[Layke1123]

How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes? Information flow is a two way street if it can happen in one direction as far as I am aware. What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.

[pdonis]

> How can you claim things that happen inside the human brain have causal influences on things outside the brain and yet at the same time ignore the causal influences the outside world has on the internal brain processes?

I have done no such thing. Obviously the causal influences go both ways.

> What you seem to not grasp is the idea that external events can influence your behavior.

What you seem not to grasp is that one of the key roles that causal processes inside a person's brain play is to control how external events influence the person's behavior. The brain is not just a big switchboard where input A always leads to output B. Of course, vastly oversimplifying what actually happens in people's brains in order to avoid having to question one's theoretical model is a common mistake, going back at least to B. F. Skinner.

[Rury]

Ponder this.

Can you ever willfully choose option C, if you never knew or had anything lead you to think that option C was even an option?

Or better yet, can you willfully imagine a new color that's not in any way related to the colors or any combination of colors you've already seen before? Or further, not related to ANY CONCEPT you're already aware of?

You can't. But if you could, how would you ever describe it to someone? After all, if you describe this new color using other ideas you're already acquainted with, then it is thus in some way related to those very ideas used to describe it...

This shows that, any "new" ideas you imagine, are nothing but a combination of ideas you're already familiar with. Otherwise, to become familiar with ideas that are not in any way related to what you're already familiar with, can ONLY come from your senses. Hence, all concepts/thoughts/ideas you ever have ultimately stem from your senses (seeing, hearing, etc).

Since all ideas ultimately originate from our senses, then the thoughts we have and decisions we make are ultimately subject to the stimuli inputted to us. Thus we are as mechanical as anything else in this world. Fundamentally no different than a rock in how it operates on the physical stimuli inputted on it. Granted we are much more complex than a rock and hence have much more complex responses to our stimuli, but nonetheless just as deterministic.

The brain may attempt to control what's external to it, but the way it does so has been programmed from the stimuli inputted on it (from DNA instructions, to nutrition, to physical stimuli).

[pdonis]

> Ponder this.

Everything you're saying is old hat to anyone as familiar with the literature on free will and cognitive science as I am.

Nothing you are saying is in any way inconsistent with the view of free will I have been defending.

[Layke1123]

Yes it is, because you are defining free will to be the illusion of choice, and that is not the common understanding of what free will means. You are intentionally misleading people who will read your comments about "free will" as a justification to continue believing free will actually exists.

[pdonis]

I've responded to these invalid claims elsewhere. We simply disagree on these points, and I see no point in continuing to argue about them.

[Layke1123]

What is invalid about them? You claim free will exists. Yet if you admit "free will" is simply believing you have a choice when the underlying reality is that you don't actually have a choice, only the illusion of it, you are intentionally not admitting the truth which is your definition of free will is a LIE!

[Layke1123]

External events are the only meaningful thing you can experience. Your whole internal world is built entirely around what you experience externally. It's why you don't wall around talking about dead people waking amongst us without having psychologists commit you to intuitions.