Have been reading "The Fountainhead" for quite sometime now.The book has some profound thoughts scattered all along.Came across one such piece today.A character in the story,one who's scaled great heights in his profession, talks about free will.
This is what he has to say -
"It's true that there's no such thing as free will.We can't help what we are or what we do.It's not our fault.Nobody's to blame for anything.It's all in your background and...and your glands.If you're good, that's no achievement of yours--you were lucky in your glands.If you're rotten,nobody should punish you--you were unlucky, that's all."
Now, I am not delving into, either justifying the above idea or refuting it. But still, all ye enlightened souls out there, what do you think ?
By the way, found the idea expressed here very very similar to my own take on free will.
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12 comments:
Brilliant! Now this actually gives me an incentive to try this book! I know so many have praised it... I myself tried reading this twice, but couldn't get myself to read more than 50 pages... Maybe your enthusiasm could get infectious this time :)
Keep blogging. I like your style of writing.
Thanks :-).
Yup,if u can get through the initial inertia, I think you will enjoy the book..
Not enlightened, but here are my ideas.
lets take this out of the perspective of the holy book.
Every time i make a decision its based on an input from previous information. this information maybe from my personal experience or parental training or environmental training. However, at each of these crossroads of making such a decision I could still stand back and evaluate a different perspective and go about exploring an unchartered territory. That is choice. So every decision is based mostly on prior training but a certain choice of allowing that training to influence you. So I still believe there could be free will if we only acknowledge this.
Taking the perspective of the holy book, all the above is useless logic. It is pre planned and we must only do our duty. Beyond this I have no more knowledge of what else the Gita says..maybe you could elaborate
Infact I would say, lets not have our ideas with/without the perspective of any book for that matter.
This is the "observation" (Would not want to term it "reasoning",as there's nothing right or wrong here),I have made in regard to this topic.
"Every time i make a decision its based on an input from previous information."
>> I would like to add one more vital parameter to this list.That being, what you actually WANT.In most of your decisions, you choose something because you want it.Say, you chose to become a doctor, thats because you wanted to be one.So yes, you did have a choice as to decide the path your career would take.YOU, and only you chose to become a doctor, instead of an actor.This choice given to you, suggests that you do have a free will after all.
Now, my doubt here is, do you have a choice, as to what you want in the first place.Why did you want to become a doctor and not an actor.Maybe you wanted to help other people and ease their sufferings.Who then, decided your this want? I doubt if YOU can actually plan your likes and dislikes.If you like something, you just like it, thats it.Not because you CHOSE to like it.
And, this is where I feel that there is actually no free will.At the fundamental level, you have no choice at all.Your choice has already been decided and you are only given a false impression that you are the one making those choices, at a higher level.
I now think the suject matter of this comment is long enough to be another post by itself :-)..
let me see if i get your view correctly.
If i want to be a doctor - maybe because I WANT to eliminate suffering then I get ready for med college. But when I see the big books I WANT to get out of college.
Now here is the free will. The free will involves choosing which path you take. Free will implies freedom. Freedom to choose to study or freedom to opt out, either decision is an exercise of free will.
Now to the point of why you might WANT to do those things. You WANT to get to eliminate suffering because your prior experience tells you that suffering is not nice. (remove Buddha's context here) You WANT to avoid studying big books because prior experieince suggests that you are not a conqueror of such deeds and prefer to play gully cricket instead.
>>Who then, decided your this want? I doubt if YOU can actually plan your likes and dislikes.If you like something, you just like it, thats it.Not because you CHOSE to like it.
No I didnt plan to dislike med school. I planned to dislike the books. But herein med school there is a conflict. I CHOOSE to get out of it.
Who planned my liking to med school? Nobody did. I FELT like it. MY feelings count towards my free will. If you remove the feelings go ahead and eliminate free will. But you would be removing human nature itself whereby all discussion about will as such is useless.
Now, why would you want to remove this discussion from the perspective of the book?
I wanted to avoid, the discussion being influenced/limited by what someone else thought of it.Wanted it to be 'independent', and to be based on what WE thought and felt of it.
Though,I know its not 'someone',we are talking about here, but still :)
Now, you say "prior experience" influences your feelings and wants.
>> Did you have a choice in choosing your prior experiences.
Hypothetically, what if you had a prior experience, showing you that suffering is actually good.(Or, that you enjoyed reading big books.)Then you would not have wanted to be a doc,as you wud be removing suffering.The point here is,if your feelings are based on prior experience or some other external agent, you still have no control over that agent.This dependance on something else implies things are not totally in your control.This again nullifies free will.
"Who planned my liking to med school? Nobody did. I FELT like it."
>>You FELT like it based on an external agent(prior experience), over which,you had no control.
"If you remove the feelings go ahead and eliminate free will".
>>No, I am not eliminating human feelings.On the contrary,these feelings/THOUGHTS are the basis upon which my argument is based.Because we have "involuntary" feelings, our decisions, as a consequence, are not only ours after all.We are limited by our feelings and wants,which influence our decisions in a big way.And, in these, is where we have no choice.
"MY feelings count towards my free will."
>> Thats the point.Your feelings count towards your free will.Do you actually have a choice as to what you want to feel ? I guess, no.
I can see what you are driving at!
"The point here is,if your feelings are based on prior experience or some other external agent, you still have no control over that agent."
>>well, my main premise is that though prior experience is NOT under my control my PRESENT decision is under my control.
My present decision could derive from no prior experience or logic. I still have the free will to make an unknown decision. Call this decision A.
