FREE WILL
So, what about free willy? "Do you believe that you have control over your destiny? If you do not, then you are more prone to bad behavior." (Free Will / free will)
John decided to holiday in Sousse because his upbringing and heredity have determined that Sousse is his kind of place.
There is simple causation (one ball hits another one and it causes the second one to move) and causation that results from careful thinking.
A criminal might commit a crime 'because he was born criminal and brought up criminal."
But, the criminal is free to do the 'unpredictable' and to be good.
The criminal is free to think about his actions.
You can be unpredictable.
You can avoid being manipulated.
"Freedom, of the important kind, of the kind worth wanting, is freedom from being manipulated."
Does free will really exist?
Who are the people who are being manipulated and who are therefore not free?
It is mainly the ultra-conservatives, the extremists and the fundamentalists.
Think of the fundamentalist Jew who is not free to marry a Moslem.
Think of the White racist who is not free to make friends with a Black neighbour.
You could argue that William's 'guardian angel' led him to the travel exhibition.
You could argue that people are only 'free' when they are tuned in to 'the Holy Spirit'.
Why does one person make 'wrong' decisions and another make 'right' decisions?
Some Taoists would argue that every 'thing' and every 'action' is a mixture of 'good' and 'evil'.
Both Sharm el Sheikh and Paramaribo have their 'good' and 'bad' bits.
According to the Taoists, everything in the universe is single, whole, but composed of opposites.
"Taoists believe that nature is a continual balance between yin and yang, and that any attempt to go toward one extreme or the other will be ineffective, self-defeating, and short-lived."
What Taoists Believe
The Buddhists would argue that 'ignorance' is the cause of bad decisions and suffering.
Socrates would agree.
The Buddhists would also say that our sense of being a separate 'self' is an illusion.
John decided to holiday in Sousse because his upbringing and heredity have determined that Sousse is his kind of place.
In other words, a 'causal chain' led John to Sousse.
It can be argued that John was not forced to go to Sousse, and that in a sense his decision was 'free'.
It can be argued that 'conscious, determined decisions' are 'free will decisions'.
It turns out that there was trouble in Sousse, and John had made a bad decision.
"If there is an explosion in a public place, hotel, or shopping mall, you should know that it is the Tunisian special forces who planned it." Thus said El Hocine Khafi, a former official at the Ministry of Interior of Tunisia.Une base militaire américaine à la frontière tuniso-algérienne.
It can be argued that John was not forced to go to Sousse, and that in a sense his decision was 'free'.
It can be argued that 'conscious, determined decisions' are 'free will decisions'.
It turns out that there was trouble in Sousse, and John had made a bad decision.
"If there is an explosion in a public place, hotel, or shopping mall, you should know that it is the Tunisian special forces who planned it." Thus said El Hocine Khafi, a former official at the Ministry of Interior of Tunisia.Une base militaire américaine à la frontière tuniso-algérienne.
William decided not to holiday in Sharm el Sheikh, even though his upbringing and heredity have determined that Sharm el Sheikh is his kind of place.
Why does one person make 'wrong' decisions and another make 'right' decisions?
Chance or randomness can affect our decisions.
Daniel Dennett says determinism and free will are not incompatible.
Does free will really exist?
Why does one person make 'wrong' decisions and another make 'right' decisions?
Chance or randomness can affect our decisions.
Quite by chance, William had come across a travel exhibition and discovered that there were at least a dozen places better than Sharm el Sheikh.
The chance visit to the travel exhibition broke the 'causal chain' and allowed William to make a better choice.
Philosopher Daniel Dennet says you can exercise free will by doing something unpredictable.
Philosopher Daniel Dennet says you can exercise free will by doing something unpredictable.
This could mean going to Paramaribo rather than Las Vegas.
Does free will really exist?
There is simple causation (one ball hits another one and it causes the second one to move) and causation that results from careful thinking.
A criminal might commit a crime 'because he was born criminal and brought up criminal."
