Are we slaves?

[Bradski]

A simple hypothetical question should help solve the dilemma:

You made a series of decisions today. If the clock was rewound and the day was played out again, with everything being EXACTLY the same, would you make the same decisions?

If the answer is yes, and I can’t see how it could be otherwise, then that implies that the circumstances, coupled with our personal preferences at that time governed our choices. Replay them a million times and we will still make the same choices. It makes no sense to say that we had a choice in what we decided to do if we always make the same decision.

If we would make a different choice, then the only thing that can possibly be different is our personal preferences. If they change for no reason (only the circumstances would affect them), then we act randomly.

 

[Bahman]

I comment that there is a difference between rational beings and non rational beings, because what you present applies to non-rational beings. You are saying that it applies to rational beings also because there is a change to personality due to experience. The will and the intelligence, that is the capability of judgment, are attributes of the rational soul not the body, since that power of judgment is of the soul, that power is not a result of experiences, however the experiences themselves provide the subject matter for judgments. By conscience, the person’s reason judges the morality of his actions. This is assisted by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Non rational creatures do not have this help.

Lets accept the fact that we can divide a alive being to soul and body. I don’t agree that intelligence is an attribute of soul but body. I believe that all creatures have intelligence. That is in fact our bodies which make us different. This can be understood from the fact that a person with a brain damage become unintelligent or at worst can go to state of vegetation.

I still don’t see how my argument fails to be applied to rational beings since rationality is an attribute of personality.

 

[John_Martin]

A simple hypothetical question should help solve the dilemma:

You made a series of decisions today. If the clock was rewound and the day was played out again, with everything being EXACTLY the same, would you make the same decisions?

If the answer is yes, and I can’t see how it could be otherwise, then that implies that the circumstances, coupled with our personal preferences at that time governed our choices. Replay them a million times and we will still make the same choices. It makes no sense to say that we had a choice in what we decided to do if we always make the same decision.

If we would make a different choice, then the only thing that can possibly be different is our personal preferences. If they change for no reason (only the circumstances would affect them), then we act randomly.

That only would show one’s wisdom is just as wise on the replays as the first time through. It does not display an absence of freedom or of free will, which is the performance of activity apart from compulsion, by assenting to (and even inventing) the activity.

The fact is, the choice is not between objects, the choice of free will is that you desire something “out there in the world”, and you with your reason devise a route to get it, a route filled with uncertainty and difficulty that only a slave would normally do, but you “CHOOSE TO DO IT YOURSELF” to reach your desire.

The Free Will choice is not about the thing desired.
The Free Will choice is about freely devising and en-Acting the difficult work or task that is the Means to the End.

The WILL is about the END
The FREE WILL is about freely doing the MEANS (which would never be chosen apart from the fact that the WILL (not free will) is powerful to direct ITSELF to desire to do things that have no innate desirability)

Freedom is about willingness, not about options.

 

[Bahman]

A simple hypothetical question should help solve the dilemma:

You made a series of decisions today. If the clock was rewound and the day was played out again, with everything being EXACTLY the same, would you make the same decisions?

If the answer is yes, and I can’t see how it could be otherwise, then that implies that the circumstances, coupled with our personal preferences at that time governed our choices. Replay them a million times and we will still make the same choices. It makes no sense to say that we had a choice in what we decided to do if we always make the same decision.

If we would make a different choice, then the only thing that can possibly be different is our personal preferences. If they change for no reason (only the circumstances would affect them), then we act randomly.

This is a correct statement. We only make different choices if our options are equally liked. This is either free will or we just play it randomly and we cannot distinguish which one is correct.

 

[tonyrey]

We are slaves of our limitations and the limitations of the world but no one can enslave our minds…

 

[o_mlly]

A simple hypothetical question should help solve the dilemma:

You made a series of decisions today. If the clock was rewound and the day was played out again, with everything being EXACTLY the same, would you make the same decisions?

If the answer is yes, and I can’t see how it could be otherwise, then that implies that the circumstances, coupled with our personal preferences at that time governed our choices. Replay them a million times and we will still make the same choices. It makes no sense to say that we had a choice in what we decided to do if we always make the same decision.

