Fate or self choice

It's a bit of both. We have karma (which we created) but ultimately we have to decide our own destinies.

You know... I don't think we are controlled... Personally speaking I think the whole predestination theory is a load of crapola... I think it boils down to daily decisions as to where we end up. One thing I think is important to realize is we cannot control the world that surrounds us. Yes, we can make decisions that will have a positive effect on our life, but you can't control the person sitting next to you.

I go into work every day and sometimes I wonder... how's the day going to go? What if one of the girls flip out and wack me upside the head? That would suck, but it could definitely happen. More and more I've been hearing these horror stories about kids flipping out and ganging up on staff, beating the crap out of them, and running away here in CT. I'm sure this isn't the only state this kind of thing is happening in, however it's most relevant to my life I suppose.

I run a risk every day. I know that. I accept that. It's worth the risk to me to see the changes I have seen in some of the girls. If they did beat me up I would have a choice... Walk away and say, "Forget this crap!" or continue on knowing that one life changed is worth more than 100 beatings. To me it's worth it. To some it's not. That's ok too. If it did happen though and I chose the former I'd have no one to blame but myself for being bitter and angry.

I understand I can't control these girls. I can't control the hurt they feel. The anger. The abandonment. I didn't do those things to them, but someone sure did and I put myself in the direct line of being punished for what others have done to them on purpose. I do that because I've been where they are at. I understand how much it hurts to feel like no one loves you. To feel like no matter what you do it will never be right or good enough. To be afraid to trust anyone because all the people you should have been able to trust just dropped you off on a curb somewhere because you became an inconvenience to them.

I've had no physical beatings but boy I'll tell you... You tell them no on the wrong day and just be prepare to be slaughtered verbally! YIKES! I just hope that my being there. Being a consistency in their life. Not changing regardless of how they treat me will help them to someday see that everyone in the world is not out to hurt them. There are people who actually care. There are people who actually understand their pain. There are actually people who want to help them.

Boy... what a tangent I just went on! LOL

My whole point is this...

I chose what I chose for a reason. So do you. The choices you make every day effect not only you, but also those that surround you. That are close to you. I believe I'm suppose to be where I am, doing what I am doing, but I don't believe I HAVE to be there. I could just as easily be a bagger at the local grocery store. I chose to be there because I want to. No one forces me.

Free will and self-choice, of course. It's so obvious I don't even want to back it up.

Is it?
I used to think freewill was a given too. For years.
That is until I seriously started DOING philosophy.
I have yet to see a cogent case for the existence of freewill, and hard determinism makes cold, logical, sense.
There is freewill, in my opinion, only in that there is an illusion of freewill. This ties into the sequential nature in which we perceive events.

Neither "we" nor anything else is in overall "control". The concept of "free will" is a useful appendage to the concepts of "guilt" or "failure", but any "freedom" is always relative.

So Dok I'm curious then, who choses if I'm going to have oatmeal or cheerio's for breakfast? I don't understand how "this ties into the sequential nature in which we perceive events"? Can you explain this for me please?



Fresco I think I understand what you are saying here but I'm a little confused about something. Are you saying then that "free will" cannot be a useful appendage to the concept of "happiness" or "joy" then? I would have to disagree in such a case. It brings me great happiness to go horseback riding. There's almost nothing that compares to the joy that brings me. However I can't do it every day. Though I would if I could... believe me! But some days when it's been a long time I choose to adjust my schedule to fit in going somewhere to ride. What is your concept of freedom?

First consider the premise: Everything in the known universe has a cause. Nothing happens in a void.

Every action has a reaction. You don't just 'like' cheerios. You may have pleasant memories tied to early experiences with cheerios. maybe their round shape is pleasing to you because of some totally separate set of causal events that caused you to find round shapes pleasing. Maybe the 30 bazillion TV adds for cheerios have caused a desire for cheerios to come to the surface. More than likely it is all of that plus 1000 more nuances you wouldn't even be conscious of, that all came together and pushed you toward the destination of having cheerios for breakfast on that specific day.

