Free-Will

Given the postmodern proclivity to intentionally become ensnared in linguistic and abstractions, we must return all concepts to their origins, Actions.
In the case of free-will there is seemingly two parts that are really one.
Will = aggregate organic energies
Free = power evaluated by the quantity of options available.

So 'Will' refers to the focus of organic energies and 'Free' refers to their aggregate power.
another way to approach this is:
Will = past made presence - determined
Free = present participating in its own fate - determining

The act is "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]".
Choice is the caused - past - producing an effect - present.

From the above it is evident that when "god" is renamed "humanity" or the concept for divinity is replaced by humanity then whoever controls the collective hearts and minds of mankind is, by definition, an agency of divinity.
A single species, on a single planet becomes a representation of the entire cosmos.

The one god is not what is, but what ought to be - not humans but humanity.
this is defined as "healing" and/or "correcting" existence and is described allegorically- always - obscurely, vaguely, as a mission - messianism - a duty....a sacred duty imposed upon a people, or a person, as a "burden" he/they must endure.
Zealotry.
Self-agradizing, self-comforting, self-medicating, self-deciving....and dangerous, because it is entirely psychological/mental, i.e., subjective, and responds to no reasoning, no objective arguments, nothing real - esoteric completely oblivious and immune to the objective.
A seclusion of self from reality to linguistically/semiotically inflate what the world has deflated.

in relation to "actions"

on the lowest plane

for the average moron free will means

his "ability" to buy a cheeseburger, a bag of chips, soda, booze, cigaretess, etc.
for me, personally, theyre just stuff that satisfy my chemical addictions, when i digress from my healthy standards,


but for the average psychotic moron, it´s something he takes pride in, his indulgences is to him a sign of "high standards"

an "act of pride" something sacred, a privilege he deserves, like a clown who mistake circus attributes for
his "possesions"

btw, im not fond of junk food, prefer soup, tomato or curry, rissoto, sushi, and spicy rahmen,

Need is for a particular nutrient - part of the body.
Choice is about the source of the nutrient, how it participates in a synthesis before the digestion process separates it, and how it is prepared, i.e., technology/technique, and presented, i.e., culture, tradition - of the mind.

Your mental, aesthetic preferences are mental, your need for the nutrients is physical.

Genes/Memes

When one begins with the word, representing an abstraction, and not the action, he entrenches himself in nihilism and Abrahamism.

The act of will is choice, and the act of freedom are options.
He who chooses from options displays free-will without having to prove it.

I need not prove my existence since my actions are evidence of my existence.
I may not know how or why, but the fact of existence is. I can then dedicate my time towards discovering 'how' and 'why'.

Goethe wrote:

First came the act.

The word evolved to express, to give form to the perception and interpretation of the act.

Man is nature manifest.
He does not follow nature he participates in it.
But nature is not absolutely ordered, it is also chaos, and it is chaos which man must convert to order in himself.
This is what it means to self-cultivate to strive towards the divine.
It is chaos that makes man's free-will necessary, not only possible, to whatever degree he can take control of the forces manifesting as himself.
Know thyself is part of the process, for one cannot begin to take control of what one denies existence to, or what one does not understand.
To the extent that a man can know and understand what is ordered - patterned - in himself determines the degree to which he can compensate for what is chaotic - un-patterned - in him.
To know of one’s own behavioural patterns is the necessary requirement to begin to alter them.

The three major Delphic maxims may conceal a path towards a solution.
148. ΜΕΤΡΟΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΝ
149. ΓΝΩΘΙ Σ’ΕΑΥΤΟΝ
150. ΕΓΓΥΑ, ΠΑΡΑ ΔΑΤΗ

The last, 150, also called the "forgotten maxim".

148
*My adjustment to the ancient maxim ΜΕΤΡΟΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΟΝ: “Everything in Moderation”.
Less is more: less possibilities/probabilities translates to less variables; less variables translates to less stress; less stress translates to less worries and cares; less worries and cares translates to freedom, and well-being.
In all areas of human interest, “less is more”.

*What can be measured, i.e., evaluated, perceived, is most fitting, useful, and/or suitable, because it is ordered, patterned, predictable, dependable, reliable, consistent, repeating.

149
*One begins to know the world, the other, by knowing the only thing he can ever hope to know, himself.

*Man is nature manifest.
He does not follow nature he participates in it.
But nature is not absolutely ordered, it is also chaos, and it is chaos which man must convert to order in himself.
This is what it means to self-cultivate to strive towards the divine.
It is chaos that makes man's free-will necessary, not only possible, to whatever degree he can take control of the forces manifesting as himself.
Know thyself is part of the process, for one cannot begin to take control of what one denies existence to, or what one does not understand.
To the extent that a man can know and understand what is ordered – patterned – in himself determines the degree to which he can compensate for what is chaotic – un-patterned – in him.
To know of one’s own behavioural patterns is the necessary requirement to begin to alter them.

150
*Certainties lead to disaster.

*Make no pledges, implying certainty, as these lead to folly.

All three allude to self-control.
What can be known of oneself can be gleaned through actions.
What can be known of oneself is what is ordered, patterned behaviours. Yet, chaos also participates in oneself and remains forever the unknown. In the unknown man projects what he knows and understands of himself so as to comfort himself.
Self cultivation is the process of converting the chaotic and the unknown into what is known, and what is known can then be understood by perceiving patterns in the patterns. What is known and then understood can then be controlled and adjusted through the will.
Will is an organism's aggregate energies - both patterned and non-patterned - focused upon an objective - this is the act of increasing self-awarness.
The chaotic participates within the ordered, even if it remain incomprehensible - it is swept along with it.

Quote :

Historians of old relate that the great Temple of Apollo at Delphi had several inscriptions on its entrance. Most prominent was a large letter E (Epsilon) made of gold. Its meaning was an enigma, even in antiquity.
Over the millennia, many interpretations have been suggested. Some are based on the meaning of E, fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, as the number five. Others say it is not a letter at all, but a religious symbol, or glyph, which predates writing.
Plutarch, the eminent biographer and Middle Platonist philosopher, was, in addition, a priest at Delphi. He suggested that the meaning is found not in the letter itself, but in its pronunciation: ‘EI’, which in Greek means ‘Thou art.’ Hence he speculated it served as a respectful address to the god, Apollo -- as though, when entering the temple, one honors the god by saying ‘Thou art!’
A still more intriguing possibility is that ‘EI’ is the god's greeting to visitors. That is, the god of revelation, Apollo, greets the seeker, saying:

Quote :

Know, O soul, this most profound and mysterious truth, beside which all else fades to insignificance: THOU ART!

3E is also an open-ended - inverted - eight, symbol of infinity. It's openness represents incompleteness moving outward.
3 also symbolizes the self in the Platonic charioteer metaphor: reason/will/passion.
Numbers are the most abstract form of language. Three represents the abstraction of self exposed to existence - open to possibilities.

Epsilon is the 5th letter in the Greek alphabet.
Here we enter the realm of reasoning since letters are representations used to express a mind's reasoning, its judgments and choices - logos.
Five senses, five points on the pentagram representing perceived existence

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Five senses, five points on the pentagram representing perceived existence. In paganism the pentagram is always angled, not perfectly positioned.
Five gradations of perceived order moving from gaseous towards solid, representing order’s five perceived rhythms, i.e., rapidity of pattern repetition relative to man’s metabolism determining his perceptual speed, his brain’s processing speed – systolic/diastolic cellular rhythms.


Five may also represent the four perceived dimensions, i.e., height, width, depth, and movement (time), with the fifth representing the unseen, unknown dimension(s).

Why is this despicable psychopath not in prison??? [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

— Theo Fleury (@TheoFleury14) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Of the three approaches we can dismiss the theological as being entirely self-contrdictory and absurd, describing 'god' - in the Abrahamic tradition - as entirely willful/intentional and "good" - excluding Judaism that describes it as the source of evil to conceal their deification of their own collective by abstracting their tribal identity as a ideal that was rejected by all tribes, until they chose it. The ideal is nihilism which is considered a shameful capitulation to fatalism and ignorance, compensating with the mystification of existence and the unknown and unknowable, adopting obscurantism to conceal the ruse, the method, the underlying motive rooted in anxiety/fear.

