The Death of Free Will

[henry quirk]

Do you think a person can become free of habitual mechanical reactions limited to desires and evolve to become part of conscious humanity capable of free will?

all men have habits...habits allow us to exist in sumthin' other than a state of constant bewilderment...without habit, man would accomplish nuthin' cuz every experience, no matter how many times repeated, would be novel...imagine a world of perpetual infancy: a dead world

no, you can't knock habit...habit allows you and me to disagree here in this virtual place...habit allows us each to have accrued enough experience to disagree in the first place...habit is that which makes for the constant reference and comparison and contrast that we all do, all the time, every day

habit is essential to a free will...habit allows a man to consider, to deliberate, to conclude, to choose

consider man as admixture of flesh and spirit, the mechanistic and the mysterious, the predictable and the free

man is not to be elevated or purified or made better...we only need to become wise so that we choose better

[Nick_A]

Do you think a person can become free of habitual mechanical reactions limited to desires and evolve to become part of conscious humanity capable of free will?

all men have habits...habits allow us to exist in sumthin' other than a state of constant bewilderment...without habit, man would accomplish nuthin' cuz every experience, no matter how many times repeated, would be novel...imagine a world of perpetual infancy: a dead world

no, you can't knock habit...habit allows you and me to disagree here in this virtual place...habit allows us each to have accrued enough experience to disagree in the first place...habit is that which makes for the constant reference and comparison and contrast that we all do, all the time, every day

habit is essential to a free will...habit allows a man to consider, to deliberate, to conclude, to choose

consider man as admixture of flesh and spirit, the mechanistic and the mysterious, the predictable and the free

man is not to be elevated or purified or made better...we only need to become wise so that we choose better

Some habits are very useful. I was referring to attachments to habits. Freedom from the emotional attachments to habits enable a person to be "all things to all people."

1 Corinthians 9:19-23

19 Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Would genocides be possible if people were free from their emotional attachments to habits which prevent the experience of objective conscience? Without this freedom, free will is just a figment of our imagination but as of now free will is just the potential for mankind.

[Walker]

Associative thoughts are very useful but lack the force to do anything. Consciousness reveals what is necessary to do but the force to do anything comes from our body and our emotions. A person may say all the right things but without the force of emotions to support thoughts, nothing gets done. Thoughts have no force.

I’d invite you to consider this view further in light of: the existence of proven scientific methods, non-belief dependent, which engage emotions via thought, and also methods to give thought emotional power, which speaks to the how in your questions. Non-thought methods, again scientific, serve to quiet the mind static, which subsequently opens consciousness to thoughts like a radio receiver opens to frequencies. Enough for this discussion to know that these methods and their purpose exist in many traditions, and the particulars of their form is shaped by those traditions.

Who would choose to pursue this knowledge?

The one who has no choice but to pursue it.

"People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it." ~ Anthony de Mello

I agree that the great traditions are concerned with the relationship between reason and emotion. Intellectual people profess that emotions deny reason while emotional people assert that emotion brings value to reason. But the bottom line is that when reason and emotion are opposed to one another, free will is impossible and replaced by the desires of self justification

Socrates in the Chariot allegory shows how the dark horse or our earthly lower negative emotions and thoughts pull the chariot down. They do not listen to the driver. In Christianity the corrupt heart denies our potential for free will.

Matthew 15:17-20
Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man."

IMO free will is only possible when a person has acquired emotional intelligence to match intellectual intelligence. Then they can function together (facts and values) as normal for human "being" Otherwise free will can only be defined by efforts at defensive self justification. What is emotional intelligence and can it develop much like person develops intellectual intelligence?

The only people willing to pursue objective understanding are when they have need for it. Without the need to admit ones nothingness, self justification and all the negative emotions used to justify it reign supreme.

That’s a good argument, Nick.

I think it’s presented from one altitude on the vertical scale. Perhaps a stopping point, perhaps only to admire the view.

Give the balloon some propane fire and move to an icier altitude, you find that the horizon is much more distant. What this means is, wu wei. Actionless action. The egoic, separate sense of “self,” is replaced by attenuation to physical, elemental forces which cause symbiotic movement in the inorganic and inner universe.

