Head to head about free will

[achilles12604]

Ok I am actually tired of answering the debate about man having the ability to choose. So I am presenting a general challenge. Anyone who really honestly doesn't think that mankind has the ability to choose when faced with a decision accept this challenge and we can set it up for a head to head debate.

[achilles12604]

I think you are referring to the difference between conscious choice and learned instinct. Would this be another way of summarizing your question?

No. Instinct I believe is knowledge one is born with like a bird having the knowledge of building a nest or a salmon having the knowledge to swim upstream to spawn and die.

I am referring to conditioning. Conditioned behavior is like Pavlov's dogs where he taught that behavior could be conditioned. I am seeing that we are like Pavlov's dogs where conditioned behavior creates our personalities which live our lives for us. So for me, conditioned behavior negates free will. Choice as a reflection of desires reflecting our mechanical conditioning negates consciousness.

Plato refers to the society established by conditioning as the "Beast" since the beast lacks conscious choice. Simone Weil in her usual laconic fashion describes it well:

The Great Beast is introduced in Book VI of The Republic. It represents the prejudices and passions of the masses. To please the Great Beast you call what it delights in Good, and what it dislikes Evil. In America this is called politics.

A conscious person capable of free will and choice not reflecting conditioning is then an extreme rarity since the great bulk of humanity comprise the "Great Beast." A person has to be sincere and look inside to determine the strength of the "Beast" in relation to their conscious potential. I am just suggesting that as part of the Beast, we cannot be said to have choice and free will. Our limitations to the mechanical responses to desires sustain us as part of the societal "Beast."

In this case I would be forced to disagree with you fore several reasons.

There are those who go against the beast there by excercising a will other than that of the beast.

The standards of the beast change in a relatively short period of time. this suggests that the beast must react to decisions of its own. A current example of this would be stem cell research or abortion.

I will cite more reasons in a bit. The group I am watching just left and I am off to lunch.

[Nick_A]

In this case I would be forced to disagree with you fore several reasons.

There are those who go against the beast there by excercising a will other than that of the beast.

Remember that the Beast is composed of many different opinions. I'm referring to the underlying attitude, the collective quality of being, within which all these different opinions struggle. It is this level of being that manifests the Beast.

The standards of the beast change in a relatively short period of time. this suggests that the beast must react to decisions of its own. A current example of this would be stem cell research or abortion.

Yes it does. Everything in nature turns in circles and cycles. The beast is reacting to the continuing change of external conditions. This cyclical process is beautifully described in Ecclesiastes 3. There is nothing conscious in this including the difference between war and peace They appear when external conditions warrant. Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.

15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.

[achilles12604]

In this case I would be forced to disagree with you fore several reasons.

There are those who go against the beast there by excercising a will other than that of the beast.

Remember that the Beast is composed of many different opinions. I'm referring to the underlying attitude, the collective quality of being, within which all these different opinions struggle. It is this level of being that manifests the Beast.

The standards of the beast change in a relatively short period of time. this suggests that the beast must react to decisions of its own. A current example of this would be stem cell research or abortion.

Yes it does. Everything in nature turns in circles and cycles. The beast is reacting to the continuing change of external conditions. This cyclical process is beautifully described in Ecclesiastes 3. There is nothing conscious in this including the difference between war and peace They appear when external conditions warrant. Ecclesiastes 3:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.

15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.

So if the beast is nothing but a conglomeration of opinions about something, does this not mean that those individual opinions must have been decided (key word) on by numerous individuals? Wouldn't this support the concept of will for those individuals?

[Nick_A]

Yes but people are different. As you know well, when reacting to the same problem, some are more inclined to think about it, others are inclined to be emotional about it, and others just start trying to fix it or make it worse depending upon their goal. So if people are different, the way they express societal conditioning differs. Republicans and democrats for example assert differences but these differences are the result of conditioning at the level of the Beast which sustains itself through imagination including the imagination that we have will.

"Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it." Simone Weil

We could have will if we were more free from imagination but as we are, we are not conscious of deeper human needs because of imagination so react as the beast with a blindness making us capable both of the deepest compassion and most horrible atrocities. It is the human condition.

.But the point is that what you are describing as "will," I am describing as conditioned reaction to desires.

Will is a tool of consciousness and allows for ACTION as opposed to REACTION to desire. For a person to sustain presence, or the inner balance between thought, emotion, and sensation also described by Plato requires conscious attention and the will to sustain it. Will in this case counters our normal tendency to be a conditioned slave to desire that keeps us at the level of the "Great Beast."

Someone on this site uses the username: beherenow. To be here now is "presence" and what is eventually necessary to acquire inner freedom. But doing it and imagining it are as different as night and day. It requires conscious choice even in the face of all the temptation to give in to habitually reacting to conditioned desire.

