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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Until then the question of free will remains an open one
ah, no...
you've got it wrong, but that's ok...
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Given the absolute dependence on your heredity and on the experience of your pre-independent life there can be no claim of "free will" where that term requires independence of all things external to you.
This argument essentially eliminates the possibility of "free will" in the strongest case.
ED
Nurture or nature are descriptives of "environment". Along with any input outside of an organism's self. Environment should be considered as much, or more of a dictator in the evolution of that organism than hereditary genetic makeup? Women change their hair color, and their boob size, Why? Because they've decided their genetic makeup could be improved upon after hearing from the environment's input.
A black child could say it's better to be white cause they are good, and black's are evil;
http://www.authentichistory.com/1946-1960/8-civilrights/1954-1960/
" Most famously, the children assigned "good" and "pretty" attributes to the white dolls, and "bad" and "ugly" attributes to the black dolls. The Clarks testified as expert witnesses in one of the cases that was combined with the Brown case. The Supreme Court viewed their work as evidence that the children had internalized racism caused by being discriminated against and stigmatized by segregation. The court wrote:
Clark Doll Test
Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system... We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment."
So, don't you think when that black child grows to maturity contemplating the white doll. If he/she came to the conclusion that the black doll was just as good. Then made an about face in their conscious and went back out into the environment and projected to this enlightenment. Free will?
The world gives one a hereditary makeup, along with environmental input. Nature and Nurture makeup the organism. But if an organism rebels to either of these, why can't we call this freewill?
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WBraun
climber
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This argument essentially eliminates the possibility of "free will" in the strongest case.
Saying something does not make free will go away nor eliminate it ever!
It's ABSOLUTELY impossible.
Free will is eternally existent.
No argument in the material world can ever deny it, eliminate it, destroy it etc etc.
Try it and you WILL fail ......
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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you've got it wrong but that's okay...
Anyone who gives a damn about the ultimate nature of reality and the puzzle of existence should be prepared to be wrong...or right.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Very nice to see different perspectives on meditation and philosophy courtesy of Lovegasoline.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 4, 2015 - 10:10am PT
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From Ed:
Until then the question of free will remains an open one
ah, no...
you've got it wrong, but that's ok...
--
There are several problems with the approach taken on the subject of free will, especially the one concerning making so-called "free" choices "in the strongest case." As though there is physical or conscious empirical data supporting anything existing outside the sphere of all other people, places, things and phenomenon. No thing or non-thing stands alone, separate from all else.
That much said, what we are seeing here assumes certain things drawn exclusively from theorizing on objective functioning - or in terms of brain output as seen from the outside. Free will then is considered in terms of drawing conclusions per internal/external situations in which a choice is seemingly in the offing. For example, I can go to Starbucks and eyeball the talent and swill redeyes (which I do with shocking frequency), or I can man up and go to the sangha and stap myself down for an hour or so. The whole process is viewed here in terms of a kind of data processing or computational MO, and from the perspective, any "choice" I make would perforce have to be drawn from information and data or impulses sourced by some thing - most likely my brain. Where else might said info and data and impulses arise from? From this perspecive, it is impossible that any response would not be produced or created entirely by some physical agency, and in this scenario, consciousness or "mind" need not apply. the brain will do the job entirely without "our" participation. this is the hope of objectifying - to posit the process with no regards to consciousness playing a significant or even a minor role. We are simply looking at a purly mechanical function. That the machine is alive and to some degree consciousness is not seen as an operative issue in terms of choosing anything. All choice is determined, entirely, by antecedent brain activities, much as a computer's output is entirely determined by it's programming. Case closed.
Except it isn't.
When the process is empirically studied from the inside, from the seat of awareness itself, how is said process seen in an entirely different light? Again, to get anywhere with this, you have to actually get started on a task and observe how your process unfolds, with no heed to what you believe or what your discursive mind tells you must be happening. Most importantly, under what conditions does the computational model clearly start to break down? And it does.
JL
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Most importantly, under what conditions does the computational model clearly start to break down? And it does.
We want information, number 6.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Lovegasoline: The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā . . . .
(This is also known as The Middle Way, and it is a hard way to go. The Middle Way certainly doesn’t mean some kind of middle-of-the-road approach or compromise. It’s: “not or,” “not and,” nor “not neither non-.” Not this or that. Even “not anything” is a this or that.)
