Do you believe in free will?

[Angrboda]

@Perhaps

Let's take this from a different perspective. You assert that mind creates reality, that perception is a requisite of existence. However, one can't experience their non-existence, whether we're talking about you specifically, or some mind in a larger sense. So by your rules, non-existence can't be real. Moreover, you personally, must be infinitely old, never have been asleep or unconscious, that you have always existed. Is that what you believe, that you are infinitely old, have never slept or been unconscious, and that you have never not existed?

I find it incredible that anyone could believe these things, yet they seem a natural consequence of your assumptions. Or perhaps you've got some sophistry to get around them — we don't actually sleep, we just remember having done something we did not do, or whatever.

First, I think you'll find many people who view the flaws built into our perceptions in your view — believing we sleep when we don't, believing in comets that don't exist — the sum total of errors in our naive worldview is greater under your view than under say, naive realism; I find it hard to see this as a movement into greater clarity — it would seem we have less truth and knowledge under your framework, even accepting it's assumptions.

However this last bit, that non-existence can't exist or be real because there is no mind to make it real, I find that to be little more than an accounting trick, akin to banning subtraction and negative numbers from our accounting: "Whoah! Look! We made a profit this quarter!" Well of course you made a profit. Because you've rigged the rules of the game.