[Nick_A]

I just thought of one more idea I should add. I believe you want to defend the biblical concept that man has free will. This is true but we are not Man. We are fallen man. The whole idea of Christianity is to allow fallen man to once again become Man.

Paul describes the human condition in Romans 7. Does he assert free will or his lack of it?

14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

The whole purpose of Christianity is to help us become ourselves by compensating for the will and consciousness we no longer have but exists now as our poterntial.

[achilles12604]

Yes but people are different. As you know well, when reacting to the same problem, some are more inclined to think about it, others are inclined to be emotional about it, and others just start trying to fix it or make it worse depending upon their goal. So if people are different, the way they express societal conditioning differs.

This I can understand and agree with. People do react differently to different circumstances. And I would agree that their environments impact these decisions. But I would never agree that the environment over rides their choice.

Republicans and democrats for example assert differences but these differences are the result of conditioning at the level of the Beast which sustains itself through imagination including the imagination that we have will.

I am afraid I must disagree here. You are suggesting that the political party members are incapable of thinking for themselves due to the pressures of their own party or beast as you put it. While some politicians are conditioned, I disagree that they all are. Otherwise we would never hear about a "rogue party member." John McCain right now is defending himself against accusations that he isn't a "real" republican. So I would disagree with you that they are all conditioned.

Additionally I lost you where you delved into imagination. What does a person's ability to imagine have to do with continuing their conditioning? If anything these two ideas are incompatable with each other. The ability to imagine is what leads to new and different ideas. Not a conditioning of the same old ideas.

Care to elaborate?

"Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it." Simone Weil

We could have will if we were more free from imagination but as we are, we are not conscious of deeper human needs because of imagination so react as the beast with a blindness making us capable both of the deepest compassion and most horrible atrocities. It is the human condition.

I neither agree with your position here nor your analysis of this quote.

His commentary, IMO, is meant to illustrate that people are not focused on their needs because they are always thinking of the future. They are only aware of moving forward with new ideas. This is directly contradictory to your position on redundency of the beast trapping the minds of people.

Will is a tool of consciousness and allows for ACTION as opposed to REACTION to desire. For a person to sustain presence, or the inner balance between thought, emotion, and sensation also described by Plato requires conscious attention and the will to sustain it.

Now this I agree with. Daily chores can be done on a sub-conscious level. I do not need to use my will to take a step. But I do need my will to decide if I want to bike or drive to work today. This decision is one that my sub-conscious is not able to make. Enter my will . . .

Will in this case counters our normal tendency to be a conditioned slave to desire that keeps us at the level of the "Great Beast."

And I agree again. Will is the use of our conscious to decide on a level above our sub-conscious.

Someone on this site uses the username: beherenow. To be here now is "presence" and what is eventually necessary to acquire inner freedom. But doing it and imagining it are as different as night and day. It requires conscious choice even in the face of all the temptation to give in to habitually reacting to conditioned desire.

And again I agree.

[Nick_A]

I am afraid I must disagree here. You are suggesting that the political party members are incapable of thinking for themselves due to the pressures of their own party or beast as you put it. While some politicians are conditioned, I disagree that they all are. Otherwise we would never hear about a "rogue party member." John McCain right now is defending himself against accusations that he isn't a "real" republican. So I would disagree with you that they are all conditioned.

Additionally I lost you where you delved into imagination. What does a person's ability to imagine have to do with continuing their conditioning? If anything these two ideas are incompatable with each other. The ability to imagine is what leads to new and different ideas. Not a conditioning of the same old ideas.

Care to elaborate?

This is a classic example of how artistic depictions can communicate the substance of an idea in ways impossible for normal language. I don't know how it could be explained without a form of visual imagry You are asking about this very difficult idea concerning coming to grips with and referred to in one way of another in all the great traditions as psychological sleep in which we are the victims of illusion.

In Buddhism there is for example the famous parable of the Burning House. The idea is that children are playing in a house that is burning and the master sees that they are so fascinated with their activities that they don't see their situation. The master has to try every trick in the book to get them out to safety.

The parable is about the human condition of being asleep to reality and caught up in imagination. The master must awaken them to their condition.

In the Christianity that I know, its intellectual side is very close to Platonism. Naturally then Plato's Cave allegory has a special significance for me, Plato describes the human condition as being in a cave where we are chained so as only to face the wall and see the shadows that are cast on to the wall from the light entering the cave. The chains are our imagination that keep us captivated by the shadows at the cost of awakening to reality.

From this perspective, imagination is a function that is taking the place of the necessary function of conscious attention.

The world as we know it is Plato's cave. Life in the cave includes changing parties and ideas and various expressions of intelligence. But as seen from a conscious perspective outside the confines of the cave, intelligence is as described by Simone Weil:

"The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell."

