Free Will vs Determinism

[Someone here]

6 minutes ago, Shin said:

I can do that, even longer, doesn't prove anything except lots of concentration meditation

No you can't lol. It is impossible to stop thoughts even for a moment. That's my claim and it's empirically verifiable by anyone.

Having no thoughts is a thought. If you think you are not thinking now.. That's you thinking that you're not thinking. ?

[The0Self]

5 minutes ago, Someone here said:

No you can't lol. It is impossible to stop thoughts even for a moment. That's my claim and it's empirically verifiable by anyone.

Having no thoughts is a thought. If you think you are not thinking now.. That's you thinking that you're not thinking. ?

Totally depends on your definition of thought. What you call thought I call experience. What I call thoughts, one can certainly have the experience of not having for extended periods. Meditation can go incredibly deep.

[Shin]

7 minutes ago, Someone here said:

No you can't lol. It is impossible to stop thoughts even for a moment. That's my claim and it's empirically verifiable by anyone.

Having no thoughts is a thought. If you think you are not thinking now.. That's you thinking that you're not thinking. ?

I know what you're talking about, but that doesn't prove there is no free will.

Nothing can prove that untill you have a leap in consciousness and realize the contrary, and even then, maybe you still didn't realize everything there is to realize

My humble and useless assumption, is that free will and no free will are limited experiences, and that God transcends both, and is therefore impossible to communicate

Edited October 30, 2020 by Shin

[Fran11]

21 minutes ago, Someone here said:

No you can't lol. It is impossible to stop thoughts even for a moment.

That's just projecting your own Concentration skills onto others.

You can develop your Concentration to the point where you can reach Samadhi in sober Meditation.

[Someone here]

Try this 

Right now.. do NOT think of a pink elephant....

 

If you did.. Free will debunked. 

If you didn't.. Free will debunked. 

Bye. 

[The0Self]

@Someone here Of course there's no free will... Yet, reality is freely willed by God. Free will seems like free will, but it's something else. This is because reality seems like reality but it's something else. Within the dream of taking things to be exclusively real, of course.

Edited October 30, 2020 by The0Self

[Moksha]

Consciousness is different from thought. If you trace "You" back to Yourself, what do you find? Sublime, eternal awareness. It is a moment of pure reality, and there is no thought. You can notice thoughts drifting across the sky of You, but you aren't pulled by them. You can even actively direct your thoughts from this place of being, and discover an ocean of creativity and intelligence that your little wave mind could never have realized on its own.

[Nahm]

@SS10

That make sense? 

[SS10]

@Nahm What part haha?

I Still believe that we humans do have fractional, limited autonomy over our lives. The idea that there is a self, that can improve their existence is what this whole forum is based upon. Everyone here acts as if a self does exist. "Reality" is a dream, however whilst we are in the dream, there is a self that can be improved and a self that has limited free will.

What does self-actualizing mean, if there is no self  to actualize???

[Nahm]

1 minute ago, SS10 said:

What part haha?

I Still believe

My comment on your thread. I wasn’t asking about what you believe, I was asking if what I said makes sense to you or not. 

[Moksha]

19 minutes ago, SS10 said:

I Still believe that we humans do have fractional, limited autonomy over our lives. The idea that there is a self, that can improve their existence is what this whole forum is based upon. Everyone here acts as if a self does exist. "Reality" is a dream, however whilst we are in the dream, there is a self that can be improved and a self that has limited free will.

What does self-actualizing mean, if there is no self  to actualize???

This forum is based on the realization that there is no self. That is what enlightenment is.

Self-actualizing means self-dissolving. You wake up to the reality of who You are.

[Alscho2020]

I get that determinism is a possibility, but I don't think it's true. At the end of the day I don't think it's really possible to "prove" either determinism or free will, but it seems to be far more advantageous to behave as though people have free will. Like Leo noted, pretty much all of society and culture are dependent upon the assumption of free will, and, as much as he may argue otherwise, I think a pure deterministic perspective of life leads to nihilism and perceived victimization. Here are some of my thoughts on Leo's Free Will vs. Determinism podcast:

1. I think the idea of determinism is rooted in the concept of materialism, the idea that all that exists is the material world. Which I don't really agree with at all. Immanuel Kant talked about the Noumenal realm of reality vs. the Phenomenal realm and I think he makes a pretty good argument against materialism. In order to even make sense of the material world (the Phenomenal realm), you have to assume the existence of things that aren't observable (the Noumenal realm), like the passage of time or empty space. Neither of those concepts can be physically observed, you assume their existence to make sense of the world, and you can observe their influences on the material world, but you can't take a sample of them and observe it in a lab. The human psyche is a lot more than the human brain. We can observe chemical releases and hormone levels in the brain, but we're not observing the mind at all, just its outer manifestations.

2. Leo's suggestion to pay attention to your continuous flow of thoughts seemingly coming from nothing, or the example of following a muse that appears to you, is also assuming that your conscious mind is the entirety of the human psyche, which isn't accurate. I think a common misconception is that the subconscious mind isn't actually a part of the "self", but it absolutely is. Your continuous flow of thoughts isn't coming from the abstract, outside world, it's coming from your subconscious. Because you can't observe your subconscious, there is the illusion, as Leo likes to call it, that your thoughts are coming from nothing, or coming from someplace outside of you, but that's not the case.

