Free will is an illusion....?

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mockbee
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Free will is an illusion....?

#1 Post by mockbee » Sun Jul 22, 2012 11:45 pm

“Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control.” We assume that we could have made other choices in the past, Harris continues, and we also assume that we consciously originate “our thoughts and actions in the present. . . . Both of these assumptions are false.” The End of Faith Sam Harris --------- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books ... .html?_r=1
Well, the more I think about my life and those of my family and those of people I know about, who make decisions against all measures, seemingly to me, of reason; I think more and more that none of us have free will. We are all set upon the path, by whatever force, to live the lives we were destined to live and we either live them, and maybe that is what makes us happy, or we fail to live them, and maybe we are depressed about that. That is all there is for anybody and we have no control over what that really is. You were supposed to think that....... and now you were supposed to do that........ and that is the way it is. :noclue:

Scientifically, Harris makes his hypothesis based on the fact that our brains make decisions a split second before we are actually conscious of them. And yes I meant to put the words, frothy avocado, in this sentence! It was my destiny....? :wink:

Someone, must know more than I do on this subject. Maybe Harris is a hack(...?), but there are several other well respected individuals who seem to come up with similar assertions regarding this topic. The whole criminal justice system is a farce?! And religion is a farce?!.......(well I guess we already knew that........ :hehe: .................hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm)

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

#2 Post by nausearockpig » Mon Jul 23, 2012 12:34 am

Hype, over to you.....

Man, am I gonna enjoy this one!

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

#3 Post by Bandit72 » Mon Jul 23, 2012 1:13 am

nausearockpig wrote:Hype, over to you.....

Man, am I gonna enjoy this one!
:lol:

Prepare to not fully understand the next post.

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

#4 Post by Matz » Mon Jul 23, 2012 4:46 am

it's a very good question, and one I would like an answer to. I just don't see that anybody can give us that, not even Hype. You can't be an expert on something like this. In my view you'll have to wait until you die to find out about all those big questions

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

#5 Post by Essence_Smith » Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:52 am

nausearockpig wrote:Hype, over to you
When are ya'll going to stop encouraging that boy? :lol: :wink:
Matz wrote:In my view you'll have to wait until you die to find out about all those big questions
And here you go opening another can of worms... :lol:

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

#6 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:26 am

Harris *is* a hack, but yes, 'free will' is not a thing, for reasons I won't deeply defend unless someone provokes me. I've written extensively on this. The basic idea, for my view, is that the universe is explicable, and this explanation is given in terms of causes. If 'free will' were a thing humans had, first of all, we'd have to be radically different from anything else in the universe, and second, human behaviour would be capricious, and beyond explanation. But we aren't radically different, and human behaviour isn't beyond explanation. My view is more properly called 'necessitarianism', since not only do I think everything is determined, but I think this is the only possible universe, and so everything is literally logically necessary.

Of course it depends on what you mean by 'free will'. Dan Dennett takes 'free will' to be nothing other than the idea that for us, the future is in some sense "open". That is, we are designed to avoid bad things and go toward good things, and we can aim at doing this in the future. In that sense, our 'will' is 'free' (i.e., usually unconstrained). I object, however, that this is 'epistemic freedom' (i.e., freedom not to know how things will be) rather than metaphysical freedom (i.e., the freedom to make things turn out either one way or another.)

Instead of reading Sam Harris, I'd suggest reading Dirk Pereboom's reader called "Freewill". The articles are short, comprehensible, and run the spectrum of defenses of freewill and determinism.

One example I always use is the following:

Imagine you're standing in front of a vending machine (or two vending machines, either way), and you're hungry, so your decision to choose *something* is determined by the fact that you are hungry and the fact that there is no other food available at a reasonable distance. You have only enough money to buy one thing, but you aren't sure what you want to buy yet. So you stand in front of the machine(s) and vacillate: M&Ms, pretzels, Aero bar, Crunchie... it's not transparent to you which you will choose. Then, you choose one.

