I think we get brainwashed by everything around us, in windows on the side of bus’s and stuff subconsciously maybe you thought it was your own decision to get a greggs for lunch but didn’t realize that your mind had been thinking about it ever since clocking a big sign on the side of a bus stop..
is my reply anything to do with what you’re asking about?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FofDChlSILU#t=76m32s

skip to 1:16:32

76m32s

@Mezz 526872 wrote:

Exactly, our genes determine our potential, and our environment, everything from upbringing, education, indoctrination, media influence, interaction with those in our family & society determine the choices we make……………. we’re basically biological machines and with knowledge of all the variables and a complex enough computer model you could literally see your own future

This ethos is good and carries a shit load of evidence.
Iv also found that when societies accept how influences effect behaviour they generally tackle problems better. Instead of believing evil to be a metaphysical power over us they look at how and what causes people to do evil things.

Still like I said on a simular thread I think people are born with individualism that can be completly seperate from influence. (soul)
I dunno. I like to stick to science when and where ever possible as it generally solves more problems!

(appologies for rambles and grammar)

@Izbeckistan 526900 wrote:

I think people are born with individualism that can be completly seperate from influence. (soul)
I dunno. I like to stick to science when and where ever possible as it generally solves more problems!

If you think of our individualism as a set of hand painted paintings of the same thing by the same artist. Now I don’t mean that someone created us, just that even though we as humans are essentially the same (same species), the differences are down to randomization of outside events. Not like influences of other people as such (although even in the fetus stages we are still susceptible to outside influences from other people), it’s these relatively random factors that shape our physical make up, which in turn factors how we are composed, just like an artist’s mood might change the colour tone of one of his renditions of the painting he’s done so many times.

I could of explained that a bit better, but basically what I’m trying to get at is our physical make up effects our ability to do certain things. We can change this somewhat, but we are not all exact physical copies of each other, therefor the physical make up of our brains are different, giving us individuality from the offset. We can mold, morph and change our personalities, but within the structure of our individually built brains.

@DaftFader 526941 wrote:

Na I don’t believe it’s real…

…was a really good tear-jurker of a film though. 😛

LOL! Free Hat…

Consciousness, whatever it actually is, would seem to be an epiphenomenon. Which to me implies that however much it feels like we’re in charge of ourselves, we aren’t really.

I’ve just decided to go buy a couple of bottles of wine, because why the fuck not? This day is already promising to be utterly horrid, so the benefit of numbing myself to it seems to me to outweigh how much worse alcohol will make it.

Point is: it’s a decision I feel I’ve made.

But is it really? Assuming consciousness is an epiphenomenon, I arguably had no choice but to ask myself whether I’d go buy a couple of bottles of wine, and my decision – while not at all random – was just the one out of a number of possible end states for the processing involved, that turned out to happen. And it’s not at all impossible (though not likely) the end state came about because causality got violated like a 15 year old street kid in a gay bar at some point in the processing.

So… I’m inclined to believe free will is whatever consciousness does to us to make us appear to act comprehensibly to ourselves, because our frame of reference is so alien to the one our decision-making happens in that our conceptions of it are entirely hypothetical to the extent that just understanding our half-arsed hypotheses requires a PhD in mathematics. Or if you prefer: free will every bit as much an illusion as strong determinism & predestination.