CHOICE may be a mere illusion. FREE WILL a trick of the mind's ego

by Terry 159 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  journey-on

  I think you're right in that we operate our lives based on our true nature. This doesn't mean, however, that we do not have free will.

  We live our lives according to our basic nature. This is the Big Picture....from birth to death. We are born with certain tendencies dictated by our genes....(or some might say our Sun Sign. :-)

  But, our environment, family, friends, and experiences will help develop our personality and will eventually influence our choices. This is the details....(or some might say our Moon Sign. :-)

  Now, let's use the metaphor of Adam and Eve. What if the temptation offered to Eve to indulge her desire to eat the fruit was actually God's "gift" to mankind. Up until that point, Adam could only be like God, because he was created in God's image and was perfect. There was no disobedience in him. As long as there was no influence to sway him, he didn't have any choice but to be who or what he was.

  However, when Eve was made for him and given to him to love and care for, he now had something to factor in when making choices. Her influence changed his Personality. By choosing to please Eve rather than God, Adam implemented Free Will. From that day forward, man became separate from God, developed an ego, and thus free will was born.

  So, in a nutshell, even though I have a genetic tendancy to be a certain way, my self-discipline which I learned from my parents, my experience with a particular life-changing event, the example set by a friend I admire, or my overriding love of my partner, will factor in. Now, do I follow my tendancy or do I make another choice based on all the influential factors? It's my free will, my choice.
• 

  Terry

  Everything acts according to its nature.

  Nothing escapes its own nature.

  Ah, I knew something was wrong and I figured out what it was. You are correlating the physical laws of the universe (i.e., gravity) and instinct with human choices and the ability to make decisions.

  Your original premise, that a rock has a much choice whether or not to fall as I do when deciding what I want for lunch, is flawed. Therefore, any conclusion you draw from it is at least highly suspect.

  Humans are of nature as is a boulder, the tides or smoke. Our minds want us to be different and we intend ourselves categorically distinct.

  Yet, this is a distinction without a difference in my view.

  I think our inborn, inherent, genetic predispositions are on a greyscale. Some we see and others are practically invisible.
• 

  VoidEater

  How would you determine a particular choice was determined or the result of free will? Without metrics, there is no conclusion possible and the argument is moot.

  Philosophically, when you increase that commodity we might call "consciousness", you increase your choices. You expand the ghost in the machine beyond the mechanistic determinations of patterned thought.

  When you become aware of having choice, you may indeed have choice. Choosing something "bad" may be the indication of free will at work - or a predisposition toward masochism. But it can be said that there is always choice - along with positive and negative outcomes, varying ways of evaluating options. If I want to feed my roses, the dog excrement is the better choice over the Dove bar.

  We constantly balance competing desires and potential outcomes to make choices. At this point, the complexities of the neural network and physical feedback we employ grant at least approximate choice, functional choice, and therefore pragmatic choice.
• 

  Terry

  I know this suggests that we have no freewill and are therefore not responsible for our actions but reality is difficult to ignore. I like to think I am responsible for my actions but it could be that I am just a part of the life’s random game and my actions are all an unavoidable part of my conditioning and genes. Why do I post these thoughts? I had no choice.

  I think you've identified the microcosm we might well focus upon.

  Responsibility is a key issue.

  A person deeply phobic about snakes may experience a heart attack from seeing a water hose at twilight when out camping. There is little "reality" to either the "snake" or the identification. Meaning? We experience very real emotional consequences for our misidentifications.

  By misidentifying "choice" we cannot escape the consequences of the actions we take.

  I don't really think anything is precisely "random". How could nature be random?
• 

  Terry

  The clothes you buy are the direct result of

  your inner-directed urges which filter out one set of possibilities from another......Terry

  A person can`t do that unless they`ve made a choice..

  Ahhhh, but, you've done a "freeze frame" and called it "choice". You've ignored the continuum. The context.

  Before the moment you did the freeze was preceded by yet another urge and another in finite regress back to the genes transmitted in the embryo.
• 

  JWoods

  Well, the logical consequences of this theory would pretty much absolve everybody of any sin or crime, right?

  No CHOICE, no GUILT?
• 

  Terry

  Anyway, I also thought you were going with Melissa Scott now, not the Calvinists?

  Calvinists attach a META-cause to cause and label it SOVERIGNTY (i.e. God's over-riding WILL.)

  I do not. The Unmoved Mover is Aristotle's mcguffin. Not mine.

  (I'd love "going" with Melissa Scott!)
• 

  Terry

  "Choice" is a choice.

  Everything else is random.

  Judge Dread

  Truism.

  I'm saying "choice" is our way of not seeing disposition within circumstance and assigning the illusion of blind free will.

  Randomness doesn't exist in nature as far as I'm aware.
• 

  Snotrag

  I think its more complicated than just free will. Your existence itself is due to a chemical bonding, if your fathers sperm met with a different womans egg you would not be you. So that coming into existence is really a chemical or biological action. So where does consiouness come to play to have free will? Your thoughts and emotions are chemical in nature and driven by various parts of your brain and hormone producing glands. So I think the only free will you may have is a subset of choices that exist within your biological makeup. So in that vein the question is " Is that freewill"
• 

  JWoods

  (I'd love "going" with Melissa Scott!)

  But, it would not be a true act of your free will, unfortunately...you were merely programmed this way like a warm robot.