If we would make a different choice, then the only thing that can possibly be different is our personal preferences. If they change for no reason (only the circumstances would affect them), then we act randomly.

Economists often use the ceteris paribus caveat to protect their theory from a reality test. For instance – If the price of a Coke is > 106% of the price of Pepsi, the consumer will always choose Pepsi - ceteris paribus. But of course, all other things are never equal. After a six-pack of Pepsi’s, I may tire of its taste and cough up the extra cash for a Coke. As you note, a decisive variable is always one’s personal preferences.

Personal preference also relates to the ordering of one’s values. Values change over time and they change for a reason. Everyone always chooses what they at the time believe is good for them. But their idea of what the good is changes.

If the subject matter involves a decision with moral content, Catholics believe one cannot choose the real good unless God provides the enabling grace which He always does. All goodness comes from God. A disordered value system may struggle with this grace and accept or, regrettably, reject it.

Over time, if one’s value system is ordered to God’s will, they possess habitual grace, the grace to choose, when confronted with a moral decision, the good every time.

 

[Vico]

Lets accept the fact that we can divide a alive being to soul and body. I don’t agree that intelligence is an attribute of soul but body. I believe that all creatures have intelligence. That is in fact our bodies which make us different. This can be understood from the fact that a person with a brain damage become unintelligent or at worst can go to state of vegetation.

I still don’t see how my argument fails to be applied to rational beings since rationality is an attribute of personality.

Since the body is temporary but not the soul it cannot be that the intelligence and will reside in the body for they would be destroyed. This is contrary to the teaching of resurrection. The soul attributes provide uniqueness in addition to to a soul being potentially united to only one body, in formation of a person.

The position I am giving is Catholic dualistic, non materialistic position, which is incompatible with materialism or pantheism. If you are following those lines, then it will not make sense because these are different philosophies.

 

[Bahman]

Since the body is temporary but not the soul it cannot be that the intelligence and will reside in the body for they would be destroyed. This is contrary to the teaching of resurrection. The soul attributes provide uniqueness in addition to to a soul being potentially united to only one body, in formation of a person.

The teaching of resurrection can be wrong when it cannot explain why a person by brain damage could be unintelligent.

The position I am giving is Catholic dualistic, non materialistic position, which is incompatible with materialism or pantheism. If you are following those lines, then it will not make sense because these are different philosophies.

I accepted dualist picture for sake of argument.

 

[o_mlly]

This is a correct statement. We only make different choices if our options are equally liked. This is either free will or we just play it randomly and we cannot distinguish which one is correct.

The hypothetical, I think, does not address the topic. “If the clock was rewound …” simply states what the poet calls the primal sympathy: “In the primal sympathy. Which having been must ever be.” Wordsworth Ode to Immortality

While we cannot change history, we are not doomed to repeat it.

 

[HelenRose]

This problem was bothering me for a while. Here there is the argument: Our decisions are the result of the situations we are imposed to and our personalities. The situation define options which we have no control on it. Our personalities are partly the result of what we inherited and how our lives experiences shape our personalities which we have no control on them too. This means that we have no control on our decisions hence free will is an illusion, in another word we are slave.

Your thought?

It has always been interesting to me to observe how different lines of faith run along the same lines of scientific thought.
Within the Christian communities we have these two distinct ways of thought.

Freewill -  Catholic thought
No Free will - Calvin

These two lines of thought are found in psychology as well. And are debated between psychologists .​

In the study of the existence of the universe we have:

Buddhism and Hinduism = time has no beginning - time is a circle that forever repeats itself.
Christianity = “And there was light” = time had a beginning.

These two lines of thought are also debated within the scientific world.

---

As a Catholic I believe that we do have free will and that time has a beginning. But I do understand why these concepts can be debated.

 

[Bradski]

Economists often use the ceteris paribus caveat to protect their theory from a reality test. For instance – If the price of a Coke is > 106% of the price of Pepsi, the consumer will always choose Pepsi - ceteris paribus. But of course, all other things are never equal. After a six-pack of Pepsi’s, I may tire of its taste and cough up the extra cash for a Coke. As you note, a decisive variable is always one’s personal preferences.

