Free will is an illusion....?

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Jasper
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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#141 Post by Jasper » Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:54 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:Unfortunately, they just don't have a good Spinoza scholar there. I'd be more likely to try for a visiting studentship at BU (Aaron Garrett is awesome and a huge influence), or Wisconsin (Steven Nadler is also great, and was my supervisor's MA supervisor).
Well, you could always try to inform them that they need a good Spinoza scholar, and that you're willing to come in as a visiting scholar to demonstrate what they're missing. :lol: :noclue:

Harvard's just so beautiful, especially if you appreciate colonial architecture.
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Eh, but BU's nice. It's well-situated for access to various parts of the city. It does share a nice view of the Charles River with Harvard and MIT.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#142 Post by Juana » Fri Jul 27, 2012 1:54 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Juana wrote:LOL just make sure none of those friends has a pig farm...
:lol: I guess this was a response to my post about challenging my friends to murder me?

Yeah, really... but the idea isn't for them to actually attempt to try, but to recognize the force of their (moral) character on what they are actually able to choose to do. They can't actually *choose* to murder me, because there isn't anything in the past that suffices to cause them to do so.

Try arbitrarily willing yourself into a murderous rage... it's pretty difficult. Not even method actors can really pull that off.
I will not delve into this but if I knew someone WANTED to die I would do it out of loyalty.

As for the murderous rage it seems we're built to survive and not just randomly kill (obviously except the % that are socio/pyschopaths and violent) but I think if anyone felt their lively hood was threatened in ANY shape they would kill. Even if it was just a 1% possibility... so what makes us not weigh the other 99% in that situation? I mean in that situation there are more reasons not to snap than there are to go on a rampage. I know why it happens from a clinical point of view... but those feelings were they always there? were they developed? or was it just a person that didn't want to lose their pool in the back yard?

As for the laws of nature we want a structure, housing, food, reproduce, etc... but why the need to just one up everyone else in the community?

Things like that make me think that because man will NEVER know/understand ALL the laws of nature that some of the other views are flawed... not wrong, but not 100%.. just thousands of years of educated guessing.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#143 Post by Matz » Fri Jul 27, 2012 4:14 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
The idea is this: if you recognize that people aren't freely choosing to be assholes or hurt you or others, or to make bad decisions, but are being caused by prior events which can be known, then it follows that if we want people to be different than they are, we should accept that they have been caused to be the way they are in specific ways, and try to remedy these things in the future, instead of hurting ourselves or acting rashly in the present because we do not understand what is going on.
yeah, well, I knew that already and I do forgive and have forgiven a lot of things based on this kind of rationale but you can only do that to a point. I mean you can't keep forgiving a guy who continually steals a 100 dollars from you every week because his dad was in that "business" as well

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#144 Post by LJF » Fri Jul 27, 2012 5:36 am

The reason I believe there is free will because we can think, we create thoughts, process our thoughts then we come to a conclusion. Each person can create their own thoughts and control those thoughts. Yes I agree there are certain laws like the law of gravity, but within those laws we live our lives. Yes outside things might influence our thoughts, but we alone make that final decision.

If there was some great force governing everyone, wouldn't we all be the same, think the same and act the same. Because we are all unique this means to me that there is free will. When two people are presented with the same question, they can come to their own conclusion using there own thought process. While they might make the same conclusion, they didn't come to it the same way. They both use their own reasons for their conclusion.

So my reason to think there is free will is basic and it is because we can think and control our thoughts.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#145 Post by mockbee » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:07 am

@LJF

It's curious to me that you haven't thought 'SCREW THIS!' and left. You interestingly keep coming back with the same exact thought again and again for eight pages. That's really odd....... That isn't a put down, think about it. Why haven't you acted on your likely thought; "these people are elitist idiots! I'm outta here!". You decide to keep saying the same thing. There is a reason why..........maybe ask yourself? You are welcome here, I'm just wondering what makes you inside want to come back over and over to say the same thing......... And no, other people are not saying the same thing over and over.....thoughts are definitely evolving.



