RE: Oh no not another free will thread.
April 23, 2018 at 8:05 am
(This post was last modified: April 23, 2018 at 8:09 am by bennyboy.)
I'm being a little bit lazy here, not having read 15 pages of undoubtedly brilliant philosophizing.
I'd define free will like this: It is the unfettered expression of the self in behavior.
This obviously cannot include variation in a given moment. You could not have made a different decision, because any decision other than the one you made would not have been a maximally perfect expression of the self. When I'm standing in front of a candy rack, and I choose a Mars Bar, you can argue that it's not free will because I'm just one node in a long behavioral chain that could in theory be traced all the way back to the Big Bang.
But as I see it, it is exactly for this reason that I AM free. I am a causal chokepoint, and whatever I decide, it turns out that is what I would have decided. I find this very comforting, and I game it like this: I do whatever I damn well please, because it turns out-- that crazy and spontaneous behavior was always going to be the one I exhibited.
I can't imagine a more freeing realization than that.
I'd define free will like this: It is the unfettered expression of the self in behavior.
This obviously cannot include variation in a given moment. You could not have made a different decision, because any decision other than the one you made would not have been a maximally perfect expression of the self. When I'm standing in front of a candy rack, and I choose a Mars Bar, you can argue that it's not free will because I'm just one node in a long behavioral chain that could in theory be traced all the way back to the Big Bang.
But as I see it, it is exactly for this reason that I AM free. I am a causal chokepoint, and whatever I decide, it turns out that is what I would have decided. I find this very comforting, and I game it like this: I do whatever I damn well please, because it turns out-- that crazy and spontaneous behavior was always going to be the one I exhibited.
I can't imagine a more freeing realization than that.