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at some point along the line, the normal, responsible, free person's neurosis becomes something that is not considered a part of their personality or personhood, but something they are afflicted by: a mental disorder. our notions of free will are very active in the notion of mental disorder, and i wanted to ask not only for intellectual, but for personal input on this topic. some related questions:
if free will is not real, then are we all equally responsible for our behavior?
if free will is not real, then is there no meaningful distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts?
if free will is not real, then is there no such thing as not "doing your best"?
if free will is not real, then are we all equally responsible for our behavior?
if free will is not real, then is there no meaningful distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts?
if free will is not real, then is there no such thing as not "doing your best"?
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Tue, February 3, 2009 - 6:22 PM"if free will is not real, then are we all equally responsible for our behavior?"
Well, I guess I'd have to say that it appears to us that we are responsible even though we aren't. Our perception of and inquiry into our behavior is limited and most rudimentary. These operations proceed via distinctly different mechanisms, yet, of course, they affect one another through feedback loops, also in themselves mechanical. What is the 'we' you are referring to other than locations of relative calm proceeding alongside one another amidst a vast and complex storm - sort of like a surfer holding his own as he zips through a tube on the banzai pipeline.
"...is there no meaningful distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts?"
Virtually all of our actions are involuntary. Those few we claim we have control over are pushed into this mode of observation for a particular reason - there's always a reason caused by a drive. So, in a sense, there's really no such thing as 'voluntary' because it can't be separated from a drive or a desire, and of course, what is it that initially generated those drives and desires.
"...is there no such thing as not "doing your best"?"
We are always doing our best. Whatever you see, whatever it is is your best shot - pretty pathetic, huh? You could also say it's pretty good; it all depends upon your mood, I guess. ;-) -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Wed, February 4, 2009 - 12:13 PMi've recently become familiar with the works of pereboom and smilansky on these issues, and it's fascinating.
smilansky -- free will is an illusion, and don't spread the word, because that fact is corrosive to morality
pereboom -- free will is an illusion, and let's take that seriously and stop with the anger and guilt
fascinating! -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Wed, February 4, 2009 - 4:55 PMGot a link and I'll check it out.
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Wed, February 4, 2009 - 5:48 PM"if free will is not real, then is there no meaningful distinction between voluntary and involuntary acts?"
This question is a zen koan and the solution is to realize that yet again our concepts have shackled our thinking. Contrast the feeling of needing to scratch a persistent itch and the desire to write a song. One is frustrating, impulsive, nagging, and seemingly pointless. The other is deliberate, creative, joyful, and often comes with a sense of accomplishment. One we wish we could get rid of and the other we hope to follow to fruition without losing focus. More importantly, scratching a persistent itch is a breech of self-control and writing a song is a self-control triumph.
To me this looks like yet another case where metaphysics muddies the waters, bamboozling our understanding rather than enhancing it. It's time to invoke the return policy on the metaphysical system we all bought into. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Thu, February 5, 2009 - 6:01 PMWell according to 'Lost', one is either crazy or lying. If lying doesn't prove free will,
at least maybe someone who lies sometime by conscious choice and sometimes not does.
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Tue, February 10, 2009 - 7:40 PM
In my experience so far, it seems there is no way to answer the question of free-will and determinism. There is no question about it either. I can't say I agree or disagree with either one at this point as both appear to be valid from different perspectives and neither appears to be ultimate reality, as perception of both is still limited.
Instead, I would suggest finding out who is it that is contemplating free-will or determinism? these are steps to come out of the intellectual thoughts and step into what is unexplainable yet bearing no intellectual existential doubts/ideals/ideas/concepts/beliefs/non-beliefs in its dance of being. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Thu, February 12, 2009 - 8:45 PM"In my experience so far, it seems there is no way to answer the question of free-will and determinism. There is no question about it either. I can't say I agree or disagree with either one at this point as both appear to be valid from different perspectives and neither appears to be ultimate reality, as perception of both is still limited."
This statement seems pretty accurate. There's really no way to confirm one concept or the other - though contemplation of 'who' merely adds another layer of abstraction.
