Posts by Anthony Howard

mellon said:I find myself wondering why I actually chose one path over another by my own free will...

I wonder if you really made that choice yourself, or if you just feel like you did, when maybe something else was actually choosing for you instead....

mellon said:It honestly feels like true experience is the only thing that comes from free will, since we use those experiences to build our own identities over time... but if you trace everything back and question all those "free" decisions, you eventually hit that very first moment where no prior experience existed, leaving nothing behind to influence the choice except genetics and circumstances. I guess I'm looking for someone to convince me otherwise and explain what MY actual role is in any of this, because when you look at the math of heredity, life experience, and environment, there doesn't seem to be much room left for my part in it?!

Free will seems to be a pretty tiny thing, probably way smaller than most of us like to think, so I suppose your individual role in the whole machine is likely quite small too. Maybe we are given the opportunity to work on ourselves so that through a massive amount of effort we can actually acquire some degree of free will, but I guess it's worth asking how many people actually succeed at that? And honestly, how many even try?

lacerta said:It seems to me that the first possibility is assuming there is some kind of 'soul' acting as the vessel for free will, but bringing a soul into the conversation feels like adding an unnecessary complication to the whole thing.

And I mean, why does it necessarily soul have to be the term for whatever carries free will, especially when there are so many other terms for the self that aren't nearly as vague or, as you might say, complicated?

And yeah, looking at the options you're laying out, I'd say it's pretty certain that nobody is born with free will. It's something that can be earned, or as you put it, manifests at a certain point in time.

That's just how I see it, I guess. 🙂

Scott Cooper said:Jonathan Livingston

😁 🙏

just being myself... and maybe Amelie Pulen 🙂))

Nemrut Dag said:To put it simply, I suppose this downward slide is really just a brief moment where we all dip our toes back down toward the earth.

But wouldn't it be more interesting to call it an "awakening" instead?

".... maybe because death is just sitting there on your left shoulder, occasionally nudging you to remind you that it's present, and that nothing else truly matters beyond that, or that it hasn't quite reached out to touch you just yet...."