Living as part of the Great Beast within the cave allows us to value "intelligence" in a manner that denies comprehension of our unnatural and unnecessary psychological situation of being in a burning house or in Plato's cave.

Now this I agree with. Daily chores can be done on a sub-conscious level. I do not need to use my will to take a step. But I do need my will to decide if I want to bike or drive to work today. This decision is one that my sub-conscious is not able to make. Enter my will . . .

Is this any different then a great cat sunning himself in the jungle and then deciding to get up and go for a stroll? Are you suggesting that the cat made a conscious decision to get up? I believe the cat just reacted to external conditions. I also believe your decision to ride the bike to work is equally automatic. It doesn't require consciousness defined in this case as self awareness..

[achilles12604]

I am afraid I must disagree here. You are suggesting that the political party members are incapable of thinking for themselves due to the pressures of their own party or beast as you put it. While some politicians are conditioned, I disagree that they all are. Otherwise we would never hear about a "rogue party member." John McCain right now is defending himself against accusations that he isn't a "real" republican. So I would disagree with you that they are all conditioned.

Additionally I lost you where you delved into imagination. What does a person's ability to imagine have to do with continuing their conditioning? If anything these two ideas are incompatable with each other. The ability to imagine is what leads to new and different ideas. Not a conditioning of the same old ideas.

Care to elaborate?

This is a classic example of how artistic depictions can communicate the substance of an idea in ways impossible for normal language. I don't know how it could be explained without a form of visual imagry You are asking about this very difficult idea concerning coming to grips with and referred to in one way of another in all the great traditions as psychological sleep in which we are the victims of illusion.

In Buddhism there is for example the famous parable of the Burning House. The idea is that children are playing in a house that is burning and the master sees that they are so fascinated with their activities that they don't see their situation. The master has to try every trick in the book to get them out to safety.

The parable is about the human condition of being asleep to reality and caught up in imagination. The master must awaken them to their condition.

In the Christianity that I know, its intellectual side is very close to Platonism. Naturally then Plato's Cave allegory has a special significance for me, Plato describes the human condition as being in a cave where we are chained so as only to face the wall and see the shadows that are cast on to the wall from the light entering the cave. The chains are our imagination that keep us captivated by the shadows at the cost of awakening to reality.

From this perspective, imagination is a function that is taking the place of the necessary function of conscious attention.

The world as we know it is Plato's cave. Life in the cave includes changing parties and ideas and various expressions of intelligence. But as seen from a conscious perspective outside the confines of the cave, intelligence is as described by Simone Weil:

"The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell."

Living as part of the Great Beast within the cave allows us to value "intelligence" in a manner that denies comprehension of our unnatural and unnecessary psychological situation of being in a burning house or in Plato's cave.

Now this I agree with. Daily chores can be done on a sub-conscious level. I do not need to use my will to take a step. But I do need my will to decide if I want to bike or drive to work today. This decision is one that my sub-conscious is not able to make. Enter my will . . .

Is this any different then a great cat sunning himself in the jungle and then deciding to get up and go for a stroll? Are you suggesting that the cat made a conscious decision to get up? I believe the cat just reacted to external conditions. I also believe your decision to ride the bike to work is equally automatic. It doesn't require consciousness defined in this case as self awareness..

Wake up neo . . . .



The matrix has you.



While I understand the idea and agree to it to an extent, I dare say it is not universal. It is also more of a comment on the state of man rather than his ability to make a choice from a variety of options.

Even if no one was really aware of reality, people could still make choices in their own small and disillusioned world. So people would still have will.

But you have written yourself that some people even have enough will to break free from this mental prison. So really I can't debate you to much about the existence of will as I too hold that mankind has will.

I am looking for someone who does not accept the existence of will or "free will" if you like.

[Nick_A]

While I understand the idea and agree to it to an extent, I dare say it is not universal. It is also more of a comment on the state of man rather than his ability to make a choice from a variety of options.

This is our chief delusion. We think that we are somehow other than the state of Man when we first start considering these ideas. I know this by experience. Until I took the idea of inner empiricism (Know Thyself) seriously I didn't realize my own psychological slavery and inner hypocrisy that causes us to turn in circles. I thought I had consciousness, will, and the ability for conscious choice. So I learned and I believe that this the beginning of becoming able to consciously carry ones cross.

[achilles12604]

While I understand the idea and agree to it to an extent, I dare say it is not universal. It is also more of a comment on the state of man rather than his ability to make a choice from a variety of options.

This is our chief delusion. We think that we are somehow other than the state of Man when we first start considering these ideas. I know this by experience. Until I took the idea of inner empiricism (Know Thyself) seriously I didn't realize my own psychological slavery and inner hypocrisy that causes us to turn in circles. I thought I had consciousness, will, and the ability for conscious choice. So I learned and I believe that this the beginning of becoming able to consciously carry ones cross.

Ok.