Free will and responsibility - paradox

[Someone here]

 I have a simple question today.. Given that free will and choice are an illusion. Which is basically undeniable within the recent discoveries within neuroscience and how the brain works. And evident by how random and chaotic our thoughts and actions are. How to reconcile that with the principles of taking 100 % responsibility for our life? 

How can you believe that you are 100% responsible for the direction of your life whilst believing that you have no free will? 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Someone here

[Opo]

It's not about truth. 

Thinking like that produces a lot of results. 

[Someone here]

2 minutes ago, Opo said:

It's not about truth. 

Thinking like that produces a lot of results. 

What do you mean? What are you talking about? 

[Terell Kirby]

23 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Given that free will and choice are an illusion. Which is basically undeniable within the recent discoveries within neuroscience and how the brain works.

Wait, what? Are you saying neuroscience has discovered the mystery of free will? This couldn't be further from the case.

[Epikur]

19 minutes ago, Someone here said:

 I have a simple question today.. Given that free will and choice are an illusion. Which is basically undeniable within the recent discoveries within neuroscience and how the brain works. And evident by how random and chaotic our thoughts and actions are. How to reconcile that with the principles of taking 100 % responsibility for our life? 

How can you believe that you are 100% responsible for the direction of your life whilst believing that you have no free will? 

You I mean it feeds illusions with other illusions. You have no control of the illusion of  responsibility. It happens or not. You are the river.





 

[DocWatts]

I see this more as a non issue owing to mistaken assumptions behind how Free Will is framed, which itself is a legacy of Enlightenment era philosphy.

A common misconception is to conflate the empirical evidence for the lack of Free Will with the idea that all of our Choices are pre-determined, which itself takes for granted that the a-priori assumption that we live in a deterministic 'clock work' universe.

Just because the Mind is not Free to think whatever it wants due to the embodied nature of the conceptual systems we use to navigate reality, doesn't mean that we lack the capacity to think and reflect on out lived experiences. Nor are we prevented from using that process to inform the ways we approach life.

Think about it. If we didn't have the ability to do so, from an evolutionary standpoint how could we possibly have survived and developed to the point to speculate om philosophical questions?

Edited September 8, 2021 by DocWatts

[r0ckyreed]

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

Given that free will and choice are an illusion.

It already assumes free will is an illusion. Deconstruct the assumption.

 

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

Which is basically undeniable within the recent discoveries within neuroscience and how the brain works

What is giving neuroscience its authority? How does anyone know how the brain works? Maybe in 100 years, they may discover that the illusion of freewill was the illusion.

 

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

And evident by how random and chaotic our thoughts and actions are.

Random and chaotic. Is that what is really happening right now or is that a projection onto the present moment?

 

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

How to reconcile that with the principles of taking 100 % responsibility for our life? 

How can you believe that you are 100% responsible for the direction of your life whilst believing that you have no free will? 

You can believe whatever you want, but no belief is absolutely true. I think what you meant to say was “how can we be responsible for everything if we have no free will?”

The answer is that free will exists, but the ego is not the one in control even though ego thinks it is. Notice that everything is happening and free will or volition is also happening.

For instance, notice your breath. Your breath was just happening. There was no free will there until awareness becomes aware of breath. When observing breath, you take ownership of it. Notice that volition is also an illusion if you believe that yourself as a concept is actively breathing. You as an ego do not do cellular respiration, breathe or talk or shine the sun. You as God, realizing you are everything has infinite free will.

So yes if you say freewill is an illusion, you are speaking in terms of the relative and in terms of ego, which is also an illusion. This also means that responsibility is an illusion in relative sense, but what you miss is that reality is illusion. Since life is the ultimate illusion, you use illusion to thrive in illusion. 

When you realize you are everything you realize ultimate responsibility. Realize that everything in life is your creation. Even though you don’t create racism in terms of ego, you are responsible for it because you are one with reality and not separate from it.

The distinction between responsibility and irresponsibility collapses into ultimate responsibility which is what I am talking about. As an ego, you will say I am responsible for my weight but I am not responsible for Holocaust. But when you drop illusions, you realize reality for what it is.

