if there is such a thing as fate, why do we feel as though we have authentic free will? discuss.
7 comments:
CORAX
said...
note: by 'authentic' free will, i mean free will where we truly do make authentic decisions of our own, as opposed to 'apparent' free will [where it *seems* as though we are exercising free will but are really just acting out foreordained events]. the flip side of all this would be 'authentic' and 'apparent' destiny. [also: i am using 'destiny' and 'fate' as approximate synonyms here -- is there a reason why i should not?]
bear in mind too that the issue of CHANCE was brought up in class today. this is a radical alternative to either 'free will' OR 'destiny -- because both of those seem to imply some sort of conscious intention [whether by ourselves (free will) or by a god or gods (destiny/fate)]; chance, on the other hand, implies the kind of randomness that is the very antithesis of intentionality.
[that is true in the *modern* sense at least. the ancients had a goddess for this too: the greeks called her TUKHE; the romans, FORTVNA. whatever else this indicates, it implies an unwillingness in those cultures to conceive of things happening entirely at random and/or apart from the intention of anyone, human or divine.
none of what we are doing here is 'prescriptive'; that is, you are not being told *what* to think. but i do very much want you to ponder *how* you think -- how you grapple with these ideas, ancient and modern, and how it is that you come to the conclusions you do adopt. and what the implications are of those conclusions in your own life.
Authentic free will is difficult to defend in accordance with either a divine force or natural law. The existence of either an omniscient or omnipotent divine being poses the most obvious of problems. Any omniscient being would necessarily know our actions before we committed them. If our future actions are already known then it is impossible for us to act in any other way than that which is known by the divine, and thus we do not possess free will. Likewise, an omnipotent being would have the ability to make us do whatever he wished. Although some free will could be had, we would not possess entire free will as we would be at the mercy of the divine at all times. There is little consolation in rejecting the divine for the "new divine", science. Given the rigid laws of physics, matter is governed in determined ways. We, simply being large masses of matter, are no exception to these laws. This argument is more detailed and I will present it more thoroughly if people are interested.
My belief is that free will is a romantic concept for humans struggling to find meaning in life. Humans perpetually strive to differentiate themselves from the world around them. We do not wish to believe that we are globs of the same insignificant matter that makes up rocks and trash heaps. Even on divine view we place ourselves on the top of existence, save for the divine. ( as you can tell I speaking mainly of the monotheistic religions in this entire post as that is what I am most familiar with. I would love to be enlightened on other forms of religion that do not encounter the same problems).
The film clip I referenced in class: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvd3kaupZ60
For years I thought that it was possible to reconcile the notion of free will with that of an omniscient god. Recently, though, I saw that such a coexistence is far too good to be true.
Maybe it's my prejudice that prevents me from seeing clearly here- but I don't think there should be any argument about how far the 'omni' part of 'omniscient' extends. My notion of the divine has a God who is just too badass for time- a perpetual being that views our one-dimensional progression of time as a cubist's collage. As such, it would seem that no detail of our lives, however insignificant by any perspective, would elude this God- this atemporal god. If you accept that, it becomes very tough to weasel out of the claws of predestination.
I do not believe in chance. It is much to devoid of purpose to be true. However, I believe in the likely existence of destiny for that very same reason -- life would be much too devoid of purpose without it. Although I am not 100% certain on destiny, I do have some theories. I cannot quite separate the belief in theism from the belief in destiny. This is also why it is very difficult for me to understand deism...what is the purpose of there being gods if they take no part in anything? Anyhow, back to destiny--I must say I do believe in maktub--everything is written. However, I think that free-will is a concept that is essential in life. I would say free-will is a surreal element. It may be characterized as the belief that keeps human beings motivated. Free-will makes humans feel purposeful and this in turn makes us feel happy because a life of purpose is a life of well-being. Without free-will will life would be boring for us. We would have no say in anything and our sense of power - which we take such pride in - would be depleted. Still I do believe in working to attain what you desire, which might contradict the idea of pure destiny having absolute power because if something was meant for us then it would just be - effortlessly and by the power of destiny. This is where it gets complicated. Although our destiny is written at the moment of our birth, our lives are the enduring journeys we must undertake in order to uncover the lessons of our destiny and therefore come to discover ourselves (our destiny).