In Christian terms is goes something like, Unto thee, I surrender. When this truly happens the will and the body, even identity, become servant to that nameless thing of a thousand names and one does not need why, or justification, or even explanation.

Of course, icy altitude can get a bit chilly, so Christmas cheer in rum spirits can warm the cockles of our hearts if the hearts are pure.

[henry quirk]

Some habits are very useful. I was referring to attachments to habits. Freedom from the emotional attachments to habits enable a person to be "all things to all people."

why is bein' all things to all people a good thing?


Would genocides be possible if people were free from their emotional attachments to habits which prevent the experience of objective conscience? Without this freedom, free will is just a figment of our imagination but as of now free will is just the potential for mankind.

you ask too much

not even god wants personality to dissolve away

[Nick_A]

I’d invite you to consider this view further in light of: the existence of proven scientific methods, non-belief dependent, which engage emotions via thought, and also methods to give thought emotional power, which speaks to the how in your questions. Non-thought methods, again scientific, serve to quiet the mind static, which subsequently opens consciousness to thoughts like a radio receiver opens to frequencies. Enough for this discussion to know that these methods and their purpose exist in many traditions, and the particulars of their form is shaped by those traditions.

Who would choose to pursue this knowledge?

The one who has no choice but to pursue it.

"People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it." ~ Anthony de Mello

I agree that the great traditions are concerned with the relationship between reason and emotion. Intellectual people profess that emotions deny reason while emotional people assert that emotion brings value to reason. But the bottom line is that when reason and emotion are opposed to one another, free will is impossible and replaced by the desires of self justification

Socrates in the Chariot allegory shows how the dark horse or our earthly lower negative emotions and thoughts pull the chariot down. They do not listen to the driver. In Christianity the corrupt heart denies our potential for free will.

Matthew 15:17-20
Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man."

IMO free will is only possible when a person has acquired emotional intelligence to match intellectual intelligence. Then they can function together (facts and values) as normal for human "being" Otherwise free will can only be defined by efforts at defensive self justification. What is emotional intelligence and can it develop much like person develops intellectual intelligence?

The only people willing to pursue objective understanding are when they have need for it. Without the need to admit ones nothingness, self justification and all the negative emotions used to justify it reign supreme.

That’s a good argument, Nick.

I think it’s presented from one altitude on the vertical scale. Perhaps a stopping point, perhaps only to admire the view.

Give the balloon some propane fire and move to an icier altitude, you find that the horizon is much more distant. What this means is, wu wei. Actionless action. The egoic, separate sense of “self,” is replaced by attenuation to physical, elemental forces which cause symbiotic movement in the inorganic and inner universe.

In Christian terms is goes something like, Unto thee, I surrender. When this truly happens the will and the body, even identity, become servant to that nameless thing of a thousand names and one does not need why, or justification, or even explanation.

Of course, icy altitude can get a bit chilly, so Christmas cheer in rum spirits can warm the cockles of our hearts if the hearts are pure.

In Christian terms is goes something like, Unto thee, I surrender. When this truly happens the will and the body, even identity, become servant to that nameless thing of a thousand names and one does not need why, or justification, or even explanation.

The goal of what I study includes the modern value of the cooperation of the objective goals of religion and science. Can they complement each other in their efforts to learn of human meaning and purpose and enable Man to serve universal purpose rather than escaping from it?

Where the animal essence is a machine serving the earth, the human soul when present can serve universal purpose by consciously connecting levels of reality; heaven and earth. The human soul we have the seed of, receives a quality of energy from above and the free will to give it to below. Heaven feeds the earth.

This also serves the purpose of awakening objective conscience. In the modern world it offers the hope to use machines to serve the potential for human being and to grow in emotional quality rather than destroying this potential as is done now in the modern secular world..

[Immanuel Can]

not even god wants personality to dissolve away

This is true.

If God wanted our personalties gone, he wouldn't have made us individuals in the first place. Identical robots are much easier to construct.

I had a conversation with a very nice Hindu once. He was asking me if I thought all the problems in the world aren't obviously the products of desire, and that if we no longer desired things, wouldn't life be more peaceful for everyone.

