Free Will
-
One of the age old questions is the question of free will. I can't see how anyone could deny the existence of free will, personally. Not because I can't see the arguments against it having any merit, they certainly have merit at some level. I just can't imagine at what point the opponents of free will would say free will would be real. What would be free will, if it wasn't for what we have right now? It just seems way to easy to just discard the whole idea of people having free will, because thoughts pop up in our head and we don't actively think them. To give it a more energy focussed twist; you seem to think more clearly and better if you have good metabolism. If free will wouldn't exist, thinking would not exist, because thinking itself indicates the conscious consideration of an agent. Would love to see some insights on this and if anyone could couple it to ray's ideas more I would be thrilled.
-
@Ruben Hi, i suggest, it may be simple and elementary to consider the idea that we don't have free will if we think that all our thoughts, feelings, actions, are the effects of causes that preceded them and/or present environmental factors, specifically when from experience we realize how much these environmental factors such as food, light, the people we interact with...etc influence us
Ultimately, "free will" is a feeling influenced by our energetic state, a feeling that can be associated with ideas, rather than an idea that results from our thinking
The common idea of the simultaneous existence of "free will" and a "god" who knows all things past/present/future and has all powers is paradoxical, because if a "god" would have created us with knowledge of all things past/present/future, down to the smallest detail, this implies that he would have created us with certain attributes/tendencies/affinities, knowing exactly what it would cause, cause, and will cause in the future, and also that he would be the ultimate decision-maker on everything that happens, including each of our actions, he would have the power to decide whether to let each of our thoughts, feelings and actions happen or to stop them, which is in opposition to the common meaning of free will
-
@Ruben He was a materialist generally speaking, and the way that subject is approached is that freedom is limited by material conditions. In a sense your ability to be free is limited by the material situation. In essence the answer would be 'Yes', but I can't speak for the man. I think personally it's a bit of a fake paradigm, and i have a suspicion he would see it similarly.
-
@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. 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.
-
@CO3 Would his conclusion be something like that there is free will in a given conditional framework? I've heard ray talk about energy being a ordering agent, something that shapes the chaos. I like that idea, but I wouldn't understand where the given order comes from. Free will of consciouss agents could be place there I suppose. Ray doens't seem like a pure materialist to me, I would not place him in the same catogery as Dawkins. I suspect my lack of understanding what opponents of free will would describe as free will and it being a fake paradigm would come down to the same problem.
-
@Ruben IDK what dawkins ideology is. It's hardly materialist in the sense of dialectical materialism, which is what Ray mostly could be identified with. He said himself he was a Marxist. Within that framework I think the debate around free will is often simplified to determinism (because of Marx' ideas about history) but I think in essence they fall on the side of 'free will exists' in actuality, and so would Ray I think.
To me it always seemed like a very meaningless point, I don't really see how it matters.
-
@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).
@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
