So, lately I was wondering about free will, the idea that we somehow have total free will over our behavior sounds kind of absurd to me in some sense, be either genetics (you don't choose your genes) or environment (you don't choose your enviroment which you grow up), both don't let much of choose for the person, that how truly free are we? What's the LeftyPol opinions of the question of free will and the implications to leftist policies?
i would defer to the classical theory of slavery as far as it regards this question. a man is considered to have agency, while a child or animal is not. there is a qualitative difference therefore, which also grants a man a larger social responsibility (such as st. paul saying that adam is responsible over eve's sin, since man has more agency than woman, for example). likewise, a mentally impaired person (such as someone intoxicated or emotional) loses their reason, and so is seen as less responsible for their actions.
in this case, there must be a secondary agent, which we may call "instinct" or "desire" or irrationality. if a man is a slave to his desires, then he has likewise forfeited his freedom as a creature (which is why we arrest criminals and enslave them; since they have lost their reason). what is freedom in this sense however? the principle of self-movement (automobility). this is also what grants qualification for the attributes of the soul (anima) to aristotle; the principle of life is will - and self-will.
free will would imply self-movement, yet aristotle sees how all things in motion have been previously moved, so we lack this larger independence, but within our own ability, if we use reason, we may break the chains of mere instinct, and so this self-mastery allows for the conception of free will; that is, a will toward freedom. what is freedom however? that is a bigger question.
>>2421431eh, its a bit more complicated. i basically agree on the fundamental level but it is not a satisfactory answer to the question of why we meaningfully experience ourselves as having free will
>>2421383look into free-will compatibilism OP. its the generally accepted and imo intuitive version of determinism among contemporary philosophers of consciousness. basically, we do in fact live in a deterministic universe, but our perception and experience of our lives include free will in a non-superficial way.
its not that free-will is just "an illusion" or a "benevolent lie" (some people say the latter which i think is retarded), but that self-direction and choice is so central to human experience that it does meaningfully exist even if it doesnt have ultimate causal power. the way i think of it is: all the material & processes that make up an individual human brain, all the events & circumstances & socialization that go into our thoughts & behaviors, are part of the determinative matrix. if that is the case, which i think is true and follows from determinist presumptions, then the experience of free-will is an integral mechanism in the human experience. our "freedom" may not be infinite and metaphysical, but anybody who asserts this in any case is delusional and wrong. the fact that "we were always going to do what we end up doing" is likewise not necessarily a negation of our free-will, since our free-will as it actually exists is not the freedom to act outside of the deterministic universe we are part of, its our freedom to act within our own lives within the tangible boundaries presented to us. one of which boundaries is inevitably time, which makes the question of whether we were "always" going to do something not only practically irrelevant but a question that only makes sense if you presume that there is experience which exists outside of time, ipso facto absurd unless you are a theist of some sort (in which case none of the determinative premises need to apply anyway)
>>2421584This is a huge amount of confused rambling
Free will is ultimately about responsibility
If you believe that people can be punished for their actions you ultimately believe in a free will
>But material conditions are what shapes people's beliefs and actionsThere is a difference between absolute free will and relative free will. When talking about free will most philisophers and ethicists talk about the latter
A true anti free will position would ultimately entail some sort of radical antinomianism. This takes shapes in psychoanalysis where the individual itself is revealed to be an illusion. And also in Buddhism where the goal is not to be a "good person" (being good implies you have concrete will over your actions) but to realize that individual existence is ultimately an illusion
>>2421603>Free will is ultimately about responsibilityyes, but "agency" is perhaps a preferable term. are we "free"? perhaps not. but do we have agency? we must, for we are made responsible for our own karmic debt.
>>2421473a natural slave is someone externally moved, rather than inwardly willed - so this is the circumstance of environmental primacy. self-reflection must then begin by stillness in the body, which brings steadiness in the mind. personal will then represents a fundamental negation or restriction against the unconditional, by appropriating it under the condition of one's own ends. this is basic instrumental reason, where man becomes a master over his environment and so determines it. this is present in any child, whose first act of creation is destruction.
the external then has primacy over us when we allow it to determine us rather than elsewise. fascinating wisdom literature concerns this relation, where to some, resisting nature brings strife, while to others, strife is necessary for a man's own being. the boring but sensible position is to aim for balance. lao tzu recognises that the way of nature is to level everything back toward its own primal order. nature resists man and man resists nature, like the tension of a branch holding a nest, yet in this is also supplication and necessity. as lao tzu correctly discerns, if you sharpen a knife too long, it becomes blunt, and so man can only live in vain, ultimately. if man is a servant of nature, then nature may be a servant to man. that is our hope.
>>2421383"Free will" for a dialectical materialist is rather straightforward, no?
Minds of all individuals are influenced by their material surroundings on multiple levels. However, a person's mind can influence their material surroundings back, creating a feedback loop, the shape of that feedback loop is what is called "personality".
If your mind reliably influences your current (!) material surroundings in equal (or at least comparable?) proportion to what they influence your mind, you have a free will (and thus, your own personality). If your mind is only influenced by its surroundings, but doesn't influence them back, you do not have have free will (and by extension, personality).