But, the criminal is free to do the 'unpredictable' and to be good.
The criminal is free to think about his actions.
You can be unpredictable.
"Freedom, of the important kind, of the kind worth wanting, is freedom from being manipulated."
Does free will really exist?
Who are the people who are being manipulated and who are therefore not free?
It is mainly the ultra-conservatives, the extremists and the fundamentalists.
Think of the fundamentalist Jew who is not free to marry a Moslem.
Think of the White racist who is not free to make friends with a Black neighbour.
You could argue that William's 'guardian angel' led him to the travel exhibition.
You could argue that people are only 'free' when they are tuned in to 'the Holy Spirit'.
Why does one person make 'wrong' decisions and another make 'right' decisions?
Some Taoists would argue that every 'thing' and every 'action' is a mixture of 'good' and 'evil'.
Both Sharm el Sheikh and Paramaribo have their 'good' and 'bad' bits.
According to the Taoists, everything in the universe is single, whole, but composed of opposites.
"Taoists believe that nature is a continual balance between yin and yang, and that any attempt to go toward one extreme or the other will be ineffective, self-defeating, and short-lived."
What Taoists Believe
The Buddhists would argue that 'ignorance' is the cause of bad decisions and suffering.
Socrates would agree.
The Buddhists would also say that our sense of being a separate 'self' is an illusion.
"The death of his younger brother, Edmund, from measles on 2 February 1900 deeply affected Hitler. He changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.... After his father's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's behaviour at the technical school became even more disruptive, and he was asked to leave in 1904."
Alvin Plantinga defends God with his "free will defense"
"It is possible that God ... could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil.
"It is possible that God .... would desire to create a world which contains evil - if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."
Jesus said that 'some seed fell on stony ground'.
Is that just bad luck?
One can speculate that if God is going to create 'a real world', then, as with a game of golf, there has to be an element of chance.
Discoveries in 'Quantum Physics' suggest that 'determinism' may be wrong.
The movement of 'particles' cannot always be predicted.
Dostoevsky points to characters who do bad things, knowing that they are bad, in order to assert their uniquness and independence.
Some might say that God does not have this burden, as, presumably, he is incapable of choosing evil?
Dostoevsky, and others, seem to suggest that all creatures go through a long learning process, which can involve suffering, in order to achieve enlightenment.
But what about 'justice'?
Let us assume that there is a God who is 'just' and 'fair'.
Jesus said that 'some seed fell on stony ground'.
How can God ensure that those who, by chance, have gone astray, are rescued from their bad luck?
For life to be fair, every single soul has eventually to reach perfection and salvation.
And every single soul has to experience the same range of 'ups' and 'downs'.
Life magazine reported (The Mystery of Chance):
On 1 March 1950, all the fifteen members of a church choir in Beatrice, Nebraska, due at practice at 7:20, were late.
For example, one couldn't start her car; and one mother and daughter were late because the mother had to call the daughter twice to wake her from a nap.
At 7:25 the church building was destroyed in an explosion. The members of the choir, Life reported, wondered if their delay was "an act of God."
...
To the Hindu, we are all part of God; our sense of being a separate individual, such as John or William, is an illusion; and all our souls eventually join up with God.
According to The Upanishads, the Hindu New Testament (Life And Death Explained?):
God is within all the created world (immanent) and outside all the created world (transcendent).
God becomes immanent (within all) until the end of evolution when the immanent has all again become transcendent (outside the created world). The created world evolves into the transcendent God.
Why?
For the joy of creation.
Why is there evil?
For the joy of good arising from it.
"Eventually suffering destroys the ego."
A Quote by Eckhart Tolle on suffering.
Alvin Plantinga defends God with his "free will defense"
"It is possible that God ... could not create a world with free creatures who never choose evil.
"It is possible that God .... would desire to create a world which contains evil - if moral goodness requires free moral creatures."
Jesus said that 'some seed fell on stony ground'.
Is that just bad luck?
One can speculate that if God is going to create 'a real world', then, as with a game of golf, there has to be an element of chance.