In the other two approaches, e.g., science and philosophy (physics and metaphysics) we find an empirical stadards, including some underlying psychological (subjective) motives, which are overcome by the scientific method and objectivity.

*As was noted, in the vid, the "issue" is linguistic: how 'free' and 'will' are defined, and how 'consciousness' is defined.

*Consciousness is not entirely 'lucid' as many modern as insist. It is mostly sub-conscious, made aware to the lucid part of the brain after-the-fact.
We all judge and choose without even being aware of it. Most of it is automated - inherited genetically - and a product of habituation - liberating consciousness from direct involvement after continuous repetition (training, paideia, cultivation), e.g., I drive a stick-shift which after years of expriences requires none of my direct consciousness. I drive to a destination, thinking about other matters, and when I arrive I am surprised and have little recollection of the journey. Body memory and habituation has made my driving "automatic".

*Free-Will, like most concepts does not refer to a static, absolute thing, nor a point in space/time, but to a continuum, and so I display my will through a multiplicity of choices that makes the final choice incomprehensible since I've chosen by objective over a long period of time.
We contribute to the determination of our fate - to whatever degree we have the power to do so - by participating in its determination - both consciously and subconsciously - with our every act.
"First was the act" as Goethe said.
Before words all is action - interaction: dynamic energy.
Before symbols/words representing mental abstractions - before there was life, and brains and minds to interpret existence - there was existence as a dynamic Interactive state.

*Determinism - as the moderns/postmoderns insist to define it - is another way of saying "inevitable".
Inevitability is fatalism.
Fatalism is entrenched on Abrahamic spiritual nihilism, no matter the deceptive semantics and mind-games, invented over the centuries, to circumvent the implication and to maintain the weaponization of shame/guilt as a method of mass control. All this is linguistically possible, and can only exist in the mind - this is why they push this idea that it is all "subjective" and a social construct, meaning it is inter-subjective power imposed upon them, necessitating a "revolutionary" spirit (free spirit) to cast off the collective chains, only to replace them with new collective chains all participate in constructing - Marxism.
All of these "free spirits" - declaring themselves free from theism and social conventions are only dreaming of a social convention they agree to create and surrender to....which is never possible because all collective agreements require a sacrifice of personal free-will. Then they imagine a world where everyone can exist in their own private universe, independent from any collective other.,....and this is impossible because the collective other will always overpower a fragmented, loosely organized, collective of hippies and free-spirits, just as communism - an ideal based collective - could not survive in a world where there was a challenge from a anture-based collective.

*The body is always dismissed as irrelevant when you come across these deceptive fanatics. Their idealism is entirely abstract and so can ever only exist as a mental construct, so the best they can do is attempt to convince others that everything is a mental construct...or a product of a collective mentality, a collective ideology.
This is most evident when it comes of "morality/ethics".

*Morality can only be comprehended from within an Abrahamic perspective, even by self-described "atheists", therefore with the 'god ideal' debunked - god defined within Abrahamic contexts that appropriate Zoroastrian and ancient-Egyptian spirituality (Akhenaten) - morality is made meaningless.
Moderns/Postmodern self-deceiving degenerates use this opportunity to dismiss everything that exposes them to what threatens their self-esteem, primarily the judgment of other, and/or the collective.
Since in Abrahamism - influenced by the source Judaism, which appropriated from other civilizations - the idea of 'god' is a concealed way of worshiping a collective within which the individual finds comfort and safety, as well as identity, compensating for whatever personal inferiorities it may feel.

*Morality is not a human fabrication.
Good/Bad does not refer and defer to an idea - other than within nihilistic ideologies and spiritualities - but refers to actions.
Like all words they are conduits connecting mental abstractions (translations, interpretations) to external interactions (actions) - in Nihilism words represent representations of actions, and so words refer to more words.
In objective philosophies (pagan, aristocratic spirituality) words refer to deeds, to actions, therefore good/bad refers to actions with positive/negative consequences.
Morality, therefore, refers to deeds with consequences to the individuals and to the group it chooses to be included within...and not to words referring to books or to collective ideas.
The consequences make a deed moral or immoral, in relation to the group's well-being within the real world, and not some theoretical ideal world.
Morality is a evolved method of imposing individual limits to choices which facilitate its inclusion within its group, but this is not theoretical, abstract, subjective, since group well- being is dependent on how it manages to survive and grow within an indifferent natural world.
This is clear now in the US where degeneracy is veering away form natural identifiers and is adopting and tolerating ideological identifiers - separation of mind from the body it emerges from is the foundation of transsexuality. Americanism reaching the limits of its own ideology - freedom from past.

*Morality requires no external agency to remain objective, unless it remains linguistic, abstract, obscure, theoretical.
Not only do all ethical systems have a similar moral grounding but if we bring morality "down to earth" and think of it as an act not an ideological abstract concept then we can see it in many species manifesting the exact same actions/behaviours.
All ethical schools have a common thread running through them, and across all divisions including biological, signifying an existential utility.
For mortal beings surviving death, even through memory, is above all other considerations. This is what it mans to transcend death and individuation.
Memory is what ties individualism into a cohesive continuity and it is what salvation implies.
To survive death is to be recalled, by the living, into existence. Reproduction of body may fail but, for humans, reproduction through mind is the only alternative. Nietzsche is an example, along with Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard etc.



*Biology Dennett says.
He implies nature, or body.
Body = past made present.
Freud = "Anatomy is destiny" - even this Jew could not escape the truth of appearances, even if he was obsessed with sexuality and incest - for very ideologically based reasons having to do with Judaism.
Anatomy = organ symmetry/proportionality determining personae/personality (private, true self). Character (public self, performance, deception) being the form personae takes within a collective.

*Body is a large part of free-will, since the brain/mind evolved long after life emerged.
Plants judge and chose on a rudimentary level, and have no nervous system nd no brain.
The probabilities of their free-will are minimal when compared to those of mammals.

*'Free' is a qualifier of 'will', describing a level of power/strength, or the force an organism can overcome - will power, is not about omnipotence, but it describes power relationships.

*Life is identified as the collective of energies (patterns) that can move towards paths-of-more-resistance (intent), as opposed to energies that can only move along paths-of-least-resistance.
This factor alone is what offers an advantage, naturally selected to survive cosmic flux.
The more resistance that van be overcome the more probability a unity has to survive and replicate.
Reproduction being a form of survival.

*Beauty signifies the quality of this ability to overcome resistance, as it preserves symmetry/proportionality within existential flux - preserving its order, as it were, despite constant attrition.
As such we are most beautiful in our youth.

The hardest thing to accept is that man brings himself to where he's at.
He may not know how his multiple little choices - conscious and unconscious - based on his lucid and impulsive judgements contributed to his position but he is exactly where he willed himself to be - every unpredictable event forcing him to adjust and carry forth towards his destiny.
Little infinitesimal acts, choices, all contributing to what is being determined in the here and now, eventually manifesting in a future circumstance the mind is unable to understand how it got there.
What happened to it, rather what did it do to make aid in tis happening?

We sabotage our own conscious intentions subconsciously and then look for something or someone to accuse.
We direct ourselves towards a probable outcome and then call it inevitable when we get there and find it to be less than what we expected or far more than what we can endure.
Hundreds of little decisions made on an subconscious level; seemingly insignificant actions expressing minute choices we forget because they seem so insignificant; little gestures, expressions, words we unconsciously choose to expose our intentions, which we entirely deny, all accumulating over time until we reach where we are surprised to find ourselves, as if we never wanted to be here - but we did and we didn't even know it.

