@Ruben said in Free Will:
@Truth I get your point, but the question I have still remains I guess. God would be outside of time and who knows what that means exactly. The fact that god would be able to know our actions, wouldn't mean we did not use our authentic agency to decide what to do.
Not just that he knows our actions, in the idea that a "god" would know all our feelings/thoughts/actions, past, present, future, and also that he would have all the powers including the power to let happen or stop each of our feelings/thoughts/actions, in this idea, it is in contradiction with the idea of free will (I do not imply god or free will exist/do not exist).
@Ruben said in Free Will:
@Truth The question of free will, I think, is ultimately the question of is our agency real or a dillusion. Meaning are we merely observers of a dream like state, or are we actively involved in making choices and have influence in outcomes. The fact that the past and present can influence the future isn't the same as that the future always deterministically follow, as is the believe of Sir Roger Penrose. I like to involve ray's ideas into it more, because his view on energy has some real value. The real question could be asked a different way as wel; can our consciousness actively order the chaos of possibilities that lies in the future? The ordering agency of our consciousness seems to make sense, if you look at quantum machenics (latest nobel prize winners etc). I just don't really understand what materialists mean with free will being an illusion, because I really can't understand what they would classify as free will then.
I know what you mean, I share a different way of looking at it, the consideration of free will as real or an illusion, is determined by a feeling, a feeling influenced by our energetic state, an energetic state influenced by our environment (food, sun, people we interact with...etc) rather than the effect of our thinking, our thinking is mostly the manifestation of our energetic state.
I suggest that what's more important on this subject, is to observe what this idea of real or illusory free will is associated with, if it's associated with a higher degree of energy, well-being, relaxation, exellent, if it's not the best thing is to thrive for another energetic state.
For example, the idea that free will is illusory, and that we are only the effects of the causes that precede us and the environmental factors present, can be associated with a lower degree of guilt, regret, remorse, and we can think that we are doing the best we can at each moment in our current state in this given environment, in which case it's positively associated, and in other cases this idea of illusory free will may be associated with a higher degree of impotency, lesser freedom, lesser energy.
The highest or lowest energetic feeling associated with the state we are in when we have this idea of real or illusory free will, determines if this state and idea are desirable and optimal, whether free will in theory is real or illusory doesn't matter in itself