Suppose free will is an illusion, something we experience but don't possess. This may or may not be true; this is a thought experiment. (I don’t have the scientific or philosophical expertise to even decide what I believe.) But if freedom does not exist, then our belief in freedom is itself compelled or determinate: we are not free to think otherwise. And we are not free to give up, in our everyday lives, the distinction between volitional and nonvolitional actions. Even strict determinists do not live their lives as though they had no choices to make. If they did, their lives would be an absurdist parable. That’s what our lives are.
3 comments:
My instinct is to classify "Do people have free will?" as a "question not tending to edification" - a phrase and concept attributed to the Buddha in many texts to refer to questions such as: "Is the universe finite or infinite?" and "Do saints exist after their physical death?" and "Are the body and soul identical?"
"Will" itself, I think, is an heuristic concept to distinguish some types of desire and choice from others.
I hope you enjoyed my Ted Talk (as they say).
It's a koan, like does a god have Buddha nature?
Something like that.
There's that Stanford psychobiologist who says depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain, he also says there is no free will. So much goes into every choice, even benign ones like my choosing a room with aqua paint over a yellow room. You think you chose, but you did not, you were impelled.
I think there we have less free will than current modern society claims, and I find this notion freeing.
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