See why Know Thyself matters?
Do you know what you want?
I know you think you do, but do you really?
Are you surprised by where you find yourself?
Are you surprised by how you act?
Are you constantly making excuses?

Then...you know nothing of who and what you truly are.

Your own impulses drive you - like Plato's stallions, passions - and you need to excuse yourself from the repercussions by blaming it on an-other....an absolute other nobody - not only you - can deny.
A god, or universal order....or the one.
Whatever name you give it it must absolve you - cleanse - you from culpability, form sinfulness....the primal sin of choice.

The hardest thing to accept is that the past is not an other which imposes an unpleasant choice upon the will which you must heroically defy because you have romantic delusions about yourself.
The will (you) is the effect of this past, it is this past manifesting itself as presence in the act of choice.

It was bad. It hurt. It makes you cringe in memory. It makes your mind skitter away in horror or regret. But.

It happened.

And it defines you and yes even makes you possible. It is you, inescapably.
No amount of delusions and self-deceptions about the nature of 'choice', of self-overcoming, no strain to hold together or break apart, no amount of wave riding or storm enduring will escape who and what you are and what makes you possible.
You can only add to it.
You are what is holding together or breaking apart, you are the wave and the storm. No god needed, no jews or magians or nihilists. Just causality.

You willed it thus. So shall you will it.

You are not a god. You cannot escape the past. If you choose then you choose based on what you are: the effect of past moving into future. If nothingness is just an abstraction then choice is contingent - on?
The past that makes you possible. Be it 'determined' or random, it pre-exists you and your choice and yet makes you possible.

Is it self-caused? Then it is god.
Free? God. Freedom is a matter of degree and relation. If it is not absolutely free, then...

To reiterate:
Reality precedes consciousness. Consciousness is an effect of brain phenomena. Will, choice, is an effect of consciousness. Consciousness, therefore, is an event along a causative chain. A looking back, as was pointed out. Consciousness is not subject to causality. Consciousness is an expression of causality.
Events occur along a causative chain called time, the measure of change. The present is an effect of past, always moving, never fixed. Present is past moving into the future, because reality is flux, movement, never static. If it was static it would be non-interactive, perceived as nothingness. Because it is interactive, it is also re-active, dependent, the outcome of past interaction, regressing infinitely.
If it does not regress infinitely then you must posit something from nothing (ex nihilo) or self-cause (causa sui), ie God. This extends into the concept of consciousness too.
Will is our past, our memory, our genes moving into the future. Will is the expression of our entire history manifesting itself through us, who are the implements of that history interacting with present. Free describes a relationship: free from, free to. There are no absolutes and so 'you' cannot make a choice that is independent of past, independent of factors influencing 'you'. 'You' are the effect of these factors. YOU. You do not observe them passively, you are not shunted around by them impotently. YOU are THEM.
'We' are not disconnected from this causative process such that 'determinism' acts as a tyrant which forces us to choose in certain ways. This is the error you're making, a false dichotomy between the Self and the past.
The past is not distinct from Self. Self is an expression of the past. I am the past manifesting as presence, I am the past moving into the future.

To emphasize:
Self, choice, consciousness, will are the effect, the consequence, the manifestation of past. I am the effect of the past. Therefore my choices are too.
If I am not the effect of the past then I am either ex nihilo or causa sui, because I would need to be a nonsensical being in order to exist without a past. Since these are eliminated as being merely abstractions then I am consequently the effect of the past and not a god.
As such, I do not exist independently from that which I am the effect of. I am an ongoing and continuous manifestation of the phenomenal processes that make me possible: the action of past moving as presence into future.

Know Thyself.

Past immutable determined.
Present mutable, dynamic, determining.
Future uncertain, undetermined.

Chaos necessitates free-will as real-time adjustments/adaptations to the unforeseeable.
If all were ordered - absolute order is another name for the one-god, or its secularized version - then consciousness and choice would not be necessary.
Why would the act of choice, and of judgement evolve at all - given the high energy costs of the brain - if all were determined and inevitable?
Why would there be natural selection when selection, i.e., choice, were a farce?
What would be selected in an inevitable universe?
Those that deny free-will are creationists that have simply overcome the infantile narratives, changing titles and definitions to secularize their religious dogma.

The existence of choice, as a product of judgement, implies agency. The ability to intentionally (wilfully) change the course of causality, because life participates in causality.
Life is an intentional causal agency, whereas non-life is not intentional.
Path-of-least-resistance is how non-intentional energies interact.
If not then will to power, or will to life, or 'will' in general does not apply to individuals, to organisms, but to god, or the uni-verse or some vague abstraction that only exists in human minds.
Will is agency. I will that which I do not have or to enhance and preserve what I may lose due to attrition.
To have a "will towards anything" implies an objective one can choose and by choosing participate in the determination of an indeterminate future - a gradual overcoming of a determined, immutable, past.
Past cannot be changed but it can be overcome.
If it were not so, evolution would be false, and life as we know it would be a produce of a creative omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Will.

Why would the illusion of agency evolve at all if all were inevitable?
Why evolve the brain - a costly organ - if consciousness, judgement, and choice were illusory?
Is god testing us?
Is existence a farce?
If we have no choice or choice is inevitable, then why evolve the illusion of choice at all?

The missing factor is chaos, defined as I have: absence of patterns affecting patterns (order) by manifesting novelty, unpredictable events necessitating a brain to make real-time adjustment to the body's inherited reactionary automated programming.
Conflict between mind/body that eventually leads to nihilism, starts here.
----
As was noted:

Present/Presence is a manifestation of past - past made present.
Existence is this dynamic, interactive, mutable present.
Past is immutable, and does not exist, even if it determines the present.
Past only exists via recollection - memory - in a reduced simplified/generalized abstracted form.
Existence refers only to the dynamic, interactive present - the mutating determining not the immutable determined.
I am not a static being, but a dynamic interactive becoming.
Past determines my potentials, by probabilities, but the present determines to what degree these inherited probabilities will be realized and if they will be surpassed, since evolution doesn't stop at birth but is ongoing.
An individual - being dynamic and interactive - continues to evolve throughout his lifetime - mutations emerge during his lifetime. (this is what cancer is)
Sperm carry data up to the time of their production and storage in the testicles. Every sperm is an updated carrier of the male's past, including his inherited past.
For example, if a man becomes ill during his lifetime this disturbance (data, pattern) will be transferred via his sperm to the offspring.
If a man becomes convinced of a nihilist ideology during his lifetime this will have psychosomatic effects that can be observed, and this dispositions will be carried in his sperm.

Is it even relevant to bring up randomness, that was my point. Whether choice is dependent upon past seems to be a separate issue to whether this past is ordered or chaotic, no? We're focusing on different things.

If consciousness is a looking back, a re-action to past events, then how is your choice (defined by you as an innovation in the face of chaos) not also a re-action?
If it's a reaction, it's an effect. If it's an effect it is not free will, it is contingent.
If it's not self-caused or appears out of nothing it must be an effect.
It doesn't matter if consciousness was a response to unpredictability. Will or judgment or agency or responsibility is irrelevant in this context. It's still an effect of past. My point is to prove that the act of choice is the effect of past. If consciousness itself is the effect of past (whether ordered or chaotic in your conception) then so is the act of choice.
If consciousness is free of the past then it must exist constantly in the present. But what about past choices?
Is the you of the past, who made the choice, an other that imposes his will upon you? He made the choice, you are merely the effect of that choice. Or are you free of it somehow? Perhaps every moment a new you is generated out of nothing and every moment this new you is imposed upon by the old you, right?
past you -> past you -> past you -> present you -> future you -> future you
Kind of Platonic.
If you as a choosing agent have will or judgment or responsibility or agency then how do you have that? If you make a choice do you do so out of nothing? Are you a thing-in-itself that exists free of the past in order to not be the effect of it? Are your choices completely arbitrary and not made with goals, motivations, objectives in mind? Is a choice not itself a reaction to the phenomenon of being presented with two or more options? Are you yourself not a reaction and effect of past choices you have made?
Choice itself is downstream of another event(s), therefore it is contingent on that event(s), therefore an effect of past.

