyond your control like your preferences of ice cream, whether you are in the mood for ice cream or not, among other things. This would mean that there are no alternate universes and the only possible outcome is the one you chose, if that makes any sense.
I dont believe that a sacred power controling us. If it is true, then why are we even living ? For example, lets assume that God control our moves and our fates and it already decided yours and you are gonna go to inferno. So whats the point of living ? You will end up in inferno at the end of your life and you wont have a chance to change it because God decided for you.Also, somebody will go to heaven and he/she will earn his/her ticket on heaven without any effort because God made the call already when they born. Does that sound fair to you ? For me, its not. In fact, it sounds ridiculous.
But you have the control of your life hence free will. You can do whatever you want and as long as you want. You are not some puppet are controlling by a power or powers. I used to believe that for a while, I used to be a Muslim and read Quran almost every day. I believed that Allah controlling us and if I dont follow its orders, it means that Allah decided that I will go to inferno no matter what but when I think this over again, I realized that it is just a scare tactic that some Muslim liars used to force you to do 5 conditions of Islam(fasting,praying 5 times in a day,give alms,pilgrimage and Islamic confession of faith). I am living in an environment that they believe having sex is causing Earthquakes.
I believe in free will. There are no "external factors" having the control of your life.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please."
I take a materialist view of free will. We are free in the sense that we are not constrained by God or cosmic forces outside of our control. We are unfree in the sense that we Held back or driven in certain directions by the material conditions we live in. A blind person isn't free to become a sniper (sorry Blind_Sniper). A democrat who lives under a monarch is unlikely to be elected President. It can also be a bit more complex than that, since the material conditions you exist in can influence your ideals and vice-versa, which creates still more constraints on what we can and can't do.
People aren't necessarily slaves to their upbringing or station in life, but they are more often than they are not.
Going to play devil's advocate here - what if you doing whatever you want is also predetermined? A crude example - you can choose what you're gonna eat for breakfast, but it's already decided by the higher powers which dish it'll be, no matter what you decide for yourself.
Also, I don't believe that saying that God or some external power may be controlling us is right - obviously we are not puppets, pulled by strings, or Sims, being told what to do action after action. I believe OP's question is "do we make our own choices or are our choices being made for us without us knowing", not "do we control our lives or are our lives being controlled". I know that it's not a big difference at all, but it's still different. Y'know, predetermination instead of slavery without knowledge.
Are we human or are we dancer?
But that doesnt matter. It doesnt change the fact that still decisions has been made by someone. I have a choice to not eat it on a dish as well.
Lets dig it some more. So if I decided to eat it on a dish you are saying that its already has been decided. But what if I dont want to? So its gonna be decided as well ? I dont have to eat it in a dish. Its like a Telltale game. You have different options in life. Saying that whatever you do has been decided by a power, doesnt make sense because it is an easy way to describe the situation. I dont see any difference between predetermination and this. For me, predetermination is just a kind word that showing the situation less unlikely.
If there is a power and this power create the humanity but it creates their decisions before they born or before they realize, it means that this power has a very huge ego and doesnt let its creatures live their lives. It is still controlling them. So there is no point of having a brain because you dont have the use it since God "predetermined" your choices for you. If they have been "predetermined" doesnt make any difference as well which will lead the same consequence again.
Well, you could say that the decision has been made by you - the power simply already knew what it was going to be before you did it, just like anything else you will do in your life.
I'm not a native speaker, so it's hard for me to express this as clearly as possible, but the difference I'm trying to emphasize here is that if some power is controlling you, you're a slave with no choice whatsoever, a drone, walking through life without any ability to choose your path, you're just following someone else's created path for you.
In the case of predetermination, the higher power is not controlling your actions or choices. It knows them, but it is not a power that is making you choose - it's aware of the result of any situation you're going to be in, but it's you who's left to decide. That power is like a silent watcher with the power of omnipotence, it watches you make your choices and arrive in the destination where it knew you were going to arrive, but didn't make you arrive there. It simply knows everything that's going to happen in your life and where it will lead you and so on. It's like a compromise between a man's free will (he chooses what to do) and power's control (it knows everything, but doesn't affect you).
Comparing it to a game is a pretty good metaphor, although not perfect. In any case, imagine that you've completed the game 100%, memorized every line and action and result of them and now you're just replaying it but you let the characters choose their choices, dialogue options and so on (impossible in a game, but let's imagine that it is for a second). In this case, you're the power - a predetermination, if you will. You know everything that can and will happen, you know all the possible endings, but you sit back and watch. The characters are the people - they make their choices, unaware of where it will lead them, they talk, choose their lines and personalities, but they're not controlled by you.
Now, if you were controlling their lines, actions and choices, that'd be the first situation I mentioned (slavery). Predetermination is not slavery.
Where has this been all my life?
Ok so, is the soul real? I mean, I always thought of Brain = Thoughts, Soul = Feelings. We feel emotions in phisical ways because chemicals and shit but is it because the brain is somehow linked to the soul in a different realm of reality (not a different universe, a different level of the same universe) and it causes these chemicals, or JUST because of the chemicals? I mean is the soul real? Are feelings real? Or just an illusion? And what makes a difference between reality and an illusion? Because to the person having an illusion, the illusion is real, who says they're wrong and the rest of the world is right? Like everyone has different realities? WHat if everyone lives in different universes/realms of reality and they're just all linked? What if everyone has different realms of reality for their souls and feelings and we only live together in the Phisical Relm? Could we go through the Emotional Realm? Like go and come back, I guess that if we die, we stay in the Emotional Realm.
