The First Thought

Playboy

After seeing Eoin's post I thought I would share some of my own philosophical musings.

When do we have our first thought? Is it brain activity in the womb? If so do we all have the same first thought or is each first thought unique?

The reason I ask this is because I believe that each thought is what causes the next thought depending on enviromental cues. If our thoughts are controlled by either what the preceding thought was (preceding thoughts acting as cues for future thoughts) or what environmental stimuli we interact with then in what way are we in control of our thoughts? If we are not in control of our first thought or our environment then how can there be free will since thought shapes our actions.

I cant seem to find a way out of this dead end and am coming to the conclusion that there is no free will and that our perception of control is an illusion?

18AD

If you mean 'internal dialogue' by thought then I'd say some stage in the early years(between 1 and 5).

At the very early stages I'd say we're acting more on instinct. I don't know if I'd classify this as thought as it's more of a survival mechanism.
So I'd say that, no, nobody has the same first thought.

I see how environmental cues trigger a response or thought, but I fail to see how this controls the thought. Of course the thought will be related to the cue but that doesn't mean it's predetermined.

Free will may or may not exist and since we can't (as of yet ) go back in time to change our actions we are stuck on this single unchangable timeline which makes it quite hard to tell if it's real or not.

Playboy

18AD wrote:

I see how environmental cues trigger a response or thought, but I fail to see how this controls the thought. Of course the thought will be related to the cue but that doesn't mean it's predetermined.

Our thoughts are imo shaped by two things ... the preceding thought or experience and external stimulus. The way we react to future external experience is shaped by previous experince/instinct. If the basis for our thinking and action is past experience and thought then how can we have free thinking?

What I am trying to say and probably not being clear about is that i see thought/thinking as a chain reaction. We cant control our first thought and if the next thought is influenced by the previous thought or an external environmental stimulus then how can we at any stage think freely. We dont control how thoughts appear in our minds and if thoughts shape action then surely there cant be any free will. People can behave in a unique and individual way but their thinking and action is not free in the sense that we cannot exercise any control over it.

Ghost Rider

I think I see where you're coming from: "If thought is nothing more than brain activity, and brain activity is governed by the laws of physics, then thoughts are determined in the same way as physical objects are generally. Therefore, there is no free will."

Is this what you're saying? If so, there are a couple of ways into the argument which may still permit some notion of free will. First, it is not clear what the laws of physics are in their entirety. (There is no unified field theory.) Therefore, the hypothesis that the physical world is deterministic remains just that - a hypothesis. In other words, it is possible that there are non-determinable outcomes to certain categories of physical situations. It could be that brain activity is one of these, in which case "free will" seems like a reasonable term, in so far as free means "undetermined" (to use Kant's terminology).

Second, and on the other hand, it may well be that brain activity (ie thought) is in fact deterministic and that it does accord with intelligible physical laws. However, even given a complete description of a particular brain "state" and a complete description of environmental factors at play, it may never be possible to predict the future state of that brain. In other words, there might well be some kind of uncertainty principle at work in the physics of the brain, so to speak, which accounts for our feeling of free will (although this is undoubtedly a weaker sense of the term "free").

Thirdly, it's possible that some kind of spiritual presence directs the brain - a "ghost in the machine" if you will. If you're going to postulate that, then the notion of that spiritual presence being undetermined (or free) is no less absurd than the postulation of the spiritual presence itself.

Playboy wrote:

Our thoughts are imo shaped by two things ... the preceding thought or experience and external stimulus. The way we react to future external experience is shaped by previous experince/instinct. If the basis for our thinking and action is past experience and thought then how can we have free thinking?

What I am trying to say and probably not being clear about is that i see thought/thinking as a chain reaction. We cant control our first thought and if the next thought is influenced by the previous thought or an external environmental stimulus then how can we at any stage think freely. We dont control how thoughts appear in our minds and if thoughts shape action then surely there cant be any free will. People can behave in a unique and individual way but their thinking and action is not free in the sense that we cannot exercise any control over it.

DadaKopf

Take a look at Davidson, philosopher of action/agency. I've only started reading up on him, but it's an interesting perspective.

I think it depends on perspective, too. If you're looking at the universe and causality, it can look like there's no free will. Looking at human experience, it seems like we do have free will, though experientally, this is ambiguous from everyday experience.

Recently, I've been thinking about the upcoming elections. How much of the politicing and party alliance-making inevitable given the contours of public political attitudes, and the state of society and economy today? Of course, a multitude of actions may be taken, but which one seems the most efficacious in respect of particular objectives.

I think most decisions arise from and enter into uncontrollable uncertainty.

I prefer to look at things from a human point of view.

FromFarEast

Is there any problem if there is no free will?

According to "The Feynman LECTUERS ON PHYSICS", the same experiment doesn't always produce the same result.
So if we define free will as what doesn't conform to so-called the laws of physics, there may or may not be room for existence of free will.
But, it makes no difference to us whether or not we consider that there is free will.

Even if we can't find out free will in this world, we can think or act, and that's all.