Lovegas, regarding your 2-month private retreat . . . I did a one-month private retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains at Vajrapani Institute, and it was remarkably challenging for me (about 6-7 years ago). There wasn’t much else to do but to sit. They brought up food from the bottom of the hill and left it in containers at a tree a hundred yards from my 10X12 cabin. In about a week, I began to doubt my sanity. At midnight one night, I got up and drove 2 hours home just to see my wife and ground me. The experience felt like self-immolation. My mind was attacking itself.
Toward the end of my retreat, I sat with the resident teacher, and we talked about such experiences. She had taken a 2-year private retreat (sheesh!), and she said that for the first 6 months, her brain continually repeated every TV theme show song she remembered as a child. She laughed: “Can you imagine listening to the theme song for ‘Mr. Ed’ repeated a few thousand times?!”
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 4, 2015 - 12:32pm PT
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Coming from you or another of the 'you're doing it wrong' crowd?
Dingus, we're not saying you are doing it "wrong," rather, you are not doing it at all.
People talk large about studying or or analyzing mind, but all they are doing is observing objecive functioning - a huge job, for certain, but you get to use instruments and figures and that makes people feel solid - about objective functioning. But are they actually even looking at "mind?" Or the material which they believe that mechanically gives rise to mind? And are they selfsame? If you insist in as much at least your have limited your field of study. So it makes sense.
People talk about free will, but instead of observing their internal process of choosing, or what seems to be choosing or making desicisions per the actions they take or don't take, we see people simply looking at the computational processes of the brain, and concluding that this organic machine does all the work in a determined way, with no input from "us."
In fact what is going on here on this thread is that various brains are communicating in a determined way.
But what is watching? And what is the nature of that watching? Do you experience any choice on WHAT you watch? Look carefully. Make a choice and see how long you can actually watch whatever you choose before your attention wanders off. What does that tell you?
JL
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Today at 2pm we took out a fine soul to pee for her last time! , Think on this :
Did she know it was her time to go?
Was it perfect?
why should this passing equal the depth of sorrow that I feel when other dogs have passed,
but rarely for some humans and not at all for some others ??
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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^^^^ I'm like that too. Dogs are innocent and loving (usually). The same is not always true for adult humans. Rarely do you find innocence, guilelessness, and faithfulness to the degree Rover exhibits. Sorry for your loss, my friend.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Today at 2pm we took out a fine soul to pee for her last time!
i'd heard this tail more then twice. Always when they were old and gray, odd how they seem to know it's time to just sit and go away..
did you know the Himalayan Black Crane, a very social species, and they also mate with one spouse for life. but when that spouse dies or is killed, the surviving Crane will fly of from the group and starve itself to death?
anyway, it strikes me as if nature doesn't have the need/greed for life as man do?
they're prolly just content to make as far as they did without be'in eat'in.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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The bond of man and dog is a very strange example of spiritual energy that defies the common held all science line of thinking.
Some thing that, other than in horses, I never hear of or see; she was in the moment, I swear she looked at me and that was it if it was going to take two people to help her pee she was ready and went to sleep!
I was so stunned and then calmed at the way the day had unfolded. When she was sure
She was ready and lay down , good dog by God and died!?
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Good post, Largo.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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:-)
I wonder what Nagarjuna would have said about the Central Limit Theorem.
Ha-ha.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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There are several problems with the approach taken on the subject of free will, especially the one concerning making so-called "free" choices "in the strongest case." As though there is physical or conscious empirical data supporting anything existing outside the sphere of all other people, places, things and phenomenon. No thing or non-thing stands alone, separate from all else.
you're assuming I said things I did not say... the dependence of "you" on things that are "not you" can hardly be controversial.
Your very existence is not dependent on you. Much of your early education is not dependent on you. It is very possible that the way you think is something you inherited, and possibly even your very strong attachment to the ideas that you hold. These all could be something that depends on "not you".
The philosophical argument (not physical argument) against "free will" is that you cannot act from just "you."
 You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are — at least in certain crucial mental respects.
But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do
Your appeal to the "no thing" is specious, we have no description of "no thing" so "no thing" can do anything we want...
"no thing" has no effect, one way or the other, on "us," if it did it would be "thing" and describable (which it is not by definition).
the antecedents of "you" are not something you can take "ultimate responsibility" for...
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WBraun
climber
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"no thing" has no effect, one way or the other, on "us," if it did it would be "thing" and describable (which it is not by definition).
It does have an effect because the definition of "no-thing" ultimately is the impersonal.
It's rooted in the Sankhya school from Shankaracharya who even in the end denied the ultimate as ultimately being impersonal.
Unfortunately impersonalism is incomplete and thus requires ultimately to come back to the personal features that describe everything.
Thus the material world is an exact imperfect reflection of the spiritual world .....
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