My idea to resolve this is that the past and present, cause and effect, are not dichotomies like this. Instead it's a continuum. Past moves into future as present. Presence therefore is the ongoing manifestation of past.
Consciousness, choice, will, the self is therefore the ongoing manifestation of past consciousness, choice, will, self. Not an other, not an imposition. Not a 'determining' other that chooses for you while you spectate impotently. It's what you were that has been added to as time advances. As such you make choices based upon this, not nothing, not 'freedom'. The past. You.

And yeah like I said:

apaosha wrote:

You can only add to it.

Chaos - defined as random energies - is necessary to explain why what we call free-will and is empirically expressed through judgement and choice is not only real but essential to survival.
Consciousness is a "looking-back'" but existence is always presence, so we become conscious of our own judgements after-the-fact.
The act of will is a process not a moment in time.
If it were simply a reaction self-cultivation would be due to divine grace or chance.

How does man impose his will?
Consciousness is a looking back but existence is a forever forward movement/momentum.
Through choice - choosing the path-of-more-resistance - and repetition consciousness can gradually train itself - habituate - usurping its biological, automated impulses, and tis past behaviours (judgments, choices) so as to adapt to present circumstances, i.e., novelty - the unforeseen, the unexpected.
What worked in the past may not in the present.
Man, like all life, evolves. Adapt or die.
If life simply reacted in exactly the same ways evolution would be impossible and intelligence useless.
Self-control means to stop your impulsive reactions to stimuli.
In higher-brained organisms this evolution is determined by the individual's judgements, choices and tis will-power - the degree it can consciously adjust its automated subconscious impulses/reactions in real-time, or train itself to usurp - to a degree - its biological programming and choose novel solutions to problems.

Man, for example, has trained himself - just as he can domesticate and train other species - to impose a limit on his sexual impulses, his sexual reactions.
This training - as with martial arts, as with all forms of self-cultivation - takes time, will-power, and repetition to create a 'second nature,' overriding the primal one, and/or the previous one.
For example martial artists over years of training can reprogram themselves to react to physical threats with specific movements, when his innate impulses remain common across our species.

So, an organism reacts to a situation either impulsively or by considering its options. Does it flee or fight?
Does it flee this way or that? How does it fight, given the threat?
Every threat necessitating a different method - an evaluation of the opponent, in real time, even if it is novel. Even a similar adversary may differ - not all tigers or bears are the same; not all dogs and cats are the same. There are species commonalities establishing a behavioural range, an d then there are individual factors establishing where on this range they will fall.
Animals also have individual traits, and a degree of free-will, as well as their individual personalities - personality is determined by organ hierarchies, applicable across species.

Why do I insist on chaos being random rather than complex?

First, disorder (absence of patterns) gives meaning and value to order.

Second, it contradicts the existence of absolute order and absolute chaos, ridding the mind of primal, infantile, superstitions, such as god, fatalism and binary logic - from where most suppositions emerge - liberating the mind that can become trapped in either/or simplicity, etc.

Third, it explains why some degree of free-will is necessary for survival and reproduction. Not simply that agency is real but that it is essential for life to survive, without resorting to divine will and universal intentionality.

Fourth, it adheres to Evolution Theory and natural selection.
How and why would consciousness and intelligence arise? What advantage would it offer if all were determined and automated?
What advantage would large-braiend organisms have over plants? - plants being the most reactionary and lest free-willed of all life-forms.
Why evolve a large brain and a nervous system to process and evaluate data if all you required was an automatic reaction to stimuli?

Fifth it agrees with ancient-Chinese and Greek cosmogony, e.g., Yin/Yang, Chaos being the primordial from which order arises and the notion of Energy being common.

Sixth, it makes sense to me - it is elegant.

Seventh, it offers a model where eternal return, or cosmic cycles are possible since chaos randomly gives rise to order and order interacting produces chaos.
It also describes existence not as a proverbial record that plays the same tunes for an eternity but in a way that validates multiverses where some never develop life and life, if it emerges, never repeats in exactly the same way.
The idea that all repeats in exactly the same way is another way of saying god willed it, or it implies that all is fated and inevitable - all is "written" is some comic text.
In my world-view the cosmos repeats but never in exactly the same way. The alternative seems absurd to me.
As if nothing we do has any value because we've been doing it for an eternity and will continue forever. A description of madness.

------

Quote :

My idea to resolve this is that the past and present, cause and effect, are not dichotomies like this. Instead it's a continuum. Past moves into future as present. Presence therefore is the ongoing manifestation of past.
Consciousness, choice, will, the self is therefore the ongoing manifestation of past consciousness, choice, will, self. Not an other, not an imposition. Not a 'determining' other that chooses for you while you spectate impotently. It's what you were that has been added to as time advances. As such you make choices based upon this, not nothing, not 'freedom'. The past. You.

The key word is "choice".
As I said...what differentiates past from present is that one (past) doesn't exist but manifests existence in the present, and the other (present) exists.
Life can choose other than it did before if its past choices have proven to be erroneous or ineffective.
We learn from our past mistakes - well some of us - while others never acknowledge that they made a mistake so they repeat them expecting a different outcome. Explaining their insanity as inevitable.
The fact that we learn means we can choose differently we can adapt our actions to what we've learned, even if circumstances never repeat in exactly the same way and they don't because chaos affects order on the infinitesimal micro scale.
Otherwise past would be no different from the present, since all would be determined and our reactions would be automatic and unable to adjust. Intelligence would be superfluous if all we did was react impulsively.
The continuum changes.
We accumulate knowledge and adjust our behaviour, so the process of free-will is also a continuum.
We repeat what is successful, fine tuning our behaviour, establishing it as our new baseline, often supressing our inherited impulses.

Past informs the mind in the present, and this past includes the individuals expriences not only his inherited genetic impulses.
We are adding to causality, not simply repeating and reacting to it. We participate and contribute to causality, effecting ourselves in whatever miniscule degree (determined by our strength, power) - even our strength power can be cultivated, increased, it isn't fixed nor determined by an external agency.

Cause/Effect
A lifeform is part of the causes of what affects it.
I've defined "artificial" versus "natural" as an organism that can affect/intervene upon its environment to a degree that the consequences affect it more than the environment it intervened upon. I know of only one species with this ability. A species with the most free-will - ability to override, self-cotnrol, change its own behaviour through tis knowledge and understanding of itself and the environment it emerges within.

Most ascribe it all to an external agency to relieve themselves and to acknowledge the causal agency of other life or the causal effect of unknown factors - one of which is chaos.
We are caused - contingent - and also cause. We are part of the causal chain. We participate in what is being determined.
The past is what cannot be changed - and so it only exists in memory and presence, and it is in the present where change occurs,
Only the present exists. Only the present has presence.
Past manifests presence but most of the past is unknown, and some of it is unknowable since it is the product of chaos.
A perpetual falling away from the past.
We contribute and participate in causality without being aware of it, just as animals participate in what happens to them - establishing probability - without knowing or understanding how their choices and judgement determines the circumstances they must react to.
Man, like all animals, increase the probability of something happening without even being aware of it.

Know Thyself is a continuous process that can never be completed.

----
If you don't like chaos to be defined as randomness then don't accept my definition.
My definition is motivated by my desire to explain everything I percive, and to construct a cohesive non-self-contradicting model applicable to everything.
If your perspective works for you, then don't accept my model.
It suffices to know that past is never overcome, and that the past is useful in the perception of patterns that can be useful to a man who wants to grow and attain goals.

The problem I have in expressing my idea is that this language presupposes a subject which an action or object is opposed to. eg:
I am an effect of the past.
I (distinct phenomenon) am the effect (action) of the past (distinct phenomenon). The latter produces the former. Past -> I
This suggests a dichotomy, that the past is an other which imposes itself on 'I'. Determines 'I'. Robs responsibility from 'I'. Makes it innocent like you have been suggesting because it has no agency, no ability to intervene on reality which it just spectates while carried along by determinism.

