Freewill or Freewon’t?

Freewill, does it exist or not? Could you choose to go left or right in the situation above or is the decision predetermined? Give it a try. Choose!

Vikid was thinking that perhaps this is the ultimate question, as without it, we were just cogs in a large machine. With it, we were something rather more special, something magical, embued with a soul, spirit or something even more fantastical.

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The question was also rather binary. For what was a partial freewill? Did you actually choose or not? Were we mechanic (Newtonian, Quantum or some New Theory) or were we magic (spiritual, religious or occult).

It really was an ultimate kind of question and as the Hero of Truth, Vikid thought it was mystery that he had to get to the bottom of.

There were two primary camps. Those who believed and those who didn’t.

Well that wasn’t the whole truth. There were other schools of thought. Take for example the Nondual School in which the question of freewill doesn’t even arise as they deny the very notion of a person who could have a will, free or not, in the first place . There were other types of Spiritualists too, like those who believed it was all “one will”, the will of god, that consumed the whole universe. Within this framework, the question of individual freewills becomes irrelevant also but we will get to these ideas a little later, perhaps.

We start with the Non Believer Camp, otherwise known as the Freewontists. They deny that Freewill exists. Their position is very simple. Nature is a mechanism. Mechanisms contain parts. Each part follows some preset set of rules. You, dear reader, are just one such mechanism (made of many little parts) and all your motions and every thought is the product of these rules playing out. End of. You are not choosing anything and never did. That feeling of choice that you have is an illusion otherwise known as an Epiphenomenon.

A great proponent of this kind of theory is the philosopher and all round buffoon, Sam Harris. His book, Freewill, is actually a very good summary of this type of theory. It is highly recommended for that reason. Get it. Read it for free is you can. Touché.

The other camp, the Freewillists, believe something diametrically different because the notion of freewill requires magic, otherwise known as a “Goal Oriented Agent”. It’s teleological. The end is in mind. Be it the magic of God or something else. Freewill can’t exist without it. Randomness doesn’t solve the problem. Randomness has no “end in mind” by definition. No mechanism can. Mechanisms are in the present. We may be able to simulate futures, and future states we desire but for a real true bonafide freewill, one has to drill down to some variety of what we call a soul and you are going to find it very hard finding a mechanism for this. Why?

Because by definition, there can’t be one! If you can explain it by a mechanism, it ain’t free!

So you sit there and think. I feel I have freewill. I know that I can choose. Just as I can choose to continue reading this post or quit in boredom. So you consider yourself a Freewillist but then the Freewontists come out and remind you it’s just an illusion.

What do you do? Can you even do anything? Are all your thoughts an mindless illusion? Or do you drop everything and pickup a Holy book. Pray to Christ and Krishna. (Notice the similarities in their name)

There is no shame in the above, it’s one of Vikid’s favorite pastimes, but is there an in between, other options?

There is one form of in between Vikid thought. It’s the one a very large number of people choose. It’s the ‘my brain hurts’, I will not think about this, camp. Ignore it and let life carry on. I will pray when told to, I will follow the mechanistic view the rest of the time. Vikid liked to think of this as the Ostrich Camp. As their heads were forever in the sand. Others called them NPC’s (Non Player Characters) as they did no real thinking.

Be an NPC no longer!

You really need not be in any camp, though Vikid preferred to be a freewilly if push came to shove, and you can definitely do it without being part of the Ostrich Society.

It all starts with noticing the framework we’ve put ourselves into and possibly throwing the baby out with the bath water. (Poor baby). Freewill or Freewont exist within a Universe which contains Objects. Freewontists say that all objects within this universe simply follow some set of rules, called Laws. Freewillists say that in addition to these objects there are other special entities called Souls, Spirits, God, Demons etc that have a property by which they can choose their course of action. They are not bound by the Laws. They can provide no mechanism for this property other than to appeal to some form of magic or faith.

It appears the Freewontists have won but their troubles run deeper than they are willing to admit, no matter how much they try to deny them…

For they can’t explain where their Laws come from. Notice you can observe an object but never can you see the Law.

They can see objects but they can’t explain them. Objects just seem to appear, disappear and behave in the strangest ways. See any modern Physics book if you need convincing. All they have is observations and rules the observations appear to abide by and furthermore, they can’t account for who is doing the observing.

Who indeed? What does it mean for mindless objects to observe? Where does the mind come from? And what / how is it observing?

They can’t explain what an observation even is and all their rules depend on that.

And what is a Rule or a Law? How does every object in the Universe know to obey it?

They are further up Shit Creek than the Freewillists!

So we start to realize that all this talk is abstraction upon abstraction. Abstractions are an exercise in word making and definition creating. They are not the real thing.

When we abstract, we strip things down. We go from the particular to the general. We try to remove the accidentals while preserving the essentials while adding labels to these concepts as we proceed, so that we can talk about them.

We notice that everything is an appearance first. We put words on appearances that we can categorize and reason about later. This goes for reason itself.

It appears that we think, that we make choices, that there is a universe full of objects, that some objects including your own consciousness are special.

It appears that we choose but equally on introspection we do not know why we made that choice and that the individual parts we are made of didn’t make that choice. The sum is greater than its parts, breaking logic.

Why did you choose left or right? Was it some prior inbuilt disposition? Was it random? Some bias? A preference? Why do you have said preference? An illusion? Who is being eluded?

Both camps inside their respective frameworks have a point, but is the framework right in the first place? Do we need that baby?

Can you be sure that you are in a universe full of objects?

Modern Physics seems to think not, when being honest. It’s bipolar in this regard. It’s all material less fields quantized at energies. Whatever the hell that means. No one knows. But will they admit it when asking for another billion dollar grant. Vikid doubts it!

The mystics of the ages deny it too. They say it’s all one field and call it God.

Sounds similar no?

There’s a whole school of ideas that does away with it all. Where there are no ideas at all. We can’t talk about that one as no idea can encompass it.

It’s the idealess idea.

This is where the non-dualists live. The only problem is that you have to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Then the question of freewill becomes moot. You are barking up the wrong tree, in the wrong forest.

Freedom is an abstraction. Useful when communicating. Bloody useful when thinking. And even more useful as a basis of running human society.

But ultimately you have to discard the concept in its entirety. That goes for it’s opposite, determinism too…

which will bring forth a new world. A world that can’t be talked about. Which is concept less, so can’t even be thought about.

Are you ready to contemplate it?

And that’s,

The Vikid Truth

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