Needless to say - very messy business. Thank god for that 'free will disorder' card - saves us every time. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Sat, February 14, 2009 - 2:41 PM"There's really no way to confirm one concept or the other"
why isn't free will something open to empirical exploration and support? in fact, there is a mountain of evidence on the matter. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Sat, February 14, 2009 - 7:12 PM"why isn't free will something open to empirical exploration and support?"
Of course it is up to a certain point, yet when you really get down to the nitty gritty, down to the subatomic level, it becomes impossible to keep track of all the variables, not to mention hidden variables we have no capabilities of making measurements on. It *IS* open to empirical exploration based on the parameters we're currently able to measure, but it's my current conclusion that these are just the tip of the iceberg. As I'm sure you know by now, my bent leans in the direction of determinism, and I'd also conclude that you'd assume by now that I have at least a rudimentary familiarity with a substantial portion of the research that has been conducted.
Personally, I'd say that free will is a myth beyond any reasonable doubt, but there's no way of proving this claim scientifically so such a judgment still has to be classified as a belief. The same, of course, holds true for determinism. So, I'd say I agree with OnlyNow - in that there's no way to conclusively answer the question of free will and determinism, though I'd say that the reasons that have caused me to come to this conclusion likely differ from his. Such is to be expected as each of our world-lines is unique, and this uniqueness in itself negates absolute certainty with respect to this dilemma one way or the other. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Sat, February 14, 2009 - 10:13 PMno, it is worse than this for the case for free will. you have the extra step that currently appears impossible: getting free will out of indeterminacy. the evidence points to two possibilities: random, or determined. neither of which is "free" in the manner libertarians require, at least of the incompatibilist positions. the libertarian has the daunting case to make of a "will" that is not caused itself, but capable of generating causes without preceding requisites.
true, you can't prove a negative, but it falls on the "entity proposer" to show positive evidence, and they have failed. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Sun, February 15, 2009 - 1:51 PMFunny, this idea was just swirling around in my mind. I'm in full agreement with your analysis. In much of the recent literature I've become familiar with, the arguments supporting free will seem to be erroneously correlated with randomness, and so the logic goes, if something is random then it must be free. This line of thinking has become so prolific that its continued reiteration has forged it into a type of a proof, if it is random then it must be free, or something like that. Randomness in many circles has been elevated to the level of being *the* agent of control.
It appears there's an exceedingly powerful tendency for the mind to 'snap to' something as being this agent of control, and sadly to say, it falls amongst the same lines as the belief in god. In physics it's the uncertainty principle, randomness of radioactive decay and spooky action at a distance. Our logical minds have a big problem basing logic on an infinitely complex and unbounded continuum so we make shit up and move on, and as history shows, there has been an unending trail of blood spilled to support such erroneous beliefs, and it appears that the more blood that's been shed - the greater the energy that will be required to ultimately uproot an unfounded belief. In certain cases it's damn near impossible and pretty much a waste of time, hence the saying, "nor cast your pearls before swine". Course, don't read anything into this. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Mon, February 16, 2009 - 2:03 PM
The concept of free-will and determinism are existential questions by nature. The question rises out of an inner longing/desire in discovering our true nature/self. Some have taken the path through thoughts, via logic, reasoning, and the sciences. This group, takes the path of accumulating the vast knowledge present from scientists in various fields and applying the intellect and some creativity and contemplation to reach a sort of understanding that eventually allows that initial inner longing/desire to relax/subside by the pill of an answer. That pill puts their mind's at ease and answers the many existential questions.
The other group can not be understood by logic and reason. Logic and reason are creations from thoughts. Thoughts are on the periphery of our consciousness. Some we generate, some are coming and going. It has been stated in ancient scriptures from all corners that Life is nothing but God/Consciousness, that it is all One. While the words may seem to be something sounding wishy washy which another trail of "believers" formed religions from, they are actual words stemming from a Direct Seeing and Recognition of that. Many of those who discovered this, their seeing was irrefutable to the point they faced death and still remained with their seeing. Many performed miracles of all sorts.
There's just no way to put that Truth into words... it can be pointed towards, but even then, only those who are truly seeking it, not just with their intellectual minds, but with their entire being will come to see for themselves. Unfortunately, even then, it's not something you can prove another as it's not a matter of an outer science.
