(June 15, 2015 at 8:20 am)Nestor Wrote:It seems to me that one might view the animal instincts as obstacles to the exercise of free will, and that Buddha and the stoics had it right.(June 14, 2015 at 11:10 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It's kind of a weird semantic, still, isn't it? I mean, you're free to express yourself, but you are a product of your environment at every stage of your development. So basically, free will is just an absence of external influences-- but then what is one making a decision about? Isn't the sight of a donut sitting next to a chocolate bar or whatever essentially an external influence? Also, would hormones or hunger be considered internal or external influences?Like all things, there are some influences that are external and some that arise within.
The decision lies in the usage of reasoning to either comply or resist bodily urges, such as in craving a donut. Your mouth waters, your stomach growls, your palms get sweaty, your imagination swims through a torrent of chocolate juices squirting down your throat (getting turned on yet you epicurean decadents?), and then you think about your weight, your diet, how you'll feel in an hour, etc., and you choose (i.e. give in to the most persuasive reason or passion, at the given instant) to indulge yourself. A choice is made, in compliance with your will, which only later upon reflection (when your will has changed) do you come to think that it was not what you actually wanted for yourself. So, you acted freely. An external influence negating your will would have been someone literally shoving the donut down your throat. Sometimes, in a fit of madness, or in the case of say, a brain tumor, we allow for certain behaviors to be excused because we realize that such and such was a factor by which a person could not have reasonably been expected to act otherwise, otherwise meaning in character, their personality as established by their history of actions and stated beliefs.
What say you? Are the baser or animal instincts the purest expression of will, or its most immediate impediments? Should one be free of emotion completely in order to most fully exercise free will?
