On Free Will

[SOUL]

@Nahm My mother is a kind beautiful soul and I find you saying something on the internet you surely wouldn't say to my face as revealing of your character....would you like to reconsider that?

[Faceless]

Hey let go of each others ego’s !!

lolololl

[Nahm]

@SOUL it’s a joke.  Sorry!

[sgn]

How long have this so called free will existed?
When you were born?
When you were in the womb?
When you were a sperm?

At which point in time of evolution did organisms get free will?

What is it exactly that is free?

How can there be something that is totally free and independent and can act even thou nothing is causing it to do so?

Imagine how something else just happened for no reason,
Like a leaf dancing in the wind, but this time there is no wind.
A cup falling from a table even thou noone pushed it.
Your blood circulating without the heart pumping.
It doesn't make sense.

[Cepzeu]

I thought I'd revisit this topic out of interest. Reading back the last few pages it seems there is a lot of confusion stemming from the inclusion of wording from different paradigm levels. For example the use of the word 'conscious' in the sense that a decision is made with free will (i.e consciously) as well as the meaning of absolute consciousness (aka pure awareness, pure perception). This is happening with a number of different terms and everyone is using them from different paradigms and getting confused.

[Angelo John Gage]

@sgn Its not FREE from influence, nor is it totally bounded by influence... it happens within the moment

 

[Angelo John Gage]

@Cepzeu The only way this is happening is by use choosing to make them mean different things at different times

@SOUL what I mean is that someone who is allowing their repitlian brain run the show rather than their frontal cortex I would consider one who is unaware and has no free will during, lets say, a spurt of anger... However, that person decided to get into the situations in which such reptilian behavior could be activated. 

[Cepzeu]

7 hours ago, Angelo John Gage said:

@Nahm @ragolp Yes I understand and have that experience but that doesn't negate free will.

I have control in this reality. 

Who is controlling your fingers now and typing the answers you are responding with? Is it God directly? If so, then who am I responding in the opposite? Not God? If I am not God, or if I am the Ego, how did I choose to oppose you without that will to do so?

Who are the 'you' who has control??? You are a collection of billions of individual cells which make up all your tissues. They themselves are made of of chemicals that interact. Interaction of chemicals is based on their location which is determined by random Brownian motion. All your 'control' is the result of random vibration of chemicals. This is not even delving into the non-materialist paradigm. But even with this start, you can see how the possibility of free will breaks down. 

This isn't even touching on the epistemology of thought. No past or future exists in the now. Reality is occurring right now, all the phenomena you encounter is happening in the now. Including thoughts. Even cause and effect break down. Any idea of cause contributing to an effect is an idea occurring in the now, not the content of that idea. Any science you bring into this does not prove or disprove anything in any way. Science cannot prove or disprove free will (or anything for that matter) because science can only build approximate models (not even taking into account the methodological flaws of building those models in the first place). 

My second paragraph even contradicts my first paragraph. But they are written from two different paradigms. Consider that reality doesn't contradict itself and there are no paradoxes in reality, there is no rationality in reality. Any paradox that we perceive is a flaw of our thinking.

 

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Cepzeu

[Angelo John Gage]

@Cepzeu And yet all these trillions of cells move where  i want, eat what I want and focus on what I want. Why would my kidney want to play guitar? Even the argument of me being a chemical slushy, doesn't mean that I am not a unified organism that has the ability to make choices which; hell, even can be "voted" on by my body if you want, but comes to me, the perceiver,  to make the final call, because I am who is the  existing phenomenon that has acquired all these cells; the life force that is holding this all together.

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Angelo John Gage

[Cepzeu]

2 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:

@Cepzeu And yet all these trillions of cells move where  i want, eat what I want and focus on what I want. Why would my kidney want to play guitar? Even the argument of me being a chemical slushy, doesn't mean that I am not a unified organism that has the ability to make choices which; hell, even can be "voted" on by my body if you want, but comes to me, the perceiver,  to make the final call, because I am who is the  existing phenomenon that has acquired all these cells; the life force that is holding this all together.

 

You have it backwards here you want what your cells want, you eat what your cells want, you focus on what you cells deem you focus on. There is no you even, there is only the cells. There is not cells even, there are only the chemicals. Your kidney may not want to play the guitar but if your kidney is damaged and needs dialysis you would definitely do something about it instead of playing the guitar. 

