Consciousness: a philosopher believes in free will (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, February 08, 2020, 18:44 (1748 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE:if neurophysiology is merely the image of conscious willing, not its cause or source—then we do have free will (dhw’s bold) ; for in the latter case, our choices are determined by volitional states we intuitively regard as expressions of ourselves. (David's bold)

DAVID:: Although not stated, Schopenhauer's free will is God's consciousness in my view. Our will is free, not determined by electrical waves in our brain. We run those waves.

dhw: (Schopenhauer died in 1869, so I'm not sure how much of this post is taken directly from him.)

This quote from the website explains for you: "As elucidated in my concise new book, Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics, for Schopenhauer the inner essence of everything is conscious volition—that is, will."

dhw: We have discussed this subject at great length – it’s a pet topic of Romansh’s – and it is emphatically NOT just a matter of materialism versus dualism, as implied by the words I have bolded or by David's comment. Nor do I see what is meant by "free will is God’s consciousness". It certainly can't mean that he takes our decisions! Whether consciousness is a blank slate or not, produced by God or produced by the brain, the important question is where do the eventual characteristics come from that influence the decisions made by our consciousness?

I think the consciousness mechanism we have gives us a blank slate with which to work.

dhw: We are faced with the problem of cause and effect, which this article totally ignores. No point in going over it all again in detail, but Romansh’s anti-free will argument is that all our decisions are determined by causes beyond our control – not just the make-up of the brain, but also the influences that unconsciously shape our decisions: heredity, upbringing, chance occurrences etc. My answer to the cause-and-effect argument would be that nevertheless, those influences are part of “me”, and so it cannot be argued that the decisions are not “mine”. I therefore have the ability, within given constraints (if I’m in prison, I can’t decide to go for a walk in the country), to take decisions independently of any influence outside myself.

I fully agree with you.

dhw: So it boils down to definitions. If you define free will as the autonomous ability of an individual within given constraints to make decisions independently from outside influences, my answer would be yes, we have it. If the definition is ….to make decisions independently from causes and effects over which the individual has no control, my answer would be, no, we don’t have it.The dilemma is relived again and again in courts of law.

Here I disagree. In our ability to logically reason we can review the influences we know we have gained/were given from our pasts. We can certainly change our basic precepts. I went from agnostic to belief. As a child my parents taught me to be a liberal Democrat. I am now a libertarian who votes Republican, and generally despises them for their spinelessness because they are so two-faced. We are stuck with two ridiculous parties set in legalistic stone.