As above, please define 'volition'. I am speaking of 'agency', which may or may not be the same thing.

Volition is the power to choose.

Volition is the power to choose. — frank

Fair enough. When you wrote those words quoted above, did you:

a) in fact want to say something else entirely, but these are the words that came out of your fingers interacting with the keyboard, somehow?
b) not want to say anything in particular, these are just words that came out of your fingers interacting with the keyboard in automatic writing mode?
c) have something you wanted to say, and after cursorly considering a few options, selected what appeared the best to say what you wanted to say?
d) other - please specify.

In other words, can you explain the emergence on TPF of the Volition definition above, as the power to chose, without referring to some act of will? Without invoking some sort of intent on your side?

It was like c. I'm a little Aspy, so sometimes I do struggle to put my thoughts into words, but free will/determinism is old territory for me. "Volition is the power to choose" just rolls off my tongue now.

Well then, your definition of 'Volition' above -- or the very question "does volition exist?" for that matter -- would not even exist as a question or definition, if not for some act of human agency (a deliberate choice being made), aka answer c.

It would not have emerged into this world if volition did not exist.

If 'volition' is defined as the capacity to select a unique option amongst several considered options, you display it everytime you write a post here and chose your words a bit carefully.

And if someone tells that your choice only appears deliberate but in fact it's not, because he says that we're just the puppets of your molecules... well, ask yourself why you should trust him, if he is indeed just a puppet of his own molecules and not a cogent, rational, logical thinker... The only reason we listen to others in the first place is because we assume that their thinking is potentially useful, and more meaningful than a chemical soup.

The true tragedy of life is NOT that we can't analyse 'meaning' or 'volition'; it is that we are trapped in meaning, and trapped in choice-making. To make sense of the world is our fate, not our choice. To act is our destiny, to chose, our principal function. Even not to act is a type of action, even not chosing is a form of choice... We are shackled to choice. We have no choice but to chose. That's the real tragedy of life.

That's why I find art and poetry and dreams and metidation useful, they help me get out of the choice analytics treadmill. Breathe a bit, take a break. Make room for mystery as a fact of life. It's important to losen the mental determinism a bit, to give one's mental chains some slack, and some rest.

Laise un peu de vague à ton âme, as the poet put it. Allow your soul to be a little vague.

When time was born, you were already there in potential waiting for your turn on the stage. You were always destined to make the above post in just that way, to mean what you meant, and to feel what you felt. The universe is a monolith. Possibility is a tool for analysis where our eyes and ears fall short.

This is actualism. It arises from simple logic more assuredly than the intuition that we're free. Logic never defeats that intuition, though.

So it seems it must be both.

When time was born, you were already there in potential waiting for your turn on the stage. — frank

That strikes me as hard to believe. But yeah, as long as human thoughts count for something, I would say that determinism is internally logical.

That strikes me as hard to believe. — Olivier5

Maybe for you, but it was a cornerstone of the European medieval world view. The wheel of fortune was a symbol of it. It's just as much a part of human thought as the idea of freedom. This opposition is a source of dynamism in the realms of intellect, creativity, and ethics. Think of it as a spectrum that the pendulum of the soul wanders through. The extremes are beyond conception: either total freedom or, as you point out, the loss of the self in the monolith.

"The loss of the self in the monolith" sounds like an apt description of death. Our body will become mineral, as a matter of fact. But while we are alive, we're fighting the darn monolith, the way I see it. Life is about fighting entropy, not submitting to it. Even if we know we can't win that fight for very long, that's what we do when we are alive.

it was a cornerstone of the European medieval world view. The wheel of fortune was a symbol of it. — frank

Fortune is an ancient personification (deification) of randomness. The idea behind the wheel of fortune -- as I understand it -- is that one cannot be lucky or unlucky for very long; Fortuna is fickle and changing. Which is basically true, poetry set aside. Of course it was framed during early medieval times within a Christian discourse about God's intervention on earth, and therefore given a more determinist interpretation (God is behind apparent randomness, acting through it).

Even if we know we can't win that fight for very long, that's what we do when we are alive. — Olivier5

If we call it the spirit of life, its beauty and grandeur only come into focus from the vantage point of the grave.

And the day may come when you need to surrender and accept humanity as it is. Then you'll clearly see how the nazi comes to be and you'll know it could have been you. You were just lucky.

Fortune is an ancient personification (deification) of randomness. — Olivier5

No it isn't.

Of course the nazi could have been me. I was lucky.


O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis;
vita detestabilis
nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis
et inanis,
rota tu volubilis,
status malus,
vana salus
semper dissolubilis,
obumbrata
et velata
michi quoque niteris;
nunc per ludum
dorsum nudum
fero tui sceleris. ....

O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
ever waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
playing with mental clarity;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,
shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy. ...

In Carmina Burana

:hearts: