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Fri 30 Jun, 2006 10:38 am
I do not believe that "no free will" is the equivalent of "not being able to act independently". Similarly, I don't believe that "free will" means the gift of total self-command.
Everything depends on something. I cannot exist without my environment, and if my own "apartness" from everything else is a misconception, then how is it relevant to talk of freedom?
It is a relative term, and applying it to will, a function that requires such strict frames to operate within, is just paradoxical.
So, I don't believe in free will. But I also don't believe in absolute determinism.
Both are dualistic parts of some non-dualistic notion that is in many ways "will" itself. The curious thing about will is that absolute submission to it rewards absolute control of it. So how does "freedom" apply?
is the debate based on false premises, or are you evading the question? alas, coberst hasn't settled it for me, he's mostly repeating himself. i'm personally unsure about the question. but as a practical matter, i assume i have some volition, and i infer others do as well, since if my behavior is externally determined, i can't do anything about that anyway. arguments for determinism, like those put forward by the stoics, ring false to me. on the other hand, some empirical proof of free will would be marvelous, as an example of a macro level phenomenon that is intrinsically unpredictable yet non-random.
Well, I am trying to evade the question if I can find a valid substitute for it.
Since no apparent solution can be found.
I think that the mechanisms of our will work along different lines that free or bound.
Once we thought it acted along good and evil, but now most people understand how these are but perspectives, not subjected to will itself, but rather to it's vantagepoint in the experience.
Can it be that this is also true for the conflict "free or bound"?
Determinism makes sense, I guess, but only as an explanation of history, not as a prediction of the future. I don't believe in it's inherent truth.
Cyracuz, would you agree--as i've been insinuating in my questions directed at coberst--that a "complete theory" of the mind has to account for its absence or presence?
That's not hard to agree on..
Assuming you are talking of "location".
It's kind of inadequate to say that the mind is in the brain, as I see it.
When I try to apply my logic I arrive at the conclusion that the mind is everywhere...
I think that in determining the "place" of the will in the total experience there may be a more beneficial approach than thinking along the terms "free vs non-existent".
This approach yields nothing but more riddles, since each counterpart only has meaning if they are mutually exclusive.
The arguments that go towards negating the concept of will are founded in the fact that we are influenced by our surroundings, wich provides pretty severe limiting to the proposed freedom of our capacity to act.
And since the oposite of "free will" is "no will", I feel that the hammer isn't exactly hitting the nail...
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