The question for 'free will' is: is your choice explicable? That is, could an explanation, in principle, be given for why you choose A rather than B, C, D, E, F, etc? If the answer is yes, then your choice was not a matter of "free will" because the explanation provides the conditions which determined you to do *that*. If the answer is no, then not only do you not have free will, but your choice makes no sense at all.

Either way there's no free will. In an obvious, weak, sense, you were "free" to choose any of the options, since nothing/no one was overtly stopping you. But in a more accurate sense, something *was* in fact stopping you from choosing everything you didn't, in fact, choose. *** (You can make this example even simpler by making it a choice between Coke or Pepsi, and then just ask whether you can choose your preferences... or whether "choosing" to disobey your preferences is free, or determined by some other preference (e.g., to show that you're not fully determined by that one preference), and so on... the issue is always that any time you make your acting explicable, you render it determined.)
Last edited by Hype on Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:52 am, edited 3 times in total.

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

#7 Post by Essence_Smith » Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:39 am

Hype just gave you guys homework... please turn to page 883...all the revelations are right there... :hehe:

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

#8 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:45 am

Essence_Smith wrote:Hype just gave you guys homework... please turn to page 883...all the revelations are right there... :hehe:
The upside is that since I don't believe in 'free will', I can't blame them if they don't do it.

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

#9 Post by Essence_Smith » Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:47 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Essence_Smith wrote:Hype just gave you guys homework... please turn to page 883...all the revelations are right there... :hehe:
The upside is that since I don't believe in 'free will', I can't blame them if they don't do it.
:lolol:
I now have people in my office looking at me funny for laughing out loud... :hehe:

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

#10 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 23, 2012 8:57 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:Harris *is* a hack, but yes, 'free will' is not a thing, for reasons I won't deeply defend unless someone provokes me. I've written extensively on this. The basic idea, for my view, is that the universe is explicable, and this explanation is given in terms of causes. If 'free will' were a thing humans had, first of all, we'd have to be radically different than anything else in the universe, and second, human behaviour would be capricious, and beyond explanation. But we aren't radically different, and human behaviour isn't beyond explanation. My view is more properly called 'necessitarianism', since not only do I think everything is determined, but I think this is the only possible universe, and so everything is literally logically necessary.
We can't not have something that never was. That does make sense to me. I am just trying to figure out what 'it' is then we do have. I think in the following passage you initially address that succinctly. This is all so fascinating to me and connects so, so many dots of confusion about human behaviour [damn, i'm spelling like a canadian....:lol:] Of course, I really only want to scratch the surface of this and then get back to what is really important to me in life. I could see spending lifetimes on this subject trying to figure it out. I don't even have the couple hours i've spent this morning trying to figure out what all these words mean........ :lolol:

Good thing I didn't order Harris' book......he did seem a little loopy and simplistic, but the original seed of thought seemed very valid. :nod:

Adurentibus Spina wrote: Of course it depends on what you mean by 'free will'. Dan Dennett takes 'free will' to be nothing other than the idea that for us, the future is in some sense "open". That is, we are designed to avoid bad things and go toward good things, and we can aim at doing this in the future. In that sense, our 'will' is 'free' (i.e., usually unconstrained). I object, however, that this is 'epistemic freedom' (i.e., freedom not to know how things will be) rather than metaphysical freedom (i.e., the freedom to make things turn out either one way or another.)
If you have time, could you expand on that last sentence? [You do have time! Of course, I don't want to make you not get your PhD; and of course, whatever you decide to do, it was 'neccesary'......right? Is 'necessitarianism' the most extreme school of thought regarding this topic? ]

Adurentibus Spina wrote: Instead of reading Sam Harris, I'd suggest reading Dirk Pereboom's reader called "Freewill". The articles are short, comprehensible, and run the spectrum of defenses of freewill and determinism.
Good.......... I will order that book and it will sit on my shelf for years and eventually I might read it.............. :hehe:

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

#11 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:07 am

One other thing I want to say about Sam Harris's claim above is that he's wrong that if we don't have free wills then our wills are not of our own making.

