On free will

It seems to me that free will is often misinterpreted. To me, what people actually think free will is is an illusion of self-control. I understand it that when I act in any way, my actions are merely reactions, that is, I can only move in relation to something that moves before me. I can never willfully make an act that has nothing to do with the past or something of the immediate past(present). Every motion I make is a response to the things that surround me.

This is not traditional free will to me. The only choice that actually occurs in life is my willingess to sense or express things, as well as the ability to allow fear into that process. Simply stated I can allow myself to be aware, I can allow myself to express, or I can allow fear into that process.

For example, if a musician were to learn a new song she would have to first listen to the music, then understand how it is to be played, and finally attempt to reproduce the sounds she had just heard. If for some reason she fears she will do that incorrectly, her fears may interfere with her learning or expression. Our free will, to me, works the same way. We have the choice to first sense, and secondly to express.(Understanding is a sensing of our senses and being so is considered sensing.) If we become fearful during any of this then our fears will lead us astray from the truth.

It might seem that by understanding some things we have the choice to choose between options. One might say, “If I can understand there is pizza or salad, then I can choose to eat either.” In reality, to me, the only options present are still reduced to sense and expression of the truth, and the amount of fear in the two. This will take some time to explain so bear with me.

Our first understandings are based upon good feelings: food, shelter, warmth, attention etc. We learn to understand what provides these things and to imitate the actions necessary to reproduce those things. Through this process we learn that it is sometimes necessary to fail the immediate feelings of good to attain a more plentiful amounts of good feelings. Now here is where the confusion sets in. Here we are faced with morality. What is the best good? This is where people become very fearful and illusioned with thier sense of self-control over good and bad.

People begin to attempt to understand things they cannot in order to achieve their own happiness and in order to flee their fears. They believe they have understood when in fact they have not. This is called ignorance. They express what it is they sense but what they begin to sense through this cycle is only their own fear of a lack of good. For example, a child, out of fear, may believe there is a monster in his room because he sees a shadow in the dark. Without verifying this information he begins to express what he senses by screaming and crying out “monster! monster!” to his parents. In actuality, however, it was only a shadow, and his expression was only a result of his sense of fear. In this manner does man create the illusion of chioces when in fact there is only truth. Again the only choice is between sensing that truth, or expressing it.

What this infers is that, if every action we impart in is an expression to some sort, then either we are expressing what we sense in reality, or we are expressing something of our sense of fears.

Through the countless mistakes of dishonesty to reality man has pushed away the truth in order to pursue his own idea of perfection out of a fear of a lack of good. Hitler is a great example. He thought he knew what was best for everyone and obviously his ideas can be understood to not be the truth. Out of fear people bite off more than they can chew and when they swallow, everyone around them pays for it.

Our only way of knowing what we sense is in fact real is by being able to reproduce, in our expression, exactly what it is we sense. In the example of the musician the only way she could know she had understood the song completely is if she were to play it exactly as she heard it. If what we produce is to our liking…if it feels good, then we begin the process again. Repeating this process, [i]correctly,[i] allows us to gain knowledge and furthermore wisdom. Once again however, I do not believe we choose between good and the bad options, we only choose to sense or express the truth as well as the amount of fear involved in that. If fear should overcome this process then our senses will be affected by it and furthermore the expression of the truth.

ok, so you’re arguing that we only have the free will to choose to express or fear the truth.

you also said that all of our actions are reactions.

i’m not sure i understand.

is our “choice” to express or fear not one of our actions. if it is one of our actions, how can we choose to do it? wouldn’t the previous event determine the current one?

free will is for those who believe probate lawyers should not earn a penny…

-Imp

Free will is the possibility of conditioned choice. Between determinism and free will you made a choice. This is free will, even if you chose determinism.

I agree that free will is just an illusion of self control and that actions are merely reactions to the outside world, but I have to add that our reactions are constrained by our physical abilities and capacities.

I always think along the lines that everything we do, all our choices, are products of our genetic make up making us a certain way, and how this reacts to the outside experiences - both of these being outside our control. We do not choose what genetic make up we are born with and we cannot control our outside experiences. Any manipulation of the world outside us that appears to be of our own doing is merely a product of how we’ve acted in the past within the limiting conditions that our physical body allows. That seems pretty concrete to me.

And this applies to fears as well…

Fears are negative reactions to certain actions that are learned from our past experiences. Its been scientifically proved that a very young and inexperienced baby will crawl onto a perspex block that gives the illusion of a big drop from a normal looking floor. If people never fell down and got hurt when they hit the floor, there would be no fear of heights.

And like with anything, the more it is reinforced, the more it affects us. The more you come to be afraid of something and the less encouraged you are to get over it (influenced by others or yourself according to the physical capacities and abilities of the people involved and their own experiences) and the less brave you happen to be feeling at the time, the more likely you are to want to introduce fear into affecting your decisions regarding the choice at hand.

Choice is very real, but I cannot see any possible argument against nature being completely deterministic in a long chain of cause and effect…

yeah . . . kinda. my “choice” of determinism was not my “choice” at all. it was a series of instants (unit of time with length zero (it works. zero times an infinity is boundless (infinite))), each of which was a reaction determined by the instant before it.

the “choice” we may have observed was just that: an observation. an observation of something in the world (the “effects” of this “choice”). not only was what we observed a series of reactions, but so to was our observation.

to answer the question some of you may be thinking: yes, i am not choosing to type these words (i have no opinion. it kinda sucks (in my opinion)).

oh yeah, Silhouette:

i’m not saying your wrong, but i have documentation saying that:

         "Experiments with babies and [non-human] animals have show that we [humans] are born with an innate sense that our world is three dimensional."
  --- michio kaku

Yeah… and?

You do have an opinion, it just wasn’t you who formed it.

well, just sayin’ that the baby would know that the drop was there. i think in the same book my quote came from there’s sumthin’ about the baby turning around and going the other way.

i’d say you’re right about the opinion thing, but it’s just your opinion.