I don't know if something like cogito ergo sum is better or more accurate. Maybe the lack of pronouns clarifies in this case.
The past therefore 'I'. Something like that.

To me it seems that this is the core of the problem with free will. Is the 'I' distinct from past in such a way that it's determined by it? Is the 'I' a subject which the past tyrannizes?
If it is a distinct phenomenon in this way, see above.
If it isn't, then it's just the past. And the concept of free will is just badly formulated because of language, because the system of representation is being confused for what it is supposed to represent.

The "problem" is, indeed, linguistic.
Using static symbols to describe dynamic processes requires artistry and abandoning the idea that words/symbols are literal.
This is why I use "choice" as the empirical manifestation of free-will.
Judgment is based on past - precedent - and choice is the dynamic expression of this judgment in the present.
Judgment - using memory - evaluates present circumstances by juxtaposing them and evaluating a course of action (choice) in relation to an objective (future).
So, immutable past, juxtaposed with mutable present, in relation to an imagined, projected, objective, determines choice.
Choice has to be able to break free from precedent if it is to adapt - evolve - otherwise it simply repeats and no progress is possible.
Evolution fails if all were determined and an organism could not adjust its past choices to present circumstance.

Memory is the key to individuality and consciousness.
Memory preserves the immutable past - in a reduced, form - so as to continuously juxtapose it with what is present - stream of thought.
This enables the organism to learn by comparing past expriences and their consequences with what is presented to it continuously.
Otherwise what would be the purpose of learning?
If all was determined and inevitable what would be the point of learning?
What advantage would it offer?
All life would be automated. No consciousness, no big brains, no learning would be necessary.

Determinism is that theoretically the universe has already been determined. But in practice those decisions still have to be made.

If we talk about objective observations and learning to predict the future better and better, determinism hits a theoretical limit in its predictive power due to quantum physics and its probabilistic nature.

If the question comes to how I see myself, in my decision process as "determined" or "free-willed", the choice between believing one or the other seems to come down to a different outlook on life. You still have to make your choices, the part of yourself that you turn into a kind of 3rd party observer of this process can then interpret this process that took place as something that was "god-given"/determined anyway or that it was still you having to decide in that moment.

Yeah...it has to do with the messianic attitude - secular version of Abrahamism for those that cannot let go of its salvation myth.
The idea that all is determined by another agency - even if imagined as absolute order.
Preserving innocence - not to be held accountable.
They need someone to blame so as to absolve themselves of it. If not 'someone' then something.
A reaction to the declaration that "god is dead".
If you notice most of them are most proud of overcoming the god concept. They've progressed, matured - feeling superior to those who remain trapped in that myth and haven't replaced it with its secular version.

The world is too unpredictable and complex and they need to know that no matter what they do, or say, that it is all part of some cosmic plan, and it is out of their control - it's all inevitable.
Everything, even aberrant behaviour, is now part of cosmic order. The individual is not responsible.
He cannot help but be what the cosmos - not god - determined him/her to be.

Not to choose but to be chosen.
Nothing you say, or do is your fault, it was chosen, it was willed, it was determined.
You are merely one of the few who knows he is god's agency, just an agent of universal order.
Anti-Evolution....a modification of creationism.
Individuals are "thrown into existence" without their will, and then they live out lives without their consent, so to know this is to give consent - to accept your lot, to accept god's will is now to accept your impotence.
It's better than Christian mythology because ti disarms shame and guilt, and makes it meaningless.
It's a strained application to begin with as it is described in christian narratives.
"God gives man free-will" but then punishes him with eternal damnation fi he exercises it.
They get rid of the "primordial sin" aspect.
So there is no right or wrong...it's all part of how the universe is determined.
Nobody can make a mistake....there are no mistakes.

Yet, they always find a way to excuse themselves when they do find culpability.
Evil agency is still preserved - the evil capitalists, the objectivists, the blasphemers, the deniers that there is no free-will (infidels) that want to make them feel ashamed and guilty for who and what they are so as to continue acting as they are inclined to act - those that want to take away their salvation.

All are equally sinners is replaced by all are equally innocent....except those who deny this.
Postmodernism is all about word-games. Feminine method.
Words are what create reality, or describe its perfect order - logos.
Biblical, without god.

Like I said...
God, of Abraham, is replaced by the abstraction of humanity.
Marxist to the core.
God's will is now collective will.

As I've said...will = focus of organic energies upon an objective
Free = quality and quantity of perceived and available options to choose from.
Here, 'free' is equated to 'power' - mind/body. The more power the more options you perceive nd can access; the more resistance you can overcome, able to choose the path-of-more-resistance.
Self-control is part of it - it involved self-knowledge.

We are speaking of degrees not absolutes.
We aren't omnipotent so we can't be entirely free - it would also presuppose omniscience, absolute awareness and knowledge.
When we say someone is strong we don't mean omnipotent, so when we say someone is free we don't mean he is entirely independent.
Free is a qualification of will.
Choice is its action.
Choices can be unavoidable, as they are sometimes necessitated by need, but not all choices are so.
Even here one can choose death rather than surrender to need.

Just going to circle back towards the comfort zone huh. Reminds me of someone.
You're consistently missing my point here and now that I look at the dates you've been doing so for about 3 years. I don't know how much more simply it can be put or repeated. Psychoanalysis is not relevant. My or your motivations or the prospective emotional rewards I or you gain from a point of view here does not change what is real.
Yeah yeah, I get it. We can't make any definite statements because language implies absolutes and so everything we attempt to communicate must be couched in vagueness to be more accurate. Let's try to clarify.

Free
Will

Free describes a relationship: free from, free to.
Will describes an agency, a consciousness choosing.

This suggests that 'free will' describes a conscious being whose choice is not contingent, wholly or in part. (here is where it happens)
Contingency can only apply to a degree. So freedom of choice is merely relative. Free from an impediment, free from a necessity.
Will that is free from _______.

Not absolute freedom. This is the invention of language. Because you can state something that makes sense within a system like language and have it remain consistent and workable within that system but still remain completely disconnected from the reality you are attempting to describe. Like Orwoll.

Reality is interdependency. Phenomena interact and are thus discernible to eachother, detectable, influential.
Existence could be reduced to interactability. The only way to know anything about reality around us is via perception, which is limited and dependent on interaction between the bodies senses and the world. There is no available example of something static that does not interact, that is independent in this way. To be so is to be non-interactive and imperceptible. (It may exist, but we have no way of demonstrating it)
To be considered existent a phenomenon must be capable of interaction in this way, including in the dimension of time.
Phenomena interact which is perceived as movement in time, the measure of such change. Ordered or disordered has no relevance here, both are past manifesting as presence, both produce consciousness downstream.
Teleology is not relevant. Past manifesting as presence can be ordered or disordered. There is no plan, yet the present is a manifestation of the past. Chaos produces order, interactivity follows the path of least resistance to effect a system perceived as empirical reality, 'least resistance' being the inherent properties of phenomena and the effects their interaction or reaction produces: in order words the (temporary) order(s) that chaos is able to arrive at according to it's inherent nature as a fluctuating, non-static, unstable force.
Causality as I have used it to mean past manifesting as presence as it moves into future is becoming that is entirely contingent on that which makes it possible. Otherwise we would see phenomena appearing out of nothing, in which case nothing would have to be posited or defined OR phenomena would be self-caused in which case they would have to exist before existing in order to bring themselves into existence.
Does will arise from nothing? Does it pre-exist itself? Of course not. Will is contingent on the act of a consciousness choosing, which itself is contingent upon biology, regressing infinitely.