Doesn’t that prove the case? Every time you have the six pack of Pepsi, you’ll switch to Coke. If you do it the first time and you replay the scene and the reasons and personal preferences and conditions are exactly the same, then you’ll make the same choice.

 

[Aloysium]

Doesn’t that prove the case? Every time you have the six pack of Pepsi, you’ll switch to Coke. If you do it the first time and you replay the scene and the reasons and personal preferences and conditions are exactly the same, then you’ll make the same choice.

A simple hypothetical question should help solve the dilemma:

You made a series of decisions today. If the clock was rewound and the day was played out again, with everything being EXACTLY the same, would you make the same decisions?

If the answer is yes, and I can’t see how it could be otherwise, then that implies that the circumstances, coupled with our personal preferences at that time governed our choices. Replay them a million times and we will still make the same choices. It makes no sense to say that we had a choice in what we decided to do if we always make the same decision.

If we would make a different choice, then the only thing that can possibly be different is our personal preferences. If they change for no reason (only the circumstances would affect them), then we act randomly.

Huh?

You do see the circular argument, right?
If a day is structured such that it can be replayed in an identical fashion, it will be replayed the same way every time.
You make an assumption and use it to prove that it is correct.

That seems to be what you claim religions are doing when in fact they are not describing hypotheticals but reality as it has been revealed or is realized.
Very different indeed.

There is nothing here to prove or disprove the concept of free will.
It is not a matter of proof; you know it yourself when you make a choice through which you define yourself.

You chose to call yourself a member of the Rational Rat Pack probably related to its effect on others and/or how you want to present yourself, whatever.
There would be clearly unconscious motives going back to your youth, but it was a choice you made, and no one forced you.
It will affect some of the interactions here, which consequently will have some, albeit small, impact on your sense of self.
This is a minor example which illustrates how in a finite way we are free.

The weird scenario you describe could not possibly exist; so, what is the point? That one can imagine something totally fantastic?
This probably has something to do with why people become fundamentalists, religious or atheist, to reign in their imaginations to what is rational.

Thinking about reality as it is, the first objection would be that you cannot create a day divorced from all time and space.
Also, given the random noise that naturally occurs in any system and the huge, probably infinite complexity of the underlying algorithm, rendering such a day from start to finish, it would be impossible to make each day the same.
And how could one determine that each day was the same or different?

What?! It does not make sense in any possible way.

 

[Vico]

The teaching of resurrection can be wrong when it cannot explain why a person by brain damage could be unintelligent.

I accepted dualist picture for sake of argument.

The intelligence and will are of the rational soul. The rational soul accounts for non-sensory knowledge, knowledge of universals, and ability to be self-aware. The sensitive faculties associated with the body are not the same as the rational soul. It can be understood as St. Thomas wrote in Summa Theologica ****
There is another operation of the soul, which is indeed performed through a corporeal organ, but not through a corporeal quality, and this is the operation of the ‘sensitive soul.’

The corporeal organs are the senses and the abilities of the sensitive soul is to store, use, and process obtained knowledge and information (including imagination, common sense, estimation, and the memory).

The rational soul remains when the sensitive deteriorates, as you described.

 

[Bahman]

The intelligence and will are of the rational soul. The rational soul accounts for non-sensory knowledge, knowledge of universals, and ability to be self-aware. The sensitive faculties associated with the body are not the same as the rational soul. It can be understood as St. Thomas wrote in Summa Theologica ****
There is another operation of the soul, which is indeed performed through a corporeal organ, but not through a corporeal quality, and this is the operation of the ‘sensitive soul.’

The corporeal organs are the senses and the abilities of the sensitive soul is to store, use, and process obtained knowledge and information (including imagination, common sense, estimation, and the memory).

The rational soul remains when the sensitive deteriorates, as you described.

What is the corporeal quality?

 

[Vico]

What is the corporeal quality?

Examples are hot, cold, wet, dry. Eyes, for example, do not function by becoming hot, cold, wet, or dry.

 

[o_mlly]

Doesn’t that prove the case? Every time you have the six pack of Pepsi, you’ll switch to Coke. If you do it the first time and you replay the scene and the reasons and personal preferences and conditions are exactly the same, then you’ll make the same choice.

Because the hypothetical dismisses time, speed and motion – the fundamentals of physics – it is not instructive.