And you don't have to answer this, but how old are you? That is a question purely out of curiosity.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#146 Post by LJF » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:21 am

mockbee wrote:@LJF

It's curious to me that you haven't thought 'SCREW THIS!' and left. You interestingly keep coming back with the same exact thought again and again for eight pages. That's really odd....... That isn't a put down, think about it. Why haven't you acted on your likely thought; "these people are elitist idiots! I'm outta here!". You decide to keep saying the same thing. There is a reason why..........maybe ask yourself? You are welcome here, I'm just wondering what makes you inside want to come back over and over to say the same thing......... And no, other people are not saying the same thing over and over.....thoughts are definitely evolving.



And you don't have to answer this, but how old are you? That is a question purely out of curiosity.
You have asked why I believe in free will and I gave my reason. I believe in x because y. I'm not saying you need to believe what I think, but you asked why and I gave my reason.

40 yrs old and I dress myself, have kids and function in society.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#147 Post by mockbee » Fri Jul 27, 2012 7:50 am

LJF wrote:
You have asked why I believe in free will and I gave my reason. I believe in x because y. I'm not saying you need to believe what I think, but you asked why and I gave my reason.

40 yrs old and I dress myself, have kids and function in society.
:thumb:

I truly hope you have an awesome day, I'm planning on having a damn good one myself.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#148 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:41 am

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... free-will/
We’re all schizophrenics now: Jonathan Kay on James Holmes, Sam Harris, and the morally terrifying case against free will

Jonathan Kay Jul 26, 2012 – 11:55 AM ET | Last Updated: Jul 27, 2012 10:54 AM ET

At his court appearance this week, James Holmes made a strong case for an insanity plea, without even opening his mouth. The Colorado mass-shooting suspect — who has dyed his hair a lurid shade of red, and refers to himself as “The Joker” — looked as if his brain were on another planet.

Holmes is 24 years old, around the age when the symptoms of schizophrenia typically become acute. Cho Seung-Hui, the mentally unstable Viginia Tech shooter, was 23 when he killed 32 people in 2007. John Hinckley, Jr. was 25 when he tried to kill Ronald Reagan, thinking that this would win him the affections of Jodie Foster. At trial, the lead psychiatric expert for the defense successfully argued that Hinckley was insane — specifically, that he suffered from schizophrenia, depression, “suicidal features,” and an “autistic retreat from reality.”

In other words, Hinckley was nuts. In the period leading up to his assassination attempt, he imagined he was Travis Bickle from the movie Taxi Driver, and also sometimes slipped into the notion that he was John Lennon in some sort of resurrected form. His notes to Foster began as love letters, but over time became weird and demented.

Yet, despite all these facts, Americans were outraged when a Washington jury came back with an insanity verdict. In the years following, numerous U.S. states responded to the Hinckley acquittal by tightening their standards for gauging insanity. (Three — Idaho, Montana and Utah — abolished the insanity defense altogether.) A national poll, taken the day after the verdict was read, found that five out of six Americans thought “justice was not done.”

I suspect you’d get a similar poll result from Americans if Holmes also gets off on insanity. All of us have an evolved instinct to separate humanity into good and evil categories. Human-engineered tragedies such as terrorist attacks and spree shootings push that instinct into overdrive, because the killers seem like the very embodiment of pure evil. The words “not guilty by reason of insanity” frustrate that instinct, and leave us morally unsatisfied. To victims and their families especially, the idea that a killer is not responsible for his butchery makes it feel like a hole has been ripped in the good-evil continuum.

But a new book raises a question that puts the very existence of that continuum into doubt: What if none of us are truly “responsible” for our actions?

The question lies at the heart of Free Will, by neuroscientist Sam Harris (an author better known for Letter to a Christian Nation, and other works in the “New Atheism” genre). Harris makes the case that every human being — the “sane” and the “insane” alike — are bound by rigid, deterministic forces that guide us through life according to the chemical reactions occurring in our brains, even if some brains obviously work better than others. Eating breakfast, going to work, switching radio stations, shooting the President to impress Jodie Foster: It’s all chemicals.