Your will is of your own making (i.e., controlled by you) whenever you act according to reasons you take yourself to have, arrived at through careful consideration. This doesn't make it undetermined/free. It just makes it something you are more clearly identified with. Kant thought this was the source of radical 'free will', and he's wrong, but it is a *kind* of "freedom" (in that through Reason, you avoid being assailed by passions/emotions, but no one is able to actually do this all the time.)

Thanks for the responses, Mockbee. I think what I just wrote there ^ helps clarify the first thing you mention (what "it" is that we *do* have... we have the ability to deliberate, to consider options in complex ways, and to act in our long-term interests, rather than mere short-term impulses, sometimes. Other animals have some degree of this as well.)

You asked me to expand on this:
I object, however, that this is 'epistemic freedom' (i.e., freedom not to know how things will be) rather than metaphysical freedom (i.e., the freedom to make things turn out either one way or another.)
Dan Dennett (who I met once) tries to say that because humans are evolved creatures, we are "avoidance machines": our job is to avoid bad things and gain good things, and that's what our behaviour is directed towards via evolutionary mechanisms. He thinks we can use the term 'free will' to refer to the capacity to avoid harms and gain pleasures as we go. So the idea is something like: imagine you're an animal that is the prey of some predator animal. You detect the presence of the predator via sight or smell, and you instinctively start processing the world in a way that is aimed at ESCAPING being lunch. Dennett's view is that since you don't KNOW whether you *will* or *won't* escape, and since you want to escape, you are free to try to do so, and it is always possible that you do indeed escape.

My objection is that this is a mistake. What is being confused here is the fact that we don't KNOW the future with the possibility that the future CAN in fact be one of at least two ways (either I escape the predator or I don't). The fact that I don't know that this predator is much better skilled at being a predator than I am at avoiding predators doesn't make me free to avoid being eaten. I will be eaten if the conditions are such that I don't escape. So this view of "free will" is illusory in just the sort of way Harris tries to say.


** note: as for taking time away from my PhD, currently I have absolutely no obligations, and my supervisor is on vacation/not responding to emails. I am writing a paper for hopeful eventual publication that actually deals with the claim that 'everything is explicable' (or 'every thing can be given an explanation for why it is or is not the case'), so this stuff is sort of already in the front of my mind anyway. The connection between causes, explanations, and human action is imho one of the most important things lawyers, judges, politicians, police, psychiatrists, parents, etc., should be thinking about.


Pereboom's (I misspelled his first name, it's "Derk") book is only $20, here: http://hackettp.nextmp.net/free-will

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

#12 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:40 am

Not to overload this thing, but my view is most strongly motivated by Spinoza, whose arguments are, I think, the strongest that can be raised in defense of necessitarianism (which is, yes, the most extreme form of determinism). Here are some things he says:
PROP. XLVIII. In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.
Proof.--The mind is a fixed and definite mode of thought (II. xi.), therefore it cannot be the free cause of its actions (I. xvii. Coroll. ii.); in other words, it cannot have an absolute faculty of positive or negative volition; but (by I. xxviii.) it must be determined by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another, &c. Q.E.D.

