Perhaps. But your improperly established tautology doesn't prove anything either. Unless you can refine the semantics of the words involved, it really doesn't say much.

Those are the first good questions in this thread in quite a while.

Q: What is the importance of the realization that there is no free will, gibran2?
A: Recognizing a truth brings us closer to the Truth. If a truth was presented to you, would you choose to turn away from it?

Q: How does that affect your daily life?
A: Usually, it doesn’t affect my daily life. Occasionally, it brings peace and tranquility. When on the Nexus and viewing most responses in this thread, it brings frustration and exasperation.

Q: In what way do you think humans individually or society would benefit from accepting there is no free will?
A: That depends entirely on the individuals. The theory of evolution – a truth – helped some people to better understand their place in the world, it made others feel very uncomfortable, and it was used by others to defend eugenics. If everyone accepted that there is no free will, my guess is that it wouldn’t lead to positive outcomes.

Q: What difference does it make?
A: It makes a big difference! To believe in free will is to believe that you can act – and would want to act - in opposition to the “Source” or the “Unfolding”. To believe in free will is to isolate oneself from “Source”.

Refine the sematics? How would you suggest I refine them?

Frankly, I don't think you can refine the semantics because I don't think your argument holds. I was suggesting that if you were able to then I would be willing to listen. I think we've all said what we have to say over and over and no one's getting anywhere and it doesn't look like anyone will, so it was a good mental exercise, but I remain pretty unconvinced. The world doesn't exist in black and white, and neither does will.

The logic of my argument is straightforward. You claim that the argument doesn’t hold, but you provide no explanation whatsoever as to why it doesn’t hold. When you make a claim that a logical argument is somehow in error, I think it’s reasonable to assume that you have a reason for making the claim.

All I ask is that you share your reason. If you can see a problem with the logic, I’d like to know about it, as I guess would everyone else who’s been following this thread.

"if something causes a choice to be made, it isn't free will.
if nothing causes a choice to be made, it isn't free will."

both of these so-called logical musings contradict the original concept of free will.
the whole point of having free will is to be able to choose.
all you're doing is making a fallacious tautological statement to fit your definition.
we all obviously have differing opinions of what constitutes will, and define "free" differently
as well...but it is inevitably linked to choice, as it was in the original context when the term
was first used.

I don't know what "Source", "Truth" or "Unfolding" are, or if you have any evidence that they exist either.

What is the "original concept of free will"?

You don't seem to be reading very carefully. Please read the following carefully:

I have REPEATEDLY provided evidence.
Free will, IF it is defined in a way that relates it to choice, is a logical impossibility. Here is the proof:

Either something causes a choice to be made, in which case the choice isn’t free, or nothing causes the choice to be made, in which case the choice isn’t free. This is a logical tautology and is always true.

The only possible way that free will might exist is if it can be defined in a way that doesn’t relate it to choice. I’ve said this before, and no one has yet explained how one can have free will without making choices. It seems that “will”, whether free or not, is inextricably linked to choice.

I do agree that part of the problem is semantic. The words “will” and “free” and “choice” are used in many different ways and can mean many different things.

The tautology is only true in the realm of propositional logic which is antiquated and cannot always accurately convey "the truth". Therefore clinging to the fact that tautologies are always true is also fallacious.

You ask for proof, and I gave it with the "God exists" tautology which is clearly untrue.

So you're saying this concept you've been devoting so much energy to and arguing about for pages, makes no real difference in your daily life (except feeling content sometimes and other times frustrated in discussions related to it), and that collectively it would not bring any positive changes if people adopted this idea... Then to justify its importance you resort to something as vague as "not isolating ourselves from the Source", which while I intuitively know what you mean, it seems like a pretty poorly laid out argument. IMO it isnt in the same quality that your arguments tend to display. Knowing what the Source is and how to be in tune with it seems as arbritary and subjective as it can be and doesnt tell me much about how it can serve me in any way

Please explain yourself better if you disagree here, but it seems like a pretty secondary realization then, no? It reminds me a bit of "letting go" realization, knowing that ultimately we have no control over the universe (and our trips). But even if letting go is important, just as important is doing your active part to arrange set and setting and the integration of experiences. Also, this 'realization' tells me nothing on what I can/should do to develop myself and society, which personally I find a much more interesting question and seems to me to be related to awareness and will levels (regardless if philosophically it is absolutely free or not). Hence why I was asking about levels of awareness all the time, to which you didnt really answer.

