Are We Deterministic Robots?

[AshvinP]

if we are self-aware, always expanding our knowledge of our own inner nature, we have the opportunity to influence that nature in ways which allow for more degrees of spiritual activity.

But the desire to expand our own inner nature is determined by our inner nature. It's a tautology.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but as far as we are concerned, from our relative perspective (the only one we will ever know), the expansion of inner nature allows us more degrees of freedom than we had the day before.

[Astra052]

I can imagine an idealist world where there is no "free will" so to speak. Either way we're still dealing with causation moving us towards certain things. I'm pretty much agnostic on free will and don't consider it to be a terribly interesting debate. The conclusion I've basicallly come to is that whether or not we have free will we are going to do the things we want to do. I really think if you saw 2 of your lives with one being in a world with free will and one without they would look basically identical. You're always going to do what you want to do.

[Robert Arvay]

. . . The abstract metaphysical question of whether every occurrence has been determined from the "beginning" of existence cannot be answered and, fortunately, is completely irrelevant to anything of practical significance in our lives.

The relevance concerns whether we regard each other as accountable for our deeds, or whether we regard each other as robots.

[Simon Adams]

Bernardo does not seem to distinguish between instinct and choice, as if choice is just a higher level instinct. In other words there are far more inputs into what we call a choice (emotions, qualia, neuroses), but what happens will always just be the result of those inputs combined with instinct. It’s like a more complicated computer program, but still a fixed program nonetheless. I guess it’s the natural result of extending the whirlpool analogy. Perhaps there is a sense in which it’s also influenced by his Disassociated Identity Disorder analogy.

I’m personally confident free will is genuine (within a context of all kinds of influences), and that it’s important to accept it as genuine. In some ways we are defined by our choices. Although it’s not a great example, I’ve had a couple of dreams where I was observing but not having any control of ‘my’ choices. The fact that ‘I’ was still acting in the world could be said to show that this was just a realisation of the reality, and indeed I think there is a way we can live on ‘autopilot’, a kind of partially conscious mode. But actually the loss of genuine agency was more like a disintegration, an artificial splitting of normally irreducible aspects of consciousness.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Let us suppose, for the sake of the argument, that we have no free will. Okay, then. What must follow from that is that all of our thoughts, words and deeds are predetermined by physical laws of causation.

It occurs to me that this is an entirely physicalist framing of the question. Under idealism, the laws of causation, e.g. gravity, are not other than the primary ideation and will of M@L, and so their influence on its 'alters' must be factored in. However, there are far more subliminal factors, influences, inputs, etc, that also play into our behaviour. Indeed, the framing of the question in physicalist terms has been influenced by the unwitting indoctrination into its paradigm that pervades the very language learned from day one—not to mention many adulterated religious teachings. Then there are repressed, obfuscated factors relegated deep in the subconscious that nonetheless play into, and unconsciously bias our choices and interactions, while being projected unawares. For example, to suggest that deeply buried, and blocked from memory events of being abused as a child have no subliminal bearing on one's behaviour throughout one's life would be utter nonsense. And while hypothetically one is 'free' to delve into and resolve that terror through agonizing shadow work, can it be truly surprising that in such cases many never do, but rather addictively self-medicate, or resort to other dysfunctional or sub-optimal ways to deal with the fallout of depression, rage, anxiety, ptsd, etc, all the way to their death beds. Is it solely the wounded one who is accountable for that? What of the cultural and parental context, and the revelation that the abuser was likewise wounded and acting out repressed shadow influences. Yes, this may be an extreme example, but even far less extreme shadow influences can have problematic consequences, which I'd suggest that only a rare few are entirely free from. If it were so easy to just mindfully overcome all such subliminal factors in our decision making and interactions, I dare say our society at large, and even the microcosm of our interactions here, would run far more efficaciously. But hey, to paraphrase a wise teaching: "Forgive them Father for they know not what is relegated to the subconscious."