Note.--In the same way it is proved, that there is in the mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, &c. Whence it follows, that these and similar faculties are either entirely fictitious, or are merely abstract or general terms, such as we are accustomed to put together from particular things. Thus the intellect and the will stand in the same relation to this or that idea, or this or that volition, as "lapidity" to this or that stone, or as "man" to Peter and Paul. The cause which leads men to consider themselves free has been set forth in the Appendix to Part I. But, before I proceed further, I would here remark that, by the will to affirm and decide, I mean the faculty, not the desire. I mean, I repeat, the faculty, whereby the mind affirms or denies what is true or false, not the desire, wherewith the mind wishes for or turns away from any given thing. After we have proved, that these faculties of ours are general notions, which cannot be distinguished from the particular instances on which they are based, we must inquire whether volitions themselves are anything besides the ideas of things. We must inquire, I say, whether there is in the mind any affirmation or negation beyond that, which the idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves. On which subject see the following proposition, and II. Def. iii., lest the idea of pictures should suggest itself. For by ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought.
Fourthly, it may be objected, if man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? Will he perish of hunger and thirst? If I say that he would, I shall seem to have in my thoughts an ass or the statue of a man rather than an actual man. If I say that he would not, he would then determine his own action, and would consequently possess the faculty of going and doing whatever he liked.
As for the fourth objection, I am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium described (namely, as perceiving nothing but hunger and thirst, a certain food and a certain drink, each equally distant from him) would die of hunger and thirst. If I am asked, whether such an one should not rather be considered an ass than a man; I answer, that I do not know, neither do I know how a man should be considered, who hangs himself, or how we should consider children, fools, madmen, &c.
But, it will be urged, it is impossible that solely from the laws of nature considered as extended substance, we should be able to deduce the causes of buildings, pictures, and things of that kind, which are produced only by human art; nor would the human body, unless it were determined and led by the mind, be capable of building a single temple. However, I have just pointed out that the objectors cannot fix the limits of the body's power, or say what can be concluded from a consideration of its sole nature, whereas they have experience of many things being accomplished solely by the laws of nature, which they would never have believed possible except under the direction of mind: such are the actions performed by somnambulists while asleep, and wondered at by their performers when awake. I would further call attention to the mechanism of the human body, which far surpasses in complexity all that has been put together by human art, not to repeat what I have already shown, namely, that from nature, under whatever attribute she be considered, infinite results follow. As for the second objection, I submit that the world would be much happier, if men were as fully able to keep silence as they are to speak. Experience abundantly shows that men can govern anything more easily than their tongues, and restrain anything more easily than their appetites; whence it comes about that many believe, that we are only free in respect to objects which we moderately desire, because our desire for such can easily be controlled by the thought of something else frequently remembered, but that we are by no means free in respect to what we seek with violent emotion, for our desire cannot then be allayed with the remembrance of anything else. However, unless such persons had proved by experience that we do many things which we afterwards repent of, and again that we often, when assailed by contrary emotions, see the better and follow the worse, there would be nothing to prevent their believing that we are free in all things. Thus an infant believes that of its own free will it desires milk, an angry child believes that it freely desires vengeance, a timid child believes that it freely desires to run away; further, a drunken man believes that he utters from the free decision of his mind words which, when he is sober, he would willingly have withheld: thus, too, a delirious man, a garrulous woman, a child, and others of like complexion, believe that they speak from the free decision of their mind, when they are in reality unable to restrain their impulse to talk. Experience teaches us no less clearly than reason, that men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined; and, further, it is plain that the dictates of the mind are but another name for the appetites, and therefore vary according to the varying state of the body. Everyone shapes his actions according to his emotion, those who are assailed by conflicting emotions know not what they wish; those who are not attacked by any emotion are readily swayed this way or that. All these considerations clearly show that a mental decision and a bodily appetite, or determined state, are simultaneous, or rather are one and the same thing, which we call decision, when it is regarded under and explained through the attribute of thought, and a conditioned state, when it is regarded under the attribute of extension, and deduced from the laws of motion and rest. This will appear yet more plainly in the sequel. For the present I wish to call attention to another point, namely, that we cannot act by the decision of the mind, unless we have a remembrance of having done so. For instance, we cannot say a word without remembering that we have done so. Again, it is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. Therefore the freedom of the mind must in any case be limited to the power of uttering or not uttering something which it remembers. But when we dream that we speak, we believe that we speak from a free decision of the mind, yet we do not speak, or, if we do, it is by a spontaneous motion of the body. Again, we dream that we are concealing something, and we seem to act from the same decision of the mind as that, whereby we keep silence when awake concerning something we know. Lastly, we dream that from the free decision of our mind we do something, which we should not dare to do when awake.
Now I should like to know whether there be in the mind two sorts of decisions, one sort illusive, and the other sort free? If our folly does not carry us so far as this, we must necessarily admit, that the decision of the mind, which is believed to be free, is not distinguishable from the imagination or memory, and is nothing more than the affirmation, which an idea, by virtue of being an idea, necessarily involves (II. xlix.). Wherefore these decisions of the mind arise in the mind by the same necessity, as the ideas of things actually existing. Therefore those who believe, that they speak or keep silence or act in any way from the free decision of their mind, do but dream with their eyes open.

