Being conscious and free will
The previous post allows me to take another shot at one of the core questions of our conception of our spirit, namely that of our culpability and free will.
As St. Augustine already figured out, the freedom to do what you want is your freedom and not that of your will. Schopenhauer then went on to postulate
Consider for instance the problem of deciding when to drink tea. A material determinist would have to argue that millions of years of evolution ended up with something written into our DNA that under the right circumstances made us invariably decide that five o'clock in the afternoon would be a good time to have it, or that at least in the case of the person who established the custom it did so (the rest then being coerced by their will to conform).
So free choice in the absence of will is a plausible idea. And this idea is intertwined with the idea of us being conscious in that the latter is seen as a necessity of the former:
And there is of course also a line of spirituality, think tender plump men around 60 years of age, that agrees with this.
But what makes us believe that free choice is the purpose of us being conscious?
In order to answer that, let us consider what we're not conscious of, like keeping our balance while walking (hopefully). Doesn't this suggest that we're conscious in order to find and once we've found we're becoming accustomed and unconscious? The ulterior consequence of this thought is frightful, but I'll postpone that. In any case, not knowing how to do something is indeed a situation in which our will doesn't pull us on a predetermined course. Hence one in which free choice seems plausible. And one in which we experience heightened consciousness.
So that is the meat of it. And part of it is indeed solid, namely that consciousness and helplessness are connected. But is arbitrariness really the only course in helplessness?
That's what this view boils down to, but I say it's half cooked.
For one, the frightful consequence: Not only would a machine surpass us, if we programmed it with a general search algorithm, no, once we ourselves would get accustomed to that algorithm, we would become completely unconscious, that is like such a machine ourselves. And that would be the state that man's consciousness was demonstrably destined to attain in the first place!
But let us consider the truth as presented in the previous post: Helplessness is a recognition that our life is not as it should be. So we pray for our life to unfold.
More generally, there is a notion (of the holy), that has been exemplified in the flesh by you know who, and God leans towards it, so much so that God was the notion*, making everything according to the notion, and in particular life itself.
But life is two things, as already dwelled on: A notion of what it should be and then the thing itself. The former is the light that guides man. And it does so in three ways:
So, to put it bluntly: All our choices are known in advance, but we are sorcerers. Or like God, as John ventures (1 John 3:2), though he gives another explanation for it, yet not necessarily a conflicting one.
Well, that is, if we're prepared to agree with the holy, for nothing unholy is ever created. One can forgive a man for thinking that this isn't freedom at all. But then, do we really want anything unholy?
As for our culpability, it's all presumptuousness. We're always trying to cope. It can be forgiven, lest someone rewrites the rules. (And there are of course acts that do that implicitly). Of course, the rules have been rewritten quite explicitly. Yet there's a solution for that as well: the trial of active support. Naturally nature is always reaffirmed. Consider this: We really have our lives from God and He does hear us. If many of us now vomit on the street, will He shield the drunkenness? Or is it worms or bitterness? The holy always finds a way, because the holy makes the way.
* θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, one of the two willful distortions, since God was Jesus (when He created the world) doesn't sound right, whereas Jesus was God is boner inducing; the other is of Ἔγειρε καὶ μέτρησον τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, for what does it mean that John was instructed to build the temple?
As St. Augustine already figured out, the freedom to do what you want is your freedom and not that of your will. Schopenhauer then went on to postulate
We have free choice only in the absence of will.And although there is biblical proof that even then we do not have free choice, for neither revelation nor time travel nor time loops are compatible with free choice, for the simple reason that in any of these cases the choice occurs after it has already been witnessed, that is if you don't change the future in the case of time travel, we find little mundane evidence to support that idea.
Consider for instance the problem of deciding when to drink tea. A material determinist would have to argue that millions of years of evolution ended up with something written into our DNA that under the right circumstances made us invariably decide that five o'clock in the afternoon would be a good time to have it, or that at least in the case of the person who established the custom it did so (the rest then being coerced by their will to conform).
So free choice in the absence of will is a plausible idea. And this idea is intertwined with the idea of us being conscious in that the latter is seen as a necessity of the former:
We are conscious so that we may freely choose.At this point you can see how conventional Schopenhauer really is, because if those two statements are both true, then resignation is the only way to make use of the potential of your consciousness and choose freely.
And there is of course also a line of spirituality, think tender plump men around 60 years of age, that agrees with this.
But what makes us believe that free choice is the purpose of us being conscious?
In order to answer that, let us consider what we're not conscious of, like keeping our balance while walking (hopefully). Doesn't this suggest that we're conscious in order to find and once we've found we're becoming accustomed and unconscious? The ulterior consequence of this thought is frightful, but I'll postpone that. In any case, not knowing how to do something is indeed a situation in which our will doesn't pull us on a predetermined course. Hence one in which free choice seems plausible. And one in which we experience heightened consciousness.
So that is the meat of it. And part of it is indeed solid, namely that consciousness and helplessness are connected. But is arbitrariness really the only course in helplessness?
That's what this view boils down to, but I say it's half cooked.
For one, the frightful consequence: Not only would a machine surpass us, if we programmed it with a general search algorithm, no, once we ourselves would get accustomed to that algorithm, we would become completely unconscious, that is like such a machine ourselves. And that would be the state that man's consciousness was demonstrably destined to attain in the first place!
But let us consider the truth as presented in the previous post: Helplessness is a recognition that our life is not as it should be. So we pray for our life to unfold.
More generally, there is a notion (of the holy), that has been exemplified in the flesh by you know who, and God leans towards it, so much so that God was the notion*, making everything according to the notion, and in particular life itself.
But life is two things, as already dwelled on: A notion of what it should be and then the thing itself. The former is the light that guides man. And it does so in three ways:
- telling us what touches us and allowing us to seek it, concretely participation, order and responsibility, participation as a requisite of our maturation, order as an understanding that we can take to heart and responsibility for our effect on the world,
- telling us what we expect to happen, that is what we believe and may take to heart,
- telling us what we're supposed to make of our life through our conscience.
- make us experienced, show us what it means to love somebody etc.,
- allow us to understand the order of our belief and
- turn out presentable (at judgment day) according to our conscience.
So, to put it bluntly: All our choices are known in advance, but we are sorcerers. Or like God, as John ventures (1 John 3:2), though he gives another explanation for it, yet not necessarily a conflicting one.
Well, that is, if we're prepared to agree with the holy, for nothing unholy is ever created. One can forgive a man for thinking that this isn't freedom at all. But then, do we really want anything unholy?
As for our culpability, it's all presumptuousness. We're always trying to cope. It can be forgiven, lest someone rewrites the rules. (And there are of course acts that do that implicitly). Of course, the rules have been rewritten quite explicitly. Yet there's a solution for that as well: the trial of active support. Naturally nature is always reaffirmed. Consider this: We really have our lives from God and He does hear us. If many of us now vomit on the street, will He shield the drunkenness? Or is it worms or bitterness? The holy always finds a way, because the holy makes the way.
* θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, one of the two willful distortions, since God was Jesus (when He created the world) doesn't sound right, whereas Jesus was God is boner inducing; the other is of Ἔγειρε καὶ μέτρησον τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, for what does it mean that John was instructed to build the temple?
Labels: 26, bibelkommentar, formalisierung, gesetze, institutionen, kommentar, metaphysik, rezension, sehhilfen, wahrnehmungen, ἰδέα, φιλοσοφία
Eingetragen Am/um
13:23
