Free will is the ability of the individual to control choices and actions; they are not determined.
The debate among philosophers and scientists has questioned this ability in various ways which
is comprehensively covered by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Well, macro reality
is determined and the human brainbody is a part of determined macro reality. Scientists who
admit macro reality is determined deny the same of micro reality. Since there is no human free
will in micro reality, should the discussion of free will end with its denial–no! Although the human
physiological brainbody is determined, its ability to make changes in reality is obvious and
incontestable. The writer can either continue or not continue with this post; choice, like action,
as the result of an idea, is obvious and incontestable. However, it can be maintained that
experience, interest and necessity, etc., determine choices and actions, but they do not; they
influence mentality–mentality does. The simple solution, then, to the question of free will
is free mentality; humans are not robots but the light of the universe.
What options are available to you, is partially determined by your previous choices - based no your judgements, i.e., evaluating, approximations.
As always we must begin with the act, without fully understanding how or why…just as man perceived an active sun, and did not know how it worked, only that it was present and had specific characteristics, effects.
Man did not need to be omniscient to perceive the sun…or any active phenomenon…but hypocrites use omniscience as an excuse to dismiss any judgement they fear, or dislike, unable to offer a better judgement.
So, we don’t need to understand the human brain, and consciousness, to make a judgement call based on the act, the apparent.
The act in question is willing, and choice is the lucid part of willing.
Most of our actions are willed subconsciously, not requiring our conscious awareness.
We are judging and willing contently, and this contributes to what is being determined.
Know thyself, attempts to make this lucid, and so make the will abide by the individual’s lucid objectives.
Culture is the method of cultivating man’s will, so as to gain control over it.
If we use ‘ego’ to refer to the lucid part of oneself - the part that is becoming self-aware - then choice refers to the ego, whereas will refers to the entire self.
Schopenhauer correctly stated that the body is manifested will. The body is will.
I replace will, and its unnecessary allusions, with Energy patterns, we perceive and interpret as appearance.
No need to get into all that.
All is energy…all is dynamic and interactive.
An organism is an amalgamation of dynamic and interactive energies - processes.
But, in regards to life will is the perfect term.
All life is Wil.
Choice is will given formal options to select from. Made consciously aware of its options.
‘Free’ refers to these options - their quantity and quality, and more importantly, their accessibility.
‘Free’ is a qualifier of Will - describing the Will’s power, based on the degree of resistance it can overcome, determining the quantity and quality of the options available and accessible to it.
The act of Will is the starting point.
The entire living body is the active Will.
Free-will does not mean absolute freedom, i.e., infinite options, nor omnipotence, nor does it mean liberation from the past, or from need/desire, or independence from causality.
Will, the organism, participates in causality.
Many factors multiply the probabilities of an option being chosen, and one is chaos.
So…all life is willful, intentional…
Choice is will made lucid.
Freedom is determined by power, and power determines the will strength to overcome resistance, determining the quality and quantity of its options - self being the primary source of resistance - so will power refers to thew will’s ability to self-control, and this determines its focus of the aggregate energies available to it, which, in turn, multiplies its strength of overcoming external resistance.
All this determines the quantity and quality of options available and accessible to the Will.
Freedom refers to this. Freedom is measurable in quantity and quality.
The more options available to me the more free I am.
The delusion that I haver choice but I can only make one, is another rmind-game played by hypocrites and cowards fearing to acknowledge their own culpability in their own life’s circumstances.
An option that cannot be chosen, for any reason, is not an option, at all.
This is why I say, freedom refers to the quantity and quality of accessible available options.
The comforting delusion that I could only have ever made the choice I made, after the fact, is a comforting idea attempting to deal with the unforeseen consequences of all choices.
All choices, all actions, have foreseeable and unforeseeable consequences - intentional and unintentional - because there are no absolutes and man is not omnipotent, nor omniscient.
Man participates along with many other wills, and mostly unintentional forces, in existence.
Every choice, guided by an objective - ideal - is a multiplier of probabilities…not a certainty.
Your post is full of information on the will. When I read Schopenhauer years ago, he impressed me with
his World as Will and Idea. Too bad GWF Hegel was more popular at the time, but his dialectic (thesis,
antithesis and synthesis) was more valuable to me than his state as god.
I’ve rejected Schopenhauer’s use of ‘Will’ as a replacement for ‘god’, though he went to great efforts to state that he did not believe in god - of the Abrahamics - and that will was more in tune with Buddhism.
Nevertheless, Will implies more, and so its use is unfortunate.
Maybe in German it has a different nuanced meaning.
‘[Energy, force,’ would have been more appropriate, reserving the term ‘will’ only to refer to life.
Will is what differentiate life from the non-living.
Intentionality.
My claim is that if one begins with the act - what exists - then will exists as the act we all experience in ourselves and in others.
I adopt Schopenhauer’s will, only in reference to life, and agree with him that physical presence is a manifestation of will, since all is dynamic and Interactive, and in life intentional.
A proper use of terms would make ‘free-will’ a description of what is experienced as an intentional act, making ‘free’ a qualifier of said act.
Defining it out of existence conceals a motive other than clarity, just as defining any concept in a way that contradicts experience, e.g., god, male/female, morality, etc.
The standard is what all can perceive, experience, not what one can declare or find in a book, as a definition or a theory.
We begin with the experienced, perceived act…will.
We don’t need to be omniscient to acknowledge its existence…like men in the past didn’t have to understand how the sun worked to perceive it…nor did they have a god telling them what is good and what is bad, to remain moral, relative to their group’s welfare.
Beginning with the perceived we must then proceed to understand it, not by using the supernatural, the imaginary, but the perceptible.
Therefore, will exists, and gods exists, if we use ‘god’ to refer to a force of nature we experience daily, and we do not use it to negate or contradict what we experience daily.
Hi! I am new on the forum and this is my first post.
An interesting remark about humans (or its consciousness) being the light of the universe. Can you please provide more details about that idea?
Philosophy is evidence that the human has the power to create the world, which is a level of freeness that surpasses that of a choice. The causal world is no limitation for the potential of philosophy and therefore I believe that the human has infinite options available.
Technology is this philosophical creation.
No, “infinite available options” would mean man is god.
Man’s options are determined by the world: nature, cosmos.
Most of nature is unintentional, and some is not ordered.
Chaos is a factor that implies omniscience is impossible.
All men can do is increase accessible options, with every choice.
Options are mere appearance in my opinion. Imagination goes beyond creativity and in my view philosophy, as an imaginative practice bound by the context provided by the idea of Good, fundamentally underlays the world, as a philosophical God as it were, although it wouldn’t do justice to philosophy to apply that term to it, because philosophy can do more than being a term.
The belief in options is the same as the belief in luck.
Imagination of what lays beyond (which results in wisdom) may involve actual beginning-less infinity, and may be a basis for a case for free will.
True. We are not robots because we have the ability to decide when there are no external forces (such as a gun to our head). This does not change the FACT that once a choice is made, it could NOT have been otherwise. This is the definition of determinism that is accurate, nothing else! It does not take away our ability to decide based on our individual circumstances. If we cannot even define what these terms mean, how do we have a basis for communication? It will continue to be a lost cause.
I am eager to learn about your theory/idea that humans (or its consciousness) are the light of the universe. Can you please provide more details about that idea?
Fate or Free Will?
…I think it’s a little bit of both
-Forrest Gump-
"Tom Hanks"