Of course, the argument is not new: Theologians have been debating the concept of free will for centuries, and the philosophical genre is so well-developed that it has generated a host of arcane sub-theories with names like “hard incompatibilism” and “Libertarianism Volition.” But Harris make his case in unusually stark terms, and he does so at a time when new brain-scanning technologies and other scientific breakthroughs are letting us examine the cerebrum in the way that watchmakers take apart the gears of a clock.

More than ever before, the brain looks to modern researchers like a mere machine, processing inputs and generating outputs like any other. On this understanding, a brain has no more capacity for “good” or “evil” than does a car or a microwave oven.

By way of example, Harris provides a list of five hypothetical killers — (1) a four-year-old who accidentally shoots someone while playing with his father’s gun; (2) a severely abused 12-year-old who kills a tormentor; (3) a child-abuse victim who, as an adult, shoots his ex-girlfriend after she leaves him; (4) a 25-year-with a solid upbringing, who kills a young woman “just for the fun of it”; and (5) a seemingly heartless murderer who later is discovered to have a large tumor that is short-circuiting his prefrontal cortex.

By conventional analysis, #3 and #4 would be branded evildoers; #1 and #5 would be given a free pass on grounds of age and biology, respectively; and #2 would lie somewhere in between. But Harris’ point is that, once you put aside our mythical religious baggage about good and evil (as he sees it), all of these cases are motivated by the same amoral whirling of a human brain’s synaptic gears. But not for the luck of the biological draw, any one of us — in another life — could be #1, #2, #3, #4 or #5: There is no magical, spiritual, free-willed force within our minds that will allow us to overcome the fate that is wired into the physical universe.

As an atheist, Harris is quite untroubled by all this. Indeed, he thinks his readers should be relieved by his revelations, because “few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems.” Once we all learn to shed our belief in notions like God and sin, moreover, he believes, we can build a “scientifically informed system of justice.” Under such a system, criminals would be jailed, yes — but only to pursue the explicitly utilitarian goal of preventing them from committing more crimes. Criminal justice would be stripped of any notion of retribution — since “a desire for retribution, arising from the idea that each person is the free author of his thoughts and actions, rests on a cognitive and emotional illusion — and perpetuates a moral one.”

On the level of scientific logic, I could not find a single sentence in Free Will with which I disagreed. Yet from a human standpoint, the book is quietly terrifying. As horrible (am I even allowed to use that word, Mr. Harris?) as monsters (ditto) such as James Holmes and Cho Seung-Hui may be, there is some deeply rooted psychological solace to be found in our collective ability to call them by that name — to make a line in the sand, placing the community of law-abiding fathers, mothers, sons and daughters on one side, and on the other marking “Here there be monsters.” To erase that line is to erase millions of years of evolutionary psychology, which has programmed us with useful moral instincts aimed at identifying and punishing harmful elements within our society.

I believe that free will truly is an illusion, just as Sam Harris says. But it is a valuable illusion, and one that is deeply rooted in every human culture known to anthropology — much like the belief in an almighty, which Mr. Harris equally dismisses. That’s why, like most thinking people, I have given up on letting it bother me. If the illusion of free will went away, we would be left with a world so morally stark and (literally) inhuman that, I dare say, even Mr. Harris himself would long for the fairy tales of good and evil he so cleverly debunks.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#149 Post by LJF » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:54 am

mockbee wrote:
LJF wrote:
You have asked why I believe in free will and I gave my reason. I believe in x because y. I'm not saying you need to believe what I think, but you asked why and I gave my reason.

40 yrs old and I dress myself, have kids and function in society.
:thumb:

I truly hope you have an awesome day, I'm planning on having a damn good one myself.
Drove to Buffalo last night it's my wife's 20 yr high school reunion, will try to have fun at that. Just got back from the zoo with the kids that was enjoyable. Not sure what I think about zoos.