But I've been thinkig, what if the Soul is, just like matter, energy and radiation, impossible to destroy? Like the soul keeps going and ocuping different bodies but it gets mixed with other souls but at the end we're just a giant soup this is so confusing
I feel like your question of whether the soul is real is asking it from more of a scientifical side of things rather than philosophical, just saying
So there is a misunderstanding there since now you made your point very clear but used the wrong word. If thats what you mean by predetermination, its fine and this is making sense now. I believe in God but I dont believe in religions. I agree with you on this predetermination description here. It gives you choices but you will be the one that choose and you will lead your own path. And of course, with the power of itself, it will see where this is goes and what will be the consequences. So, what we are talking about is not slavery if the point is that one. Also, it means that free will is exist as well due to your freedom about your choices in life. Game example is a good metaphor which can exactly describe your predetermination concept.
It is nice to see threads like that. People should be free to share their opinions about life or philosophic perspectives. I will follow this thread regularly when I visit the forum.
I GUESS YOU KNOW THE ANSWER, THEN.
Will we ever come to the point where an AI's thoughts and emotions will be just as valued as that of a human's? Should the feelings of an AI be valued like our own?
Yeah, predetermination was not the most correct term to use, my apologies, but I was in too deep in my explanation to back down.
Yeah, one of my points was that free will and destiny can co-exist peacefully, without having to choose one or another.
This thread is the first philosophy thread that I've actually commented upon, I'm glad to have a proper discussion right away
You make good points! I do agree that it's a bit silly to think that a higher being is responsible for your actions (I don't really have anything against religion though.) That wasn't exactly what I meant by external factors though, but religious beliefs do play a part in it.
The external factors I was referring to is known as determinism, which to my knowledge (I'm not an expert in philosophy so don't quote me) is the belief that all choices we make are molded by the conditions surrounding them, such as events prior to the choice, the morals and values that have been internalized at that point, and our overall mood, among many other things. This would mean that every scenario where we are faced with many different choices in actuality only has one possible outcome, since our programming only allows us to make the choice that we feel benefits us most. This is the antithesis to free will, which states that in any scenario we have the capacity to make every single choice provided to us, meaning we are completely responsible for our actions.
I hope that kind of makes sense. Thank you for contributing to the thread
Whats life?
If you had sex with your clone, would that be considered incest or masturbation?
No worries. It makes sense. No problem I like these kind of discussions and appreciate that kind of topic. I will enjoy discuss this kind of things
Another good question comes up.
If we are talking about a soul that "makes you a human different and than the other exist creatures, gives you consciousness, not a physical thing and it will exist forever even after your death", there is no scientific provision since we are not talking about a thing that can be observed. So you will be out of science's reach. Sometimes people are describing this description in so many different ways and it turns out that this description can be researchable for science. This is one of the strongest enemy of science.
Assume that its not we are talking about. Soul concept has been describing in different ways. One is, a sense that is the consequence of nerual system(which actually almost same with the science's view of soul); other one is just like I described above.
In history, people used to believe that soul is not a physical thing so it cant be see and reachable. They also believed that soul is everything that makes you human. But when the time has been passed, scientific researches realized that soul description is wrong. They realized that soul is just a consequence of nervual system. Your feels, your thoughts, your senses, all of it comes from your nerual system. So it causes a "soul" that the response of all of them. But its not a thing that makes you human, animals have that as well. Its not a specific thing that only human can have.
Today, neurology is making some researchs called "ablation". These researchs helped to find paths of neural system then it discovered that all of the senses and thoughts come from very long paths in neural system. Also, ablation helps to develop even artificial intelligence today.
Neural system always ending in brain. So our "soul" is our brain and nothing else.
The description that claims that soul is a supernatural thing, is a consequence of "physcologic defend mechanism". This is described by Sigmund Freud. On old times, people didn't know the scientific facts like we did so they couldn't handle the explain what is actually going on in our body. So they decided that there is a thing inside our body that makes us ourselves.
Is the truth always so simple and dull compared to the theory?
holy shit is this a motherfucking THE KILLERS reference??
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
or narcissism?
Yes! I remember when it came out and everyone was trying to work out the deep philosophical meaning of that line.
Just read a YouTube comment that thinks it's about whether humans have free will or if our lives are choreographed. Pretty cool.
And if he or she was really bad at it, would you take it personally?
Yes!
fetishism
only homo for myself
Oh you fucking asshole I came here to type the entire speech
Nah, Fetishism is when you think an ordinary object has magical powers.
But you are able to choose a ice cream against your preferences by taking a new flavour you havan't tried. Wouldn't that be free will when you are able to actively choose against something?
Yeah that's definitely possible. A determinist would probably argue that other factors come into play when going against preference, such as flavor fatigue of the preferred ice cream or an instilled value of open mindedness, possibly among others.
Does these magical powers include making you sexually aroused?
Gaaaaaaaaaaay
(and very hot honestly)
(just kidding i'm a mess)
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Not sure if this is philosophical...but I do wonder about the fools who call people who are pro woman or equal rights SJW...when you are arguing over these and others aspects people on both sides are arguing for their own brand of social justice...whether is progressive or maintaining the status quo...you are fighting for your brand of Social Justice....therefore...if you ever argue against something...you are yourself an SJW.