3. I'm no biologist, so correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that each individual cell contains the entirety of the organism's genome, but are designated to work in a specific area. Certain area's are "switched on" in the cell which tell it to be a blood cell, for example, or a skin cell, or a liver cell. My question is what on earth designates the cells to do that? Maybe it's DNA, again, I'm no biologist so I don't really know. But even if it does originate from DNA, that raises the question of what makes the cells respond to DNA. I get that DNA is like a recipe for a cell, and it "tells" the cell what to do, but what ensures that interaction? My guess is that the unconscious mind has something to do with putting the cells in order. Sure, we have trillions of complex cells that operate of their own accord, they do their jobs without being continually forced, but something had to tell them what their jobs were in the first place. I also had the thought about how some organs seem to operate of their own accord, for example, you can't just voluntarily stop your heart. But that's because your conscious mind doesn't have control over it, your unconscious mind, or the part of the brain focused on motor skills and survival does. Following Leo's line of logic, I can't seem to go beyond the human psyche as the controller of biological functions, or of the flow of thoughts for that matter. He seems to imply that they may be coming from nothing, but I think that's a pretty weak argument. Sure, evolutionary history may have taught the brain to behave in the way that it does, but no primitive human being is directly influencing my mind now. No outside force, as far as I can imagine, is interacting with my subconscious mind, forcing it to survive. I am performing my biological functions of my own accord because survival is my subconscious mind's motivation.

4. Also I don't understand when Leo says you need to take responsibility for your ego or for your life or whatever. Take responsibility for what? That you're a victim of circumstance? That the world around you controls everything you do? I don't agree with him at all that that will lead to enlightenment or a positive life. Knowing myself, if I surrendered completely to determinism, I wouldn't be really motivated to do anything at all except the things that bring me pleasure. I'd eat fatty food, I'd probably do drugs, I'd get into all kinds of trouble because what the hell is the point? I am the way that I am because the world around me is the way that it is, and I can't be anything other than what I am because of that. I can hope that the universe perfectly aligns one day to make me into a happy, rich, successful person, but I can't do anything right now to change the way I feel because the universe is aligned to make me sad and nihilistic, so I guess I'll just eat another burger and shoot myself up with heroin to take my mind off the present.

Total surrender to whatever it is that's controlling you takes away all responsibility from you. It causes people to lose themselves in victimhood, it doesn't turn people into "Zen masters and yogis and martial artists". The moment you try to take responsibility and change, you disprove determinism, because your cells and the outside world obviously don't have complete control of you - unless your trillions of cells all collaborated at the exact same time and were all forced by some abstract influence to decide they were all going to skip the fatty foods that bring them pleasure, go put enormous stress and tension on muscles when they'd rather relax, and commit to a lifelong journey of self-mastery for the big meat machine they control. Not likely.

[Moksha]

@Alscho2020 Nice first post, and welcome to the forum. There is no inherent disadvantage to determinism, if you understand relative and ultimate reality. Relative reality is nothing more than a cosmic pinball machine of cause and effect, being played by ultimate reality, which is Consciousness. It would be silly for the pinball to claim that it has free will. If you understand that You are actually the player, not just the pinball, the question of free will no longer matters.

[onlyOneness]

Love the free will vs determinism debate. Below are a few thought provoking quotes...enjoy!

 

“Each being is a moment in time with a name, a form and a script to be performed In this play called Life.

None chose the name nor the form nor the script,

yet each believes himself to be the master of his destiny.

Once their sight clears, they, too, will laugh.” – Wu Hsin

 

“If you really believe in the chain of ‘cause and effect’, you can’t possibly believe there’s a separate self, accomplishing anything. Every atom of your being – everything you appear to think, say and do – is an expression of the chain.” – Darryl Bailey

 

“Man plans, and God laughs” – (Sufi proverb)

 

"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."

(Albert Einstein)

 

“God cannot allow billions of people to exercise free will and continue to run the universe with any sort of precision!” (Ramesh Balsekar)

 

“If you cannot believe that thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions are arising spontaneously from the welter of life and are convinced that you are a separate individual in charge of your life, try this small experiment. In this moment decide to feel elation and feel it. Think of your least favorite food and really crave it. Consider your opinion on capital punishment and change it. Finally, ask yourself what your next thought will be and see if it can be known in advance. While you’re busy doing this or perhaps hosting a thought stream that rejects all this as nonsense, the Divine Play of Life magically unfolds by Itself.” Leo Hartong

 

 

[Moksha]

@onlyOneness Another great first post, and welcome  Free will only resonates in the context of ultimate reality. Anything that is created cannot have free will. Only the uncreated is free.

[BlackMaze]

On 29/10/2020 at 11:35 PM, Nahm said:

@SS10

It is possible to be dreaming and believing that you are a character in a dream and thus not realize you are dreaming. There could be snakes in a dream. There could be stuff like free will and determinism talked about in the dream. These ideas and concepts could seem to make sense in a dream. But if the dream told you it was a dream, how would you know If this statement makes sense?

I can't believe that noone commented on this. I just wanted to comment on this 

I guess that wasn't free willed.