Notice what is happening, there are concepts you use such as free will and responsibility. Beyond these concepts are there is, is creation. You can create whatever life you want as an ego but you don’t need any free will to do it, since choice and ego is relative and illusion, it is reality. 
 

It is hard to communicate this but I did my best.

[hamedsf]

It's no about believing, it's about the deep realization.

just believing it will make you more an unproductive person with doormat characteristic. 

[Gesundheit2]

Illusions keep existing until you stop looking at them.

That applies to absolutely anything; including both (free will and no free will) illusions.

[gettoefl]

let's assume you haven't free will

1. do you accept waking from a dream within a dream is possible, in that you have seen complelling evidence of it?

if so

you haven't free will but god might choose to wake you up as has happened with others

you can't do anything

but there are a million things you can refrain from doing

so that god might have mercy

and awaken you

then you can take responsibility

ps you might argue but not to do is still doing ... when i say refrain i mean just be, don't do ... free will is mind, to be is to exit mind ... anyone is able to step out of mind and this does not contradict free will since you do nothing you merely refrain

Edited September 9, 2021 by gettoefl

[Mason Riggle]

responsibility is also an illusion. 

If you stop having a problem with this, then the problem of 'how to reconcile this with principles of taking 100% responsibility for our life' just goes away. You don't reconcile it.  

Everything is happening and nobody is doing it. 

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[Mason Riggle]

If I train my dog to bite a child and it does, who is responsible for the bite, me or the dog?   

What if my father trained me to train dogs to bite children? 

What if his father taught him to train me to train dogs to bite children? 

How far back must we go to find out the 'cause' of any 'event'? 

 

[Someone here]

@Mason Riggle I agree with you. 

 

[Someone here]

Thanks for the replies. 

I think I made my point clear.

What you  guys should do is.. Either present an argument that we do have free will or try to reconcile our lack of free will with being responsible for our lives. 

[Gabith]

It's so simple ?
I mean everything is happening like a movie, we are the "watcher" and then it means we can choose to love everything that arises ? Instead of judging it or resisting it ? I mean why bother creating negatives thoughts / stories if everything is happening no matter what ?

[Mason Riggle]

@Gabith 'choosing to love everything that arises' happens if and when it does, or it doesn't happen.  Not up to you. 

'judgement' and 'resistance' make no sense in light of 'no free will'.  

Judgement- You don't judge a volcano, because you recognize it makes no sense to.. you recognize that a volcano had no part in causing itself to be how it is. 

Resistance- Any attempt to resist what is occurring, is just more 'what is occurring'. 

Edited September 9, 2021 by Mason Riggle

[Mason Riggle]

56 minutes ago, Gabith said:

 I mean why bother creating negatives thoughts / stories if everything is happening no matter what ?

Survival. 

Why survival? That's the real question. (my best answer: it seems to be preferable to the alternative). 

Questions of 'why do I do what I do' go away when it's recognized that there's no doer, nothing to be done.  'You' are something that is occurring, not something that 'does things'.  You might as well ask, 'why am I growing my hair the way I do?'.. the answer is 'hair is growing how it will' and there's no 'you' who's doing it.  You can't stop 'growing your hair' because you're not doing that.  

Who(or what) is growing the flowers? Is it the plants? Well who(or what) is growing the plants?  These questions are silly!! Flowers and plants are growing.. the entire Universe is doing that. 

It's all happening, and there's NO ONE doing it. 

[Vibroverse]

Dude you need to stop thinking logically and understand that logic is an illusion. No answer ever will satisfy you fully because all answers are coming from mind.

[r0ckyreed]

You cannot have free will without contrast of no free will. Same with responsibility. You are responsible for everything that happens in your life, but that does not mean you are to blame. “Response-ability” that’s what it means to be responsible. Free will and no free will are one. Notice your direct experience and you will find both free will and no free will, both the involuntary and the voluntary. All of this is concepts that we get lost in. 

[DocWatts]

Being that the entire notion of Free Will comes from mistaken Enlightenment era assumptions that the Mind is somehow disembodied, having something that was a Myth from the very beginning confirmed to be not true by Empirical evidence shouldn't be a cause for distress.

Edited September 9, 2021 by DocWatts