Discoveries in 'Quantum Physics' suggest that 'determinism' may be wrong.
The movement of 'particles' cannot always be predicted.
Dostoevsky points to characters who do bad things, knowing that they are bad, in order to assert their uniquness and independence.
Some might say that God does not have this burden, as, presumably, he is incapable of choosing evil?
Dostoevsky, and others, seem to suggest that all creatures go through a long learning process, which can involve suffering, in order to achieve enlightenment.
But what about 'justice'?
Let us assume that there is a God who is 'just' and 'fair'.
Jesus said that 'some seed fell on stony ground'.
How can God ensure that those who, by chance, have gone astray, are rescued from their bad luck?
For life to be fair, every single soul has eventually to reach perfection and salvation.
And every single soul has to experience the same range of 'ups' and 'downs'.
Life magazine reported (The Mystery of Chance):
On 1 March 1950, all the fifteen members of a church choir in Beatrice, Nebraska, due at practice at 7:20, were late.
For example, one couldn't start her car; and one mother and daughter were late because the mother had to call the daughter twice to wake her from a nap.
At 7:25 the church building was destroyed in an explosion. The members of the choir, Life reported, wondered if their delay was "an act of God."
...
To the Hindu, we are all part of God; our sense of being a separate individual, such as John or William, is an illusion; and all our souls eventually join up with God.
According to The Upanishads, the Hindu New Testament (Life And Death Explained?):
God is within all the created world (immanent) and outside all the created world (transcendent).
God becomes immanent (within all) until the end of evolution when the immanent has all again become transcendent (outside the created world). The created world evolves into the transcendent God.
Why?
For the joy of creation.
Why is there evil?
For the joy of good arising from it.
"Eventually suffering destroys the ego."
A Quote by Eckhart Tolle on suffering.
Why darkness? That the light may shine more.
Why suffering? For the instruction of the soul and the joy of sacrifice.
Why the infinite play of creation and evolution? For pure joy.
Why suffering? For the instruction of the soul and the joy of sacrifice.
Why the infinite play of creation and evolution? For pure joy.
The Buddhists teach that "it is only conventionally, not ultimately, true that we are persons."
Buddhist 'No-Self' Doctrine.
Buddhist 'No-Self' Doctrine.
Labels: Alvin Plantinga, Buddhism, causal chain, conscious determined decisions, Dennett, determinism, Dostoevsky, free will, Hinduism, Jesus, justice, manipulated, Quantum Physics, Socrates, Taoism, unpredictable, yin yang
posted by Anon @ 09:12
21 Comments
21 Comments:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/world-war-i-the-1914-christmas-truce/5421076
what about the day of the 9/11 catastrophe, and all the jews had a premonition not to go in that day ?
"Who are the people who are being manipulated and who are therefore not free? It is mainly the ultra-conservatives, the extremists and the fundamentalists."
I can't help wondering if you honestly believe that Aangirfan?
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/eckhart-tolle/56100
"Why suffering? For the instruction of the soul and the joy of sacrifice."
BS. This is masochistic.
It's also the kind of thinking that allows powermongers to impose, against all the good instincts of ordinary people and the patent abundance of the earth (which only a brainwashed populace could doubt in an age of robotic production) wars and scarcity upon society. We don't need resignation in the face of adversity, we need categorical exposure and rejection of the lies of the financiers and their mercenary minions.
To strongly posit any belief is to be an extremist. The struggle on earth is to have extremism of love , which inherently is voluntary, overwhelm extremism of hate, which is reflexive.
How do you explain precognition?
Perhaps God, the Holy Trinity, desires a real relationship with his created beings, and therefore creates them with a free will by which they can either accept God (and live by the laws of harmony and universal compassion) or reject God and live in rebellion against heaven and nature, doing what is "good in one's own eyes". This gift of freedom of choice is a love gift from the Creator of the highest order.
