I was wondering one time, and i thought “I wish i could choose what my dreams were.”
That led me to this thought:
“I can’t control what i dream. I can’t control what my own brain is doing.”
That’s an example of choice without choice. In the dream, the characters still make choices and do things,
but the whole process isn’t chosen by the person who dreams it.
When we make a choice, what does that choice consist of?
We were born a certain way, and that wasn’t chosen.
We are exposed to influences, and we are aware of limited options,
but options and influences aren’t all chosen. They are found and stumbled into in life, but they aren’t all chosen.
Inside of somebody is something that people assume is causal.
People assume that we are the causes of events.
Therefor we are to be blamed.
Therefor it is our choice.
Etc.
Subconscious and unconscious processes are the basis of our bodily existence.
DNA doesn’t have a plan. It does things, but it’s not thinking.
Now for some reason, christians say that God gave us free will.
We didn’t naturally have free will. Free will is a supernatural affect.
But to me, choices are part of the natural process of our being.
Divine things can’t be proven in arguments so screw 'em, i don’t need to argue about that.
I do wish i had more control over my life, though.
I wasn’t able to choose my health, my family, my looks, my species, all kinds of things were not by choice.
That probably makes this an existential thread. That’s ok.
I will post more if anyone wants me to.
Any comments?
All right!!!
The phenomenological stance on this has to do with intentional behavior. My cat sees a rat in the kitchen. Does he have the option not chasing and biting that thing?–Or is his reticence to do so based on his being well-fed or sleepy at the time?
I do believe that most of what we humans describe as choice amounts to after the fact ruminations on what we did. We seem to need to justify our behavior. Why?
That is likely the most well-phrased and concise argument for free will, without resorting to metaphysics or “God”, that I have seen.
Needless to say, I’m in agreement.
Perhaps we are actually just that uncertain and insecure. We know of our subjective ‘pros’ and ‘cons’, but in order to act without feeling obligated to consider the scope of all possible ramifications, we need justification. The oddity, to me, is that we manage to calculate our justifications according to the scope of the possible ramifications. So, essentially, we consider the ramifications anyway (even if just for our own sake), but we shed accountability if justification seems to suit the consequences.
There is no such thing as an “unchosen/unfree choice”, it is only an intuive misinterpretation of determinism and choice. If “me making a choice” is determined, then one must certainly agree that it is “me making a choice”. We do not have a choice over the past that influences us. Whats the big deal about this? We still make a choice over our actions that follow, and that is our place in the determined chain of events.
I find it interesting that you wish you had more control over ‘your life’.
can I ask, what do you define as ‘your life’?
I believe we have complete free will, and I’m trying to accept the responsibility that comes with that. I see free will as being able to make a free choice between the options that the world throws at me. Maybe its a natural disaster, a prison cell or the common cold, but I know I can choose freely from the options that the past has given me.
I can’t see how this has anything to do with God. The organised religions usually draw on free will as a way to justify right and wrong and of course punishment and retribution. In my opinion they have high jacked a perfectly natural thing to increase the level of control.
But what i’m interested in Dan, is why you want to control everything. The reason I’m so interested is because despite my confidence in free will, I am concerned that there are psychological, environmental and ideological constraints on my behaviour and choices that I am simply not aware of. To remove them, as someone like Jurgen Habermas demands, would be, in my opinion, to remove ‘me’ from me.
so i’m stuck, if I am to be truely free, I need to remove the things that make me me. I’m not sure what the answer is yet. But i’m keen to know your thoughts on whether you would still be you if you changed your health, family and species!
One thing I am certain of, choice is no illusion, I just don’t know if it’s as free as I think!
Religious/moral reflection may lead one to an understanding of motivating factors, rather than the epistemic understanding that those factors led to a particular result.
why do you assume you can’t choose what you dream about? I would suggest you do do choose your dreams, you just don’t know you’re doing it.
I think there should be a separation here between ‘control’ and ‘choice’. You want to have more control in your life, but why does it follow that to have more control you need more choice?
I wish I could agree, Stat, but one man’s truth is another man’s lie–unless you want to see truth as some abstract universal that cannot be affected by human interpretation.