I’m as sure the answer is no, as I’m sure you see the comment as frivolous.
Are you a science fiction fan?
Because I wonder what type of science fiction will be written when atheism is found to be as impossible as an infinite number of planets in space.
What is not impossible, is looking at images of the cosmic web, and wondering whether it is part of a larger structure or the very beginning of a new life form.
For me it has done well with philosophy questions. It didn’t do well with this size comparison question:
If a galaxy node in the cosmic web is equivalent in size to an atomic particle, what size would the earth be?
Thinking back, this may be where we got our lines crossed.
I was not nor do I think consciousness is caused by “ionizing radiation hitting the brain.”
What I am saying is that it is possible in your words, that quantum events are affecting the subconscious and causing you to act and you are fooled into thinking you acted, when you didn’t.
I would suggest focusing more on the evidence instead of what people believe.
Your definitions of acted are highly overloaded. You are essentially forcing your preferred conclusion onto your definitions.
Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought me saying you and I can snap our fingers is overloaded
When you say it, it is. You add the qualification of non-determinism to the snap. If it turned out that the decision to snap your fingers was entirely deterministic then you would claim you didn’t snap your fingers.
Sure, in black and white cases where a scientist is sticking a needle in my brain, I am not snapping my fingers.
Of course we’re not responsible for our actions… until someone maliciously keys my car with a long scratch – then they sure are.
If it looked like “my” car (if it still works when I move out, it is intended to be), then keying wouldn’t be very obvious (“oh, another hole in the paint, we should get around to dealing with it some time this year, along with all the others”).
I have a thirty-year-old truck like that too – you can’t tell where the paint ends and the rust begins.
By the way, I add the qualification of self-determined to the snap when I cause it.
Now it may be when a scientist probes the brain of a person who is unaware of the scientist, a person may be fooled into thinking they snapped their fingers when they didn’t.
Yet it is also true that we may be aware of actions our body performs that we did not consciously intend. As can be observed with certain patterns of speech and thought or bodily gestures.
As with an emergent phenomenon, that is in a state of becoming, there can be some real practical concerns with determining whether the phenomenon is or is not.
What we are asking is if the decision to snap your fingers is deterministic or not. We aren’t asking if fingers were actually snapped.
You are making the assumption that if someone snapped their fingers it automatically means it was a non-deterministic decision.
We are asking if a person snapped their fingers, whether it was consciously determined.
Or another way to state the question: Is it possible to consciously act?
Then the answer to that is no. It is determined subconsciously as demonstrated by multiple scientific studies.
14 participants, and at best the decision was recorded 1 second prior to the participant registered that they made the decision.
Do you have the full data set?
These experiments have been disputed:
Some people may be more intentional to act when compared to other people. It also requires real determination to come up with a random series numbers of any considerable length. And in the process of choosing the numbers, there is a noticable sense when your attention begins to lapse.
What a poorly written article. The AI behind that piece needs to get an update:
“were able to predict basic choices participants made 11 seconds before they consciously declared their decisions”
Consciously declared??
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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