Free will or no free will, these are just words, models, philosophical ramblings, mental abstractions. We do know that we are all to some or other level influenced by factors we dont know about, psychological complexes and traumas, physical laws, context, etc, and we do know that we can become more aware of these factors and that this makes us less of a victim of these unconscious/unknown variables. I feel its worthwhile to try to find strategies for myself and others to develop this greater 'freedom/awareness', because it has tangible consequences, it affects directly our lives. It matters not if ultimately there is no absolute free will. Now what is the connection between choice, will, awareness, consciousness? Are there not levels of some semi-freedom that are worth striving for and have direct impact on our lives? How does that fit in (or not) with your current world view?

You shouldn't do anything because you can't make a choice.

This whole line of thinking is a total copout. I have no choice. I cant make a choice oh boo hoo. I'm sorry but ths thread is the true pinnacle of philosophical BullShit.

Gibran I can make a choice. You can fill a football stadium with 100000 people. You can then put two glasses of water in front of me and ask me to choose which one I want to drink. When I chose there will be an entire football stadium of witnesses that will say I made a choice. It will be you saying i did not. YOU PROVE IT. Expiremenal proof not some wishy washy bs logic that only you can follow because only you know the secret code to the definition. What equipment will you perform your magical expirement with?

Gibran you have free will. It is your choice not to use it. Murders have free will. Charitable contributors have a will. Drug addicts have free will and politicians have free will. Quit trying to change the definition to fit your limited view. The definition simply means the ability to make a choice. You make them every day and so do I...perhaps if your logic doesnt match up with the obvious you need to recheck your logic?

Unless you can stand before the world and claim God realizarion then you experience the ability to make a choice every day. I suppose if you can claim you are God and prove that to the world then maybe you will have a leg to stand on when you try and tell the rest of us that we aren't resposile for our choices....wait we are responsible yoy say? But if we make a choice then we are responsile for it right? If we don't make a choice we aren't right? You see the contridiction staring you in the face but you won't acknowledge it.

But joedirt how do you explain for example unconscious motives that can influence that decision? Seems you are going to the other complicated extreme and claiming any decision/choice is free will, and to me psychology has shown well enough this is not so simple in at least many cases.

How do the many truths that each of us know affect us in our daily lives? How does knowing that e =mc² affect your daily life? How does knowing about quantum mechanics affect your daily life? (assuming you aren’t a particle physicist) How does believing the theory of evolution affect your daily life? How does knowing any of this and countless other things about the nature of the world around us affect us in our daily lives? I don’t measure the importance of knowledge selfishly and consider it valuable only if it affects me in my daily life.

Regarding the comments I made about “Source”. You asked me what difference it makes (whether or not we accept the impossibility of free will), I interpreted that to mean “why is accepting this viewpoint important to you?”, and I gave you my answer. The explanation I gave is not logical or provable, nor is it intended to prove anything. The logical argument has already been presented countless times and proves why choices cannot be free. But that wasn’t your question. The question that I brought up in response is one that no one seems willing to even look at:

“Why would you ever want to act in opposition to _____? (fill in the blank with whatever word works for you: Source/God/Unfolding/All/…)

The main reason I’ve continued to post is because this thread has become an interesting social experiment. It answers questions that I hadn’t started out asking. For example, the respondent in post #408, in order to defend… to defend what? (what is he defending?) is now claiming that “propositional logic is antiquated”. Logic, a branch of mathematics, is antiquated! I feel like I’ve been saying, “If you agree that 1 + 1 = 2, then it follows that…” and some of the responses I’ve been getting are like “You can’t prove 1 + 1 = 2” or “addition is antiquated”. Whether free will exists or not is always debatable, but whether or not a tautology is true is not debatable.

