What is the Truth about Control? - Discussion
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
Big discourse with many contributions
I take control over life circumstances, action, thinking where it is possible. Where it is not, I accept it.
If my personal free will is determined from an absolute point of view, I care at the most philosophically, but not in everyday life.
Big discourse with many contributions
I take control over life circumstances, action, thinking where it is possible. Where it is not, I accept it.
If my personal free will is determined from an absolute point of view, I care at the most philosophically, but not in everyday life.
Thanks guys for the great replies. But Seth, we do have control over the ever-nowness of reversing the conditioning and choosing not to go with our desires, yes? Due to my current very-newly-realized circumstances (just got up from a crazy strong never-ending Kundalini sit), I can choose to (A) listen and actively search and destroy past conditioning or (
disrobe and just live out my desires or (C) go even further to fight the thing?
Or you could say I am left with no free-will because my previous conditioning will make me choose Option A.
disrobe and just live out my desires or (C) go even further to fight the thing?Or you could say I am left with no free-will because my previous conditioning will make me choose Option A.
I knew you would disagree, seth tapper. It's pre-determined that you would. You cannot help doing so 
Yilun Ong:
How much control or free-will do we as individual human beings really actually have? Other than small choices like coffee or tea, are the big decisions like how I ended up in a monastery predestined? Where and what do we really have control over?
Predestined or not, there is no free will. You are not free to will something other than the physical laws' expression. Things arise upon causes and conditions, and even if they arose in partial or total randomness, it would be still meaningless to speak about freedom. And the same goes for willing, and pushing, and striving, and everything else.. they all arise in the base of a tightly interwoven net of conditionality.
But it's important not to misinterpret the statement. It is a delicate distinction, but is a crucial one. People usually perceive the notion of absence of free will as being something like the situation of a free agent being put in a prison, or a free agent being trapped with chains, or a free agent being moved like a puppet against his will. But all these are just misconceptions.
"You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm"
~Sam Harris
meaning that you are neither a free agent (controller of the arrising of phainomena), nor a traped one (in the midst of the arrising of phainomena). but that what you actually are.. is a PART and an EXPRESSION of the arising of phainomena, with no separate self to be found in the first place. In reality so, the view is not as depressing as it may first seem. On the contrary, it is a positive view that can encourage us to be more loving and accepting.
In terms of practice, past is forgiven, no responsibility to be found and nothing to be blamed, and the future will show of what forces we will be the expression of, positive or negatives. The future is open to us, to be expressed. One way or another, the taste of virtue doesn't change :-)
May you be a positive force in the world. May you be happy
In my own experience, the same forces in my nervous system that make me take a breath also make me get angry, make a sandwhich or go pee. It is out of anyone's control.
Breathing is a great example - it can be completely autonomous and it can be controlled by will over short periods of time. So breathing, at least as I see it, is evidence that there is no simple answer to this conundrum. There are quite obviously several different mental processes at work here. I don't see fuly autonomic systems like digestion and such in the same way i see decisding to make a sandwich or choosing the time and place at which I pee. I will indeed pee - that's determined by my digestove system, but not at random, uncontrollable times and places
To my sense this is just not as simple or as cut and dried as is being presented. Because there is no permanent continuous "me" and thus no permanent continuous "will" does not mean that the conscious mind has absolutely no control over anything whatsoever. The absolutist position that there is always free will and the absolutist position that there is no such thing free will simply doesn't square up for me, based on meditative experience and on relative experience. I think I'd be fooling myself if I made either absolutist claim, so I'm still firmly in the "I don't know" camp.
Maybe folks are getting caught up in the Buddhist notion that all phenonema are conditioned and are inferring from that that free will is not possible. I don't think that's what the doctrine of dependent origination is about, but I can see where folks might think so.
Anyway, great conversation.
Would you like to see the video of Sam Harris' talk i linked above and then bring any problematic points you find for discussion?
I'll go this far - here's a critique of Harris' ideas on free will by John Horgan. No need for me to re-write these points:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/will-this-post-make-sam-harris-change-his-mind-about-free-will/
And there's more here from philosopher Daniel Dennett, by way of this blog:
https://philosopherinthemirror.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/touring-the-veritable-museum-of-mistakes-thoughts-on-dennett-on-harris-on-free-will/
Funny how message board conversations can sometimes become proxy battles for appeals to authority
I'm still in the "I don't know" camp, folks. I find the arguments on both ends unconvincing to the extent that they insist experience must fit into one or the other extreme. I'm content to think there are good arguments on both sides and that how we see those arguments depends to a large extent on which view we assume is "true" to begin with. This is typical of philosophical discussions, IMHO.
I knew about Denett's counter arguments and they are all false and really just off topic.
Ah, I see what you did there -- you're using Harris' verbal replies to Dennett's arguments and not Dennett's actual arguments.
I'll assume you had no choice because... determinism.
Chris Marti:
I'm still in the "I don't know" camp, folks. I find the arguments on both ends unconvincing to the extent that they insist experience must fit into one or the other extreme. I'm content to think there are good arguments on both sides and that how we see those arguments depends to a large extent on which view we assume is "true" to begin with. This is typical of philosophical discussions, IMHO.
It's ok, the only problematic camp would be the "i'm not willing to reconsider my views in the face of new evidence"
Dennett has no arguments at all, as he didn't even aligned with the initial reasoning. You have to see Dennett's of topic response through the prism of his main motivation: his fear that if these views of absence of free will be adapted from the public, it will lead to very bad consequences in society. You mentioned a name, "Dennett", and i made a comment about the absurdity of the view that an automaton has free will, and for the other writer i presented counterarguments in detail. What was you respond to these?
Yes, i think it was in the absence of free will that i provided detailed refutation of the arguments you had referred to, is it in free will that you seem to be attached to views that that are not founded any anymore?
If you are really interested in the subject though, you can bring any argument you want and you can test it against criticism. Just to mention that the phrase "i find the two ends unconvincing, because they are extreme" is not really indicative of good philosophical discussion because eitηer you don't agree and you point the the disagreement or you agree and you adopt the new position. If you find any false assumptions in my position i would be interested to point them to me, but to just refer to some generalities about extremes, is of no value in a discussion.
