• 1 Post
  • 24 Comments
Joined 4 days ago
cake
Cake day: April 18th, 2025

help-circle


  • coldaf@lemmy.worldOPtoPhilosophy@lemmy.worldAbout Will
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    17 hours ago

    I’m asking how we want it. I’m asking what kind of causality the brain uses to want it. It’s very difficult to explain what’s in my mind. Let’s take earthquakes for example, earthquakes don’t just shake the earth as they please, right? There are certain continental movements, land plates form, these plates move with certain underground movements and we shake because of the friction, movement, cracks and pressure. Take the winds on Earth, the wind doesn’t just blow wherever it wants to, certain pressures, landforms, antecedent and successor winds, things like that allow winds to happen where and when they want to happen. Before we humans knew about these mechanics of earthquakes and winds we thought they were random, but thanks to science we have mapped them and now with our current knowledge we can at least make high-powered predictions. And if you are not a religious person, you are more likely to think that the “life” of us humans and other living beings is not something that was created in such a monumental way. It is, in essence, a complex structure of energy cycles in which inanimate beings live with each other in a given ecosystem. And human beings have a lot of mechanics. There are many details that affect our will. It’s not random and we can’t decide anything. Can we be predictable beings with a lot of mechanics like emotions, thoughts, certain movements of atoms and molecules inside us, the society and the world we live in?










  • coldaf@lemmy.worldOPtoPhilosophy@lemmy.worldAbout Will
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    21 hours ago

    I respect your opinion, but for me it is not a waste of time. My ultimate desire is not to know the real answer, but to find what would I accept as the real answer. I don’t need to go from point A to point B. The real joy for me is that I am discussing this. After all, we humans are limited beings, and just because we think we have found the real truth doesn’t make it true. What we accept today with scientific consensus can be overturned by new perspectives and new learnings. What I mean here is not the possibility of religious writings being true, I’m not approaching their ideas by saying “what if they are true?”. What I am looking for is to see as many differences of opinion as possible and find my own self. In any case, if we are discussing the existence of free will and the answer is that there is no free will, then my life experience, what I have been exposed to, my environment, what I have experienced will stop me from going beyond a certain view, and even if it were the truth, I would probably not be able to reach that truth. We may disagree on this, which is very natural. If it is a waste of time for you, it would be best not to argue.


  • coldaf@lemmy.worldOPtoPhilosophy@lemmy.worldAbout Will
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    21 hours ago

    I understand what you mean, but rather than culture and phenomenon, I’m curious about the limits of our will. For example, except in the case of dogs or chimpanzees, would two identical children, living exactly the same life (same life, same food, same family, same traumas, same friends, same events, and even all the little reactions and actions that we don’t define as events) make the same decisions? Would they do the same things every day, at the same time, at the same second? Or would we still see a difference? Could one be good and one bad? Would one listen to a different band?


  • coldaf@lemmy.worldOPtoPhilosophy@lemmy.worldAbout Will
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    21 hours ago

    I may not fully understand what you are saying, but what I am focusing on is whether we are free in the choice we make when we do something. Whether we have a choice in what we do or who we are, rather than what happens to us. If we don’t give a right to free will, wouldn’t the evils that we as humans condemn cease to be evils? When I describe the evils that are done, I’m not talking about categorizing them as bad or good, I’m talking about the people who do them choosing whether or not to do them. For example, murder, rape, jealousy. Do we kill someone or is it a reflection of what we have been exposed to throughout our lives?



  • coldaf@lemmy.worldOPtoPhilosophy@lemmy.worldAbout Will
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    22 hours ago

    That’s exactly what I’m trying to ask, what caused this? Was it already prepared and foreseeable? Or did I just want to brush my teeth. I think we humans don’t live in a cause-and-effect relationship and so I think it’s difficult to give a clear answer to that question. Maybe if I could come up with a rationalization, it would be: I need to be clean, for the health of my teeth, to keep up the routine, etc.




  • coldaf@lemmy.worldOPtoPhilosophy@lemmy.worldAbout Will
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    22 hours ago

    As free will, we can handle any choice you make. At least that’s what I mean. Everything you choose in life, whether you brush your teeth this morning, whether you drink tea or coffee. More broadly, your ideologies, your reactions in life, whether you choose to be a “bad person” as a result of bad experiences. The holy books say we can choose these things. That we can determine our destiny by these decisions and that it is up to us to choose between heaven or hell. I think this is wrong and I wanted to ask you all my opinion. There will always be certain criteria and certain limits when we make choices. But what I am curious about is the predictability of our choices.