…or do their respective social groups operate at a level of consciousness much higher (and undetectable) to that of the individual - and thus feed them their cherished beliefs?

In other words, do human minds receive brain frequencies from the their respective collective…i.e, political party/religion/country/dietary websites (vegetarian/vegan/other brainwashed morons) and interpret them as their own ‘conscious thought’?

I think so.

Ok, I mean are political parties/religions/countries/dietary websites individual living entities in their own right?

I think so.

Other entities I believe to be "alive":

- ideas
- ideals
- economies
- industries
- vehicles
- businesses
- religions
- many more

Humans interact.

That produces some results in itself. Do humans think for themselves? Yes they do. A non-thinking swarm can operate quite sophisticated, but nothing near the level of human groups.

You should flip the question to gain proper insight:

What would you be without other humans?

hmmmm, .. I always thought "alive" included grey jagged rocks and clouds with two humps. wha happened?

my answer to the OP is no

but that is because i don't believe in free will

"How come you're lazy, unemployed, sit on the computer all day, no friends, no money, no car, no girlfriend, watch TV, fat, smoke weed all day?"

"Well it's not my fault, I don't have free will"

If only there was such a thing as 'facts' that we could attribute one side or the other of this question to...

Luckyme raises a good point. What don't you consider to be alive, Laprub?

Free will might not exist for real, but then it certainly can be a usefull illusion.

Plus we want to keep locking up the bad guys. Telling murderers it was not their fault, because the cause was predetermined in age-old stardust, removes their duty of a choice between right or wrong.

Viewing ideas as being "alive" entities is not cooky or weird from both a realist and a idealist standpoint.
Realists like calling them memes, some psychologists might call them archetypes, and for idealists since Plato, true ideas really did existed in an abstract place, and personal representations of them were ever evolving.

Realists, psychologists and idealists alike view ideas and buisinesses as entities influenced by culture sometimes, possessing features very similar to biological life.

Also worth noting is that those "living entities" nowadays often consist of smaller ideas and humans. In a more and more complex and intertwined culture and environment each agent/idea on its own tries to acts rational, but the behaviour of the whole system (for example the administration of a university) shows irrational acts and counterproductiveness.

Eventhough the smaller parts all do their utmost best, the resulting business or idea do not act as the economic thinking man, with a defined searchspace.
Instead it will flow on and on like water, making every mistake possible and mostly ignoring the single droplet with a good solution.

my school of thought is that freewill is in fact just crazy super complicated causality.

What would the egg be without the chicken that laid it? What would the effect be without the cause that caused it? Nonsensical question.

Yes, obviously I was asking what you would be if you suddenly popped into existence without a mother or father.

I know what you think you meant, but when you analyze it it becomes clear that your question is pretty much the same as mine.

Not really. Some children have more or less been raised by animals, and it's hypothetically possible that everyone other than you could die in an instant, leaving you completely alone.

In both cases, I think that what we consider to be identifying elements of a "human being," especially where thought is concerned, are dependent upon a social context.

Yea, it's pretty obvious that humans think for themselves. Thinking takes place in the brain - One brain per person. But, things like language and culture illustrate that we don't entirely decide "for ourselves" .

Burlap, check out these experiments. I think they go along with the thought you were having. (that's right, the thought YOU were having. lol)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psych...onformity.html

How can we ever know whether or not we have free will?

Nielsio calls this the argument from apocalypse.

Point is it doesn't matter much because that's not happening here.

Yeah, I think morality would probably go off the board if you were on a deserted island for long enough. There could be exceptions of course.

But humans do think for themselves. They'll make up an imaginary friend/god if they need to talk to someone in order to think, but they'll do it.

Of course most of what they're able to think has been taught to them by other humans and I don't know if this is what the OP is talking about, culture vs instinct...

We already know the answer to this question...

We're talking about whether humans can think for themselves. If they can, then it should be possible for a 100% isolated human to think coherently.

Then how are they "thinking for themselves?"

There have been humans who were isolated alone. Is somebody suggesting that they were incapable of thinking?

Incapable of thinking coherent, meaningful thoughts.

Why would you think that? Do you lose the ability to think coherently when you're alone? Diaries of those totally isolated don't seem to suggest that people isolated for other humans are incapable of thinking coherently. I suppose you (or someone else) will argue this wasn't long enough or isolated enough. So how long do you have to be alone for this process to be fully completed?

I have been exposed to other people. My thoughts are based on that exposure. It doesn't matter if I'm alone, as I've already learned to think. I would definitely go nuts if I were isolated for a long period of time, but I wouldn't lose the ability to think that I've gained from prior social interactions.

I'm saying people who grow up with no human contact probably lack the ability to form coherent thoughts.

The point of my question was to point out that interaction in some form or another is probably the most important aspect of what we think of as human beings.

Maybe the question is flawed in some way, I don't think it really matters much though, if we weren't social creatures I don't think we would be asking a lot of questions.

I suspect you have zero experience with what you're talking about.