How far will some people go to refute the irrefutable?

I feel like I’m describing the shape of the Earth to members of a flat-Earth convention! Not a very receptive audience!

I had hoped that the discussion would address the types of questions that you are now asking, and others, such as: “If there is no free will, can individuals be held responsible for their actions?” or “If there is no free will, then why should we bother doing anything?” or “If there is no free will, then what is the purpose of existence?” or “What are the different ways we can define free will and what are the consequences of each definition?”

I’m beginning to think that this audience (the audience of most participants in this thread) isn’t really interested in asking such questions. The few members who continue to badger me don’t really seem interested in exploring this issue at all!

So… Having come to the realization that there isn’t much interest in exploring the sorts of questions I had hoped would be explored, I end my participation in this thread with this sentence.

Well first let me be very clear here. These are my beliefs. They are not completely provable with logic.

I reject pure materialism largely because materialism implies no choice by the nature of thermodynmics. The fact that i have free will or the ability to chose is self evident to me. It is self evident in the same way my awareness is self evident.

Most decisions I make are unconscious decisions and are thus not really free willed choices. But other decisions that I weigh consciously in my mind are obviously decisions made by me irregardless of the chain of events that led to that eventual decision. To believe any other way is to reduce your existence down to that of an unconscious, unreponsible robot. I personally reject that view based on the self evident claims I made above.

I believe...but cant prove...that our mind is sperate from our brain which now allows for the possibility of my conscious will coming from a place that doesn't necasarily violate the laws of thermo.

I believe in levels of awareness, and thus levels of conscious will...or free wil.

Endless you ask great questions. Im curious what your stance is?

This is not the same as 1+1=2. It's a clever guise for it. But it's really not. In the realm of philosophy in the 20th century, followers of Russel and Frege all ended up falling short with serious criticisms due to the severe limitations of the mathematical system of logic known as propositional logic. It was abandoned and left by the wayside. Here are some other examples of why your mathematical logic system fails to be an accurate defense.

I would also like to point out that your "tautology" doesn't even take the form of (a ^ ~a) because


involves conditionals whose truth values will not produce a tautological result.

"Either something causes a choice to be made, in which case the choice isn’t free, or nothing causes the choice to be made, in which case the choice isn’t free. This is a logical tautology and is always true."

You have not proven anything there. And it is not even entirely logical when you break it down because "nothing" is still something..so you have listed 2 cases in which "something" is causing a choice to me made..because the idea of "nothing" causing something just makes no damn sense from a logical standpoint..you need to define what nothing really even is. The idea of nothing as some sort of vaccume that causes choices to be made does not make sense. This is why your point here makes no logical sense and is not proof of anything. You posted more of a word puzzle than anything else. This whole thread has become silly word puzzles.

'Free' is only a word used to describe the infinite possibility's and high level of flexibility of the brain. No-one is arguing that we aren't bound by the laws of physics.

You are constantly bringing the discussion back to that narrow definition of the word free.
And others are constantly not seeing that they are defending a different definition of the word free, than you are discussing.

It's becoming so childish. It's like when i say "they freed mandela" and then you come again with the old "well, i see he's having more possibility's now than when he had a cage around him, but how does that make him free?"

Free will is a program of the brain. In that sense you're right. BUT NO-ONE IS ARGUING THAT.

What is being argued, is whether it is still possible to speak about free will as a real phenomenon in a way that makes sense.

There very clearly is such a way. And it's not simply the complexity but the KIND of complexity that makes the word 'free' meaningfull because it enables us to distinguish between levels of complexity and flexibility.

I have a free will because i can ask myself:"do i realy want to do this?" or even "do i realy want this?" and thus interfere with the program my brain has decided to run.

Ofcourse when you look at it, this part of me is eventually just a program run by the brain as well.

