Free will stems from unconsciousness

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You say that a free will choice is always influenced by a reason but you also introduce an element of unpredictability into the decision making, thus combining consciousness with indeterminism. With that element of unpredictability it appears to be similar to my concept of a semi-random machine: we are influenced by reasons but are also subject to randomness, spontaneity
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Oh, now you are entirely misrepresenting my position. I won’t add anything substantial now; because everything has been said already(I kindly redirect you to a careful perusal of my previous messages on this thread). Just this: we are not subject to randomness(according to my opinion) - you omit the “agent” once again - though real freedom in acting is always unlikely, though it requires effort to resist the stronger impulses, it is possible and it happens. There’s unpredictability here, to be sure. The human can always choose among a range of thousand reasons to act and thus act in thousand different manners. But there is no randomness implied here. The conscious I chooses and determines what to do - the agent. That’s the reason it’s called free agent causation. - Well, I’ve said everything on my part that could have been said(especially in prior posts) and deem it unfit to add anything more.
 
TheWhim said:
The conscious I chooses and determines what to do - the agent.
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Is agent a thing or nothing? If he is a thing then his choosing is influenced by the properties or nature of this thing. If he is nothing then his choosing is influenced by nothing.
 
Is agent a thing or nothing? If he is a thing then his choosing is influenced by the properties or nature of this thing. If he is nothing then his choosing is influenced by nothing.
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The agent is not a thing but a spiritual person, or, if you’d prefer saying so, a mind, a soul. There are no properties to an entity belonging to the spiritual realm that could be compared to properties of a natural thing. - It’s useless to talk about freedom at all if we say it’s just all nature and there’s nothing that transcends nature in humanity. - Perhaps the point is best hit by saying that there is just one property with a mind/soul: freedom. And we cannot be possibly influenced by… freedom(that would be a contradiction in terms).
 
glowingembers said:
Free will stems from unconsciousness because in unconsciousness there is nothing that can influence our choice, while consciousness consists of things we are conscious of, and these things influence our choice. There’s a whole spectrum of things that influence us, varying in their degree of definiteness - feelings, emotions, thoughts, concepts, words, material things. All of these things attract our attention and evoke reactions in our bodies and thus influence our decision making.

If we were only consciousness we would only be reacting to things we are conscious of. We would have no free will because our choices would be determined by these things. On the other hand, if we were only unconsciousness we would have free will influenced by nothing, but we would also be conscious of nothing. By being both consciousness and unconsciousness we have free will and we are conscious of things we choose. We can also allow things to influence our choices but we still have that spark of free will that is independent of all things and enables us to do something that is not a consequence of other things, for example to create something inherently unpredictable or to choose to what degree we will allow this or that thing to influence us. We are engaged in the world but we are not of it - we are rooted in the unconsciousness that transcends all things, in the nothingness that initiates all things, in the first cause, the prime mover, one with God.

There seems to be a danger though: the things that influence us can start to control us, if we forget about our free will. By misusing our free will we can become attached to things, caught up in deterministic interactions and inertia governed by the law, and forget that we can actually choose. We can turn into puppets on strings pulled by mental, emotional and physical things. Even though we may believe that we choose our actions, we just react to stimuli and follow conditioned patterns of behavior. This may be what happened during the Fall: our eyes opened as our consciousness dawned, but we lost contact with God.
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Glowingembers:

It appears to me that you are over-thinking the meaning of “free will.” You seem to want to excluded the possibility that the will may well be determined, in the sense that it is limited by what we know (influences), and that choice stems from the existence of at least two possibilities of action, or, decision.

Because influences exist within us does not negate “freedom” from free will. This is what the anti-free-will supporter uses to try to annihilate the existence of “free will”. So that, in other words, our basic limitations as rational animals somehow precludes real free will. It does not. If it did, there would be no room for forgiveness of actions due to actual - not feigned - invincible ignorance, for example.

It might seem as though real freedom has to devolve from some sort of state where there is an absence of any kind of influence whatsoever, but, that is close to strawmaning the definition. What makes the choice between one course of action, or another, not free simply because there pre-exists some influence(s) contained within the chooser? That things are implies their own determinates.

jd
 
JDaniel said:
You seem to want to excluded the possibility that the will may well be determined, in the sense that it is limited by what we know (influences), and that choice stems from the existence of at least two possibilities of action, or, decision.
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What is free about a will that is determined by influences?
 
TheWhim said:
The agent is not a thing but a spiritual person, or, if you’d prefer saying so, a mind, a soul. There are no properties to an entity belonging to the spiritual realm that could be compared to properties of a natural thing. - It’s useless to talk about freedom at all if we say it’s just all nature and there’s nothing that transcends nature in humanity. - Perhaps the point is best hit by saying that there is just one property with a mind/soul: freedom. And we cannot be possibly influenced by… freedom(that would be a contradiction in terms).
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TheWhim,
if you can choose freely between a strong impulse and a weak impulse then you are free to choose one or the other. But why would you choose any of them?
 
