Thomas_More
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And THE WESTERN SOCIALIST in 1972 understood the definition of free will in the same, classical, way as I do.
Again:
” the most vital argument that the Socialist advances against free will is that its acceptance precludes the possibility of a science of sociology. The Socialist expounds the principle of laws acting behind social causation. If man, individually and en masse, is a creature of caprice, if he thinks and acts independently of his heredity and social milieu, then the search for laws supposed to govern human history, economics and social relations is forever doomed to futility. The acceptance of free will is a flat denial of social science.”
THE WESTERN SOCIALIST.
To say that free will has been proven since the debates of the 18th century, you would have to prove that it is now known that we are responsible for our wishes, our thoughts and our feelings, and that we will to will, want to want, and wish to wish, and that our feelings are freely chosen, and spring from nothing but themselves.
Rather like telling a child whose parents have just been killed and the family home destroyed, “Why are you crying? Be happy!”
If i hold to the classical meaning of the term free will, the meaning that the classic materialists (and even some deists) attacked, it is because i believe language is important and the past something to learn from.
As Orwell said, “Loose thinking leads to the loose use of words, but the loose use of words also leads to loose thinking.”
Whatever we may think of the personalities and milieux of the classical 18th century materialists, whatever they might be behind in today, they were the foundation stones of modern materialism.
If we attach any meaning we like to historical terms like “free will”, where is our connection to our materialist heritage? Why insist on definitions at all, for anything?
And people who want to learn from the past, they will be flummoxed when reading Voltaire et al. and coming across “free will”, or “necessity”, and other terms. Treat language capriciously and you get a lexical free-for-all of loose words and loose 🤔 thinking.
No, it would be a life of free will, and it would be awful, with no morality and no motives for any thought or action.
And since one would only have the thoughts and feelings one wants to have, there would be no political activity. Firstly, it would be pointless, since no one’s will would be subject to any persuasion, and secondly, one wouldn’t be fazed by any evil or injustice whatsoever. Feeling only as you want to feel, you wouldn’t experience any love, hatred, sorrow, grief, anger, or indignation.
There would be no relationship with anything at all.Again, Wez, as i’ve told you, i am posed with no dilemma with regard to me holding to my moral convictions and acting thereupon.
It does not subtract anything from them because i have been persuaded to hold them, as opposed to my “free will” cavalierly adopting them free of any motive to do so.Russian Christmas today. Both sides pray to God for victory in the killing fields. God must decide which is the holiest killing.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/18569/18569-h/18569-h.htm#Free-will
Project Gutenberg. Voltaire.“dehumanizes.”
You see i have no problem because i don’t see humans as “above” anything. We are an animal species, material organisms, including our wills, which are the effects of sense impressions, external and internal motion.
I don’t feel uncomfortable about that, any more than i feel uncomfortable about being on a rotating globe in what is mostly darkness. I’m not the centre of everything and don’t need to be.
I think, for the sake of your comfort, you should probably give up determinism, which is causing you problems. Why do you consider yourself a determinist?
The motive in you to believe in free will, because you feel the opposite diminishes your sense of moral agency, seems so strong, you maybe should yield to it, and reject a materialism which you feel is reductionist.
I have always thought idealists who want a socialist world, just as materialist members do, should not be barred from the party.
“One answer is that even if we see free will as an illusion, we can still recognize the social requirements for ethics and morals.”
“Walpola Rahula points out in What the Buddha Taught, “If the whole of existence is relative, conditioned and interdependent, how can will alone be free? Will, like any other thought, is conditioned. So-called ‘freedom’ itself is conditioned and relative.”
“the idea of free will is part of the larger human illusion that we are the central focus of all creation. Consider the belief held until the early 1600s that the Earth was at the center of the universe. This belief was challenged by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, who put the sun at the center of our solar system and made our observations of the heavens much easier to explain. Although resisted by some at first, this new way of thinking gradually entered into mainstream thought.
Two hundred fifty years later Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection removed humans from the pedestal of special creation. Nevertheless, many still believe that humans must occupy a special place in the evolutionary scheme, perhaps as the inevitable peak of evolution on Earth.” The second question raised by accepting the absence of free will deals with moral responsibility. Although biological evolution in humans has not changed much over the last 50,000 years, cultural evolution has shaped the biological imperatives for survival into religious and civil laws. If there is no free will, are these laws meaningless? What happens to good and bad, reward and punishment? One answer is that even if we see free will as an illusion, we can still recognize the social requirements for ethics and morals.
” In the end, we can embrace this paradox like a Zen koan: we can live our lives as though we have free will yet realize it is just an illusion. This may be the ultimate freedom.”
∞
From the Fall 2001 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 18, No. 1)
Text © 2001 Robert FraserYou think there is an entity called “you” inside your body, inside your brain, receiving audiences like a king, or god, and whose decisions are independent of material motion. Christians call this fiction the “soul”, which is answerable, motivelessly, for its thoughts, desires and actions.
But there is no such thing.There are not different levels of intelligence, only different levels of understanding.
I.Q. is bogus.
S.J. Gould wrote a book about this.No, i know many people who are not socialists but have better characters than some socialists do.
Why is internal moral debate redundant? I am doing it all the time with myself. I know that i will yield and make a decision according to the strongest motive that presents itself. A free will, on the other hand, would be independent of motive, and therefore impervious. It would have no morality or immorality, because it doesn’t exist.Your wrestling, or inner conflicts, mean that opposing motives have presented themselves. You will, however, yield to the strongest acting upon your will, not the weakest, and your choice will be made accordingly.
You are conflicted because you are thinking in a non-material, idealist way, without being aware of it. I, however, have no such dilemma.
I am fortunate in that my father was a materialist (and an SPGB member). My philosophical reading were the materialists. Ancient as well as modern.
Were you raised a Christian?
Most people are raised either religiously, but more modern, nominally, Christian. Children were smacked and grow up just accepting free will, without thinking about it, and in a society that is blame-oriented.
“Who’s to blame?”
“It’s your fault.”
“No, it’s your fault.”
“It’s those bloody immigrants!”
“You bumped into me!”
“No, you bumped into me!”
“He’s just bloody-minded.”
“He’s the one that done it.”Behaviour is seen as freely originating, with no reference to cause.
Hence, blame is endemic, and if someone says free will is a myth, he’s a “bleedin’ heart liberal.”Free will is a parrotted term (apologies to parrots!) thrown around and seldom if ever explored, except by academics.
“Good and Evil”, Original Sin, reward and punishment, all are part of a religious scenario that is ingrained in the mass of people, including professed atheists. They are culturally visceral.
They have always also proven useful to ruling classes since antiquity, and the stick with which to beat materialists has always been “morality “
