The Nature of Free-Will

There is no more prickly subject matter than the topic of free will, and no issue requires more education to flesh-out than this one.

Some people say it doesn't exist, and they make recourse to physicalism to justify their position. I agree a lot with this position, but still feel it is driven by a sort of nihilism, and hence, fails to capture the real complexity of the issue.

On the other hand there are people who believe in free will, and they will tend to ignore the complexities of the physicalist position with a focus on self-experience and the capacity to 'inhibit' oneself.

In a certain sense, the issue is entirely unreal, because free will implies that I can act freely, which is to say, given the choices before me, I can freely choose the one I want. Phenomenologically, this is true, and we can always 'veto' a position. But from a physicalist perspective, every interaction your body has with the world structures you, so the very conversation of being able to 'veto' a position motivates you to believe you can do so. Thereby proving that you and I are mutually entangled in causally closed universe-of-interactions.

I think Empedocles had it more right when he said that there is love and hate, or centripetal and centrifugal forces. Empedocles of course is projecting when he reduces it to love and hate; fear could easily replace hate because its equally centrifugal, and since hate is derivative, developmentally speaking from experiences of powerlessness i.e. fear, it is therefore more fundamental than hate is.

Love and fear are therefore correlated to the physicalist concepts of a 'centripetal' vector and centrifugal vector. We also see parallels between the electromagnetic notion of attraction and repulsion. If one sticks to and holds to the fundaments of this notion, that all of reality processed through these dynamics, then free-will makes sense only within a limited framework of a universe which is mostly deterministic i.e. densely structured in hierarchical, fractal ways, and that free-will is limited to probabilities, with some circumstances being so incredibly improbable you might as well describe it as impossible i.e. a person traumatized from infancy onwards, without being afforded any capacities or resources to develop any competent self, all of a sudden transforming into a person with a history of secure attachments. All of the matter of such a persons brain mind and the objects and persons they've grown around have made them a desperately weak individual, and therefore, the 'integral' of their consciousness cannot manifest anything other than the circumstances of its correlates in the body+environment complementary.

Thus, is a person like this 'free' to simply 'change' their mind, "grow" up, and "be strong"? Such clichés are worthless to a person with this sort of history. People only manifest psychological abilities as a function of the resources they've internalized through self-other interactions. Emotions become internalized as brain structure, and brain structure mediates an experience of self and ability that could not exist outside those interactions.

At a certain phase-transition, however, the self becomes competent enough, or organized enough, to make regular use of its identification with a particular attractor. The most fundamental, and therefore, most resilient attractor is that which links humans into interaction with one another in the first place: love. A person who has grown through repeating cycles of reflection-on-feeling-through-knowledge has built up a powerful edifice that allows them to tolerate a great deal of suffering, which implies that a certain point, because of the way the brain is structured, the system can sustain itself through a deep connection with an ecologically-extended attractor (what occultists would call an 'egregore'). This form is not some abstract entity, but a point that extends from a field - the field being what gives the energy to the point, and the point then 'feeding' back upon the field via the person in a ceaseless circularity. In physics, a similar relationship exists between the Higgs field, the Higgs boson, and fermions and bosons, implying that this higher level relationship is a higher level manifestation of the same process occurring at the root of the material universe.

Free-will is therefore an ability we all possess insomuch as we all have multiple self-states, and that more fundamental self-states related to attachment can always gain control over lower-level self-states which, although more ancient in an evolutionary sense, are less relevant in a developmental sense, where love is that which every human infant needs to regulate their internal tensions.

Nevertheless, how and when states appear is probabilistic and dependent upon history. If I experience anger 300 times in a month, and love a mere 5 times, clearly the latter will have more potential energy for expression than the former. I will therefore identify more easily with the latter state than the former, implying that free-will for the purpose of acting morally is far less present in a person who doesn't have loving-interactions than someone who does.

This complementarity between environment and existence (or consciousness) is a strange one, since the former process in a developmental sense is more fundamental, and yet the latter process, when touched, reveals a remarkable power which gives one the sense of being 'more fundamental'. There is a deep paradox here where in order to discover the nature of love, you first have to love the other in order to experience its power and truth within the self.

a reply to: Astrocyte

I'm a bit concerned some might not respect, free will.
Because of a contract one was never ask to agreed to. Is that possible?

