Free will again (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 21:35 (4649 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 21:52

dhw,
Romansh,-"Does free will exist?"-I think that free will exists, but I also think for most people it is an illusion.-What do I mean?-These past weeks I've been meditating more and more. What I notice has scared me--and has also been the source of some anxiety as the experience has been challenging my perspectives on the world--oddly in a negative light. -The key idea is this:-The beginning of Buddhist meditation, concentrates on nothing more than sitting still, and continuously bringing your concentration to your breathing. This simple task is the most insanely difficult task I've ever had to do. -Why? Your mind never stops! It doesn't like to be controlled. The fact that it is so difficult to obtain exclusive control of your thoughts is truly a frightening idea. -This has lead me to reconsider Dennett's view on free will--as illusion yet again. -(I like Romansh's distinction of delusion and illusion.) -If we're only capable of controlling our minds for narrow gaps... then this necessarily means that most of the time, we're NOT in active control. Not in the way we think we are. It means our subconscious likely has much more to say about how we act than we think we do. Free will is really a "gate." And really... all this gate does (for most people, most of the time) is say "no" to certain kinds of actions. Otherwise, you just keep right on doing whatever filters into your mind.-We don't need to know about consciousness in the abstract to be able to answer the question about free will. All you need to do is observe your mind in action, and think about what it is that you find. -For the record: Free will as in the classical Western paradigm "We are free to do whatever we want" as a necessary condition to being a human is what I'm calling illusory. We're less free than we think, definitely less free than we'd like to be... but I think its something very much like a muscle... you can exercise it and make it stronger.

--
\"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.\"