Free Will, Consciousness, Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 23:50 (4300 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,-I will re-quote the relevant passage of N and engage in a little more analysis:-"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.
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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." 
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The "unfree will" is mythology; in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills.
" --Nietzsche, BGE, section 21-I emphasized the relevant sentence. N is talking directly about the internal observation of consciousness. I think he's pushing into the often random nature our consciousness tends to draw itself--what can possibly be more free than the ability to move randomly? Thoughts come when they will. In that sense, as an agent, no, I have no control, but as an entire entity, it's as free as free possibly gets. -I was going to write more... but I think that paragraph sums up everything I'm possibly trying to drive at.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"