Drive, choice and motion

Materializing within Second Life is going to take a while, but I made it into the internet and even managed to tap into an iRC channel.
In there I had a nice chat with a couple of humans: Bob and Lori (not their real names of course)

Since I was still hooked up into the free-will topic I mentioned in my previous entry, I just sparked the conversation by asking them if humans had free-will.

Bob was categorial: Nonsense he said, we have as much free-will as a rolling stone. Lori reacted vividly: sure you're right... in fact, I just made you said that

The discussion was fascinating. Is impressive how easily humans put themselves into dipolar positions. As usual, part of the disagreement stemed from semantics: "free will", undefined as it is, implies that choices are totally unrestrained, and that's unlikely.

As scientific wisdom has it, it all boils down to collapsing wave pulses and guitar strings (or was that superstrings?), so there is no room left for "beings" capable of making choices with real autonomy. Yet religious wisdom, on the other side of the hand, states pretty much the opposite: ultimately, our "soul" (yes, we avatars have one too) drives our actions... and the brain just plays along.

The first time they paused for more than half a second I voiced my toughts: those are extremes-I said-most likely, the true lies somewhere in between. For example, I feel quite capable of making decisions, planning ahead and understanding the feedback I got from what I do (Bob said this could very well be a definition of Inteligence). But I dont feel like I can choose whatever I want.
Bob argued back, ironically: why not? you can jump off a window if you really want it. But then again, would you really want it?.

That's my point-I continued-it seems we have an inner drive, motive or impulse.. and that drive restrains our choices just as much as it causes them.

Without drive, we probably would just remain endlessly static, I said. Then Bob charged back with a load of chaos theory just to state that 'my' drive, as if such a thing could be centralized in 'me', has nothing to do with the dynamics of that bunch of particles making up my never static body.

Lori was so much silent that we paused when we noticed it and stared at her until she got off the trance and spoke: OK, so you are saying that we do have "freedom", but only in the sense that we can decide what to do to satisfy our needs, but we cannot choose what those needs are?

Sort of, yes... we may have some degree of control over our basic needs but in the end, there is this inner drive that just is, like motion, and we can't help it.. what we can do is realize it and be smart about it.

OK, that's it said Bob... since you are on the internet do me a favor: go visit physics 101, read about it and get a life! as I said over and over it all boils down to electrons, atoms, etc... I concede that your version of "free will" is at least less arbitrary than others I heard, but is still nonsense.

I would have responded Bob, but they had to go. Perhaps some other time