I was thinking just now and noticed that every one of my decisions, at least right before I decided to act it out, was justified by some righteous cause. Even if it was something I REALLY didn’t WANT to do, I justified it as a necessary cause. (i.e. I didn’t want to go to school but I justified it by the fact that I wanted a good job someday)
That got me thinking. Can we even do something if we don’t want to?
The answer I came up with(which is obviously subjective) is that we must always come up with some sort of good purpose in our decisions before we act upon them. Any other act is without thought or consideration.
Examples of acts without thought are ones that are simply physical reactions. Such as a reflex, or a twitch, or some other uncontrollable hiccup in our anatomy or physiology.
Apart from these actions I have found none in my own personal experience that originated without some percieved “good” direction or “righteous” purpose in the minds of their creators. If we are going to do something, we must believe in it first. If we do not believe in it, then we truly are simply just a physical reaction. This is what my mind tells me now. Can someone change it for me?
hmmm. ambiguous word.
if ‘what ever happens happens through (you)’ (sartre), every act one makes is willed by the person.
if one acts but claims that one did not will it so but still does it anyway, he is trying to evade responsibility and thus acting in bad faith.
perhaps one wills it so, unwillingly, (!!) against rationality or ones desires.
You’ve opened an existential treasure chest with that statement.
Its like this. No one can seriously argue causal determinism and involuntary human action; the twitch, the heart-beat, the breathing, etc., and expect to get very far. The problem occurs when we try to account for the illusion of freewill as being a by-product of an obvious science that proves determinism, and not as an actual valid state of experience that should be divided from the determined system.
I think the obvious reason why we experience freedom is because we live forward, events are caused backwards. Of course you were determined to raise your right hand, but when deciding to do so, the illusion that you could and would do otherwise was the real state of the experience. What marks the reality of this freedom is the fact, as you stated, that any action that isn’t involuntary, that is, chosen by you under this illusion, involves an intention and a reason that is literally in the future but simultaneously in the presence of your current decision to act. The point: your voluntary action that results from your chosen and deliberate course of action is a state of freedom and indeterminancy. Choice is freedom, illusion doesn’t change this fact.
You say every act of yours is done with good intent for yourself? But do you say that every person acts like this even when commiting an evil act; they act out of their own percieved good intent? For example Hitler acted like he did because he wanted a great germany, he really thought jews were evil ext. When looking at peoples psychologies, criminals; people like Al Capone for example justify to themselves that they are great men, Benevolent men even.
However, Dostoevsky in his fiction short story 'Notes from the Underground' Which I really suggest you read throws forth the notion of whether or not people can act of pure evil. When they know they are harming themselves in the proccess and there is no precieved good intent whatsoever in their action.
What about when a person is in another state of mind. Such as being drunk or high, or in an an alternate consicusness like a split personality (if such things exist.)