From:
david.j.worrell@gmail.com
On Wednesday, July 25, 2018 at 11:52:30 AM UTC-7, fuckowski wrote:
i like the way he broke it down.
very basic understanding of free will
maybe look at it a little differently.
do you think we make 'free' choices too?
So, as usual, you say very little.
It depends on the definition of "free" for one thing. No choice is
absolutely free" (influenced ONLY by conscious will and nothing else).
And yet 'free will' - while always a matter of relative degree and
the available realistic options - is nonetheless vitally important.
Choices come up all the time that are heavily influenced by your
conscious mind's input (as opposed to every single choice being
totally 'dictated' by sensory inputs, unconscious reactions,
instinctive functions, and personal history).
I'll create a simple example.
Say you're hiking down a path in the near darkness just before dawn,
and suddenly an enormous rattlesnake right in front of you coils,
rattles, rears up and hisses at you. Before you even fully realize
what happened, you jumped backward and sideways about 6 feet.
Your unconscious functions handle that situation (fear circuits
have priority) overriding your conscious mind while doing so.
And yet... just a second later, although your heart is racing
and your unconscious is still telling you to stay the fuck away
from the goddamn snake, you become consciously curious and
decide you want to find a long stick or a big rock and provoke
that big snake a little just to have it strike and rattle.
Or, you could decide to take out a gunny sack and try to
capture it. You might even consider selling it to a local
zoo or something. Or, if you're a cruel or vindictive person,
you may decide you want to kill it for scaring the shit out
of you, and maybe even take it's skin to hang on your wall...
Your conscious mind may consider all sorts of options, and...
you may choose one of them, OVERRIDING the initial dictates
and the continuing influence of your unconscious, which is still
almost certainly just telling you to stay the fuck away from it.
You've NEVER had an experience like this before, thus there
is no way the outcome could be totally pre-determined,
(*except* for the initial unconscious overriding fear reaction,
an instinct deeply ingrained in us by evolution).
However, there is no conceivable reason your past sensory inputs or
unconscious mind or your history would ever want you to just play
around with a dangerous snake. Nor do people eat snakes, and there
is no actual need to kill it. And yet, consciously you might still
choose to provoke the snake to see if you can get it to strike,
just so you can see its fangs and hear it rattle again.
I've been in a situation like this (slightly different; I modified
the story to better show unconscious tendencies). And after a bit
of conscious deliberation, I did choose to 'play' with it,
trying to see it to strike and rattle again.
There's no way that decision was "pre-determined" unconsciously
or by my history because I'd never been in any situation like it.
It was the FIRST time I ever met a rattlesnake in the middle of
my path that immediately threatened me. Some of the ensuing acts
were determined unconsciously and others were arrived at after
conscious thought and choice. At one point, I freely chose to
play around with a dangerous animal, overriding what history and
unconscious impulses would naturally lobby for.
This is not a completely rigorous treatment (which would require far
more neurology than either I or Harris currently have), but is
illustrative.
In some circumstances:
sensory input/unconscious reactions/history overrides conscious choice
In some circumstances:
conscious analysis and choice override sensory/unconscious/history
In BOTH cases, there can often be INPUT from BOTH factors,
and that is true regardless of which influences "happen first".
Harris makes too much of what influences currently seem to
"happen first". Sometimes it's a good "battle" between the two.
Harris throws the baby out with the bath water.
Free will is never complete but is common and highly significant.
After a lifetime of incidents DUALLY influenced both by
unconscious reactions AND free choices, we gradually become who
we are. But that identity is never fixed or complete. It may indeed
become harder to change the more previous experiences we have weighing
upon us as we age, and yet... the possibility of relatively free
choice is nearly always there to some extent.
Will is real. Conscious intent matters.
Like everything else, it depends on the individual, their assets
and liabilities, and on all the specific things that have happened
to that individual.
Genetics is a huge factor. So is the environment of where a person
is born and raised. And so is... chance. This is one thing Slider is
correct about, life is always partly... a gamble. There are always
factors of chance. However, none of those factors and indeed...
NO factor is ever fully and totally deterministic when it comes to
how we make choices.
That is the perpetual flexibility inherent in being a living being.
So, is life free choice or is it all pre-determined by your past?
Neither. It is always a mixture of both.
To give an example of a few of the limitations, questions,
and a look at how individual it all is, here's a song I really like.
[Comments in brackets.]
Robert Wyatt - Free Will And Testament
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNQgz2fkRY4
Given free will but within certain limitations,
I cannot will myself to limitless mutations,
I cannot know what I would be if I were not me,
I can only guess me.
[Good point. "Me" is never fixed; it's constantly changing,
yet always within limits.]
So when I say that I know me, how can I know that?
What kind of spider understands arachnophobia?
I have my senses and my sense of having senses.
Do I guide them? Or they me?
[Is it really an 'or'? I say it's an AND.]
The weight of dust exceeds the weight of settled objects.
What can it mean, such gravity without a centre?
Is there freedom to un-be?
Is there freedom from will-to-be?
[There is. It's called suicide. But will-to-be is powerful
and it takes a lot to override it (either way, live or die).]
Sheer momentum makes us act this way or that way.
We just invent or just assume a motivation.
I would disperse, be disconnected. Is this possible?
What are soldiers without a foe?
[The effect of 'momentum' brings many interesting questions.
It can be positive or negative but it too is never absolute.
You can - to a relative degree - remain detached. But we're
never without any foe.]
Be in the air, but not be air, be in the no air.
Be on the loose, neither compacted nor suspended.
Neither born nor left to die.
[This isn't really an option, except in the temporary
subjective virtual reality of lucid dreaming. :)]
Had I been free, I could have chosen not to be me.
Demented forces push me madly round a treadmill.
Demented forces push me madly round a treadmill.
Let me off please, I am so tired.
Let me off please, I am so very tired.
[We're not absolutely free, and cannot ever be.
Suicide is up 28% for Americans since the turn of the century.
http://tinyurl.com/y8c3ocpv
A positive side of death is... you do get 'off the treadmill'.]
***
Wyatt, once one of the most creative drummers in alt-rock-jazz,
became crippled and confined to a wheelchair when in his 20's.
.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)