Free Will 2 (Evolution)

by romansh , Sunday, July 08, 2012, 02:23 (4308 days ago) @ xeno6696

Hi Matt
> Don't know. What I do know, is that I can say no to an impulse. 
Yep I agree - but is the act of saying "no" a result of another (albeit perhaps a different kind of) impulse?-> I don't think it turns a blind eye at all. I'm living proof of that. Remember what I said earlier--just because I can *at times* sit still and ignore impulses, doesn't mean that the majority of the time I'm fully "in control" either. The "goal" again, of meditation, is to get beyond the point where our minds are constantly firing off flak, and reach that state of "here and now." That's the first step. -I don't see how we are not avoiding the concept of dependent origination here.-> As for "Causa sui..."
> 
> "The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense.
> ...
No argument here.-> Suppose someone were thus to see through the boorish simplicity of this celebrated concept of "free will" and put it out of his head altogther, I beg of him to carry his "enlightenment" a step further, and also put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of "free will": I mean "unfree will," which amounts to a misuse of cause and effect. One should not wrongly reify "cause" and "effect," as the natural scientists do ... according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it "effects" its end; one should use "cause" and "effect" only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication--not for explanation. In the "in-itself" there is nothing of "causal connections" of "necessity" or of "psychological non-freedom"; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule of "law." -I don't thnk reifying cause and effect is a problem in that its opposite does not allow for freedom either. It is the very word free (intrinsically independent) that is the problem. In a scientific sense we should be careful of this word. -If we are using the free in the vernacular, then who cares? My will is not intrinsically free, in shape or form. It is shaped by the universe and it shapes the universe. The two are one - so to speak.-> 
> My book list certainly grows with age! 
Have fun Matt -> The core Buddhist truth here is that free-will cannot be an absolute thing. That was what I attempted to communicate earlier. It seems we're more alike than I thought, but I *am* used to defensive thinking. Forgive me!-We are defined by our definitions?-Back to the regularly scheduled programming?