4 ms·
The inescapable question of free choice always seems to come back into these things. It's easy to say "just think like this" when you already do think like that
by jqm 11y ago
The inescapable question of free choice always seems to come back into these things. It's easy to say "just think like this" when you already do think like that. It's much more difficult when (for whatever reason) you don't. How much control do we really have over our feelings, our attitudes and our emotions? How much is the result of environment, genetics and circumstance? My personal opinion is a bit of both. But it's really hard to say in what proportion.
Do we really choose when we choose or are we just acting a predetermined role? I have noticed people who do well tend to believe the former. But I'm not convinced this belief is necessarily what caused them to do well and somewhat suspicious that it is partially an attempt to frame their achievements in their own mind as the result of "their" free will and goes back to their need to "prove" themselves superior which may well be the cause of much of their success in the first place. I've met more than a few people who have this need very intently and it seems pretty mechanical and not generally the result of meditative conscious choice.
Not to bash the concept. Sometimes the faulty, but useful belief holds more value than a more truthful belief which leaves one powerless. At least in the short term. Long term and on a societal level the side effects of faulty beliefs become much more prominent. For you and I however, here and now, we are almost certainly better off thinking we can do it (imhop). But the question is very deep and certainly a lot more complex than just clicking a switch and deciding to "think" a certain way which to be frank, is a bit of juvenile and superficial way to think about the topic.
- resu_nimda 11y agoI see free will as an illusion. Things may be predetermined or there may be true randomness, either way our conscious decisions can be reduced to the laws of physics. But it is an illusion that I am still subject to, and it is useful to believe that I can choose, insofar that anything is useful. If we can't choose then there's really nothing to be said about anything. Isn't it somewhat ironic to comment on someone's behavior while calling free will into question?
- jqm 11y agoDo you mean ironic to comment on people's beliefs while calling free will into question? Absolutely. Consciousness might just be an illusion as well. But as you point out, these are the conceptual tools we have to work with. I prefer to think of it like this. People like to think they are making conscious decisions most of the time while in reality most of the time they aren't. Most of the time people are responding to conditioning/stimuli/response like a trained dancing bear or an insect following a pheromone trail. Still... people have the possibility of having free will. Sometimes it glimmers through a little.. sometimes more, but in order to really have free will people have to step outside of conditioning/stimuli/response and conceive of themselves differently which is a psychological place most people don't enter for long or very often if ever. But the possibility still exist. Again... just a conceptual model that works for me. Not sure there are hard and fast answers in this realm.
- throwaway999888 11y agoIf it's an illusion why is it set up like an illusion at all? If you don't have free will, it's not like you'd be sad or would do something about it. You have no free will. You can't even think negative philosophical questions about it, as a consequence. We could just as well have been born as an awareness trapped inside a meat suit intimately aware that we are just observing what is happening in and around that meat suit. The meat suit would grow up, get in fights, backpack across Asia, get married, get cancer, die. To the outside world, it would be indistinguishable to a person with actual free will.
- throwaway999888 11y ago> How much control do we really have over our feelings, our attitudes and our emotions? How much do people try? Most people don't even try. At all.