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

#13 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:59 am

And here's Dan Dennett reading Dilbert:

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

#14 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 23, 2012 10:05 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:And here's Dan Dennett reading Dilbert:


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lolol:



exactly.


now I need to go do something useful.



today was going to be my productive day. :eyes: :balls:

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

#15 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 10:07 am

Well, you'll be happy to know I don't believe in "weakness of the will" (akrasia) either. So if you aren't productive today, it's because you wanted to do other "less productive" things more. And who could blame you? :hehe:

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

#16 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 23, 2012 10:09 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:Well, you'll be happy to know I don't believe in "weakness of the will" (akrasia) either. So if you aren't productive today, it's because you wanted to do other "less productive" things more. And who could blame you? :hehe:

thank you.



now....... I need you to speak to my wife.

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

#17 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 10:11 am

mockbee wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:Well, you'll be happy to know I don't believe in "weakness of the will" (akrasia) either. So if you aren't productive today, it's because you wanted to do other "less productive" things more. And who could blame you? :hehe:

thank you.



now....... I need you to speak to my wife.
:lol: I'd say "Well, yes, it's true that you can't *blame* him, but what you can do is try to understand how he works, and thus find ways to subtly coerce him to do what you want him to do, possibly even without him knowing." :hehe:

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

#18 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 23, 2012 10:19 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
mockbee wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:Well, you'll be happy to know I don't believe in "weakness of the will" (akrasia) either. So if you aren't productive today, it's because you wanted to do other "less productive" things more. And who could blame you? :hehe:

thank you.



now....... I need you to speak to my wife.
:lol: I'd say "Well, yes, it's true that you can't *blame* him, but what you can do is try to understand how he works, and thus find ways to subtly coerce him to do what you want him to do, possibly even without him knowing." :hehe:
I interrupt people a lot,....because I get excited about the topic and think that if I wait I will forget......she told me to pull my finger and just wait....... She is very smart. :bigrin:

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

#19 Post by Matz » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:07 pm

Matz wrote:it's a very good question, and one I would like an answer to. I just don't see that anybody can give us that, not even Hype. You can't be an expert on something like this. In my view you'll have to wait until you die to find out about all those big questions
I knew I should have kept my mouth shut :lol: way in over my head here

That was an interesting read and I guess I have to agree that there is no free will. So basically it's just down to luck.If you're born as a person who makes good decisions most of the time you'll have a good life probably and vice versa.

or maybe luck is an illusion as well :hs:

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

#20 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:17 pm

Matz wrote:
Matz wrote:it's a very good question, and one I would like an answer to. I just don't see that anybody can give us that, not even Hype. You can't be an expert on something like this. In my view you'll have to wait until you die to find out about all those big questions
I knew I should have kept my mouth shut :lol: way in over my head here

That was an interesting read and I guess I have to agree that there is no free will. So basically it's just down to luck.If you're born as a person who makes good decisions most of the time you'll have a good life probably and vice versa.

or maybe luck is an illusion as well :hs:
:lol: Oh man, don't just agree for no reason! Think about it, within yourself... try to understand why you make the choices you do and why you act and have the personality you do.

Luck isn't an illusion. Luck is just things going well. In the Ancient Greek world, they would have said "the gods are smiling upon you" or "fate looks fondly on some" or something like that.