Your body and brain (not consciousness) are connected. Your brain decides what your body does (again, brain the pink squishy substance, not consciousness). Your brain is made of cells that are not you. So who is deciding what your body does as a whole?

The illusion of free will seems really real at the level of everyday life. But if you contemplate it to a chemical or physical level it dissolves. 

In other words. You have free will, but you are not in control of your free will  

[Angelo John Gage]

@Cepzeu Your urges, desires, thoughts, etc... I will GIVE you all of them as 'not yours' most likely stemming from your subconscious and influenced by your past, the current situation, and choices in front of you, yet who finally decides if they are acted upon or what choice is made? How can 37 trillion cells all decide via chemistry; this 37 trillion celluar organization forms like Voltron and creates a being. And who controls this being? The perceiver. Now this is where I disagree with Leo in his video against free will.. I believe there IS a CEO, and no  its not the brain, not even the mind; because the mind can be perceived lol... The perceiver is beyond BOTH, the real you who does call the shots.

Take for example the experiment which claims that a person has already decided which button to press before they do it. I would like this experiment to explain how someone who decides to punch someone, stops mid way and doesn't do it... If the experiments had any truth to them, that our actions are predetermined before they reach us, then that would mean my body would have to be able to predict the future and know that I do not want to punch the person in the face midway of doing so, in order to reverse the predetermined command of "punch the person in the face".

Do you understand this issue? This is a fatal issue with this idea that things are predetermined. 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Angelo John Gage
grammar

[Cepzeu]

I see what you're saying.

The issue is not with determinism. It's with getting any proof for it. As you describe it will be impossible to predict what button you will press, thus no experiment like this likely exists. 

BUT take any prospective cohort study that determines eating habits and what you will likely find is that family eating habits influence child eating habits. Poor eating results in low energy, decreased mood, and poor body metrics. So an individual's past could determine how much energy they have. A scientist could give evidence to low energy leading to low productivity but they could never prove it. 

In a similar argument you could give evidence to what situation you will be in life given your past (hence contributing to the 50% determinism of your position) but no scientist can (for now at least) predict the exact action you will take at any given point in the future.

The existence or lack thereof of free will is for you to decide then. It can only be proven to you through direct experience and self-inquiry. 

I see what you're saying that even if you were God/the True self you think that you have free will. For me I believe I (tre self, consciousness) have no free will, but in my day to day life, if I revert to a state of lower consciousness I (the egoic self) will definitely act and think as though I have free will. This is my personal experience. The fact that we disagree is perfectly fine but in your search for an answer to your question you have to see it for yourself. No one is able to prove it to you. From this forum and from science you can only get perspectives.

 

Edited January 3, 2018 by Cepzeu

[Angelo John Gage]

@Cepzeu Yes its ok to disagree, but understand that I have achieved those states where I had "no free will" and my point is, those are states which cause that experience to seem that way; similar to if I told you to sit down until you legs went numb, to prove you have no feeling in your legs and all feelings are illusions simply because they went numb doing a specific thing. I believe there are many states in which have or don't have free will. Being blacked-out drunk is one in which we have no free will and those 37 trillion cells are running amuk without the CEO preventing any stupid behavior. And of course this free will isn't about having zero causes from the past or whatever; it is limited, but not totally dependent on those limitations. 

That's just my take on it. 

[Cepzeu]

4 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:

@Cepzeu Yes its ok to disagree, but understand that I have achieved those states where I had "no free will" and my point is, those are states which cause that experience to seem that way; similar to if I told you to sit down until you legs went numb, to prove you have no feeling in your legs and all feelings are illusions simply because they went numb doing a specific thing. I believe there are many states in which have or don't have free will. Being blacked-out drunk is one in which we have no free will and those 37 trillion cells are running amuk without the CEO preventing any stupid behavior. And of course this free will isn't about having zero causes from the past or whatever; it is limited, but not totally dependent on those limitations. 

That's just my take on it. 

Could you flip that around and say that certain states you live in cause you to experience that you do have free will?

EDIT: And could that experience also be an illusion?

Edited January 3, 2018 by Cepzeu

[Angelo John Gage]

@Cepzeu Yes I have said that lol.