Furthermore a consciousness performing choice has to have this basis of past moving into future as presence in order for it's choices to have 'meaning'.
If choice is not the ongoing manifestation of past processes then 'choice' is simply arbitrary and without 'meaning'.
An act of choice independent of past simply appears into existence without any reason or motivation or goal or whatever that pre-existed it in order to give it 'meaning'. It is thus meaningless.
To be independent of past necessitates appearance out of nothing, it necessitates self-cause, or any other such nonsense that seeks to evade or to escape.
Will that appears without a past has no justification to be described as 'will'; it is not the effect of consciousness, it is not the effect of a brain, it is not the effect of an organism.
Will is a consciousness choosing.
A consciousness does not float in a void of absolute independence. A consciousness is not a soul. Consciousness is contingent.
Therefore...

I proposed in my previous post that language creates this false dichotomy between actor and act: that the subject 'I' performing the action 'Will' suggests this dichotomy.
If there were a way in this language to combine subject and action into one word it would be more accurate.
Instead vagueness and incorrect conceptions are baked in and so it gets into the weeds with nonsense about being free of the past because the I is taken literally, the representational is mistaken for what it represents.
I, self, becoming, will, choice, past, present; all refer to the same phenomenon.
Consciousness, that is the ongoing manifestation of processes within the brain that produce awareness of self such that a choice can be made with respect to one or more options presented to this awareness, in accordance with pre-existing goals/needs/objectives.
How can choice occur, if not as a manifestation of past in this way? Can you make a choice without being the effect of a brain, without looking back at your past, without pre-existing options, without pre-existing goals? But that's the only way it can be 'free'.

If this hurdle can't be surmounted then there is indeed a problem.
The problem is narcissism which elevates the self above reality as an omnipotent will that can impose itself on the world, without any such contingency as described above.
What makes one possible is instead interpreted as an outside force that imposes itself on the I and robs it of any agency or accountability. If Will is contingent upon past it is interpreted as a loss of accountability. Since narcissism places the I above and beyond reality in an elevated state where it exists wholly non-contingently. A first mover, uncaused, magical. 'Free'.
The I would be made 'innocent' of it's choices if it were to relinquish it's delusions about it's own nature, this is incompatible with the narcissism and so it is just discarded. Conceptualization in this way must satisfy the pre-existing need to flatter the self. Ironically.
Instead, the I chooses. Not the past, that's the other. I, the disembodied soul, the thing-in-itself, the being-that-arose-from-nothing, the present-without-a-past, choose.

This is achieved via quantum mechanics: 'randomness' at the micro-cosmic scale is proposed as an unknown counter-intuitive void that the mind cannot comprehend, therefore anything can be inserted into this blankness. God itself resides in the quantum foam, creating matter out of nothingness, bestowing the chosen with freedom, the great emancipator liberating the I from the tyranny of past.
This formulation presents it's problems however as the I must always exist separately and distinct in order to satisfy.
The 'randomness' occurs only at a level that is far removed from the phenomenon of consciousness, which is quite downstream from it in terms of causality. This relationship is ignored because it cannot be addressed.
How then to resolve things like needs and instincts, past events. The body, the brain. The past is the hated other which tyrannizes the sacred I, the devil that must be mastered, overcome constantly. Doing so implies mastery and power and satisfies the narcissism. But there remains that sense of doubt.
Did I will that, it must wonder? Was that me or my body, my needs, my instincts? Was it me, really? The world must seem a cruel joke, a haze of deception where it's impossible to see where the I ends and causality begins.
It must be paralyzing. It must feel like madness, as if there are two people residing in the body at all times, at war with eachother. The Self and it's past self(s). The I and the hated other, which imposed himself on I.

Again and again and again, careless of how powerless you were to resist. Careless of his power.

It is understandable how salvation might present itself as 'free will'. Then again, this should be discarded too as psychoanalysis is very magian indeed....

apaosha wrote:

Causality as I have used it to mean past manifesting as presence as it moves into future is becoming that is entirely contingent on that which makes it possible. Otherwise we would see phenomena appearing out of nothing, in which case nothing would have to be posited or defined OR phenomena would be self-caused in which case they would have to exist before existing in order to bring themselves into existence.
Does will arise from nothing? Does it pre-exist itself? Of course not. Will is contingent on the act of a consciousness choosing, which itself is contingent upon biology, regressing infinitely.

I don't believe in will independent from life. It is intrinsic to life.
Life differs form non-life in that it can direct itself towards and away, wheres non-life simply follows the paths-of-least-resistance.
Life can go towards more resistance by focusing tis aggregate energies, to the degree that ti can control them.

apaosha wrote:

Furthermore a consciousness performing choice has to have this basis of past moving into future as presence in order for it's choices to have 'meaning'.
If choice is not the ongoing manifestation of past processes then 'choice' is simply arbitrary and without 'meaning'.

Choice is a diversion from past not its contradicting.
These processes can be directed to alter their past performance - to the degree that the controlling agency (consciousness) becomes aware of itself.

apaosha wrote:

An act of choice independent of past simply appears into existence without any reason or motivation or goal or whatever that pre-existed it in order to give it 'meaning'. It is thus meaningless.
To be independent of past necessitates appearance out of nothing, it necessitates self-cause, or any other such nonsense that seeks to evade or to escape.
Will that appears without a past has no justification to be described as 'will'; it is not the effect of consciousness, it is not the effect of a brain, it is not the effect of an organism.
Will is a consciousness choosing.
A consciousness does not float in a void of absolute independence. A consciousness is not a soul. Consciousness is contingent.
Therefore...

Life is thrown into existence, like a bug thrown into a river.
The bug can abandon itself to the flow or it can choose to swim this or that way, all the while swept away down the river. It may even choose to swim contrary to the river.
This is choice.
Will is the focus of the bug's physical energies. The bug itself is a synthesis of flows, rivers, and which one dominates determines which one affects its decision the most, at any given time/place.
If the bug develops a sense of self it may even challenge this impulse and alter it, based on its evaluation of tis circumstances - changing the objective, destination.

Chaos, in all of this, are energies that unexpectedly affect both river and bug, even its reasoning.

Choice is not independent from past.
But past can be stored as memory so the body's past - its impulses - conflict with the mind's memories of its experiential past - what it has learned, or how culture have affected its reasoning, judgments and ideals.

apaosha wrote:

I proposed in my previous post that language creates this false dichotomy between actor and act: that the subject 'I' performing the action 'Will' suggests this dichotomy.

Not in my world-view.
The act is the actor, and will is an act, focusing/controlling other actions.

Only nihilists insinuate otherwise.
The act is not the actor.
Something or someone else is in control.
They are independent form their actions, and their actions can never be blamed on them. No wrong actions.

apaosha wrote:

If there were a way in this language to combine subject and action into one word it would be more accurate.
Instead vagueness and incorrect conceptions are baked in and so it gets into the weeds with nonsense about being free of the past because the I is taken literally, the representational is mistaken for what it represents.
I, self, becoming, will, choice, past, present; all refer to the same phenomenon.

Yes...self is a continuum and its dynamic part is present, expressed through will, even if there is no mind to be aware of itself.
Yes...
Present is past manifesting presence, and presence is the dynamic, interactive which we call existence.
The past no longer exists, other than in memory- recollection.
The none living have no memory of past nd are entirely in the present.
Only the living can recall past and with this recollection guide their presence - they learn.

Phenomenon refers only to what is apparent, or how the living interpret presence.
So, only in regard to life down the phenomenon have meaning.

apaosha wrote:

Consciousness, that is the ongoing manifestation of processes within the brain that produce awareness of self such that a choice can be made with respect to one or more options presented to this awareness, in accordance with pre-existing goals/needs/objectives.
How can choice occur, if not as a manifestation of past in this way? Can you make a choice without being the effect of a brain, without looking back at your past, without pre-existing options, without pre-existing goals? But that's the only way it can be 'free'.