You enjoy your weekend.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#150 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:14 am

Matz wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:
The idea is this: if you recognize that people aren't freely choosing to be assholes or hurt you or others, or to make bad decisions, but are being caused by prior events which can be known, then it follows that if we want people to be different than they are, we should accept that they have been caused to be the way they are in specific ways, and try to remedy these things in the future, instead of hurting ourselves or acting rashly in the present because we do not understand what is going on.
yeah, well, I knew that already and I do forgive and have forgiven a lot of things based on this kind of rationale but you can only do that to a point. I mean you can't keep forgiving a guy who continually steals a 100 dollars from you every week because his dad was in that "business" as well
I agree. There's a difference between forgiving and understanding. I don't think you need to forgive those who wrong you, but in understanding them, some will be forgiven, and others not, but you will also not be so bothered by them. It's more important that you are less affected (less mentally disturbed) by others, than that you forgive them.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#151 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:42 am

Juana wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Juana wrote:LOL just make sure none of those friends has a pig farm...
:lol: I guess this was a response to my post about challenging my friends to murder me?

Yeah, really... but the idea isn't for them to actually attempt to try, but to recognize the force of their (moral) character on what they are actually able to choose to do. They can't actually *choose* to murder me, because there isn't anything in the past that suffices to cause them to do so.

Try arbitrarily willing yourself into a murderous rage... it's pretty difficult. Not even method actors can really pull that off.
I will not delve into this but if I knew someone WANTED to die I would do it out of loyalty.
This, though, wouldn't be murder (except maybe technically legally). A desire to fulfill a loved one's wish to end their life, produced from compassion, empathy, loyalty, etc., is far difference than a freely induced, unprovoked, "chosen" feeling of uncaused rage directed at a person for no other reason at all than that they asked you to freely choose to do it (which of course for some people may be enough a trigger, in combination with their bodily states, but this again wouldn't be free).

The fact that your view here is intelligible to you (and to me) leads me to believe that not only is it not something you choose from free will, but it is something you MUST deeply identify with because of your particular moral character, which you did not choose.
As for the murderous rage it seems we're built to survive and not just randomly kill (obviously except the % that are socio/pyschopaths and violent) but I think if anyone felt their lively hood was threatened in ANY shape they would kill. Even if it was just a 1% possibility... so what makes us not weigh the other 99% in that situation? I mean in that situation there are more reasons not to snap than there are to go on a rampage. I know why it happens from a clinical point of view... but those feelings were they always there? were they developed? or was it just a person that didn't want to lose their pool in the back yard?
I agree with your thought that we aren't built, generally, to randomly kill (it isn't evolutionarily adaptive). But I don't agree that ANYONE would kill if they felt their livelihood was threatened. Maybe I'm wrong about myself, but I don't think I would.

I have been asked by people the following question which I find very strange: how come the Jews allowed themselves to be systematically slaughtered so easily in the Holocaust? Why didn't they fight back?
The answer is of course that many did fight back, but the power imbalance was stark from the beginning. When German troops have surrounded you, have a gun to your wife or daughter's head... it's not so easy to just "kill".
As for the laws of nature we want a structure, housing, food, reproduce, etc... but why the need to just one up everyone else in the community?

Things like that make me think that because man will NEVER know/understand ALL the laws of nature that some of the other views are flawed... not wrong, but not 100%.. just thousands of years of educated guessing.
Well, it isn't quite "guessing". But you are right to be skeptical about what exactly the "laws of nature", or the propositions we call by that phrase, actually are. There is a philosopher named Nancy Cartwright (not the same woman as Bart Simpson's voice) who has argued for decades that the laws of nature are not real. But she means something technical. For scientists it isn't about establishing absolute certainty, but about establishing the common features of regularities we observe in nature. So when you see the planets orbit the Sun, you try to find a way to symbolize the paths they take, and this produces a pattern with such a deep regularity that we can derive laws of gravitation from it. The reason we can call it a 'law' is that we have discovered something which shows itself to be applicable universally, not just in some small area of the universe. Things which are only applicable sometimes, or in some places, are not laws of nature. So we do have ways of trying to establish truths about all things in the universe. The fact that after Newton it took LaPlace and, (among others) eventually, Einstein, to fine-tune the details of the abstract symbolic representation we have for the laws we observe about planetary motion and light, and other things doesn't mean we're just "guessing", it just means that the scientific method proceeds (how fitting) methodically, aiming at higher levels of accuracy over time. There are, however, certain foundational principles which probably aren't questionable. These, in my view, are certain very basic logical laws. There may be only a couple, and they aren't necessarily the symbolic laws of modern "logic" as we have it. Something like A = A & A does not = not-A, and if P implies Q, then if P, then Q. Those are not observed laws, but laws which are integral to making sense of the universe at all.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#152 Post by Juana » Fri Jul 27, 2012 1:40 pm

I believe everyone will reach their breaking point and do what they needed to ensure survival. If you do not have that survival instinct like the rest of the natural world, then wouldn't that be defying the "laws of nature"? Or is that person making a choice to ignore the most primal instinct?