[Jim Cross]

Under idealism, the laws of causation, e.g. gravity, are not other than the primary ideation and will of M@L, and so their influence on its 'alters' must be factored in.

So we are robots of M@L?

Broadly speaking I think everything causes everything but that effectively makes the concept of causation meaningless. More concretely I like to think of systems with inputs and outputs that have internal dynamics. To the extent, the brain/alter/mind is a system (BK with the Markov blanket concept seems to think so) then it can be said to have free will - that is, it is able to cause things.

There is another aspect to complex systems which is addressed in the links I provided to this and the previous post by Robert. Complex systems are not strictly deterministic. They can't be modeled with algorithms. The same inputs will not always produce the same outputs. In that sense too, the brain and the universe are alike.

[AshvinP]

. . . The abstract metaphysical question of whether every occurrence has been determined from the "beginning" of existence cannot be answered and, fortunately, is completely irrelevant to anything of practical significance in our lives.

The relevance concerns whether we regard each other as accountable for our deeds, or whether we regard each other as robots.

No one regards other people "as robots". If someone does, then they have much bigger problems than figuring out the metaphysics of free will, like figuring out how to stop being a complete psychopath.

[AshvinP]

. . . The abstract metaphysical question of whether every occurrence has been determined from the "beginning" of existence cannot be answered and, fortunately, is completely irrelevant to anything of practical significance in our lives.

The relevance concerns whether we regard each other as accountable for our deeds, or whether we regard each other as robots.

No one regards other people "as robots". If someone does, then they have much bigger problems than figuring out the metaphysics of free will, like figuring out how to stop being a complete psychopath.

I want to add that I am not suggesting the increasing mechanization of humanity is not a cause for concern, because it certainly is. Yet I doubt we will find any productive answers for dealing with that concern through metaphysical debates about free will. Humans who feel increasingly unfree will need to reverse that process through their individual spiritual growth, realizing they are the only ones who have the power to give themselves the freedom they cannot find from the "external" world.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Humans who feel increasingly unfree will need to reverse that process through their individual spiritual growth, realizing they are the only ones who have the power to give themselves the freedom they cannot find from the "external" world.

Agreed, ultimately only I could take that step. However, retrospectively I now see it as stage-specific, and I had to be ripe to take the step, to actually recognize that I was being driven by subliminal factors and influences, and be ready to undergo the painstaking shadow work that brings the subconscious into the conscious so that one could be healed. It's easy now to look back on it all from the current stage and imagine that I could or should have acted sooner. However, I'm not sure now that I could have, or how I would have been forced through any warning of suffering-prone repercussions, or that it wasn't triggered from some oversoul purview, as opposed to solely by one's own 'free' will. Indeed, sometimes now it seems, as the song goes, such freedom was just another word for nothing left to lose.

[AshvinP]

Humans who feel increasingly unfree will need to reverse that process through their individual spiritual growth, realizing they are the only ones who have the power to give themselves the freedom they cannot find from the "external" world.

Agreed, ultimately only I could take that step. However, retrospectively I now see it as stage-specific, and I had to be ripe to take the step, to actually recognize that I was being driven by subliminal factors and influences, and be ready to undergo the painstaking shadow work that brings the subconscious into the conscious so that one could be healed. It's easy now to look back on it all from the current stage and imagine that I could or should have acted sooner. However, I'm not sure now that I could have, or how I would have been forced through any warning of suffering-prone repercussions, or that it wasn't triggered from some oversoul purview, as opposed to solely by one's own 'free' will. Indeed, sometimes now it seems, as the song goes, such freedom was just another word for nothing left to lose.

Right. We should be clear that, in terms of freedom, i.e. full Self-determination, none of us are yet free. We are all determined from without in various aspects of our lives. Complete spiritual freedom is an ideal that will take a long time to reach, and it will not be simply given to us as a gift from something external, but only earned from within.