I said, "That's a good question: let me think about it and get back to you."

When I saw him again, I asked him this: "Do you suppose that absence of suffering would be a sufficient definition for happiness, or would there have to be something more, something positive beyond that basic negative?"

He said, "That's a good question; can I ask my priest?"

I said, "Sure."

But he never got back to me.

However, the question, I think, is generally a good one for the Buddhist-Hindu set, and plausibly for Gnostic and such as well. Is absence-of-whatever (strife, division, desire, pain, suffering, badness, etc.) a complete definition of things like "peace," or "happiness" or "fulfillment," or is something beyond the mere negation of these negative experiences what is required for a soul to be truly peaceful, happy, blessed, fulfilled or whatever? Or does there have to be something positive beyond the mere negations?

[Nick_A]

Some habits are very useful. I was referring to attachments to habits. Freedom from the emotional attachments to habits enable a person to be "all things to all people."

why is bein' all things to all people a good thing?


Would genocides be possible if people were free from their emotional attachments to habits which prevent the experience of objective conscience? Without this freedom, free will is just a figment of our imagination but as of now free will is just the potential for mankind.

you ask too much

not even god wants personality to dissolve away

What I am saying that what we call personality is created in us artificially by the fallen world. Can we become capable of personality which reflects what we ARE born with. I'm not suggesting to dissolve personality but only dissolve our attachments to imaginary artificial personality to open to one reflecting human being itself.

“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.” ~ Socrates.

Can the personality reflect what the seed of the human soul can become?

The same idea is expressed in Matthew 6. The lily manifests in the world as it was intended to do. Since we don't know what we ARE, we manifest an artificial personality which pleases the fallen world.

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

[henry quirk]

What I am saying that what we call personality is created in us artificially by the fallen world.

that's not how it seems to me...the world, it seems to me, is often tryin' to eat away at us, to wreck us, to make us less...the world isn't tryin' to create anything but absence

[Walker]

The goal of what I study includes the modern value of the cooperation of the objective goals of religion and science. Can they complement each other in their efforts to learn of human meaning and purpose and enable Man to serve universal purpose rather than escaping from it?

Where the animal essence is a machine serving the earth, the human soul when present can serve universal purpose by consciously connecting levels of reality; heaven and earth. The human soul we have the seed of, receives a quality of energy from above and the free will to give it to below. Heaven feeds the earth.

This also serves the purpose of awakening objective conscience. In the modern world it offers the hope to use machines to serve the potential for human being and to grow in emotional quality rather than destroying this potential as is done now in the modern secular world..

Seems like if something must be escaped from, and it's a universal something, then there's nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

Isn't the modern secular world's view of science, godless? And this is to cooperate with religion?

[Nick_A]

What I am saying that what we call personality is created in us artificially by the fallen world.

that's not how it seems to me...the world, it seems to me, is often tryin' to eat away at us, to wreck us, to make us less...the world isn't tryin' to create anything but absence

If the personality is created by the fallen world, what else can be expected but a fallen personality which prevents a person from opening to the potential for human being. Genocide for example is abnormal for human being yet it has become the norm

“....the world is what it is because man is what he is, that we cannot help the world unless we also help ourselves—not in the sense of self-gratification, but of helping ourselves discover to what greatness we really belong.”

As you said the world eats away at us. This raises the question of what human being is and if human being can grow by seeing the world for what it is not for self gratification natural for the fallen world but the result of the need for truth necessary to return to our origin

[Nick_A]

The goal of what I study includes the modern value of the cooperation of the objective goals of religion and science. Can they complement each other in their efforts to learn of human meaning and purpose and enable Man to serve universal purpose rather than escaping from it?

Where the animal essence is a machine serving the earth, the human soul when present can serve universal purpose by consciously connecting levels of reality; heaven and earth. The human soul we have the seed of, receives a quality of energy from above and the free will to give it to below. Heaven feeds the earth.

This also serves the purpose of awakening objective conscience. In the modern world it offers the hope to use machines to serve the potential for human being and to grow in emotional quality rather than destroying this potential as is done now in the modern secular world..

