Ucc.,
If I take you correctly, this is an appeal to general skepticism. Is there any special reason a person could not say the above about Determinism?
I don’t take this to be skepticism at all, but rather an attempt to understand the person as an expression of larger things. I have no interest in undermining “knowledge†of any kind, but only of placing knowledge with the context of its power to do.
My belief in Free Will, then, is surely not the only example of this, this is better applied as a reason why we can’t know anything at all.
The question isn’t if we ultimately know something, its what does our “knowing†do? The “knowing†of freewill includes the unknowing of some of our determining factors, and therefore it has a built-in occlusion. The “knowing†of freewill does allow you to operate as a determined factor of a cultural ideation, expressing that historical – and one may even say, spiritual – vector, but there are other kinds of “knowingâ€, in other words, other kinds of “doingâ€, perhaps even more conducive to happiness.
such that the essence of ‘choosing’ is always there, even if in ways that are hard to recognize.
Not only is hard to recognize in “lower†life forms, it is hard to definitionally delineate in our own. The reason for this is, in my opinion, that it is a fiction, an artful and many times useful fiction, but a fiction nonetheless. Understood as a fiction, it then can be put along side other fictions, and compared, beyond its structuring of experience.
Well, the determinist requires one answer, and the free will believer requires the other, so it seems we’re both over the same barrel if this question is truly unanswerable.
But the determinist refers to the facts of the matter. What has happened, did happen. Freewill requires the hypothesis that if you had a desire to do something opposite of what you did do, you had the power to act on that desire, a fiction based on nothing whatsoever, other than the desire to feel free, even if you aren’t.
I may ask ‘What causes an apple’, then we could go into the birds and the bees, I suppose.
Open up a biology book, study evolutionary theory and you’ll have a nice set of causes and effects.
To say that factors A-X led to the existence of my mind (factors that include free choices of other minds), is not to say that factors A-X led to the decisions the mind would make.
That is because the “mindâ€, as you refer to it, is a mythological invention used to identify certain behavior patterns. It does not exist. It will never be found. Not because it is a spiritual otherness but because it is pure projection. One can do this with anything. I can say that there is a fairy nymph called a “shelma†that comes with her little wand and touches an apple just at the moment before it can be called an apple. All the physical processes that lead to that point are not enough to make an apple an apple. It takes the invisible little shelma to make the transformation. The same is the case with the “freewillâ€. There is no moment of decision. There is “I should/am going to/am about to, decide†and “I have decidedâ€. There is pure continuity. There actually is no decision, there is no shelma. It just happens, it expresses its conditions.
And what if I point out the obvious- that humans clearly don’t always act on what they desire most? That we sometimes may make judgements against our desires, or act on desires in defiance of judgement? How are you defining ‘the strongest desire’?
Impossible. If you acted as such, your desire to do so was stronger to do otherwise. Only a stronger desire can overrule another desire.
What could possibly lead to that conclusion, other than a prior allegiance to determinism?
Just examine your life. Anytime you suppressed or overruled a desire, it was the desire you had to do so. In this way life is understood as a continuous vitality. This is not a determinism of molecules and billiard balls, but a determinism of the unfolding of Spirit
Which desire is the strongest?
The one acted on. The one that wins.
Dunamis