Anyway it seems obvious to me that the question of agency or free will has a history which predates the deliberations and deliverance of the church fathers, and that was all I was responding to. I haven't made bold to comment on the article, since I haven't read it — Janus
my shoes — Banno
It easy to say "the will is itself", but unless we can demonstrate that there is actually something real which is being referred to as "the will", such an assertion is pointless. — Metaphysician Undercover
This makes absolutely no sense to me, to say that "will is the sum total of...". How can you add up a whole bunch of distinct things and say the total of all those things is what is called "will". That's like saying the sum total of all living things is the soul. It makes no sense. If you were adding a bunch of the same type of things, like when we say the sum total of all human beings equals "humanity", it would sort of make sense. But you are proposing to add together a whole bunch of different things, thoughts, activities, values, etc., and say all these different things together is "will". You might as well just say the human being is will, but that makes no sense. — Metaphysician Undercover
You are your shoes? The shoe store must be an existential nightmare for you.
:grin: — ZzzoneiroCosm
I've been scouring the SEP for evidence that shoes have free will — ZzzoneiroCosm
What are you if you are not your thoughts and actions? — Garrett Travers
What are you if you are not your thoughts and actions? — Garrett Travers
I've been scouring the SEP for evidence that shoes have free will. — ZzzoneiroCosm
No, your brain controls the entire body you see in the mirror. — Garrett Travers
Philohilarity aside, thank you for the article. — ZzzoneiroCosm
I think it's fair to say that if we have any capability of control at all, then that is a quantum of freedom. If we never could have done otherwise than we did, then freedom is an illusion; our lives are pre-determined or at least not determined by us. — Janus
That said, in the absence of external political or social forces controlling us, we can enjoy a felt freedom; would it matter if, on some externalist perspective alien to our actual lives, the feeling of freedom were thought to be an illusion? — Janus
Anyway it seems obvious to me that the question of agency or free will has a history which predates the deliberations and deliverance of the church fathers, and that was all I was responding to. I haven't made bold to comment on the article, since I haven't read it, but only on the generalized comments of others. I don't intend to read the article, so I won't discover whether Arendt makes the claim that the idea of free will originated with the church fathers, and that's OK. — Janus
However, that definition leads to absurd consequences because it means traffic lights would make you less free. — Tobias
Conclusion: Because the term 'will' describes and encompasses all human emotions and actions. And because those emotions and actions are controlled by the brain in a vast interconnected system that is not regulated by the conscious mind, which has very limited capacity for agency. And because the brain is self-perpetuating without fail by it's own genetically determined laws. The term 'will' simply describes the emergence of human behavior and action as generated and regulated by the brain. There is no "you" outside of the brain's operation, there is no 'will' outside of the brain's operation. There is only the brain's operation and the emergence of brain associated activity. Thus, the 'will' describes the sum total of individual human emotion and action, the emergent expression of all of the brain's operations and the processes that contribute to them. — Garrett Travers
No, I didn't. The brain is controlling all of these "distinct" things, as explained above. — Garrett Travers
...now imagine all humans connected to a central hub of control and regulation, that's your brain... — Garrett Travers
It is expressed in the passage with the distinction between "common good" and "private good", such that the "private good" is always sinful. This means that there is an inherent incompatibility between the common good and the private good. But this is faulty by Aristotelian principles, and those expressed by Aquinas, which were later accepted by Catholic moralists. — Metaphysician Undercover
[God] himself is the source of our bliss and he himself is the goal of all our striving. By our election of him as our goal … we direct our course towards him with love, so that in reaching him we may fnd our rest and attain our happiness because we have achieved our fulfillment in him. For our Good, that Final Good about which the philosophers dispute, is nothing else but to cleave to him whose spiritual embrace, if one may so express, it fills the intellectual soul and makes it fertile with true virtues — City of God, 10.3, translated by Betterson
It is argued in many places by Plato, that we knowingly do what is wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover
“Anyway, think about it this way,” I said: “aren’t hunger and thirst and [585B] things like that certain kinds of emptiness in the condition that involves the body?” “What else?” “And isn’t ignorance or lack of understanding an emptiness in the condition that involves the soul?” — Plato. Republic, 585b, translated by Joe Sachs
I'm sorry if this disappoints you, but I find your conception of "will" to be completely incoherent. — Metaphysician Undercover
Self-perpetuating, and determined by genetics, contradict each other. — Metaphysician Undercover
And your propensity for classing together a wide variety of different affections as having the very same cause (will) is equally unacceptable. — Metaphysician Undercover
This is nothing more than a modern version of the ancient argument for a sixth sense. Basically, the argument was that the imagination can be creative, therefore we need some sort of extra "sense" distinct from the five senses, to account for the creation of images not caused by sense organ, but created. This would be the sixth sense, the faculty which creates fictitious images. — Metaphysician Undercover
You make "the will" something very similar to the sixth sense. Notice that the fictitious image created by the imagination can be an image from any of the five senses, sound, sight taste, etc., and there is posited a single faculty (sixth sense) which can create an image from any sense. That's what you do with "the will", you take all the different bodily activities, which are creative in nature, and you class them together under "the will". — Metaphysician Undercover
The person with hearing responds and the person without does not. You say that the brain controlled that activity which I called the response, but obviously you are overlooking the role of the ears. — Metaphysician Undercover
And if you deny the role that ears play in controlling that activity, you also must deny the role that the external thing, the noise itself, plays. Therefore you have isolated the prefrontal cortex as the "control center", as if it exercises control over the entire living body, as an unaffected cause of activity, "the will", when this is a totally improper representation. — Metaphysician Undercover
Human beings which are connected to a central hub of control is not an acceptable representation of anything real. — Metaphysician Undercover
This is exactly the problem you have created with your description of "the brain", describing it as a one way control mechanism. You do not include the control which the individual parts have over the brain. — Metaphysician Undercover
You got it the wrong way round. I don't allow my thoughts to think about all that science. I know how the brain functions. It's not that difficult. I have over 30 years experience with it! It's a neural network that's there for me, like the physical world. The neo-cortex is a nice extra feature! — Dijkgraf
I have fairly good knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the brain. But that's contingent on the real state of affairs. I know the basic neo-cortex structures and have done a fair amount of personal experiments, even drug-induced, and read a lot about it. But personal experience shows me how the network actually functions. Just observe. — Dijkgraf
I think traffic lights do interfere with personal freedom. Red light means you cannot go ahead. My goal is to go ahead. I am being stopped in achieving my goal, by a control; the control is curtailing my freedom.
I am not saying that your surrounding argument is invalid, but this example does serve the exact opposite of the service you used it for. — god must be atheist
However, that definition leads to absurd consequences because it means traffic lights would make you less free. — Tobias
That is a question tackled by some compatibilist philosophers I think. Possibly also by some in this thread. If you define freedom as freedom from natural impediments and control by other people, (or just control by other people) than by definition the will is free. — Tobias
I consider freedom from external control to be freedom, as experienced, of course. — Janus
Arendt contrasts this with a notion of freedom as satisfying one's goals, achieving what one is capable of, — Banno
What Augustine is referring to is not the 'private good' as expressed by Aristotle. Augustine is separating the 'what is good for oneself' as oneself from the matters of self-interest involved with participation in human affairs. — Paine
Point out a few of those places, please. — Paine
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