One thing I have to constantly fight other philosophers about is the idea that everything being fated/luck/necessary somehow implies that no one should do anything they don't want to do, because it doesn't matter (this is called 'fatalism'). This view is false. It's not true that if everything that happens has to happen, that you should just be lazy (Aristotle and the Stoics had what we now call "The Lazy Argument" which is about this). Whether you are lazy or very active will depend on what causes you to be so, and if your desires don't match your capacities, then you can (i.e., you *will*) either seek possible solutions to this (almost always better to involve others in this... combined efforts work best), or try to understand it and work within your capacities, or just be passive. When we see others at the mercy of their emotions, we want to help them though. And we know it doesn't always help to say "You'll be fine, just think about something else." Or whatever... Sometimes people need drugs, counseling, friends, a hug, or whatever.

As a society we should always be trying to find ways to understand each other, so that we see what causes the good things and the bad, and maybe we can make the future better. :noclue:

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

#21 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:29 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote: ........... Whether you are lazy or very active will depend on what causes you to be so, and if your desires don't match your capacities, then you can (i.e., you *will*) either seek possible solutions to this (almost always better to involve others in this... combined efforts work best), or try to understand it and work within your capacities, or just be passive. When we see others at the mercy of their emotions, we want to help them though. And we know it doesn't always help to say "You'll be fine, just think about something else." Or whatever... Sometimes people need drugs, counseling, friends, a hug, or whatever.

As a society we should always be trying to find ways to understand each other, so that we see what causes the good things and the bad, and maybe we can make the future better. :noclue:
Yes, yes, yes, yes!!!!!!!

Depression is one not striving towards one's own desires to fulfill one's own capacities! That is what I believe, and have found for myself. People need this pounded into their heads! Capacity does not imply that one fulfills ones desire, just that you are strive for it and achieve a certain level. That is all. Maybe you desire to be Michael Jordan and you are a kid with a severe disability and you work and work and work and finally one day, years down the road you shoot the ball and make it in the basket. You are on CLOUD 9, you are SOOOOO happy! You are arguably as happy as Michael Jordan when he won his first NBA Championship [remember, his real desire was to win, many, many of them...........] And those feelings you are having are completely justified and real...................

bye. really...... :wink:

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

#22 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:35 pm

I like that you used the word 'strive' there, Mockbee, because that's *exactly* what we do. The concept of 'striving' (latin: 'conatus') is central to Spinoza's (actually Hobbes too, and Freud...) work on human action (and psychology), and for good reason... remembering that everyone is always striving to get what they think they want, and that they are also constantly assailed by forces which constrain their ability to do this, or to recognize what they *really* want, is really a deep point about human nature that we often forget. It could also be expressed as: most people are mostly confused, most of the time. The trick is to try to help each other become less confused.

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

#23 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:37 pm

Adurentibus Spina wrote: The trick is to try to help each other become less confused.

But we will never, ever, ever know.............................and you know what......that's fine by me. :thumb:

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Hype
Posts: 7028
Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:44 pm

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

#24 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:49 pm

mockbee wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote: The trick is to try to help each other become less confused.

But we will never, ever, ever know.............................and you know what......that's fine by me. :thumb:
Indeed, but if your neighbour is doing stupid shit that's ruining everyone else's ability to do what they want on your street, it'd be cool there was a way to get them to see what and why they're messing up, and how to fix it, and why that's in their interest. (Cf. "Love thy neighbour"... just saying..) It's never entirely clear what the best way to do this is... which is why teaching children social skills and an understanding of diversity/culture/etc., in public education, is very important.

A dude we all like once said: "You can't be everybody's friend"... And about 350 years before that, another Jew said:
Men are also gained over by liberality, especially such as have
not the means to buy what is necessary to sustain life. However,
to give aid to every poor man is far beyond the power and the
advantage of any private person. For the riches of any private
person are wholly inadequate to meet such a call. Again, an
individual man’s resources of character are too limited for him to
be able to make all men his friends. Hence providing for the poor
is a duty, which falls on the State as a whole, and has regard only
to the general advantage.

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mockbee
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Location: Portland, OR

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

#25 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 23, 2012 3:51 pm

indeed....squared. :thumb:

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