How can you make free choices if your brain is a machine?

Question

Every peice of the machine is 'physically connected' so that it requires one peice to "hit" another peice to move it. (Every cause has an effect or vice versa.) Where or how does physics stop and the seemingly immaterial begin?

Electricity is also a physical part of this machine and can't be used as an excuse.

ok kat46...it's like a machine as much as our heart, muscles and lungs act in accordance with physical principals to carry out certain feats.

Answer 1

Often humans try to conceptualize themselves as free-willed, emotion feeling people as a means of separating themselves from the mundane reality of life. As a means to survival all animals must fend for themselves, and therefore value their own life since it is the only purpose to which they seemingly exist. Therefore we feel the need to make ourselves feel important and different to the logical and systematic world in order to follow that same systematic need for survival. So in truth we fool ourselves into believing we are characterized differently from that we label as a machine or program in order to better our own survival as we need the perceptions of such emotions and such to understand others on a personal level since today's world has developed into such a social society. If i were to summarize:

I say to you;
You are a machine, everything around you is a machine, you are composed of the same materials as those around you, you are only different by the fact you are composed of different molecules and yet when you die, you will not posses a single atom or molecule that you originally possessed when you were born. Once you die another machine will replace you and the world will continue without you with your atoms being used in another machine.

Being told that...would you value your own life as much and being told that your entire life being made to believe you are simply a go-between of atoms, would you have the same level of self-worth and desire to survive?

We simply perceive ourselves as different in order to survive, because if we didn't survive, we would not perceive and we are prolonging that cluster of thoughts and memories...all electro-chemical signals.

Answer 2

Funny you should use the term machine. Have you ever heard the concept the "ghost in the machine?"

This term was used by one philosopher in fact to criticize the notion that there is a mind-body duality. There is no ghost in the machine. The machine is the ghost!

So there is no point where physics stop and the immaterial begin! It is the physical brain doing the thinking. And when it is drunk, drowsy, happy, sad, depressed, dizzy or completely together, it would have different abilities to think.

So your other question would probably be, can this machine make free choices? My answer would be yes. But I must confess that I would find it difficult to support my answer. It is not given to us to be able to see ourselves and examine ourselves with objectivity. I only experience my consciousness, not as an object, but as being conscious of other objects. I am the one who is deciding how to answer this question.

The only answer I can give is freud's. That man, in order to be free from his sub-conscious self, must understand his unconscious self. We must understand our biases, and prejudices. We must be willing to question our own beliefs.

I would add finally, that by trying to answer your question, I begin to see Socrates' statement "the unexamined life is not worth living" under new light.

Answer 3

If you have preprogrammed your brain with prejudices, preconceived notions, likes , dislikes ... your brain is a machine. You have surrendered your freewill.

But if you have an open , thinking mind your brain is not a machine at all. Try stopping the Brain machine and you will know it is totally out of your control.

But what is the free choice or free will , that we are referring to, all the time freely? What is it? Unlike a machine that can be started and stopped by any , your brain can respond only to you and your thoughts.

Answer 4

So... can't you imagine who manages the machine? There is still someone who's regulating the motion of the machine... And do you think that God is the one managing the "brain" you call a machine... and as far as I know, God is not a dictator... That even he' s controlling the motion of the machine to be in good condition, he also gives the machine a free will whether to loose track or to follow a good direction...

Answer 5

Even if the brain is purely determined by physical laws, it does not follow that the qualitative "product" of consciousness is also. The supervenience relation, which is weaker than identity, shows us how the mental requires the physical, but does not reduce to it. There are multiple physical pathways for any mental event. There need not be any laws between the two levels of description.

Answer 6

Your absolutely right, every thought we think comes from the databases of experiences that we have organized into our heads... .Choice plays a part only in choosing to act according to those thoughts, or others, or feelings.... So where is freedom? Perhaps freedom is being able to choose between conflicting thoughts? Perhaps freedom is the peace that comes from following the pattern of organized thoughts in our heads, or perhaps,,, freedom,,, really doesn't exist at all. Who's to say? .... To answer that question,, wouldn't we have to fall back on those categories of experience once more?

Answer 7

It is a machine, but this machine has consciousness.

We are the consciousness of our brain and thus direct it. It has an abstract 'energy' element to it ( the MIND ) that directs it, as one might control a machine's actions.

This is what robots and such lack; consciousness.

I do not know how it is bestowed upon us, but I have my theories.

Answer 8

Things are not deterministic on the quantum level. So, on the electrical level, I'm not so sure you are correct. On the quantum / electrical level, things act out according to a probability distribution - they are not necessarily causal.

Answer 9

The brain may be a machine, but the mind is not.

Answer 10

machines aren't made of flesh Mr. Brainy