But like an electron, life is unfree to choose what it attracts and is attracted to. It is merely more complex.
Life is distinguished by its ability to choose how to attain what it needs, or what to prioritize.
Will is what differentiates the living form the non-living.
Unfortunately, Schopenhauer, and then Nietzsche, made it their metaphysical grounding.
The (a) point VO clarifies is that our valuing determines our nature. We cant choose whether our body values arsenic or carbon, but neither, on a more subtle level, can our brain choose if it values sports, or philosophy, or whatever.
This provides no novel insight, and it does not apply to non-life.
It is about psychology.
The appreciation an organism has for a particular source of energy, or a particular form of discharging, expunging energies, has to do with multiple factors.
Here a distinction between need/desire must be made, differentiating that which is based on lack and, its byproduct, after multiple successful satisfactions of lack, how to deal with the ensuing excess of energies.
This duality is the nature of life.
Lack, producing excess.
The grounding for both is organ hierarchies - particular to different species and individuals - determining how much and how often an organism needs to replenish a particular nutrient, or form of energy.
Then there’s accessibility and how rare this source is, in its environment.
These factors, and more, determine how pressing the need is, determining what value a conscious mind places on what can satisfy its need, and determining the frequency of its accumulated energy excesses.
This is the only meaning of ‘value.’
No. Value is assigned by the valuer.
The thing that logically comes closest to having intrinsic value is valuing itself, as its existence necessarily means some value is bestowed somewhere.
Then it is about psychology, not metaphysics.
Will willing itself…a nice circular argument.
Life needs closure, I guess. Men need to close the circle of their thoughts.
But, existence is not an enclosure.
"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
(Schopenhauer)
Same with valuing.
You are working from a wrong definition of ‘freedom.’
As did he.
If we apply your method to ‘power’ and define power as omnipotence, then we can say that life is powerless.
If we define knowledge as omniscience, then we can say that all men are equally ignorant.
Platonic ideal, no reality can ever match.
The human skull is the platonic cave. It is where he places his metaphysics, and then demands his physical experiences to fulfill them.
Free-will has nothing to do with a supernatural liberation from causality or from needs, desires. We don’t have to be gods to be free.
Freedom is measurable. It has to do with options.
Instead of Plato’s charioteer, representation of psyche, use a boatman.
Existence is a never ending river, flowing downward towards a sea of chaos…
Reason is the navigator, the boatsman. The boat is his body, a manifestation of his past…and the rudder, his wheel, is the will.
A will cannot stop the river’s flow, cannot reverse it, but he can choose his path, and with each choice determine if the waters become choppy or smooth…
Generations of boys are burdened by Schopenhauer’s choice of the term - Will.
The un-grounded grounding…very platonic.
The un-caused cause.
He took God’s Will, and eliminated the god part.
A Germanic word, expressing a Germanic attitude towards existence… that does not work in Greek, for instance.
Appreciation goes to the thing that attracts the most/repels the least. I.e. least net resistance.
But neither least resistance, nor entropy (‘selflightening’) accounts for attractors, opposite electrical values, etc. Whereas these are the foundation of cosmos, order.
Yes, and this has to do with energy harmonics.
Interacting energies in harmony attract…those whose patterns are more disharmonious, repulse.
No evaluation required.
All about power dynamics and how energies interact, i.e., harmonize.
And this is why chaotic energies always repulse, and can never form perceptible unities, but remain imperceptible…affecting patterned energies inconspicuously.
There are no voids. All existence is energy.
What we perceive as dark and empty is what we cannot process, either because the energies are too complex, too subtle, or they lack order…are chaotic.
Attraction is caused by a reduction of resistance…due to greater harmony.
A unity can create a field of effect - range of effect - if its harmony exceeds the forces of resistance participating in its unity.
Like a planet attract stray meteors…
Similar energy patterns create harmoniums unities, where their field of effect increase.