Reality In Review: Part Three

Reality and Free Will…

*What? The alleged and apparent ability to freely choose / decide between two or more competing options.

*Why? It would appear to be in your best interests to be able to choose between an unfavorable option and a favorable option. If you freely choose to take a long walk off of a short pier that might not really be in your best interest vis-à-vis taking a short walk on a long pier.

*How? Therein lies the rub. There’s no known mechanism that can give you or result in your free will. Further, if you are actually a colony of organisms, each of which have no free will (i.e. – your body cells hence tissues, organs and organ systems), then “You”, the total collective of those organisms that lack free will, can’t have free will. But looking at the individual realities in turn, yields…

In Mother Nature’s reality, the laws, principles and relationships inherent in the physical sciences are deterministic. Chemistry is a physical science and chemistry is deterministic and you are just a complex sack of chemical and biochemical reactions that take place in a chemical factory.

In a supernatural (theological and theistic) scenario, well God (or god) is apparently an all-knowing deity and therefore knows what you are going to do even before you do it so you have no choice but to do it; no choice in the matter.

If you are dreaming your reality, then, by analogy, do the characters in your apparently really real reality dreams have any free will or do they dance to the tune of what your brain conjures up?

And if you are part of a computer-generated simulation your options are restricted by the programmed software which was designed by “The Outsider / The Other”. That means that you dance to their tune or whoever is controlling the simulation. You’re a puppet on a string! And if the simulation is just a “what if” simulated scenario, the programming has been determined in advance.

Reality and Memory / Knowledge…

What? Data that is stored inside of your brain.

Why? Memory / knowledge has extremely high survival value like knowing where the nearest local watering hole is and why you should be way more cautious when coming across a carnivorous beast relative to one that’s a herbivore.

How? Memory is presumably chemically encoded. That’s probably nothing too unusual. There are lots of data storage mechanisms from magnetic codes to the bumps in LP grooves to the pits in CDs / DVDs to computer software’s bits and bytes. However, unlike those physical mediums, human memory is both fallible and malleable. Nearly every human being has some false memories; memories that they believe to be real.

Reality and Sleep...

*What? Sleep first and foremost is an emergent phenomenon. You didn’t sleep upon conception as a single-celled “You” or for some time thereafter. In fact I’m not even sure you sleep while you are still in the womb (but I could be easily mistaken / wrong on that). Anyway, sleep is a state of unconsciousness. However, not the best of ideas given you are unaware of any pending danger.

*Why? You’re tired. However, in that case just why not just rest and relax instead of sleep?

*How? How are you ever asleep given that none of your body’s components (cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, etc.) sleep?

*So the question arises, when you are sleeping, exactly what part(s) of you and your body is actually sleeping? I mean when you are sleeping your heart is still beating; your blood is still circulating; your lungs (hence muscles) are still working; you toss and turn and your position when you awake isn’t the same as when you drop off to sleep so your skeleton-muscular system is functional; your digestive system is digesting; your kidneys are doing their waste removal thing; and your brain is still active regulating many of these functions and of course dreaming. So again, when you are asleep, what part of you is actually asleep?

*And by the way, is sleep analogous to death or an analogy for death? I mean when you are sleeping you have no consciousness; no self-awareness; no sense of personal identity; not even just awareness. So, does the “You” cease (briefly) to exist when you are sleeping? Further, try as you may, you cannot ever remember the transition between being awake and falling asleep. Ditto I therefore assume, no possibility of remembering your transition between being alive and being dead.