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Emotions, typically. Most decisions are made with emotional compute, influenced by biology, past experience, and present psychological state. At the same time
by vczf 6y ago
Emotions, typically.
Most decisions are made with emotional compute, influenced by biology, past experience, and present psychological state.
At the same time, being mindful and observing those emotions (predicted pleasure from the flavor, predicted guilt...) does interrupt that emotional processing and allow a "decision" to be reached in a completely different way.
Free will may only exist subjectively, but mindfulness does free the self from the emotional decision-making of the monkey brain.
- laumars 6y agoBut you’ve also cited that emotions are the result of stimulus. Both hunger and anger (in the examples you’ve given) are the result of conditions external to ones free will. The positive spin on this is if we are going to apply a software development mindset to free will then you can also argue that the value of software isn’t its sentience but it’s usefulness. For example computer games don’t need sophisticated AI to be enjoyable. So however we argue the definition of free will, that shouldn’t take anything away from the experience of life.