But if you want to look at the brain as a computer that's running a program, wich we are doing for the sake of the argument, there IS a clear distinction between computers equipped with this program and computers that aren't.

That's why it is meaningfull to speak about this feature that separates us from computers.

We experience this feature as freedom because it causes us to stop running in the same old circles all the time (contrary to what's happening in this tired discussion).

It is true that THIS freedom as we experience it is an illusion. Yet, the feature and the infinite realm of new possibility's it brings is not an illusion.

When i speak of free will, i'm talking about the extra dimension, the extra space we have as the result of this special program that allows us to interfere with all the programs our brain is running, including itself.

To speak of free will is meaningfull like it is meaningfull to make the distinction between a onedimensional and a threedimensional picture. It isn't nonsense. It's just different than what we initially would think it is.

In vipassana budhism, this issue is already being discussed for ages.
The reason is that seeing through the illusion of freedom, shedding the ego, the false picture of the self, allows for a greater level of self-reflection: Our ability to ask "do i realy want this?" becomes greater and thus the level of freedom we have is heightened.

I think truths affect us in our daily lives. You ask what is the use of e=mc2? Well there are plenty of daily experiments and uses that relate to this in science and technology. Maybe its not my personal area of work but its still someone's work that will affect me directly or indirectly. You can't say the same for free will subject, nobody works with that in a way that affects us except philosophizing about it, which is fine as a personal hobby and what not but has its limits imo. I mean, sure with physics for example some theories and ideas dont have immediate application, but they serve to broaden one's ideas and maybe in the future experiments can be devised using that. On the other hand, I dont see how such black and white visions of free will can ever serve us in any way, and I find there are more interesting and realistic ways to help produce the feeling of "letting go" in relation to the universe and life in general, without the disempowering attitude that seems to rise from the "there is no free will in any level or form"

And why does it have to be selfish to consider how things affect us? Im not saying you shouldnt consider if it affects someone else but not you, on the contrary, that was part of my question, but if it doesnt affect anybody in any way except maybe as a philosophical discussion, I still dont see the point.... Not that you shouldnt do it, by all means talk about what you are interested in, but I personally wont lose my sleep over it or get stressed over an internet discussion.




Dont you find this a bit ironic though? That you have been very strong about proving why you are right and others are wrong through some sort of logic, and when I question you why does it ultimately matter, you give me an answer that isnt logical ?



How do you know you are acting in opposition to it? For that, you would have to be based on the supposition you know how the Universe/Source works, and that sounds pretentious specially because you so often claim we cant know whats in the 'marble box'....

You can say that for you, realizing a certain philosophical idea is being in tune with the Universe. For me, not caring about that philosophical "truth" and trying to work on and question more tangible aspects of awareness, feels more like being in tune with the world. So where do we stand here? Can we instead avoid making claims of how the universe works and what being in opposition/in tune in absolute terms would be like?




Again your words strike as excessively self-confident, hubris, to say that its as if others are flatlanders and you're the only one with the real 3d perspective here....

I cant speak for how others responded, each one can think for themselves, but in a forum with such diversity of opinions and life experiences, what else did you expect, that everybody would agree with you? I think if the answers arent as expected, maybe its an opportunity to look at your own words and see if there is something that can be improved, either in the content or in the form?

In any case feel free to not post here anymore, I just feel that if we all tried to hear what others have to say and ask questions, try to learn from the differences, instead of use all the effort to prove the other is wrong, this discussion would be quite productive. I would love to hear your answers on those questions you mentioned. Personally im interested in continuing this, and I see no reason to get angry/offended/bothered, but each one has to decide when, where, how and with who they want to communicate.

Good time to repeat something I said earlier: A significant problem with "free will" discussions is that parties don't even agree on a DEFINITION of what "free will" IS. Unless people are prepared to FIRST describe exactly, and in DEPTH, what the term "free will" means and doesn't mean, they are not, IMO, really interested in having a serious discussion.

A preemptory "Free will means having a choice" statement is insufficient.