It is this past - stored as memory - that gives options to the living.
More complex life can govern its actions using its recollection of past events, and not be entirely impulse and reactive. It can usurp its reactions because of tis knowledge of past.

apaosha wrote:

If this hurdle can't be surmounted then there is indeed a problem.
The problem is narcissism which elevates the self above reality as an omnipotent will that can impose itself on the world, without any such contingency as described above.
What makes one possible is instead interpreted as an outside force that imposes itself on the I and robs it of any agency or accountability. If Will is contingent upon past it is interpreted as a loss of accountability. Since narcissism places the I above and beyond reality in an elevated state where it exists wholly non-contingently. A first mover, uncaused, magical. 'Free'.
The I would be made 'innocent' of it's choices if it were to relinquish it's delusions about it's own nature, this is incompatible with the narcissism and so it is just discarded. Conceptualization in this way must satisfy the pre-existing need to flatter the self. Ironically.
Instead, the I chooses. Not the past, that's the other. I, the disembodied soul, the thing-in-itself, the being-that-arose-from-nothing, the present-without-a-past, choose.

Self is not independent from reality, but a participant.

apaosha wrote:

This is achieved via quantum mechanics: 'randomness' at the micro-cosmic scale is proposed as an unknown counter-intuitive void that the mind cannot comprehend, therefore anything can be inserted into this blankness. God itself resides in the quantum foam, creating matter out of nothingness, bestowing the chosen with freedom, the great emancipator liberating the I from the tyranny of past.

An individual is never liberated from past, he can only learn and adjust his choices so as to modify the consequences in the future.
Randomness simply necessitates real time judgements and choices, either subconscious and impulsive, or guided by the past. Past becomes a Second source, along with the ongoing present.

apaosha wrote:

This formulation presents it's problems however as the I must always exist separately and distinct in order to satisfy.
The 'randomness' occurs only at a level that is far removed from the phenomenon of consciousness, which is quite downstream from it in terms of causality. This relationship is ignored because it cannot be addressed.

Chaos interacts on the quantum level, if you like.
It's lack of order denies it the possibility to form stable unities that can rise to the level of being perceptible.
Chaos always interacts with order on the infinitesimal, Planck level, and can only be perceived indirectly, through its effect on order, in the form of the unpredictable.
Consciousness cannot perceive it, because of its inconspicuousness and because consciousness can only perceive patterns - that which is order.
It assumes all is ordered because of this limitation.
Therefore, language can be taken literally, leading to paradoxes....and organic limitations can lead to wrong presumptions, producing fantastic implications - like the one-god, absolutes, or the curiosity of explaining how and why we even have judgment and the ability to choose if all is determined and inevitable?

apaosha wrote:

How then to resolve things like needs and instincts, past events. The body, the brain. The past is the hated other which tyrannizes the sacred I, the devil that must be mastered, overcome constantly. Doing so implies mastery and power and satisfies the narcissism. But there remains that sense of doubt.

But there is never mastery of anything...
Complete knowledge nd understanding are impossible.
All there is is constant adjustment, adaptation, evaluation, action.
No judgement call, no matter how precise and successful, holds true across space/time.

apaosha wrote:

Did I will that, it must wonder? Was that me or my body, my needs, my instincts? Was it me, really? The world must seem a cruel joke, a haze of deception where it's impossible to see where the I ends and causality begins.
It must be paralyzing. It must feel like madness, as if there are two people residing in the body at all times, at war with each other. The Self and it's past self(s). The I and the hated other, which imposed himself on I.

Will does occur subconsciously.
Plants will and need no brain to do so.

The evolution of the nervous system leads to Cartesian dualism.
Development of the brain makes the split worse, as the mind becoming aware of itself (ego) begins to feel superior to it, especially when it begins to control and usurp its drives.
Mind begins to feel other than the body, the brain that produces it.

Jaynes spoke about this in his Bicameral Mind.
At first self-consiousnes is experienced as an alien mind, a divinity...as if one were possessed by another.
Over time this becomes a hatred of the body that makes the mind possible, because it limits it.

Narcissism, as you put it, is this conviction that the mind is limitless - other than the imperfect body it is forced to endure.

apaosha wrote:

Again and again and again, careless of how powerless you were to resist. Careless of his power.

It is understandable how salvation might present itself as 'free will'. Then again, this should be discarded too as psychoanalysis is very magian indeed....

Both types of absolutes offer their own salvation.
Both are contradictions of the experienced.
One disappears in otherness - god - and the second becomes god, and the world disappears in it.

The main problem and contention here is the Western, Judæo-Christian understanding of Time as Linear.

The Past = Unchanging, Permanent
The Present = Changing
The Future = Unknown, Unpredictable

The given premise, the Dogma, is that Life/Humanity "begins" in the Past, or that the "Entire Universe" begins with "The Big Bang". The logical imposition is that all Existence comes from a permanent state of Unchange, Absolute Determinism.

If that is your understanding of life, existence, physics, then you won't be able to snap out of it. You won't be able to change your mindset or understanding of change, choice, freedom, free-will, etc.


Consider the alternative, that Existence is infinite and there is no "Beginning", because there is no "Big Bang". There is no "Beginning" to Time, nor Space, nor Life.

Once you take that premise, then you will release your mind from the Dogma of Determinism.

(more later)

The Big Bang, as I understand it, is not a beginning - it is an ongoing process.
It is an approach to absoluteness that never finalizes.
A dualistic point of inversion where one universe becomes another.

The smallest number is 2, not one.
The duality is of order/chaos.
Chaos is what prevents order from imploding into a singularity, i.e., absolute probability.
Order is what prevents chaos from exploding into infinity, i.e., absolute possibilities.

Infinity is a process not a state.
Within this infinity another duality emerges.
Cosmos is expanding towards infinity but never attains it, just as the singularity is never attained.
Both would be an end of existence.

Linear time simply describes the movement from near-absolute order towards near-absolute chaos.
The triad past/present/future places present at tis center, because present is what we experience as existence.
Past no longer exists - it manifests existence but it does not exist - it is immutable.

In the context of life an organism participates in the determination of presence, but experiences it after-the-fact as being in the past.
We live forward but experience living backward.
Our participation in the present is mostly automatic, unconscious.
This makes some hope that they are not responsible sine they only associate responsibility with conscious intentions.
But an organism is activity and all its activities are what is itself.
Consciousness evolves later to know and come to understand these activities and to intervene and regulate them in accordance with circumstances.
But since this occurs after-the-fact we can only intervene in the midst of our own activities to negate them to a degree.
This is why nihilism is integral. It is mind saying no to the body's ongoing, automatic, activities.

Since I agree with much of what Satyr has already elucidated about choice and free will, I’ll only add this.

One of the most salient problems of this free will/determinism preoccupation is responsibility, self-consciousness, or the consciousness of self. Responsibility, for me, is the undeniable element to the nature of choice and how it is possible and correlates to self as a cause. To be responsible for oneself, in itself, is a recognition that one’s actions are self-determined and caused by themselves; there is nothing magical or special about this, it is only part of the continuum of interactivity and becoming, as self is a manifestation of nature after all. Denying responsibility, is denying self, self is the manifestation of individually determined action and choice simply means the capacity to account for the consequences and vicissitudes of self-consciousness, because self-consciousness carries with it a demand of acknowledging the existence of identity, which is the capacity to participate as another cause and account for its consequences.

If a bear was conscious of its physical strength, if it knew rationally, the power of it, what it could do, what it was capable of and what the consequences of it were, it would then have to take accountability for this strength and for itself as a bear. Its awareness would place a demand of responsibility upon it, its freedom would be elevated to a greater degree. It would place a demand of duty to recognize that it possesses the power to choose in what capacity its strength is exercised, its actions would not be merely reactions anymore, but self-willed causes.

‘Duty’ in this sense, not relating to ethics, but meaning simply motive and intent, the existential pressure to act in accordance with oneself, one’s being, one’s predispositions; taking stock of what one is and therefore what it must do. So, not consciousness alone, but 'self-consciousness' is an evolved trait distinct to human beings, just like any other organism possesses their own traits and adaptations in accordance with their own function of survival, self-consciousness is a human function of survival as it pertains to psychic conditions of the mind, the terror/anxiety of knowing why one is the way they are and what to do about it, how to survive it.