Seems like if something must be escaped from, and it's a universal something, then there's nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide.

We escape into imagination. If Simone Weil is right, freedom from imgination is one of the most difficult things we can do

Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

Isn't the modern secular world's view of science, godless? And this is to cooperate with religion?

Godless religion is idolatry while science worships the money. This isn't what I mean by the complimentary relationship between science and religion in the cause of discovering human objective meaning and purpose.

[henry quirk]

If the personality is created by the fallen world

that's the thing, Nick, I don't believe that...I don't believe my personality, my mind, my soul are a product of the world...and I don't believe the world is fallen

materially, the world, Reality, is a big, mostly empty, box with a minuscule amount of mostly disassociated matter thinly and unevenly spread thru out...it is mechanistic, deterministic

morally, the world, Reality, isn't...morality is a highly local phenomenon, associated only with certain peculiar high-order clumps of complex matter that are unique because, while mechanistic, each clump of this matter embodies a particular, unique, non-determined sumthin' not born of this world, a reasonin', choosin' sumthin' that is its own and that is itself the moral aspect

materially, the world, Reality, is hostile to this unique stuff; morally, there always a sum'bitch 'round the corner lookin' to take advantage (free will is double-edged, a man can choose to do wrong)


Genocide for example is abnormal for human being yet it has become the norm

no, it's not the norm...if it were, man would not oppose it, be outraged by it, or even notice it...there is evil in the world (as I say, free will is double-edged) but it is opposed every step of the way by good


As you said the world eats away at us.

it does...materially, Reality really doesn't like high-order, complex matter...entropy is not our friend; morally, Reality, specifically certain folks in the world of man, entices and deceives...as a kind of entropy, these people are not our friends

literally or figuratively, the devil is a ravenger and out & out liar: he sez we're less than what we are...we really ought not listen to him

[Walker]

In determinism the physical universe moves step by step. Each step comes from a previous state and the previous state is part of an ever progressing causal chain.

The brain also functions step by step but the mind often leaps from one line of thought to another. The leap is causally unexplainable. It could have a cause but that cause is unknowable. To say that it comes from a causal chain is not true. To say that it comes from a causal leap is unknown.

So believe what you want but don't say you have definite proof.

I believe I have free will. Why? That's what I want to believe.

Consider that the endpoint of rationality is that all phenomena can be causally explained, in theory. A thought is a phenomenon, as you’ll agree when your memory starts to go, because a phenomenon is change, and thought is a change. Blank awareness changes to thought when the thought appears to memory, as many fogies will attest. To say that a causal chain of thought, or mind, is not true means that the existing causal train exists, but has yet to be discovered either empirically, reasonably, or inherently. Example: rationality indicates the existence of knowing other than linear thought. Example of inherently: love can weave a strange, twisted, but predictable path once all the conditions are known … knowledge which often arrives both rationally and empirically at the end of a lifetime of lovin’, which is why Casanova retired to a monastery, to conceptualize all that he had to do in the past, and the consequences. But, who has time to read of such adventures when the present is all consuming and the sand is piling up.

[Immanuel Can]

Consider that the endpoint of rationality is that all phenomena can be causally explained, in theory.

That's incorrect, and obviously so. Because either rationality is the basis of causality, or causality is the explanation for rationality. You can't have both being the cause or the effect.

If rationality is the means, and causal explanation the end, then rationality is one thing causality cannot explain. And if it ever did, then rationality itself would be a mere "effect," the result of causal chains that themselves have no relationship to truth, but rather are blind causes and effects. That would mean that being rational would have no special truth status at all, but would simply be one odd and contingent kind of effect of inherently impersonal, irrational causes.

[Walker]

Consider that the endpoint of rationality is that all phenomena can be causally explained, in theory.

That's incorrect, and obviously so. Because either rationality is the basis of causality, or causality is the explanation for rationality. You can't have both being the cause or the effect.

Empiricism indicates that when the inner becomes the outer, the boundary separating rationality and phenomena fades sometimes to nothing, but energy is required to keep pace. Rationality can prove this outside of time for posterity, and inherent knowledge of awareness, and perhaps also the experience of recognition, can confirm the proof.