I am determined and I am not. Free will and a deterministic future is intertwined. If let alone then we can be determined greatly by our environment or our surroundings. But if we are conscious and critical by our surroundings then we can gain some kind of control. And by controlling where we want to go or where we want to be in the future whether immediate or distant we can exercise a kind of free will. For example, there is a lot of different kinds of music out there by various artists, but I can make a decision as to whether which one I want to listen to. I can read books of my choosing and based on those ideas I get from them I can direct my life course in a certain direction. But it is heavily or overwhelmingly determined. I don’t believe in total free will. Plus if I choose to educate myself then I have a kind of control as to my outlook on life. I can see things differently than having not been read. It’s hard. You have to guide yourself. I can say that there are infinite determined paths to life that are parallel to one another and that criss-cross and intertwine and it can become so convoluted. It’s a map that I can’t see, but I can only take an educated guess as to what would be the correct route. It is so determined because I have to choose from what is presented to me and I have no control over that. This thing works two ways; it pushes onto you and you push it onto it. It is my will to write this piece and it is nature that created the ideas in me whether by experience or not that gives rise to such a kind of reaction. In essence it’s cause and effect. And vice-versa, creation to cause. It is this latter part “creation”, that I can exercise freedom although and nonetheless it has been caused. I can’t get away from it. For example, if I walk into a book store I have no freedom in terms of what is presented to me. My choice is limited to the books there. There is no influx of books infinitely stacking up with all kinds of knowledge. And to a lesser degree much of the information presented there is repetitive. I have to choose from this set in the store. This is a simplified example, you can take it as far as all literature in the world as far as I’m concerned. But as I read, I can come up with my own conclusions and I have a kind of freedom from going from one book to another and maybe with those ideas I can come up with some kind of knowledge that has not yet been known. But nevertheless it will be connected to what has come before. After all, knowledge builds on top of other ideas. But I do believe in a little control. But I can’t quantify it. I can’t say that I am determined 99% of the time although to me it might seem that way and maybe even greater. I think one has to work hard in order to be free. Because the laws or nature of cause and effect is an inescapable dynamic. We have to welcome it and play with it because we certainly can’t rid ourselves from it, not to mention the inherent nature of this in science where it seems everything has to do with cause and effect. What I’m talking about is the psyche. How can we go about life and choose where we want to be the next day? My answer to this is education and rigorous rational thought. You can’t come up with thought that can’t make any connections to things that are untrue and impossible. But I think that any thought you come up with exists in the world of Plato’s forms (if I have that right). A world of endless ideas being anything conceivable whether good or bad. Sometimes when I close my eyes right before I go to sleep I see images and forms that I can’t recognize from anything in this world. And sometimes there is pattern to them. They have a kind of dark color to them or else I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between them and the blackness that comes from the absence of light. Where do these forms in me come from ? Maybe I subconsciously extract them from the real conscious world around me? They’re strange. But I like it that they’re there. It’s entertaining.
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Perhaps ones actions are determinable, countable, and calculable to the extent where free will disappears and thus it is an illusion only in our minds. We can calculate ones freedom depending on their belief system or what goes on in their mind space in general. For example, it could be safe to say that a person with a certain kind of education should be directed in a certain way as he or she continues in this same regard. And thus and ever more so freedom of will is lost. Let us take a closer look at these two schools of thought. I have a choice between option A and option B and therefore you are free two choose either one of the two. However these are the only two options you have and you must make a choice between one of these two paths. (Certainly you cannot do both because you cannot be in two places at once.) But then again how are you free to choose? Our minds work in such a way where we either choose to act or not. Even here we are automatically determined; there is no easy way out.
I am discounting the idea of refraining to choose because I want to go forward with a decision. To go forward and do something instead of staying neutral which is to take no “action” at all. But for arguments sake I want to choose so what can I do? It’s like an “on” and “off” switch. We can assign option or path A “on” and option or path B “off”. (I don’t want you to mistake me for making the act of not to choose as “off”. This is not what I’m trying to convey. In logic you either have point A or B and there is no middle ground. I think this is called the law of the excluded middle. But I don’t even know if this holds. There is a neutral ground that we pivot on in bringing us forward to A or B. And I would still argue that we are predictable to a great degree, and I would even be as so bold to say that we are determined one hundred percent and that three is no free will at all by any means as the natural order of the world. The only free will I can really come to believe is to choose between determined paths or course. And thus this is infinite in nature. The limitless nature of this system that I perceive in life is the only free will I can imagine because there is no end and therefore the road ahead is never ending and we can navigate it as freely in terms of a deterministic demeanor to what ever degree you can imagine.
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Determined Freedom:
We have no choice. It’s only an illusion because we create new ways of direction or take action which are caused by ideas external to us (from experience) but if we have pure innate concepts from the time of birth that are continuously new we are yet still determined by genetics. Someone might have superior genetics and therefore she can govern herself better than her weaker counterparts. I know this brings up the controversy of Nature vs. Nurture and both these phenomenon have a great impact on a person’s destiny.
Nature = how you are born with certain traits. This is out of our control unless we use genetic engineering principles.
Nurture: I can nurture anyone to become an medical doctor provided he has somewhat good genetics. You don’t have to be a genius to become a doctor. All one has to do is to show the candidate what to study, how to study, so on and so forth. This is provided that he has learned the basic principles of education (i.e., K-12). Even if he gets average grades in preliminary school; he can be shown methods that are conducive to become a good doctor.
Freewill can work in a sinusoidal fashion upon your actions which determine your future to a certain extent. Depending on when you use freewill this comes in three parts in making a decision. Yes, No, or Not. Imagine your life time as a Cartesian coordinate system. Take the x-axis and call it your future or “determined” consequeces. The Y-axis is the three parts of the decision you must make when encounteriung a situation and depending on this the amplitude could rise on the next interval or fall steeply making this the rigorosity of life. But how do we quantify these two dimensions on the graph. But the key is a sinsusoidal graph as I see it in order to represent it more accurately rather than a regular function. “No fate but what we make” (Linda Hamilton, Terminator). And no “make” or frewill then necesarrily fate or that we fall into the traps of determinism which could have very dire consequences for the individual in a free society.
Kokozyon True Fiction 