Post: #26

C'mon guys. 25 comments and no one quoted from this song yet? Rush is always the first thing that comes to mind anytime anyone brings up "free will."

Maybe the music of my generation really is receding into the past. Whatever the case:

"There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance

A planet of play things
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
'The stars aren't aligned
Or the gods are malign...'
Blame is better to give than receive

[Chorus:]
You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill

Post: #27

Can animals self-train themselves to go against their instinct though? As far as I can see they can only do so when trained to do so by a human being.

Look at this forum and there's plenty of stories of guys altering themselves and changing habits they've been locked into for most of their life. No animal can do the same.

Post: #28

(06-01-2016 11:04 PM)Wutang Wrote:  Can animals self-train themselves to go against their instinct though? As far as I can see they can only do so when trained to do so by a human being.

Look at this forum and there's plenty of stories of guys altering themselves and changing habits they've been locked into for most of their life. No animal can do the same.

Free will definitely veers into philosophical territory, so there's likely no way to prove or disprove it using purely empirical studies. Whether not it exists in humans but not animals, or whether it exists at all, etc

I think most philosophical arguments argue that it does exist. Possibly even in animals (e.x. in ant colonies the female worker ants self sacrifice their reproductive rights to the one ant who becomes the queen; I've heard that if worker ants procreate without the queen's permission they can also be killed by the ant "tribe").