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#153 Post by mockbee » Fri Jul 27, 2012 1:56 pm

Juana wrote:I believe everyone will reach their breaking point and do what they needed to ensure survival. If you do not have that survival instinct like the rest of the natural world, then wouldn't that be defying the "laws of nature"? Or is that person making a choice to ignore the most primal instinct?
Some people just die, very little fight.....

What about those ladies at the gym....? :noclue:

Aren't they just effectively dying...... many people I don't believe are truly aware of true threats...... Another reason for no free will!..... I mean we careen down the highway at ridiculous speeds while doing all manners of other stuff.....o'd say that is a HUGE risk... You have to ignore instincts all the time..........:noclue:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#154 Post by Juana » Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:05 pm

But that is what I mean animals for example are bound to their instincts and while we're technically mammals, if we can ignore our instincts and do something incredibly stupid there has to be some choice in there. I mean people know that driving down the highway and texting is bad but they do it anyway. So if its not free will could it be the lack of rational thought?

As for the girls at the gym don't get me back on that. :banghead: :lolol:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#155 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:06 pm

Juana wrote:I believe everyone will reach their breaking point and do what they needed to ensure survival. If you do not have that survival instinct like the rest of the natural world, then wouldn't that be defying the "laws of nature"? Or is that person making a choice to ignore the most primal instinct?
It is true that, in a sense, everyone is striving (as Mockbee nicely suggested earlier in the discussion) to continue existing. It's also true that this could be described in evolutionary/biological terms as a kind of law. Hobbes, back in 1660 or so, actually calls it "The first Law of Nature":
Hobbes, in Leviathan wrote:CHAPTER XIV. OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURALL LAWES, AND OF CONTRACTS

Right Of Nature What

The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.
I do not think it follows from this that any given individual will, if their life is threatened, kill someone, or become murderous. We agree that there is this necessary fact that each of us is *trying* to continue to survive, but the implications of this for what we are compelled to do in a particular instance are not at all clear. There is no law of (human) nature which says ONLY: "If my life is sufficiently threatened by S, kill S." Laws are more general than this. They are something more like: "If my life is threatened by something, I will react in such a way as I can imagine will remove this threat." Put this way, it doesn't imply killing a person, necessarily, though it also doesn't necessarily rule it out.

Does that make sense? The response will depend on what that person sees as their available options, and which of these he/she thinks is best at the time. Sometimes it's better to run like hell than to stand and fight.

I think this just is what you were saying anyway. And interestingly, Hobbes (essentially the first modern political philosopher, but who is also a determinist) describes what we do under that law as "Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe". This might *seem* to endorse the idea that when people act according to that law, they're exercising "free will". And actually, this would be a charitable interpretation of LJF's repetitive insistence that when he makes decisions he thinks are good, he's using 'free will'. But Hobbes CERTAINLY didn't believe that that is what this was. His description is actually a RE-description of what we would have thought was free will in law-like terms. This allows us to describe and to predict behaviour, rather than leave it unexplained and capricious.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#156 Post by Juana » Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:37 pm

So they make a choice based on what they see in the situation?

The only reason I bring in other mammals (nature) in this is because while we can make choices based on experiences and our instincts, animals like dolphins do this as well, but then occasionally will do something to make the science community do the "wtf?" :crazy: I'm sure if they can do it then humans can do it as well, and we will study it but what if there is no rhyme or reason to it nothing that we can find.. Topics like this make me think of the end of I Robot movie.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#157 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 2:45 pm

Juana wrote:So they make a choice based on what they see in the situation?