It's like a hugely complex game of knockdown dominoes, with literally billions of intersecting chains going on at any one time in any one persons life.
Therefore all choice is is the end result of a web of different causes. There is no actual choice, because you were going to choose the cheerios all along. Just as that last domino will be knocked down a certain way, determined by the movement of the very first domino in the chain.

The illusion comes in that we experience time in a straightforward fashion. We can't examine, therefore know, the future.
Everything we do something that appears as if it were a choice, the fact that we do not know which way we will act seems like freewill. It isn't.
But considering the illusion of freewill is indistinguishable from the real thing without stepping outside of linear time, it doesn't really matter.
It's all pedantics.

hephzibah

We certainly perceive "choice" as something positive. But your "freedom" to go horseriding and the ensuing "happiness" are value judged relative to your less attractive obligations and restrictions. I put it to you that "an escape angle" figures and you cannot be sure your "choice" is towards something or away from something. Once we allow for positive and negative "forces" within decisions then "free-will" may be nothing more than a balancing act between opposing forces.

Ok so I'll give you that Dok. LOL I do happen to prefer cheerios over oatmeal. Oatmeal just looks gross to me... ack... so I'll give you another example. What if I'm driving home late from work one night and a drunk driver runs a light, hits me, and puts me in the hospital for a few months. I fail to see that was predetermined by anything in my past in anyway. He made a choice... I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and whamo... my new best friends are the nurses in the hospital.

Is this some of the stuff I'm going to run into as I keep reading more about Adler and Maslow?

Some of them hospital nurses are pretty hot.

Nice sig line fresco. I like that.

Now that is an interesting concept. You and Dok both have good points but my perspective is getting in the way of my understanding of this issue.

On one hand I can see that certain things that happen to me may be a direct result of my past. But on the other hand I just can't seem to conceive of the idea of not having control over certain things in my life. Like getting up in the morning, taking my dog to the dog park, going horseback riding... and so on. I really believe that there are things out there we have no control over. Life is life. It happens. But I do believe there are certain aspects of life that I can make choices about which will have a direct effect on which direction I'm going, or what happens next. Is this making any sense at all?

LOL nick... I don't look at the nurses, but boy some of them doctors... whooo weee!

Your posts are making plenty of sense Heph, I think the problem with conceptualising any of this has been highlighted by the Doc with these lines...



The nuances that make up any, however trivial, action can be vast, mind boggingly vast.

hephzibah

We like to think we have control.

Unlike the Doc, I dont have much use for reductionist "causality" On the other hand I am quite attracted to the Gurdjieff doctrine that "Man is asleep" ....in fact he is a sleepwalking committee of squabbling "selves".
If you are not familiar with this stuff here's a link:

http://consciousness.consumercide.com/gurdjieff_consc.html

(P.D. Ouspensky's "In Search of the Miraculous" is the best entree)

A secondary issue is that "control" may be philosophically constraining.
I have argued this elsewhere refereng mainly to the Santiago Theory of Cognition which (a) seeks to resolve the mind -body dichotomy and (b) holds that "thinking" is merely an extension of the "general life process".

http://consciousness.consumercide.com/gurdjieff_consc.html

I have done extensive research in this area. I spent 2005 having four major operation in two different hospitals. UCSF is the winner by far as to really hot nurses. I think because it is a teaching facility and they have lots of students training there ... that has a lot do to with it!

One of my doctors was especially hot!

Anon

hephzibah,

sorry that second link should have been:

http://www.combusem.com/CAPRA4.HTM

Ashers mind bogglingly vast is definately right! I'm feeling quite mind boggled myself right now!

Thanks fresco, I'm looking at the stuff now inbetween posts. Trying to sort this whole thing out... whew... could take me some time to figure out how or if this fits into my current perspective. Where I stand, and so forth. I will have to get back to ya'll on this one.

In a chaotic system like our universe, a "butterfly flapping it's wings" on the other side of the world can alter your decision about what to have for breakfast.

That means that even if free will does not really exist, neither does determinism.....?

I've read this a few times and I have no idea how you arrived at that conclusion from that premise, as that premise is one commonly linked to the argument for determinism.
Could you reword this?