Sincerely NoClue

originally posted by: NoClue
a reply to: Astrocyte

I'm a bit concerned some might not respect, free will.
Because of a contract one was never ask to agreed to. Is that possible?
Sincerely NoClue

You have a contract with yourself (group oversoul of past lives) as to what you want to accomplish in this lifetime. The percieved problem is you are NOT supposed to remember any of your past experiences current goals or who you really are while you are experiencing this incarnation. You always start over from scratch. There is a plan but can you actually deviate from it (inact freewill) or is the deviation part of the overall plan (no freewill). If ones life is scripted to accomplish something (like Karma cleanup) your free will began and ended with finishing the script; does that allow for edits, and are those concidered acts of will?

Do you do it, or does it do you? I happen to think free will or determinism is barking up the wrong tree. I happen to think that you ARE it!

Unless we have omnipotent powers to decide what our choices then we have no free-will. Free-will can only occur if we are authors of our own choices.

a reply to: Astrocyte

This complementarity between environment and existence...

Are you sure these are two separate things?
What if there is just what is happening?

Just the one life.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
Unless we have omnipotent powers to decide what our choices then we have no free-will. Free-will can only occur if we are authors of our own choices.

You think you have choices and you label that action of decision making "freewill". Its all scripted.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
Unless we have omnipotent powers to decide what our choices then we have no free-will. Free-will can only occur if we are authors of our own choices.

Surely we all are the authors of our own choices, I know that I am for example. I cannot blame anyone else or any thing for the choices I have made in my life. I can say that there was a time when I had a tendency to look for reasons outside of my control for all my failings (poor choices) but eventually I realized that I was simply avoiding being responsible for my own thoughts, actions, prejudices, fears, ignorance et al. I have the free will to buy into whatever I choose. I have to admit that many of my choices have not been wise ones and I have paid the going price for my stupidity more than once but that is life. Every morning you wake up and you mentally and without giving it the importance it deserves buy into the new day. If you were to take the time to reflect what it is you are buying into you would likely jump back into bed.
Many people, so many, are doing it hard simply because thy do no know that they possess the free will to buy into, or alternatively ignore, whatever they want. This, my friend, is freedom.

Free will is limited by laws and situations when you're not able to walk on water, even when you're able to walk on water.

originally posted by: Out6of9Balance
Free will is limited by laws and situations when you're not able to walk on water, even when you're able to walk on water.

There is no such thing as unlimited free will but that doesn't mean you have no free will. There is an endless variety of choices that you can exercise your free will on but obviously we have to have rules and laws to maintain a level playing field for everyone. You have free will to step outside of the rules but you must accept the likelihood that you will be stigmatized, hated, thrown in jail, even executed if you go too far. I could opt to become a professional burglar, nothing to stop me. I don't for obvious reasons but there are people that do. No-one forces them to. They exercise their own free will. Anyone who pines for unlimited free will is trying to grab a handful of cloud.

a reply to: Astrocyte

If I brandish a firearm and aim it at someone? I make a choice to fire it at
them or not. I absolutely have the free will to choose. Consequence is the
evidence of free will.

I think predestination sure can look like free will when you consider only the last choice made in the cycle.

a reply to: carsforkids
The belief is that there is actually someone in the body...... there isn't.

There is no separation...... everything is just happening.

There isn't anyone so..... no one can have freewill.

If there was free will, all apparent people would be happy and content..... who would choose to be depressed?

a reply to: carsforkids

itisnowagain
The belief is that there is actually someone in the body...... there isn't.
There is no separation...... everything is just happening.
There isn't anyone so..... no one can have freewill.
If there was free will, all apparent people would be happy and content..... who would choose to be depressed?

Your 'someone again' is attempting another go at another lifetime to further grow your individuality. The spirit actually exists in your aura; not your body. Everything IS just happening ALL AT ONCE; these are admittedly very hard concepts.
One at times chooses to be murdered or poor or depressed or rich. The entire point is to grow the soul (yours). Your 'freewill' regarding this lifetime begins and ends with the script you wrote for yourself prior to your TSI encarnation for maximum growth.

a reply to: vethumanbeing
That's a nice story.....

What does TSI mean?

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: vethumanbeing
That's a nice story.....
What does TSI mean?

Time Space Illusion (the game board and rules that we are playing within).

a reply to: vethumanbeing
The illusion is that there is a you and a game.

All there is, is what is occuring..... no game and nothing to play it.

Everything is BEING what it is..... there is nothing DOING what it is.