what's ur take of free will vs. determinism??

[happyhappy]

This topic has been discussed countless times on this forum and in elsewhere. Leo too made 2 videos so far on the topic. and what stance do you take on the age old debate?

Edited July 17, 2022 by happyhappy

[A Fellow Lighter]

@happyhappy I'd like to know this from you: How would you be able to tell the difference? You know, whether your life is determined or not. How would you know which it is between the free-will and determinism?

[r0ckyreed]

Was just about to make a separate post on this, but I will post my insights here.  

I had a new insight into free will.  I used to be free willer before philosophy, then when I took philosophy, I slowly became deterministic.

However, when I did spirituality, I have realized that determinism is an illusion and free will exists.

You have free will because you are God.  I realized I have free will by being conscious of all that I am willing.  I can move my fingers.  How am I able to move my fingers?  How am I as consciousness able to will something at all?  How am I able to will something without knowing how I am willing it?

But you see, existence and will come before knowledge of how you exist and will.  Even to analyze your own thoughts of how you willed your thoughts has to first be a will.  You see the problem?  Your act of knowing is a will - decision, desire, action, behavior.

But where does the "free" part come in?  Free will does not mean that the ego can do whatever it wants.  People who are determinists or spiritualists will sometimes say that free will is an illusion because the ego is an illusion.  But the ego is never the one who has free will.  People who say free will is an illusion because the ego is an illusion are mistaken I believe because the free will debate to me is about whether choice or will exists or not.  In a deterministic universe, there is no choice or will, it is just events and actions happening like dominos in a linear way, but this seems to be underestimating the power and intelligence of reality and dumbing it down to a linear progression.  It may appear linear and causal to you, but that does not mean that is how it is.  

For clarity, when I say you have free will, I mean the awareness can will and choose what it focuses on.  You are consciousness and consciousness can decide what aspects to be aware of.  It is kind of a paradox, but from a certain perspective, you have free will by realizing you have none as an ego.  

The reason why I say you have free will is because you as consciousness can do whatever you want.  If you want to move your hand, you will send signals to your imaginary brain, to fire electrochemical impulses and move your imaginary blood so that you can move your hand.  But to move your hand, you also need to will the entire universe around your hand.  For instance, to even move your hand, the sun has to exist and be a certain distance from earth, plants have to grow for there to be life at all. Why is this?  You willed it to be like this because this is how you designed reality but you just forgot.  

You are willing everything right now, it is just that you don't know how you are doing it.  Alan Watts says that you can say that you are breathing right now, and you can also say that it is happening to you.  Both are true.  You are willing the circumstances for breathing to happen, which is another way of saying that you are God.

So yes, you have free will, you just don't know how your doing it, and the Self or Consciousness is not the one who has free will, it is free will.  Your ego is just the idea of separation which doesn't actually exist.

You can whatever you really put your mind and heart to.  The mistake is that there is a subject who is willing.  There is just Consciousness with the properties of intelligence and will.

EDIT: Also, your first response to the poll is backwards, it should be that free will is true in the ultimate sense but an illusion in the relative sense, which is what this response is about.  The human being doesn't have free will because it is subject to the Will of the Universe or God's Will.

 

Edited July 21, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[r0ckyreed]

What is the assumption of freewill? That there is a mind behind it. Does a chair have freewill? An animal have freewill? An atom? A cell have freewill? Does a human being have freewill? If a human has freewill, then what part of the human has freewill and which parts don’t? Does the human toe have freewill? Does the human heart have freewill? Immune system? Brain? Neuron? Where is freewill located? Does the mind have freewill? 
 

Freewill is making distinctions in consciousness that aren’t really there. When you say a human has freewill, what do you mean by that? You already assume that human has a mind separate from your own. Really, the human mind and will is one with all of the universe. The human mind and the wind and lava and gas and the water cycle are all the same process. 

The Mind is constructing freewill. But is the mind free to construct freewill? I think so. When the Mind is fully present in the Now, all ideas of freewill become just that, ideas. Choice is an idea that you as a human can choose among many options. But if you aren’t even aware of your choices and freewill, then it’s as if it doesn’t exist at all. 

The freewill debate is also about the mind debate. It seems weird to argue freewill exists without also assuming that mind exists. But freewill debate is also deeper still than just mind. It is about whether choice exists or if it is all just a game of dominoes, cause and effect. Are there multiple possibilities or just one possibility? The mind constructs this. If you believe in one possibility that will be real for you. If you construct multiple possibilities for yourself, that will be real for you.

Determinism is flawed because it takes the Intelligence out of life. It assumes life is linear, predictable, and that it is all just dumb matter. Determinism = materialism. But if we assume the freewill paradigm is true, we are also assuming that the Universe is an Intelligent Mind rather than a chain of linear cause and effect.

Edited July 24, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[r0ckyreed]

Freewill assumes ownership of choice. There is no owner but Consciousness. Nothing outside of Consciousness to own and control it. 

[ZenAlex]

It depends what you mean by free will. If you mean the freedom to make decisions based on your own will rather than being slave to someone elses, then sure.

But your will is not controlled by you. Your will determines your actions, and your will is not chosen by you. So there is no free will, at least not as a human. 

There is no free will in the sense that there is no choice for you. That's an illusion. The decision making process happens like any other natural process, on it's own, and you can watch this happen. 

[Razard86]

1 hour ago, ZenAlex said:

It depends what you mean by free will. If you mean the freedom to make decisions based on your own will rather than being slave to someone elses, then sure.

But your will is not controlled by you. Your will determines your actions, and your will is not chosen by you. So there is no free will, at least not as a human. 

There is no free will in the sense that there is no choice for you. That's an illusion. The decision making process happens like any other natural process, on it's own, and you can watch this happen. 

I agree with this. When I got in my car accident I blacked out, I wasn't sleepy or nothing and time stopped before it happened. Me surviving the accident and not hitting anybody at all....what would you call that? I had no control over time stopping as a human, no control over blacking out, and no control over not hitting anyone and no control over the human body surviving. 

So from God's perspective sure free will, but from human perspective I don't think so.

[Dimi]

My attempt: 
The only "choice" you have as that individual (as your question is refering to that level) is to surrender or not to Yourself (giving yourself up, egodeath, reborn, whatever you want to call it). 

In the Absolute sense, free will is an illusion like all the rest is, keep it simple, it's an infinitude of You's (Godly You's, not human you's)  

[caspex]

Will has nothing do with the individual, but it exists