When i gave my example of two states where we have ZERO free will:

When we reach the "oneness" state where the self melts away; obviously you cannot have free will there, if you absorb everything and become everything, your will is gone. Also your trips you may not have any control over or free will; or dreams as well.

You also have no will; nor even awareness of existence at all, when you're under anesthesia during surgery. If I used this as my reason to say free will doesn't exist, because I've been in that state of literally nothingness at all, wouldn't that be silly. Because then I could argue like a materialist that "see my brain was off therefore there is nothing outside of my brain and there is no afterlife or any metaphysical reality"

However, in this "shared reality" we do have free will, because it is in the middle of both states; our "self" is in tact, we experience reality in this consistent form. Notice, no matter what state you may achieve, you ALWAYS return to this state and form of existence. Why is this so if the "oneness" state is the true state? Why can we just be there forever? That is why we cannot say because I reached X state and "saw for myself" therefore free will is an illusion.

I could easily argue that it is an illusion that the self melted away during the trips on drugs or self-hypnosis during meditation.

[SOUL]

12 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:

what I mean is that someone who is allowing their repitlian brain run the show rather than their frontal cortex I would consider one who is unaware and has no free will during, lets say, a spurt of anger... However, that person decided to get into the situations in which such reptilian behavior could be activated.

The prefrontal cortex, which is where reasoning takes place and is often associated with 'intellect', and the amygdala, which is considered the base of emotional response, are both used by the ego to influence our awareness. People who are highly rational are known to exalt the prefrontal cortex and it's function while denigrate the amygdala and it's function, but both are used by the ego.

The ego uses all of the tools in the box to create and convince us of identity but that is all done for self preservation. It's all conditioning and used to influence awareness to voluntarily act on behalf of that self interest. The ego uses all it has access to but no matter the number of influence and conditions our awareness won't reflexively act on the ego's desires, it must choose to though it's not "decision making", it's volition.

Well, unless of course awareness has been lulled into a zombie like sleep state so it is consumed by the ego's histrionics. Hehe, nah, that would never happen, right?

[Angelo John Gage]

@SOUL See, I don't know everything but you get what I was saying. 

[Cepzeu]

5 minutes ago, Angelo John Gage said:

Notice, no matter what state you may achieve, you ALWAYS return to this state and form of existence. Why is this so if the "oneness" state is the true state? Why can we just be there forever? That is why we cannot say because I reached X state and "saw for myself" therefore free will is an illusion.

I see what you're saying but I would also argue that always returning to that state is an assumption. I can't comment further regarding this because I have't achieved this myself but from what I know enlightenment is a permanent shift is identity. You and I could be returning to a human-centric state and form of existence because we are not enlightened. I would argue that always returning to this state is a false assumption.

[Angelo John Gage]

@Cepzeu Well I certainly have "changed" a lot because of my recent exposure to this place and Leo's videos, but also my own experiences and things before this.

But take for example someone like Eckhart Tolle who will meditate for hours during the day. Why? Why escape this place? i find this zen stuff a great tool to bring understanding to oneself and an inner peace; not to ESCAPE this world, but to work to better it. Because this is the place we always come back to; even the most so-called enlightened still come back; eat, take a shit, sleep, etc...they just have a more positive attitude or perspective, but none of the laws of physics has changed in their favor and they will still suffer at times.

 

 

[Cepzeu]

Why do you assume he is escaping? I would argue that by meditating you are more attuned to primary experience of reality rather than escaping it. What place do we come back to? Always coming back to it is an assumption. The sun could blow up tomorrow and wipe everyone out. No body knows what goes on inside anybody else's mind. Sure the most so-called enlightened COULD come back to wherever it is they left from. Some may not. We don't know who the most enlightened are and how many of them there are. We don't even know if someone who claims they are enlightened is enlightened. Positive and negative are relative. You could become enlightened and realise the awesome business you were running was fully ego driven and done for the wrong reasons and you would be depressed. Laws of physics are just ideas. Laws of physics are not absolute. The speed of light changes all the time. Its just set as a constant by definition. Nothing is permanent, nothing can be proven outside of direct experience, nothing is knowable. For all you know everyone writing back to you doesn't exist as a person. This would be a silly idea relative to the norm but again that's relative. The FACT is that you absolutely don't know whether I am a person writing this or whether I'm a computer program writing this.