Someone once tried to reconcile the idea of destiny and free-will for me. This person said that everyone is born with their destiny, but we do have free-will and every choice we make from our free-will either follows in line with our destiny or deviates from it. In other words this person said that yes we do have a destiny configured before birth but with the existence of free-will we also have the power to live through the path of our destiny or to deviate from it. My question to this person is, how do we know if our choices are in line with our destiny or whether our choices are deviating? and is deviating from our destiny, in this case, bad?
In response to Jenesis' post, that is a very interesting concept of free will that you were presented with. I do not feel, however, that destiny as most people interpret it is something that can be deviated from. This response seems very familiar with a branching-forks model of time. On one interpretation of the model our lives are entirely temporally mapped out. It proceeds as a path from past to future, like most timelines. However, at every present moment the path branches into a nearly infinite number of other paths, each representing a choice we can make. When we make our choice, the corresponding path remains while the others disappear. An interesting concept that reconciles a kind of destiny with free will, but not one I am inclined to accept. I don't enjoy thinking of my life as a "choose your own adventure" story.
Many people cling to free will as it is difficult to understand what our signicance might be if we are merely puppets. Free will gives us a semblance of control in a ruthless, uncaring world. But perhaps the world is not to be controlled. Friedrich Nietzsche proposed the concept of "Amor fati"- love of fate. Instead of constantly and hoelessly searching for meaning and significance in life, we should instead enjoy the experience. My concern should not be whether I chose freely to attend UM, but to fully enjoy the experience while I am here. In concert with another of Nietzsche's ideas, that of eternal recurrence (one should desire nothing more greatly than to live every moment of their life in eternal repetition), I feel that life does not need to be controlled but enjoyed. I have not done justice to these relatively complicated theories but I encourage anyone who is interested to investigate them further.
I agree with what someone said in class about holding fate/destiny responsible for the larger things in life, i.e. stepping in front of speeding cars, and seeing free will as something God allows us to use, almost for his own amusement. The notion, and often excuse, that 'we are all human' is used quite frequently to reference when people make mistakes. I see this allowance of mistake-making a way for God or the gods, whichever you may believe, to get some enjoyment out of their creation. On another note, I do believe in fate in certain instances, most often, when it is convenient. You know those nights when you're walking around a bad area of town or those times when you know you're about to do something dangerous, like sky-diving or bungee jumping? I look to the supposed existence of destiny to get me through these times. It might sound weird, but when I think to myself, 'well, if it's my time to go, it's my time go', and somehow I find comfort in this.
7 comments:
note: by 'authentic' free will, i mean free will where we truly do make authentic decisions of our own, as opposed to 'apparent' free will [where it *seems* as though we are exercising free will but are really just acting out foreordained events]. the flip side of all this would be 'authentic' and 'apparent' destiny. [also: i am using 'destiny' and 'fate' as approximate synonyms here -- is there a reason why i should not?]
bear in mind too that the issue of CHANCE was brought up in class today. this is a radical alternative to either 'free will' OR 'destiny -- because both of those seem to imply some sort of conscious intention [whether by ourselves (free will) or by a god or gods (destiny/fate)]; chance, on the other hand, implies the kind of randomness that is the very antithesis of intentionality.
[that is true in the *modern* sense at least. the ancients had a goddess for this too: the greeks called her TUKHE; the romans, FORTVNA. whatever else this indicates, it implies an unwillingness in those cultures to conceive of things happening entirely at random and/or apart from the intention of anyone, human or divine.
none of what we are doing here is 'prescriptive'; that is, you are not being told *what* to think. but i do very much want you to ponder *how* you think -- how you grapple with these ideas, ancient and modern, and how it is that you come to the conclusions you do adopt. and what the implications are of those conclusions in your own life.
Authentic free will is difficult to defend in accordance with either a divine force or natural law. The existence of either an omniscient or omnipotent divine being poses the most obvious of problems. Any omniscient being would necessarily know our actions before we committed them. If our future actions are already known then it is impossible for us to act in any other way than that which is known by the divine, and thus we do not possess free will. Likewise, an omnipotent being would have the ability to make us do whatever he wished. Although some free will could be had, we would not possess entire free will as we would be at the mercy of the divine at all times. There is little consolation in rejecting the divine for the "new divine", science. Given the rigid laws of physics, matter is governed in determined ways. We, simply being large masses of matter, are no exception to these laws. This argument is more detailed and I will present it more thoroughly if people are interested.
My belief is that free will is a romantic concept for humans struggling to find meaning in life. Humans perpetually strive to differentiate themselves from the world around them. We do not wish to believe that we are globs of the same insignificant matter that makes up rocks and trash heaps. Even on divine view we place ourselves on the top of existence, save for the divine. ( as you can tell I speaking mainly of the monotheistic religions in this entire post as that is what I am most familiar with. I would love to be enlightened on other forms of religion that do not encounter the same problems).