That i choose to make a decision other than A based on prior experiences upon which I have had no control is Decision B. Just because we have mostly made decisions of Type B does not mean free will never existed, you could have chosen to think otherwise but you did not.
Therein lies the free will.
"Because we have "involuntary" feelings, our decisions, as a consequence, are not only ours after all.We are limited by our feelings and wants,which influence our decisions in a big way.And, in these, is where we have no choice."
>>I agree that we have involuntary feelings. But if I decide to choose something based on involuntary feeling-1 against involuntary feeling-2 then am I not exercising my free will? Agreed, that both of these feelings have not stemmed from my free will, but by merely choosing the PRESENT choice from previous involuntary choices I can always make a voluntary choice that would mabye be a basis for what I would call 'prior experience' in the future.
The reason I said we might want to look at the book for suggestions is that it might already have the answer we are looking for. However, if that is not under the purview of the discussion I am ready to expose my ignorance!
"My present decision could derive from no prior experience or logic"
>> On what then,is this present decision based.In our discussion, we have already listed the parameters which influence our decisions -
1.Our feelings/likings/wants
2.Which in turn may be influenced by prior experiences/external agents.
So,is there something else other than these, on which our present decision is based upon ?
Otherwise decision A is not all that different from B.
"But if I decide to choose something based on involuntary feeling-1 against involuntary feeling-2 then am I not exercising my free will"
>> Is it "free" in the real sense? I mean, aren't you still limited/bound to a set of decisions only ?
Given that any person has 'N' involuntary feelings,then his free will is only to choose among these N decisions.
Ideally, N should be infinity, meaning there is absolute free will.But in reality, that is not the case.Each person is one kind of a "template"(If I may use the word).There is one basic theme to his personality.He might have other "plug-ins",but there is a single essense running in his soul(And this,he did not choose).Naturally then,his feelings will also be in tune to this essense which according to me is a limitation.
(Making feelings << Infinity).
So yes,as you said there maybe free-will,but only in the very limited sense.
To be frank,I do not know what the book exactly says regarding the same.I would rely upon you to elucidate,on the book's take on this subject.
well we finally are seeing some common ground here.
but first replying to you.
"So,is there something else other than these, on which our present decision is based upon ?
Otherwise decision A is not all that different from B."
>>No, it can be a decision based purely on impulse. There was no will just impulse. But because it was YOUR impulse its now your will.
"(Making feelings << Infinity)."
Even though we might have a multitude of feelings , we cannot expect all these to translate to rational decisions. There is a limited set of sensible decisions otherwise merely by using this argument saying that N~infinity => free will , you can say there exists no free will. Which I believe isnt true.
So do we agree that though there is little free will, it is more determined by the person whther he chooses to expand it or limit himself in manners such that some day he wont have any free will at all.
Yes,maybe we are seeing some common ground.But still a few things to be clarified..
"it can be a decision based purely on impulse. There was no will just impulse. But because it was YOUR impulse its now your will"
>>Now,whats this new entity called impulse? How is it different from what you want/like.Is it totally different from these ? Is it then,only yours ?
"There is a limited set of sensible decisions"
>>Yes,precisely, the "choice set" is limited and not capable of expansion.
"So do we agree that though there is little free will.. "
>>Yes, I do agree that we have "limited freedom" to make our choices.But I am not sure,if this freedom can be termed free-will.
"it is more determined by the person whther he chooses to expand it"
>>Now,dont you see a contradiction here.We've already agreed that it is limited.So,where is the scope to expand, even if the person wants it to ?
Looks like u were quite busy the last couple of days :)
"Now,dont you see a contradiction here.We've already agreed that it is limited.So,where is the scope to expand, even if the person wants it to"
No I dont see a contradiction. I am repeating what i said in an earlier post.
There is a limited scope for expansion from the beginning. but the more you make your own decisions the resultant set of experiences will be entirely your own. The further decisions you make based on these decisions will come under a category of decisions done under the free will because they are all yours. This will expand all the likely set of experieneces to encompass all the decisions you take - if you choose to exercise your free will.
">>Yes, I do agree that we have "limited freedom" to make our choices.But I am not sure,if this freedom can be termed free-will"
What else will you term it?
"ow,whats this new entity called impulse? How is it different from what you want/like.Is it totally different from these ? Is it then,only yours ?
"
The impulse is something you feel without prior experience.
K
"The impulse is something you feel without prior experience."
>>Getting back to the same old question, how did you get one particular impulse,if it was not based on prior experience ? (Remember 'involuntary feelings'...)Is impulse then of one such kind.And if so, it was not under your control.Which means decisions based on impulse also do not classify as yours.
To summarise, our decisions are based on following (unless we've left out something else):
1.Our feelings/likings/wants
2.Which in turn may be influenced by prior experiences/external agents.
3.Impulse (Here,I am assuming they are also not under our control)
As we've seen, none of the above 3 contribute towards free will.
To draw a parallel with mathematics,our decision making is a mapping F:X->Y, X being the domain and Y the range.
Here X can be one of the above listed 3 points.Based on this input you will make a decision Y(output).And this range is fixed for a person, depending on his X (X not being under his control).
I feel each person is one such kind of mapping with a predefined set of X and Y.
Yes,he can certainly choose his own Y among his range of Ys.But, he cannot expand his range(As X is not under his will).
What else will you term it?
>> Maybe "Psuedo free-will" :)
You are only given the false impression that things are entirely under your control..
Must say,have really enjoyed this discussion :)
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