The objective part of the mind is the slave of the ego or ‘doer I’. The ‘doer I’ is free to command whatever images it desires, it only answers to itself. This is where we find free will, but with a limitation. It is like a dog tied to a stake because the dog is free to do whatever it pleases, but it cannot go further than the length of the leash without experiencing pain. Jesus said, “Whatever you sow you shall reap.” Therefore, the evil person will have no greater enemy than himself because everything that strikes the evil person will just be that person’s own evil actions coming back. Pain has this function of teaching us the right path.
 
glowingembers said:
What is free about a will that is determined by influences?
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Glowingembers:

My question to you would be: "Why is it necessary to complicate the question with an additional layer (or, layers) of apparent self-awareness? How many layers must we traverse until we reach a final layer whereupon any and all possibility of influence will be completely eradicated? Is that the level of “unconsciousness” you speak of? What level is that? I have spoken with people herein who believe they can go 11 layers of self-awareness deep. I get to about six or seven and I run into the confusion of what my last count was. Or, do you mean to imply that there is no sentience at all at the unconscious level? If the latter is the case, then, what is it that one is trying to decide? What is the choice between? What are the choices?

The “freedom” of the will is much like the freedom of a thing. A thing is free only insofar as it is free within the constraints of its being. Thus, a thing cannot be then, at some other point, not be, then be again. Even God is not free in the absolute sense of that word. For, He cannot be and not be from time to time either.

Taking the concept of freedom to that level is the same as asking whether or not God can be and not be.

Additionally, I might ask whether or not an infinity of choices might resolve this conflict? That being asked, then, at what point would a choice ever be made? Further, what are some possibilities of choices? Do not the “objects” of choice(s) themselves influence?

jd
 
TheWhim,
if you can choose freely between a strong impulse and a weak impulse then you are free to choose one or the other. But why would you choose any of them?
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Oh! I already answered that one. It’s post #16:
However, free agent causation implies that the choosing of weaker impulses is not in itself controlled by impulses but is a free decision of the individual. - If we have to engage in such an attempted regress ad infinitum of impulses(and I don’t see at all why we should be compelled to do so), it must be remarked that such an attempt stops short at the very moment when a weaker impuls is chosen - in other words, the attempt stops short right at the beginning. The decision, you say, has been determined by weaker impulses. But the core fact that the decision initially has been taken against stronger impulses proves that is is not determined by impulses at all though it undoubtedly will be explainable by such weaker impulses. If it would have been determined by impulses the stronger impuls would inevitably have succeeded in claiming its priority over the weaker one.
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It must also be said that your question strikes me as tautological. If you choose a weaker impuls(that is, a ‘weaker’ reason of action) it’s futile to ask why you have chosen so, in other words, what makes your choosing explainable, because the answer is: that very weaker reason is the reason why you have chosen like you did and what makes your decision explainable. - As I said, there is a free agent who chooses. This agent happens to be a spiritual soul/mind. This free agent prefers to decide for this reason instead of that reason. Why so? Because of the very reason it takes side with. - To claim that there would still be needed another reason behind the decision-making is to claim your own standpoint and to dismiss free-agent-causation: namely, to claim that the conscient agent is always determined by reasons and that this process of determination never stops short at any point of freedom, of free decision-making, but goes back ad infinitum. - You’ve actually defined into your question what you want to prove all along.
 
JDaniel said:
My question to you would be: "Why is it necessary to complicate the question with an additional layer (or, layers) of apparent self-awareness? How many layers must we traverse until we reach a final layer whereupon any and all possibility of influence will be completely eradicated? Is that the level of “unconsciousness” you speak of? What level is that? I have spoken with people herein who believe they can go 11 layers of self-awareness deep. I get to about six or seven and I run into the confusion of what my last count was. Or, do you mean to imply that there is no sentience at all at the unconscious level? If the latter is the case, then, what is it that one is trying to decide? What is the choice between? What are the choices?
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There seem to be no choices. You come into the world with no choice because you are not conscious of anything. Then you become conscious and your behavior starts to be influenced by things.
 
TheWhim said:
This free agent prefers to decide for this reason instead of that reason. Why so? Because of the very reason it takes side with.
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However, the agent’s decision is not completely explainable by the weaker reason, if there was also the stronger reason available. So in order to complete the explanation I would think that the agent has a preference (reason) that leads him to choose the weaker reason. But you say that the agent has no preference (because he is a mind/soul whose only property is freedom). Then I would think that in order to complete the explanation of his choice we must invoke randomness (because the weaker reason cannot completely explain the decision).

How is randomness different from freedom? They seem identical:

Randomness and freedom are not determined by any reason, they are unexplainable by reasons. Randomness and freedom cannot be controlled by the agent.
 
So in order to complete the explanation I would think that the agent has a preference (reason) that leads him to choose the weaker reason.
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Why do you subsume the “preference” under the headline of “reason” and not under the headline of “individual mind/soul - freedom”?

This would entirely resolve your difficulty.
 
glowingembers said:
There seem to be no choices. You come into the world with no choice because you are not conscious of anything. Then you become conscious and your behavior starts to be influenced by things.
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That is correct. However, “no choices” is not equivalent to “absolute freedom” of choice. I know it seems as though it should be that way, but, we can only choose between what we know; or, between what we know and some exquisite whim - that influences one to choose purely for the sake of choosing, for example. And, at that point even that becomes a reason.

jd
 
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