Perhaps then, our ancestors chose to rebel against God and to go their own way, living according to their knowledge about the creation rather than their relationship with the Creator. In this intellectual bubble, they built cities and weapons with which those who possessed the knowledge dominated the Earth and their fellow men. Worshipping themselves as emerging "gods", and serving their source of occult knowledge (the wise serpent-dragon), they have made Earth a living hell in many respects.
Perhaps the Creator, looking at all of this sadness and woe said, "As much as it pains me, I am going to have to exterminate my creation, as it has become a cancer engulfing all the good thinge that I have made."
"But first, I myself will go to them in the guise of a pauper and a little child and try to warn and save those who choose love and compassion over power and glory. They will kill me, but I will not die, and this will be as a witness to the salvation I offer the meek and the holy who take up their cross and follow me."
Hallelujah! For unto us a child is born! +++
Me burden, well... a burden, is this:
The Bible portrays some kind of linear-time as reality. God in time, and however beyond, is not, outside. Time in God, mystery maybe, but time is... at least we should understand and accept Bible-wise, as ticking and tocking. Personal experiences and retrospectives might seem to contest this but aren’t necessarily only explainable because something was ‘seen’ ahead and therefore...
Tomorrow hasn’t already ‘happened' (for God), or yesterday can be reconstructed/held to reoccur. Neo-Gnostics through to adamant science-heads say otherwise. Fair dos, my contention - as reg. readers know - is, what a bunch of ol’books genuinely say? And what other musings amply appear to confirm? The science argument against, pushes and pushes, but... still falls short to convince with certainty - there’s ‘no’ free-will.
But what about that lot of elite evil? I assume they’re so drunk in their illusion to believe their ‘secret knowledge’ teaches, it’s all and every last moving molecule in the stars or their hidden texts. And apparitions etc told them their future’s written -or- they know its now, and in the balance. This would make sense in my assumption, the Augustine soaks Plato theory involved their hands, in setting the Church fate-forward. (Know a tree by its fruits and all that).
Do ‘they’ believe we have free-will, and if so, god-like powers to overcome our sacred gift, thereby destroying the threat to their sick-head dream?
So what is it?
This quite outstanding post, is almost to good to be true. I didn’t jump on Friday’s THE SOUL, another corker, because like here, don’t want to hog on every time.
One question, and reiterating a open-free-will, relational, Christian theology.
Givin’ it a quick simplistic 123 and many thanks for ‘boldly going where...’
Mark
"Woe to the world because of snares! For there must be snares - but woe to the person who sets the snare!"
Matthew 18:7 (CJB)
I don't think we have free will, well, not in the way most people believe, anyway. Even if I go the same way home every night, and I read an article about exercising free will, and then as I'm almost home I dart up an alley and go through the back door instead, I still don't think we have exercised free will.
Let's say I decide to go to college to get some good qualifications. I enrol and study hard and I am very determined to do my best. I really want to well and I work hard for it. But what am I really after? Probably at the back of my mind is the thought of getting good qualifications and then getting a good job. And when I get the job I work really hard at it and become an expert. Eventually i hope to be able to afford to buy a flat, or a house.
In the above what I am after is self esteem. The more clever I become, the more respected I am, and the more I'm needed. This will make me feel important, and it's good to be important in a group. So when I meet someone of the opposite sex I will now be far more attractive to that person, because they will see that I'm clever, which means I'm competent, and this a good sign that I'm fit. Top notch! And if I'm a bit cleverer than lots of other people, it's a good sign that I will be more successful and maybe be a better provider. If I'm a man this is going to give me a more success rate of finding a good woman. Someone really special to make my dreams come true.
So I'm successful, I have a nice home, a good car, and I'm independent. Sorted! I might not be entirely confident but I can put on a good show. And I make an effort to look good, where nice clothes, so now I'm set up to find a good 'mate'.
A gorgeous looking woman takes an interest in me and now things are beginning to 'happen'. We go out a few times and we hit it off. One evening she comes around my flat which she really likes and I cook her a good meal and we have some wine. Earlier that day I bought some condoms and put them in the bedroom. Yes!