I feel that it's also unfortunate that many people take the paths of meditation/yoga/zen/tantra etc to go along that path until they reach certain amazing experiences and they use that as some conclusion, and continue on with their mind reason/intellect path. Taking this journey is like stepping beyond yourself and everything you know, and never really returning. You will know, and life also remains as an intimate mystery.
Science has made great steps; but the journey of science's realization is for the overall human technological civilization; it is not a substitute for direct realization... and if some think it is, I have to say you are taking an approach that is not likely to deliver the true answer anytime soon. If science really directly realized the potential, it just seems unimaginable if there would still even be an existence; it's for each individual.
I really hope you don't excuse my words as capricious. What I have written comes from my own direct seeing that is irrefutable to myself. I know this is the way, i.e. the realization occurs inwardly, not under some mechanic experiment. It maybe that through those experiments a spark happens inside of you, but the inner realization, your own realization is the only part that has any meaning/substance/power. Out of that, then perhaps something significant maybe brought to the masses if it's the time for it. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Tue, February 17, 2009 - 5:39 PMOnlyNow,
I have nothing against mystical experiences. I think they can enrich our lives and show us other ways of looking at the world and our relationship to it. They can alter our perspectives in positive ways. I do however take issue with people asserting their own view as absolute truth without being willing to argue for it. Isn't that a bit conceited?
If we want to understand with any objectivity how mystical experience works, we're going to have to study it methodically, by establishing correlations between experiences and brain states and manipulating variables experimentally. That is to say, we're going to have to do some science.
If the brain cannot represent it, we cannot experience it. Thankfully we now have some pretty fancy tools for looking into the brain so we can actually peek at what's happening during mystical experiences. In "The Happiness Hypothesis" Jonathan Haidt discusses some of these observations that may go a long way toward explaining what's going on. During mystical experiences people often report a loss of the sense of self and being melded with something larger. Sometimes this is described as "all is one." There are patches of the left and right parietal lobes that represent our location in space. To quote Haidt:
"The patch in the left hemisphere appears to contribute to the mental sensation of having a limited and physically defined body, and thus keeps track of your edges. The corresponding area in the right hemisphere maintains a map of the space around you. These two areas receive input from your senses to help them maintain an ongoing representation of your self and its location in space. At the very moment when people report achieving states of mystical union, these two areas appear to be cut off... The area on the left tries to establish the body's boundaries and doesn't find them; the area on the right tries to tries to establish the self's location in space and doesn't find it. The person experiences a loss of self combined with a paradoxical expansion of the self into space, yet with no fixed location in the normal world of three dimensions. The person feels merged with something vast, something larger than the self."
No doubt there's also a lot going on outside of the parietal lobes, but this has got to be part of the explanation. Thank goodness for guys like the Dalai Lama who are interested in the neuroscience of of this stuff and happy to send monks to labs.
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Thu, February 19, 2009 - 1:04 PM"Our logical minds have a big problem basing logic on an infinitely complex and unbounded continuum so we make shit up and move on"
true, yet interestingly subjected to the feedback loop of evolutionary selection processes. if our ideas are dysfunctionally out of sync in a way that impacts survival and reproduction competitively, then it would probably feel a selection pressure, though mistakes can crop up developmentally again and again without selection being able to touch them. -
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Re: free will & mental disorder
Thu, February 19, 2009 - 11:53 PMWell, I would better had said that 'shit is made up' than "we make shit up". It changes it a little, snuffs out the ember of the agent of control and better encapsulates my take on the matter. The stuff that's made up is of course part of a local feedback loop unique to each of us, though it's every bit as mechanical as the experiential influences that steer our behavior. Dysfunctional ideas produced by in individual are simply the ideas that that individual had to produce at a particular point in time; it could not have been any other way, other than through scenarios generated after-the-fact by the byproducts of the imagination. So, the selection pressure you refer to is in any given moment not so much a pressure as it is a continuity of equilibrium, an inevitable transformation of energy. I'd push it a step further and say that the mistakes you speak of are a more deeply hidden (as in 'hidden' variable) manifestation of the same process, though of course, to an outside observer what appears to be a deviation from the norm would likely be characterized as a mistake. But, we all know that there really aren't any mistakes, but we've got to pin it on something. It's our nature - that's what we do.
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