No Free Will?

[TruthSeeker]

4 hours ago, WarPants said:

There is no free will.

We don't choose when we come out of the womb, that is decided for us; thus begins the life in this "matrix". All choices and decisions are based on the circumstances at hand. That is all there is. This is true from deciding what you eat for your next meal, to what you decide for your career. This continues until the moment of death, which we also have not control over.

Have a nice day!

Circumstances and past experiences just set-up what type of decision we will make or what two things we will choose between. But the actually choosing is up to you my friend

Hmm.... will he choose to answer?

Edited March 3, 2016 by TruthSeeker
clarification

[TruthSeeker]

4 hours ago, WarPants said:

There is no free will.

We don't choose when we come out of the womb, that is decided for us; thus begins the life in this "matrix". All choices and decisions are based on the circumstances at hand. That is all there is. This is true from deciding what you eat for your next meal, to what you decide for your career. This continues until the moment of death, which we also have not control over.

Have a nice day!

You have stated what has been stated but do you have proof? Do you have a basis? If not, HAVE A BAD DAY

[MaxBlank]

3 hours ago, TruthSeeker said:

Circumstances and past experiences just set-up what type of decision we will make or what two things we will choose between. But the actually choosing is up to you my friend

Hmm.... will he choose to answer?

Not quite there yet. The possible choices exist just like the possible directions that a branch grows exist. A branch will grow, and a person will choose. Any choice is not based on free will, it is just a choice out of the possible choices, that's all (of course one choice is to not choose anything, but life will still go on, as that is actually a choice).

[Guest]

For the record, the Buddha argued against non-free will, but he also argued against free will. Both extremes can cause unethical behavior.

In my opinion, you have to look deeper at why you WANT free will do exist, not at the issue of whether free will does or doesn't exist.

[Britta]

Maybe the real question isn't whether we have free will or not, but whether we are conscious of the decisions we believe that we make.

 If you are going outside and put on your shoes, did you decide to put your shoes on, or did you put your shoes on with out thinking of it? 

Did you think of the cause and effect of wearing the shoes vs not wearing them?

That is the distinction is where people assume they have free will, if you harbor strong feelings and opinions of why you are doing an action.  Really this is just your mind justifying your actions.  Either way you're going to do the thing you were always going to do, your thoughts are just what make this free will distinction seem tangible.  Like free will is a thing you have or don't have.  In life all you're really left with are the actions you made, and sometimes you make actions with a perceived intent.    

 

I think people start to think to much about the things they do.  You can sit down and write out a list of why you're not going to eat sugary foods, you might even stop for a little while but It's not really free will that decides if you're going to eat a cookie it's you're preception of what eating that cookie will be like. For example you might justify your mind by saying "Sure I'll eat that cookie, just one wont hurt." that decision was already made when you saw that cookie and even started to justify with a short thought story.  

[abrakamowse]

 

 

[David1]

On 1-3-2016 at 1:21 AM, C C said:

You make decisions based on what your brain decides to do. Your brain is composed of neurons, which are composed of cells, which are composed of atoms. At a low level, your brain is making decisions based on the predictable routes the atoms within your body decide to move. You don't have control over the individual atoms that make your brain function, they have control over you.

Atoms don't take predictable routes. Quantum physics make that very clear. They take probable routes. At that level, everything is explained by probabilities. There isn't even an atom, unless we measure it. And that is litteraly. You can think...'well there actually is an atom, we just don't know where it is...' That kind of thinking is wrong. There litterally is no atom.

 

 

 

[Neo]

My opinion is that some people confuse the concept of *free will* with the *decision making process*.

There was another thread recently called, "may as well flip a coin", something like that.

When you are faced with a choice, every atom in the universe that impinges upon you and everything that has happened up to that point conspires within you to make a certain choice. If I hold out my hand with a poison pill and say "take this pill, eat it", you go through a *decision making process* as to whether to take the pill or not.

It's still a process. It doesn't matter if there is no ego doing it or if it is every atom in the universe and all history impinging on that moment. It's still a process.

The ego may have no control over the outcome, but that is different to claiming there is no process.

And there is a little part of me that worries that people who are handing over life to a dice and saying, "there is no process of decision making" are actually in for some pretty chaotic problems.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Neo

[Salaam]

Wow, a lot of pendulum swinging between extremes going on here. But, thats what happens when you look at things without the proper elements in play, the reduction creates a corruption in understanding.

The real answer people can eventually develop to seeing is there is BOTH Self-Determination and Automation. Ability to choose grows in it's degree amidst the confluence of influence that is life. You are an eco-system made up of both the body, the mind, and the soul/identity (whatever the hell you want to call it). You can't really do shit with your free will as a baby, the attractive and repulsive forces going on in the body are too much for most people at that stage, and the development of capabilities that make up the health of your self-determination haven't breached certain thresholds yet. Self-Determination has to be developed, just like over time parts of the brain differentiated and developed to support greater thresholds of life/activity.

You CAN'T look at this stuff with the simplicity of fallacious absolutes. A two-dimensional answer of yes or no is not gonna cut it, but degrees of mixture and inter-dependency, multi-dimensionality will. You have to differentiate those degrees for yourself or else your conceptualizations are gonna come out all weird.