The only reason I bring in other mammals (nature) in this is because while we can make choices based on experiences and our instincts, animals like dolphins do this as well, but then occasionally will do something to make the science community do the "wtf?" :crazy: I'm sure if they can do it then humans can do it as well, and we will study it but what if there is no rhyme or reason to it nothing that we can find.. Topics like this make me think of the end of I Robot movie.
This is good. My view is, as you might have guessed already, that there is nothing 'special' about humans. I place humans and other animals on a spectrum of how complex they are capable of thinking. And, in fact, my view is crazier than that, since I don't think we can draw a principled distinction between animals with very simple nervous systems and plants/fungi with proto-nervous-systems. I attribute a kind of rudimentary representation of reality to literally everything in the universe. I take this to be a totally natural phenomenon, and so something we can do science with. That doesn't mean that I think rocks are conscious. I take 'consciousness' to be a vague term describing a certain kind of very complex thinking (i.e., things like awareness of perceptions and ability to represent the future as possible), but not something which is distinct from the simpler sorts of thinking in any other way.

So yes, I think it's true that people make choices based on what they see in situations, but what is really tricky for "free will" is whether or not if a person sees TWO possibilities, they are in some sense FREE (or "able"/"capable") to choose one or the other in a way that isn't DETERMINED by some other fact that is already true, like some biological or environmental cause.

It's not enough for "free will" to say "well, they chose what they thought was best", because if it wasn't possible for them to choose anything else, then they necessarily chose what they did. How could that be "free will"? A "free will" becomes unnecessary here.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#158 Post by mockbee » Fri Jul 27, 2012 8:04 pm

Matz wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:
The idea is this: if you recognize that people aren't freely choosing to be assholes or hurt you or others, or to make bad decisions, but are being caused by prior events which can be known, then it follows that if we want people to be different than they are, we should accept that they have been caused to be the way they are in specific ways, and try to remedy these things in the future, instead of hurting ourselves or acting rashly in the present because we do not understand what is going on.
yeah, well, I knew that already and I do forgive and have forgiven a lot of things based on this kind of rationale but you can only do that to a point. I mean you can't keep forgiving a guy who continually steals a 100 dollars from you every week because his dad was in that "business" as well

I'm realizing that there is no limit to forgiveness. I forgive everyone for all future events. I acquiesce my notion that I have any control over future events. I will strive to do my best and approach events in my life acutely utilizing my past experiences and valid external insights to my greatest advantage..........everything else is far, far, far beyond my control. And that is glorious. No more worries! None! That is everything!

I never have a reason to be angry again. EVER! [not to say it always plays out that because I am certainly not perfect]. But ever since I have employed this outlook, 95% of the time I am completely calm and happy and often joyous.

Regarding the guy who steals $100 every week from you; I have a question.... Why wouldn't you take the first experience as a lesson and modify your actions to avoid future occurences? Hmmmmmmmm..... Every time we get angry we are missing an opportunity to learn something.........Being angry is our own personal mini protest against the entire universe and everything that is and always will be......who's going to win that one.....? :noclue:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#159 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 8:09 pm

Mockbee you REALLY REALLY REALLY should read "The Spinoza of Market Street". You'll like it. :nod: It took me all of half and hour yesterday.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#160 Post by Artemis » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:22 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Juana wrote:I believe everyone will reach their breaking point and do what they needed to ensure survival. If you do not have that survival instinct like the rest of the natural world, then wouldn't that be defying the "laws of nature"? Or is that person making a choice to ignore the most primal instinct?
It is true that, in a sense, everyone is striving (as Mockbee nicely suggested earlier in the discussion) to continue existing. It's also true that this could be described in evolutionary/biological terms as a kind of law. Hobbes, back in 1660 or so, actually calls it "The first Law of Nature":
Hobbes, in Leviathan wrote:CHAPTER XIV. OF THE FIRST AND SECOND NATURALL LAWES, AND OF CONTRACTS

Right Of Nature What

The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, hee shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.
I do not think it follows from this that any given individual will, if their life is threatened, kill someone, or become murderous. We agree that there is this necessary fact that each of us is *trying* to continue to survive, but the implications of this for what we are compelled to do in a particular instance are not at all clear. There is no law of (human) nature which says ONLY: "If my life is sufficiently threatened by S, kill S." Laws are more general than this. They are something more like: "If my life is threatened by something, I will react in such a way as I can imagine will remove this threat." Put this way, it doesn't imply killing a person, necessarily, though it also doesn't necessarily rule it out.