>>2423943>tabula rasathis vulgar empiricist approach is self-evidently debunked by inborn forms of knowing, like instincts and other heritable qualities (such as twins often sharing the same personality). so we are not a mere feedback loop upon a blank slate, but expresses as a genetic adaptation to different environments.
>>2424142what causes change in society to occur?
>>2431833religious people believe in pre-determination by God.
>>2431869they are all granted freedom within that framework, that's literally in genesis my friend, but it doesn't matter what they think, your point about how "change can't happen under determinism" is just silly, let us take that example from before, you don't really have control of your own life, you don't really have control over it due to pre-established factors, but this is not absolute, under some circumstances you can break that pre-determination, you can free yourself in both a metaphorical and literal sense, and under those conditions you can affect the world immediately, but most of the time change is simply cumulative, it doesn't happen due to "free will" it happens due to making enough "free choices" that eventually things change
>>2424112true
incredible things are being posted under this flag
it also ties in with the Marxist conception of freedom as the recognition of necessity
more like "free pills" thread haha, got 'em!
>>2424112>Quantum mechanics shows events are not deterministic but probabilisticit is deterministic but we are uncertain with measurements which can only tell the location of a particle or the velocity, not both. By measuring something you add/remove energy from systems and make them follow random paths instead of predictable ones
>Humans can act to decrease randomness. Capital can act to decrease randomness to accelerate its flows of bourgeois accumulation. Capital has free will?
>The minimization of randomness is the maximization of willtotalitarian communists: "this 15 year old made a tweet that condemned our agriculture plan, we need to silence them for causing friction with their human free will, which we perceive as a threat to us"
>>2434906>>2434990The meaning of the words for free will, soul, sentience and consciousness are all related. It is one of those things we do not have words to describe but we all know what they mean.
There truly is something supernatural about all those words because where is this sentience located? Can we make it? What is that thing that is "the center" of our being?
I cannot be certain of your soul but I am certain about my soul.
I call it the MMORPG theory of ontology.
>Our bodies are the avatars>Our sentience is Us (players) behind the keyboard>Other people are other players>We cannot see them through the eyes of the video game>We cannot access "their souls" through the video game>We only see the bodies (avatars) of other players>"god" is the admin of the server>"angels" are the mods>"devil" is the admin's brother>"fallen angels" are rogue mods on the side of the brother>"demons" are hackers>It appears "god" cannot control us outside of the game>But he can take over the player character to negate our will over them>Outside of the game, we can bitchslap "god" and his stupid brother for making the game unplayable >>2421383Genetics probs plays a vital role but we have more freedom than we realize we just wouldn't do it. Fear of punishment is there, but even if it weren't most people fear the entropy more than the punishment.
People want stability, they want justice, they want others to be punished even themselves. Sartre talked about this extensively.
You think I'm some sorta hippy who just wants everyone to be free and happy? Hell no. But I'm self aware…people will naturally gravitate towards reaction and reprisal. Anarcho Stalinism could also be called Neo Gorbachevism. If you truly want to imagine hell for the over socialized redditor, stick him in a room with more video games than he could ever finish, more books than he could ever read, more food than he could ever eat, and watch him look for the nearest gun to kill himself with. We just get rid of the guns. Liberals for that one right.
There's no escape from your hell. You will choose the slop, you will be burdened by slop, you will have to live with the fact your slop choices differ vastly from the people you think most highly of, maybe even inferred inferior slop, and noone can make the slop choice for you, we killed them all.
You will be born in and die in the goon cave. And I will maniacally laugh as I watch you give into despair.
>>2434997Amateur gnosticism take. I would never be so chalice as to blasphemy God comparing him to some petty made up authority like an admin.
God is in essence the pixels that makeup the avatar as are the angels. They make up our being and define us and we define them. We are the sum of our parts good and bad alike. Remember angels have hierarchy. Powers, principalities, domains. Why do you think these words were used?
When you give yourself over to anger or regret, you're in essence possessed by a demon.
When you feel immense joy or experience prosperity, that is an angel.
And we can call upon them, talk to them, they are sentient.
But to speak into a being made of pure love, pure hate, pure anything could be dubious to the human psyche
>>2435059According to some interpretations of Mahayana Buddhism, all the different "worlds" coexist in a single individual at the same time, so the potentiality for "hell" - the lowest world and the most affected by suffering - and "enlightment" - the highest world and the one unaffected by suffering - are all already here.
>>2437127You may be interested in an Arab-Andalusian philosopher of the Middle Ages - can't fucking remember his name right now, sorry - who was a fundamental influence on Spinoza. They were onto something broadly similar to what you're saying. Also, a Hindu tradition embraces such a view, but again, tonight I can't remember exotic names…
>>2437127That's fair
>>2437975You assume I say angel or demon as a strictly black and white morality instead of reading between the lines of nuance. Higher and lower dimensions just means that. To us it may as well be called evil though as do you wanna be angry or sad all the time? Even sometimes? It has purpose sure but so does fire. Doesn't mean you wanna be on fire.
>>2438099It literally doesn't. Did you read the Bible? Its all allegorical
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