The male birds of paradise build the most beautiful displays with coloured stones, bit of trig, flowers, anything they can find that looks attractive. They spend days building these elaborate, ornate displays, and the females just sit on tree branches and watch. They are watching all the males to see who builds the most beautiful displays. When the males have finished building their displays the females then compete for the males who made the best displays, and the most successful males get to choose the most 'red hot and buxom' females.
Humans are as much driven by instinct as the other creatures, and perhaps the other animals are convinced they have free will too?
Things I'm juggling with.
But perhaps we do have free will after all. Well, we appear to making free choices all the time, "Oh I feel tired, so I think I will stay in tonight'. But did we choose to feel tired?
Now one thing is certain, whatever we do we want to do, or we chose to do. Sometimes we might drink too much and do things we regret, but even when drunk we were making choices and do doing what we want to do.
What if we do have free will but the choices we make are the only ones we can make at any given time? We can choose to have either tea or coffee, but if we choose coffee that the only decision we could made at that time. It's like when Ford said you can have any colour car you want as long as it's black. That's weird, isn't it, to have complete free choice but every decision we make is the only one we could have made?
What if who we are is not centred in our conscious ego at all, that our real selves were our feelings, and our feelings jiggle in a way to give us leeway. We can't choose our feelings, but we can alter them. But when we choose to alter a feeling that's because an different urge won through to alter the original feeling.
Jung said that our unconscious was the larger part of our consciousness. Could there be another seat of consciousness that alters our feelings to some degree?
We can really work hard to make things happen and be successful, and this feels like free will. We can be very motivated where we can really drive ourselves. And yet this drive is instinctual.
I'm going around in circles now, and people far more intelligent than me have been debating this question for centuries and still haven't found an answer. And I still have a quantum physics blog to read that argues that at a quantum level we can exercise free will.
But this is where I am right now. I crack a joke to a very pretty girl who works in a bakers. She suddenly busts into laughter and is delighted and when I go she runs to tell someone else the joke. What happened when she found that joke so funny? She had no choice when she split her sides, but she loved the joke, and loved everything in the world at that moment, and with a bit of luck, even me. Now I can feel it there, you know, our free will, in that situation, but I can't quite grasp how we have it?
The Lie We Live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipe6CMvW0Dg
Happy Christmas Aangirfan (and readers) and thank you so much for all your posts this year. Always interesting and thoughtful. Blessings to you xx
Happy Christmas to all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkuIrSP9Pi8
Substitute "hold that opinion" for "believe" and re-read.
Aangirfan does not mention the other significant group of people (including children) who are also being manipulated via mind-control techniques, often sadistically. They are often alluded to in this blog. Freedom is not an option for them.
Yes but what are human instincts really about? That's the tricky bit - beyond the obvious and superficial - especially a woman's instincts.
Time is an ocean ..
Bob Dylan, Oh Sister
Neuroscientists can read brain activity to predict decisions 11 seconds before people act. Free will, from a neuroscience perspective, can look like quite quaint. In a study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers in Australia were able to predict basic choices participants made 11 seconds before they consciously declared their decisions.
In the study, 14 participants—each placed in an fMRI machine—were shown two patterns, one of red horizontal stripes and one of green vertical stripes. They were given a maximum of 20 seconds to choose between them. Once they’d made a decision, they pressed a button and had 10 seconds to visualize the pattern as hard as they could. Finally, they were asked “what did you imagine?” and “how vivid was it?” They answered these questions by pressing buttons. https://qz.com/1569158/neuroscientists-read-unconscious-brain-activity-to-predict-decisions
“Pay attention to the people who excuse Prince William's physical assault of Prince Harry and insist it should have been kept private. They are the abusers amongst us. If not the abusers, they are the silent enablers.”
https://twitter.com/MireMarke/status/1610863233342255104?s=20&t=agclWqECpx2dHcwXhRRFxw
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