Does that make sense? The response will depend on what that person sees as their available options, and which of these he/she thinks is best at the time. Sometimes it's better to run like hell than to stand and fight.
A personal example that's related to the above..

In a nutshell: my father was physically and mentally abusive to my mother and me. So, while I lived at home(until age 17)there were times when I seriously contemplated murdering him in some way..poisoning or smashing something over his head, stabbing, etc. I never actually went through with any of those things because I didn't think going to prison for him was worth it. Also, he was bigger and stronger (former boxer, partisan in WWII) and would have ended killing me instead. My mother continued to live in that situation for several more years, and 9 years ago, he tried to strangle her while she was sleeping(napping on the couch). She distracted him by saying she heard soemone knocking on the door(he was really hard of hearing) which he believed and went to check.She took advantage of her chance and ran out the back. Luckily her neighbour was out and she told him to call the police. A couple of years after that when the court order to keep away from her was up, he tried to coem back to the house. He had been living in a mens shelter for older guys(my father was in his late 70s at this time). I happened to be at my mother's place doing something for her while she was out, and the phone rang. I answered, and it was one of the staff from the shelter calling to say he was on his way to the house. He was probably less than an hour away. I had a moment of real panic, fear, and terror really. I calmed myself and had to make a plan. I knew my mother would freak out and probably have a heartache if she came home to find him in the house. I contemplated getting a weapon of some sort-hammer, knife, anything. I didn't do that though. Instead I locked all the doors and called the police. I explained the situation and begged them to come and said my mother's life was in real danger. I also mentioned a very fresh news story about a domestic violence situation where a husband murdered his wife ,which could have been prevented if her situation was taken seriously by the police. I said I didn't want my mother to be the next big news story. I think the suggestion of bad press for the police convinced them. While i was waiting for the cops and my father, my mother came home! Again, I had a moment of panic but I took charge and remained in control. I told her what was happening and she started to cry and shake. I told her that I called the police already and told her to go upstairs. She went upstairs and I watched by the front door for my father. While I was waiting, I thought what I would do if I had to confront him. Then, I saw him walking down the street to the house- an old, shrivelled man. I felt relief because I thought, if I have to, I can take him! I could easily kick him down the stairs or punch him in the face or something. Then, as he was walking up the drive, the cops pulled up. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. I had some courage and opened the door to tell him he couldn't come back(actually he could come back because my parents weren't divorced or even legally seperated) and to get out. He told me to get lost and ,"This is my house." Then the officers came up and started to talk to him(shout at him because he couldn'treally hear) and tell him that his wife didn;t want him and they suggested he leave. Now, the cop I talked to o nthe phone did say, my fatehr still had the right to enter the house, and as long as he wasn't violent or threatening, he had the right to be there, though morally wrong. Anyway, the police scared him and he left back to the mens shelter.

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Hype
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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#161 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:29 pm

A personal example that's related to the above..