The film clip I referenced in class:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvd3kaupZ60
For years I thought that it was possible to reconcile the notion of free will with that of an omniscient god. Recently, though, I saw that such a coexistence is far too good to be true.
Maybe it's my prejudice that prevents me from seeing clearly here- but I don't think there should be any argument about how far the 'omni' part of 'omniscient' extends. My notion of the divine has a God who is just too badass for time- a perpetual being that views our one-dimensional progression of time as a cubist's collage. As such, it would seem that no detail of our lives, however insignificant by any perspective, would elude this God- this atemporal god. If you accept that, it becomes very tough to weasel out of the claws of predestination.
I do not believe in chance. It is much to devoid of purpose to be true. However, I believe in the likely existence of destiny for that very same reason -- life would be much too devoid of purpose without it. Although I am not 100% certain on destiny, I do have some theories. I cannot quite separate the belief in theism from the belief in destiny. This is also why it is very difficult for me to understand deism...what is the purpose of there being gods if they take no part in anything? Anyhow, back to destiny--I must say I do believe in maktub--everything is written. However, I think that free-will is a concept that is essential in life. I would say free-will is a surreal element. It may be characterized as the belief that keeps human beings motivated. Free-will makes humans feel purposeful and this in turn makes us feel happy because a life of purpose is a life of well-being. Without free-will will life would be boring for us. We would have no say in anything and our sense of power - which we take such pride in - would be depleted. Still I do believe in working to attain what you desire, which might contradict the idea of pure destiny having absolute power because if something was meant for us then it would just be - effortlessly and by the power of destiny. This is where it gets complicated. Although our destiny is written at the moment of our birth, our lives are the enduring journeys we must undertake in order to uncover the lessons of our destiny and therefore come to discover ourselves (our destiny).
Someone once tried to reconcile the idea of destiny and free-will for me. This person said that everyone is born with their destiny, but we do have free-will and every choice we make from our free-will either follows in line with our destiny or deviates from it. In other words this person said that yes we do have a destiny configured before birth but with the existence of free-will we also have the power to live through the path of our destiny or to deviate from it.
My question to this person is, how do we know if our choices are in line with our destiny or whether our choices are deviating? and is deviating from our destiny, in this case, bad?
In response to Jenesis' post, that is a very interesting concept of free will that you were presented with. I do not feel, however, that destiny as most people interpret it is something that can be deviated from. This response seems very familiar with a branching-forks model of time. On one interpretation of the model our lives are entirely temporally mapped out. It proceeds as a path from past to future, like most timelines. However, at every present moment the path branches into a nearly infinite number of other paths, each representing a choice we can make. When we make our choice, the corresponding path remains while the others disappear. An interesting concept that reconciles a kind of destiny with free will, but not one I am inclined to accept. I don't enjoy thinking of my life as a "choose your own adventure" story.
Many people cling to free will as it is difficult to understand what our signicance might be if we are merely puppets. Free will gives us a semblance of control in a ruthless, uncaring world. But perhaps the world is not to be controlled. Friedrich Nietzsche proposed the concept of "Amor fati"- love of fate. Instead of constantly and hoelessly searching for meaning and significance in life, we should instead enjoy the experience. My concern should not be whether I chose freely to attend UM, but to fully enjoy the experience while I am here. In concert with another of Nietzsche's ideas, that of eternal recurrence (one should desire nothing more greatly than to live every moment of their life in eternal repetition), I feel that life does not need to be controlled but enjoyed. I have not done justice to these relatively complicated theories but I encourage anyone who is interested to investigate them further.
I agree with what someone said in class about holding fate/destiny responsible for the larger things in life, i.e. stepping in front of speeding cars, and seeing free will as something God allows us to use, almost for his own amusement. The notion, and often excuse, that 'we are all human' is used quite frequently to reference when people make mistakes. I see this allowance of mistake-making a way for God or the gods, whichever you may believe, to get some enjoyment out of their creation.
On another note, I do believe in fate in certain instances, most often, when it is convenient. You know those nights when you're walking around a bad area of town or those times when you know you're about to do something dangerous, like sky-diving or bungee jumping? I look to the supposed existence of destiny to get me through these times. It might sound weird, but when I think to myself, 'well, if it's my time to go, it's my time go', and somehow I find comfort in this.
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