Yrsh rules!

No.

But I have free will.

(Reed, however, is offering a free willy....)

No.Environment and upbringing shapes us.We are all 'brain washed' to some extent.Whether we have the ability or not to bring about a state of Freewill is actually a more trickier question.I also believe NO in that instance as well as our will to achieve Freewill is effectively removed from a very early age.But if you are lucky enough to meet someone who is capable of unlocking it then ..perhaps,...maybe, who knows?

Peter wrote: No. But I have free will. (Reed, however, is offering a free willy....)

Peter, a quote from a film whose title escapes me:

"If it is big and heavy it must be expensive"

so I wont be offering free anything!

actually, now I think about it it was Jurassic Park, quite apt for an old Dinosaur like you!

richardh wrote: No.Environment and upbringing shapes us.We are all 'brain washed' to some extent.Whether we have the ability or not to bring about a state of Freewill is actually a more trickier question.I also believe NO in that instance as well as our will to achieve Freewill is effectively removed from a very early age.But if you are lucky enough to meet someone who is capable of unlocking it then ..perhaps,...maybe, who knows?

Very true. We are all the product of our impulses and impressions as we mature and they shape us in subconscious ways most of us are not even aware of,and then there's the genetic codes we cannot shake off. So we have freewill but only to a certain point and only in certain circumstances.

No matter how free willy get's he's never really free.

We have the capacity to make decisions, so there is freewill. Even a choice made at gunpoint has an alternative...even if the 'gun' is a few decades of personal history, thousands of years of cultural development, and/or hundreds of thousands of years of biological development. As long as there is the capacity for conscious thought, there is freewill.

Things can never be other than they are, so the choice you make is the only choice (unless you believe in parallel universes, but let's keep it simple for now). So there is no freewill, because we have always made the same specific decisions, just as we will continue to always make the same specific decisions in the future. It has nothing to do with personal choice- there's only one way that things can happen, despite all of our illusions and confusions. Freewill assumes that there is the possibility of choice, whereas there is only ever one outcome to any seeming dilemma.

I didn't vote because there's no "other" answer.

James Lee wrote: We have the capacity to make decisions, so there is freewill. Even a choice made at gunpoint has an alternative...even if the 'gun' is a few decades of personal history, thousands of years of cultural development, and/or hundreds of thousands of years of biological development. As long as there is the capacity for conscious thought, there is freewill. Things can never be other than they are, so the choice you make is the only choice (unless you believe in parallel universes, but let's keep it simple for now). So there is no freewill, because we have always made the same specific decisions, just as we will continue to always make the same specific decisions in the future. It has nothing to do with personal choice- there's only one way that things can happen, despite all of our illusions and confusions. Freewill assumes that there is the possibility of choice, whereas there is only ever one outcome to any seeming dilemma. I didn't vote because there's no "other" answer.

I used to be indecisive, but.....................

i believe we do have free will. though, we cannot do what we feel like (we are not "free") but many have the will to be free. to quote Marx;

"[People] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living."

or

to quote Gandalf and Frodo

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.  “So do I,” said Gandalf, “ and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All that we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 

i good book to read, imho, is the german ideology

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01.htm - http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideol ogy/ch01.htm

Yessiree!  But i guess I still bend over for the big guy, I STILL ATTEND HIGHSCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!

I'm gonna drop out 

My attorney gave me a free will but I had to pay for the testament though when he found out I posted here.  He said I could not be in sound mind to frequent places like this.

.

Wizard/TRueStar wrote: Yessiree!  But i guess I still bend over for the big guy, I STILL ATTEND HIGHSCHOOL!!!!!!!!!! I'm gonna drop out

See you in the upgrading class!

Seriously Wiz, if you're serious, DON'T DO IT!

Believe me (and I have lots of experience with this) you'll regret it.

Now, more than ever, no HS diploma = no future.

High school doesn't last long, but your future lasts the rest of your life.

As far as I know, you only get one life -- why not do something worthwhile with it?

Free will is an illusion....