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Free Will VS Predestination/Predetermination
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
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I see this cropping up from time to time - interviews with Psychologists, Physicists, Biologists, and the question is reduced to Free Will or Determinism.
I am clearly a firm believer in Free Will - and that the question itself is a red herring that paints one into a corner - much as asking someone "Would you prefer to die by drowning or hanging?", when, in fact, that someone had no intent of dying whatsoever and so the question is irrelevant.
Determinists subscribe to the mechanical view of the universe as laid down by Newton or Galileo, that cause follows effect, that we, as people, are of necessity driven by a thousand subconscious "causes" of which we can recognize only a few at a time. These "causes" result in most of the largely unconscious day to day decisions we make. Therefore we can be seen as being driven by unconscious urges and reaction to external forces and cues such as advertising, peers, society, people in the street, etc, etc...
They would argue that as we are largely unaware of the forces that shape us and control our behavior we are therefore little more than automatons, admittedly with a very complex programming, but automatons nonetheless.
To a degree this is true - but like many things it's a question of degree. We are all - to one degree or another - Schizophrenic, Neurotic, Obsessive, etc, etc - but our place on the scale of labels determines whether we take it as part of our identity or not.
I personally disagree with a great many of the physical and psychiatric diagnoses handed out for the sole reason that it disempowers the patient and takes away the ability for them to try and effect positive change and accept responsibility for their actions. Not that they are necessarily responsible for their disease or condition, but people that accept helplessness never get better, people who accept responsibility and take action occasionally do. A cancer patient might resign himself to a terminal outcome on the recommendation of their physician, when they could instead be making adjustments to their lifestyle and attempting to remedy the causal factors that led to the cancer. And I've met a lot of mentally ill people that seemed to accept their illness, as opposed to attempting to understand and control it. No diagnosis should be an excuse or a defining part of anyone's character or circumstance.
I fundamentally disagree with the question and would argue that a better question might be "How can we best reduce the influence of internal arguments and external influence to achieve the results that we truly want?". This, then, supposes we have some agency in our fate and by the very supposing we take responsibility and agency.
Meditation
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 1134
It takes a month to make a habit or so they say, and I'm on my way, I'm on my way. I get my phone ready, I've got to time this. Get into pose. I've got my own poses.
Then START:
"gotta make a list I'm gonna kill...and...wait! That's a thought...let it go...
...wonder what I'll have for lunch...WAIT! THOUGHT! LET IT GO
..and then I'm gonna...and ... THOUGHTS!! BAD! CLEAR MY HEAD!! IMAGINE SWEEPING THE LEAVES AND THE LEAVES ARE THOUGHTS...
NO, DAMN, THOSE ARE THOUGHTS TOO
...how much money is it there left in the bank? THOUGHT! THOUGHT! LET IT GO!!!
...this place is a dump...gotta clean it...
THOUGHT!!!"
Eventually after a long while of wrestling inane thoughts that just percolate up like the bubbles in champagne I arrive at a place like this:
"...
...I'm bored...THOUGHT!!...
just breathe...THOUGHT!...
..."
END. Open my eyes, stop timer. Record time. Over 22 minutes, a new record, I'm getting better at this...Now the actual time I'm actually in any sort of meditative state - even at 22 minutes, can't possibly be even 1 minute. But I am noticing flickers in the white noise and assure myself that I will get better - qualitative as well as quantitative, like anything it's just a matter of practice...
The power of gaze
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1566
It is a common trope that vision has the power to affect what it gazes upon - and there are no end of figures of speech that seem to back that up. Think: "She felt his eyes burning...", 'feel' and 'burning' suggest a tactile response to the gaze, and we are all aware of that uncomfortable feeling or prickling upon the nape of our neck, then turning to find somebody looking upon us. This has its precedent in antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory_(vision) - that the eyes emit photons or rays responsible for seeing - and while we would generally laugh there are some recent psychological studies done that seem to suggest that we still unconsciously believe it: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/1/328.
The Nimbus, Aureola, Glory or Halo
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
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Now again thanks to Montague for introducing me to a new idea. I had long accepted the Halo as an artistic convention used to highlight the divinity of certain personages.
Not so, the Halo was first attempted to illustrate the irradiation that was said to accompany people of great divinity - Saints were said to glow with a great light - and the conventions of artists were attempts at replicating this.
He then discusses the bodies of Saints which were recorded as emitting light, which I find a lot easier to believe, it might be rare but the right combination of fungi and decomposition could conceivably make a corpse luminous.
Oddly enough, Google seems to turn up results that suggest it might not be impossible: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006256 && https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15947465. A long way from a Halo, but that makes 2 things I didn't know. Curious and curiouser...
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