So, when one denies responsibility, placing it instead into the realm of causality--as if causality is some divine judge that chooses for the individual (see The Matrix Merovingian movie scene)—than they are simply delusional, self-deceiving charlatans or dunces, psychopaths or degenerates wishing for ‘logical justification’ of giving themselves over to animal impulses or other base behavior. Why the possibility of feelings of regret, shame or guilt, pride, power, or triumph, all emotions pertaining to selfhood and self as a cause? If one bears no responsibility then their actions should carry no consequences of any of these emotions. Why not commit a crime, and instead blame it on causal determinism, instead of yourself? Why not jam a banana up your ass and claim that casual forces made you do it? But the irony, is that responsibility is inescapable, in a similar way that determinists claim that casual forces are inescapable, because responsibility is an inherited human trait of consciousness that cannot be avoided. This causes suffering and the need to escape it. Consciousness, self, is inescapable and bears consequences that most choose not to deal with, because it would require committing to the being of what one is: a self-conscious organism, aware of its own actions.

Causality would have to be an absolute in order for it to be the only explanation for life. Like this crazy from ILP:

Peacegirl wrote:

The term "free will" as opposed to determinism has but one definition in this debate. It means a person, given the same exact situation, could have done otherwise. If he could not have, how could his will be free? Besides, there is no way to prove free will (because we can't go back in time which is required

See how they think? In absurdities, in goofy absolutes. For them, existence is not dynamic, and fluctuating and versatile. One cannot learn from the past and then make a different choice, influencing the future. For them, magic and the supernatural is needed to overcome the absolute deterministic system. Choice is simply self-manifestation. A participant, among all other living participants, changing and influencing their environment.

Yes, and because we cannot go back in time the crazies want to believe that the choices they make were the only ones they could have ever made, and there's no way to disprove them.
The only way that comes close is that given a similar circumstance do individuals choose otherwise, having learned what the consequences of their previous choice has been?
Can a man who did A choose to do B if placed in a similar situation? The answer is yes...if he can learn and perceive how he participated in the consequences.
Have they learned, adjusted their judgments by recognizing their previous mistakes?
If not then they will repeat them, and so their denial will become a self-fulfilling prophesy - it validates itself by remaining true to itself.
By denying free-will they remain unfree, unable to identify their participation in their own circumstances and so unable to adjust their own behaviour to alter their circumstances.
Chaos contributes to their salvation convictions.

Finally...causality means an individual participates in the determination of his future circumstances, along with other willful agencies and a vast cosmos of ordered and chaotic unwilful energies.
This miniscule participation multiplies over time, with every subsequent choice.
Butterfly Effect.
We nudge our course, and then nudge and nudge, and depending on our strength we affect our destiny.
Little tiny, seemingly insignificant, choices - conscious and unconscious - little gestures, movement, expressions, attitudes, tonal fluctuations...all contributing to direction.

We are constantly interacting, even when we believe we are alone, even when we are alone.
We exist - we are present.

The body learns.
Past mistakes adjust its impulsive, automated, reactions through pain/suffering.
Pain = no; pleasure = yes. Binary. Easy to evolve.
Good/Bad, gradually becoming good/evil.
This, on its own, is free-will.
Even plants can learn and pass-on this learning to the future by surviving and reproducing.

How do leaves turn towards the sun, when there is no brain, no mind, to tell them what to do?
Plant learning is slow....those plants that chose correctly survive and reproduce, those that chose wrongly, die.
Sophisticated organisms learn in real time - they can adjust themselves to previous mistakes.
"What does not kill me makes me stronger".
How can something that almost killed me make me stronger without free-will?
Unless, god intended it. Unless my survival was inevitable, because I was 'chosen' by a higher will, i.e., god.
Surviving a wrong judgement, a wrong choice, makes you physically and mentally stronger.
Those with more free-will have an advantage over those with less. Those with more free-will can adjust, learn from their mistakes - if they survive - and pass-on this ability to their offspring.
Those with less free-will die, and then hope that a mutation will arise that will correct their poor choice, if they manage to reproduce before they died.
Chaos is why such mutations arise.

This is how even asexual species evolve.
This is how a complex organ like the eye could have evolved.
First, a single cell that mutated a higher sensitivity to light, affecting the cells in its surrounding, and this contributing to an increase in the probability of survival of the organism; then a second, then a third...etc.

Heterosexuality accelerated the process of cellular mutations.
So, species using sexual reproduction evolve into sophisticated species.
This, alone, identifies homosexuality as a parasitical mutation of heterosexual reproduction.

Causality does not always result in infinite-regress; because many causal chains loop back upon themselves and are circular.  Some patterns in Nature repeat, indefinitely, until they are acted-upon by other patterns/phenomena.  All patterns have an upkeep, a cost of Energy, requiring a Physics (equal input and output).  Looping-patterns and phenomena are perceived as "Equilibrium" and "Balance" in nature.  These can represent the Seasons on Earth, cycles of hot and cold fluctuations, humidity fluctuations, wind, air pressure, carbon dioxide levels, etc.

Another example, where does "Life" begin?

Does a human life begin at Conception?  How about Birth?  How about your 5th birthday?  When you become a Man?  When you Accomplish something in life?  When you being to "truly live"?

Where does "Life" end?

When you die?  Do the cells in your body cease to exist?  Does your flesh and bone disappear?  Or, when people say that Death occurs, what they mean is the "End" to that person's consciousness?  Because, assuredly, much of the protein and cells of a "dead" body remain alive, until they are 'consumed' by another animal, or micro-bacteria that decomposes body matter.


The compulsion of the human mind to assign "Beginnings and Endings", to Life, to Time, to Existence, is *exactly the same* as its compulsion to find physical "Causes" and their Effects.  The fact that Mankind is wrong often about these assignments, demonstrates our fallibility with regard to Causality and Physics.  But, perhaps, we get somethings right, correct, and true.  If Life and Death have no beginning nor end, and the Universe also has no beginning nor end, then the Teleological compulsion to Assign beginnings and ends, will yet persist.

This is Epistemology; this is how a highly evolved intellect/brain/mind understands and becomes exponentially aware of Existence.  Causality is Teleological; because Epistemology and pattern-recognition depends on it.

Most of what we learn begins in an Anthropomorphic Fallacy.  Humans believe, because we live, that the Universe must live as well (God/Deification).  Humans believe, because we die, that the Universe must die as well (Nihilism/Annulment).  But if humanity can only take itself as an example, then it is that my or your consciousness appears, and then it disappears, and that is what people construe as a "lifetime".

The flaw here is that consciousness is abstracted as Life, when it's not.  It is an extremity of life.  It is The extremity of an evolved, highly intelligent life.  It is its "end result". It is its Conclusion. It may very well be...the point, the purpose, the meaning of a life.  Perhaps, it is even more precious, delicate, and rarer than Life.  Because most living organisms show almost no sign of it.

If a man doesn't know where his own life begins...then what makes anybody believe they can know where *ALL* life begins???

If a man cannot take account for himself...then what makes anybody they can take account for anything else???


Responsibility, Accountability, accurately assigning Cause... all these are linked to a heightened Morality and an exceedingly high Intellect. At a certain point of intellectual development, it becomes Necessary that a mind take into account causal-relationships. This is when Lying becomes inevitable. It must either take Account for himself, or at the very least, lie about it as a Denial to others publicly. Compare this to a Stupid person, or a child, who simply does not know or cannot know, the causal relationships connected to it, or that he may take control over.

A lowly person is akin to an animal (amoral), in that s/he can never hope to gain Autonomy. This is why animals are perceived as 'innocent' and 'blameless' in what they do. "Instinct/Nature" dominates them, compared to Mankind, that has "transcended" Nature and Instinct. Or at least, Mankind becomes somewhat aware of this Dilemma.