In a nutshell: my father was physically and mentally abusive to my mother and me. So, while I lived at home(until age 17)there were times when I seriously contemplated murdering him in some way..poisoning or smashing something over his head, stabbing, etc. I never actually went through with any of those things because I didn't think going to prison for him was worth it. Also, he was bigger and stronger (former boxer, partisan in WWII) and would have ended killing me instead. My mother continued to live in that situation for several more years, and 9 years ago, he tried to strangle her while she was sleeping(napping on the couch). She distracted him by saying she heard soemone knocking on the door(he was really hard of hearing) which he believed and went to check.She took advantage of her chance and ran out the back. Luckily her neighbour was out and she told him to call the police. A couple of years after that when the court order to keep away from her was up, he tried to coem back to the house. He had been living in a mens shelter for older guys(my father was in his late 70s at this time). I happened to be at my mother's place doing something for her while she was out, and the phone rang. I answered, and it was one of the staff from the shelter calling to say he was on his way to the house. He was probably less than an hour away. I had a moment of real panic, fear, and terror really. I calmed myself and had to make a plan. I knew my mother would freak out and probably have a heartache if she came home to find him in the house. I contemplated getting a weapon of some sort-hammer, knife, anything. I didn't do that though. Instead I locked all the doors and called the police. I explained the situation and begged them to come and said my mother's life was in real danger. I also mentioned a very fresh news story about a domestic violence situation where a husband murdered his wife ,which could have been prevented if her situation was taken seriously by the police. I said I didn't want my mother to be the next big news story. I think the suggestion of bad press for the police convinced them. While i was waiting for the cops and my father, my mother came home! Again, I had a moment of panic but I took charge and remained in control. I told her what was happening and she started to cry and shake. I told her that I called the police already and told her to go upstairs. She went upstairs and I watched by the front door for my father. While I was waiting, I thought what I would do if I had to confront him. Then, I saw him walking down the street to the house- an old, shrivelled man. I felt relief because I thought, if I have to, I can take him! I could easily kick him down the stairs or punch him in the face or something. Then, as he was walking up the drive, the cops pulled up. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. I had some courage and opened the door to tell him he couldn't come back(actually he could come back because my parents weren't divorced or even legally seperated) and to get out. He told me to get lost and ,"This is my house." Then the officers came up and started to talk to him(shout at him because he couldn'treally hear) and tell him that his wife didn;t want him and they suggested he leave. Now, the cop I talked to o nthe phone did say, my fatehr still had the right to enter the house, and as long as he wasn't violent or threatening, he had the right to be there, though morally wrong. Anyway, the police scared him and he left back to the mens shelter.
Jesus christ. Artemis, you know my dad's worked in Toronto women and children's shelter housing since the 80s?... the horror stories I've heard... :neutral: You are very lucky things turned out that way.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#162 Post by Artemis » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:35 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Jesus christ. Artemis, you know my dad's worked in Toronto women and children's shelter housing since the 80s?... the horror stories I've heard... :neutral: You are very lucky things turned out that way.
Yes, that's for sure!
I recall you mentioned he was a social worker. I didn't know he was working in the shelters though.

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Hype
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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#163 Post by Hype » Fri Jul 27, 2012 9:43 pm

Artemis wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Jesus christ. Artemis, you know my dad's worked in Toronto women and children's shelter housing since the 80s?... the horror stories I've heard... :neutral: You are very lucky things turned out that way.
Yes, that's for sure!
I recall you mentioned he was a social worker. I didn't know he was working in the shelters though.
Yeah, it's a tricky job for men to do, especially on the front lines, because the women are often extremely apprehensive about dealing with any men. The protocols for leaving the shelters are extremely strict, and the number of times they've had to call police because some asshole husband/ex-husband/boyfriend is trying to get inside the building... it's insane.

In the context of this thread... does it help at all to think of your father as someone who was really very confused (and obviously angry/frustrated; a very common thing for immigrants. My dad could tell you stories about the crazy Hungarian and Czech Roma that were coming into Toronto claiming refugee status about a decade ago...) and completely and utterly helpless to do any better on his own? He was, in a sense, trying *his* best to do whatever it was that he thought he was supposed to be doing in life... it's just a real tragedy that nothing caused him to change.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#164 Post by mockbee » Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:02 pm

That is a terrifying story Artemis. I am glad that you were able to think clearly in such a traumatic situation. We are all surely wired just a certain way. It's a tragedy that abuse is so common.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#165 Post by Juana » Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:41 pm

mockbee wrote:That is a terrifying story Artemis. I am glad that you were able to think clearly in such a traumatic situation. We are all surely wired just a certain way. It's a tragedy that abuse is so common.
I would keep my cool until someone struck me. Then I'm afraid the years of training would take over. Which in my old line of work was a benefit but there was an incident where someone was messing with my misses and I usually let her handle things as she is a tough one but he would not stop and I noticed they were gone. So I checked the lady's rest room and he was physically assaulting her so I went in there and got him in the back of the legs with my asp and pinned him until the security got in there and I let them handle it. That being said if it was a dark alley somewhere and I knew there was no security I would have hurt the guy pretty bad.

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