Thomas_More
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Concerning God, freewill and destiny: Of all that earth has been or yet may be, all that vain men imagine or believe, or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, we descanted.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I’m referring to proponents here of a free will, not expecting people generally to retrace their thoughts and feelings.
One can only retrace for a little bit anyway. It is sufficient to admit that every feeling and thought springs from what precedes it. That’s easy enough.Needless to say, a fragrance or a piece of music can elicit the same feelings they accompanied decades previously, and bring back the memory immediately to mind of a particular moment.
I have no problem with a Christian believing in free will, because i know they are obliged to. I would wonder why they are a Christian if they did not.
My problem is with inconsistency, such as avowed materialists ignorantly standing by idealist concepts.All true. And there are many who think they are materialists but are not. They do not analyse their own feelings and thoughts and what lies behind them. If you have a thought or feeling, you should be able to follow it back, for a while, through its antecedents.
Nothing springs from nothing.
All Christians, including Calvinists, affirm free will, since without it the entire Christian doctrine and fable is irrelevant. The whole Christian concept of redemption is based on human free will creating Original Sin. No Original Sin, no need for redemption, no need for Christ.
But, uninformed as usual, you will retort, “What about predestination?”
I repeat again, Calvinism, by “predestination”, is referring to a particular doctrine of its own, that it is predestined who is going to Heaven and who to Hell. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Necessity vs Free Will debate. (Which debate was settled, btw, in the 18th century, where materialist thinkers are concerned. Advances in the study of organisms, beyond mechanics, only make, i repeat, free will more absurd, by comprehending complexity and its infinite multiplication, beyond mere mechanical physics,of antecedents, causes, effects, motives, subconscious as well as conscious. Free will is an absurdity).” But the plainest common garden use of “free will” just means something like an uncoerced choice made from alternative possibilities.”
*******
No one can choose other than as s/he chooses, and every choice is a yielding to the motive that weighs most heavily on the will.
One cannot choose in accord with the weakest motive, but only in accord with the strongest. The strongest motive isn’t necessarily the most rational.
Using the term “free will” out of its historical context in the history of thought is just further debasement of and loose use of language, damaging coherence and rendering terms meaningless. Free choice is as foolish as free will. Choice and will, minus the idealist adjective, are however fully consistent with a materialist understanding. There is no First Cause, without being itself an effect, not even the Big Bang, which was surely an effect as well as a cause.
A believer in free will is applying deism to “Man” and to him/herself. Free will is idealist, deistic thought. It is the negation too of historical materialism, which is based on the analysis of social cause and effect, and its application to the human mind too; social movement and psychological changes being all part of the dynamic.But then, since you believe in free will, why not save yourself the frustration and anger of being a socialist and just stop being one? Abracadabra!😄
Since science deals with matter, and motion is integral to matter, any scientist seemingly believing in free will is either interpreting the term differently from the materialist philosophers or else is trying to unite science with religious dogma (and many scientists are avowedly deists). Materialist philosophy has already disproven free will by means of reason.
I assume you do party political work. Why, if people’s wills are not subject to motive? It is surely then a waste of time trying to persuade them of anything, since they are independent of persuasion, of cause and effect?
1) Am i free not to resent it if i resent it, is the point.
2) Precisely because organisms are more complex makes their free will even more absurd. What you are is the result of so many intricate layers, antecedents, motives etc , most of which you are not even conscious of.
You are assuming they are thinking rationally, yet you have just said that their paying billions for bunkers proves they aren’t bright.
So is ignoring climate not very bright on their part. Since the profit system isn’t bright in the first place …
A whiff of seasonal air brings a memory to your mind. Were you free to have that memory or not?
You forgot to make the tea because you were thinking of something else. Were you free to forget to make the tea or not? Were you free to make the tea in spite of forgetting to do so?
My opinions infuriate you. Are you free not to be infuriated by what infuriates you? Are you free not to have the opinions you have?
Something causes you great sorrow. Are you free to not feel the sorrow? Are you free to feel it?BJ, you are not beyond the laws of cause and effect. Your ideas, opinions and feelings are not. Your actions are not. Your choices are not. Your socialism is not. Your will is not.
None of these things could exist outside of the laws of cause and effect. Consequently, all your choices, ideas, opinions, thoughts, feelings and actions, your likes and dislikes, are determined by what precedes them in the chain of cause and effect, including your agency to change the direction of that chain. I am not denying you possess will, only that it is free and independent. It only feels that way to you because you are not analysing its nature; you are not cognisant of the laws of motion that rule matter, including your brain, senses and nervous system.
