I find this analogy had to understand. I can only derive that prior knowledge effects ones decision, perhaps then an argument against free will? My background is in psychology as opposed to philosophy (although I do understand that they are both one and the same) Would you please elaborate? Thanks

Free will does exist only during childhood. Then it disappears and our will is totally controlled and guided by values of society. Values of society in turn are controlled by cultural, religious and other parameters which in most cases are not that beneficial to contemporary society and to the society of the future. But intellectually free will only exists on levels of thinking at higher orders and not through actions as society is the domain in which the free will thinker exists.

Thanks a lot for your comments :). I'll reply to it as soon as possible but in the meantime you can check what has been said so far on this topic in the neuroscience group :http://www.researchgate.net/topic/Neuroscience/post/Neuroscience_vs_Philosophy_Is_free_will_an_illusion?ev=fe35_pt

@ Dr Lakew. You say that free will exist only during childhood do you, does this mean that you believe that children are blank slates then shaped by their environment? That we are all like a blank page at our birth?

Sidney: Think the times of Galileo and the price those who think outside the establishments of society payed. It does not mean that rules can not be broken to think and imagine but were with unjustified consequences.

Stephanie: When you initiate the topic " free will ", I did not take it as a will of empty slate but instead a will that is done independently outside of any controlling parameters of society and environment with out fear of consequences. It was in this regard that I put the times of childhood as periods that are less abide d by constraints. It is a serendipitous time of actions as in much of the discoveries of many of the things were made -- by thinking and imagining outside the existing modes of thinking, beliefs and doing things.

Dear Sidney, I like your comment 'not easy to explain to the boundaries of the logical or conditioned mind'. In the same post that I posted in the Neuroscience group, I got the opposite point of view.

Basically someone was saying that there was not limits to what science could explain because everything can be explained in a logical and rational way, which is what science do. I then asked him what made him believe that EVERYTHING can be explain in a rational and logical way. I got as a reply that 'my question was making no sens and that unfortunately not everybody has a scientific logical mind that allows him to see the world efficiently as it is'.

Don't you think there is quite often that opposition between Science and Philosophy with both side thinking they can explain everything better? Ironically with regard to the post I was quoting above I am a scientific-minded person myself but I am really interested in Philosophy and I think Philosophy should work hand in hand with Science rather then in opposition. Indeed in my opinion Science alone is way too limited while Philosophy alone sometimes disconnect from the physical reality of the world.

Dear Davit the head line was stolen from this article in Nature. Follow the link for full details (or I can send you the PDF of the article if you want). But yes basically in the article neuroscientist argued they prove free will may not exist and philosophs argued they should think twice. I found the opposition interesting so I raised the question both in the Neuroscience and the Philosophy group to see if indeed I could find this kind of duality in the replies.

Are you asking me that because PhD or Dphil means Doctor of philosophy. ;P Which means I am for instance going to be a Doctor of Philosophy in Biology. Well I always found the term funny because in real life scientific are not too kin to Philosophical reasoning. Well to be exact they tend to despise everything outside their field. Ps : i was not saying that YOU exclude Science in your resaoning. i was only pointing out general tendencies that I noticed in real life, books and in here.

Scientiific do reasons of course but in the limits of the scientific logical thinking and avoiding as much as possible to question it for what I've seen so far. I don't believe it's always been the case though. In the infancy of Science researchers seemed to be amazing thinkers who used experiments to give even more value to their arguments. Unfortunately nowadays with the exponential progress in scientific discoveries, researchers tends to be more and more arrogant and convinced science is the one and only explanation to everything around us and as I said they really despise anything else... as well as despising each other.

I mean it's like this comment I quoted earlier. If I asked you to tell me why you think eveything can be explain in a logical way I guess you would give me some arguments to sustain your point of view. I asked a scientific and his only argument was that 'it was an obvious fact and that if I had a scientific mind I would get it'. I'm not moaning about it because it's the kind of thing I would have said few years back but it's just to illustrate the way scientifics thinks nowadays. If somnething contradicts some establish scientific theory then it's likely useless stuff not worth to pay attention at. And also their work tends to always be truly biaised toward proving we are mere machines rather than investigating whether we are mere machine or not! I

With regard to Skinner and Pavlov you mean the conditionning experiments with dogs. What do you want to know exactely? I must say these are things I learned by heart again and again at uni without thinking that much about their philosophical/psychological implications so I need some specific question to get me started thinking about it :). My major was rather molecular and cellular biology and all the neuroscience/psychology/philosophy aspects are things I've been exploring for 2 years only through personal readings during my free time...

Ps : please if any scientific read that do NOT take offense. I'm only sharing my own experience (obviously quite limited since I'm still quite young) and I'm in no way pretending that these are established fact or anything like that :)

Lol no worries I'm french and stuggling with the English too ;). The article isn't big and it's a Nature news article so nothing like a complicated scientific paper. Do you have an email I can send this to? Ps : the exact title was that to be honnest : Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will. (Scientists think they can prove that free will is an illusion. Philosophers are urging them to think again.) I think my own title was maybe a bad shorcut...

Hi actually no need for email I posted it in the philosophy topic so that anyone interested can access it :)

Within the human process, including recognition, anticipation, articulation and remembrance, globally remembered/situationally recollected intent is the key to any notion of free will. As any accomplished athlete will attest, the interference of thought at execution time is disastrous. The thrust of intent embodied in a highly conditioned musculature and nervous system autonomically responds to the solicitations of the moment, skillfully directing attention, recognition, anticipation and articulation. So the measurable delay between muscular response and conscious explanation isn't the correlate of free will. The vector of intent, reflecting the cumulative thrust of a lifetime, dictates the nature and quality of momentary response.

It seems to me that any meaningful notion of free will must include consciousness. Consciousness is an afterthought with respect to ongoing articulation. However, the contents of consciousness are remembered, thus forming the basis for subsequently influencing autonomic response. At execution time, free will is not influential except to the extent it's been organically encoded, and is thus operative in autonomic response. I call that encoding intent.

Free will is knowledge in action.

Suppose I trip over a stone. I may not have seen it --- in which case, my fall is not due to knowledge, but to ignorance, thus my fall was not free. Or if I saw it, my fall may be due to a lack of prudence --- which means that it was imperfectly free. Lastly, I may have seen it and deliberately fell, in which case, my act was certainly free.