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Free Will
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
Note to the moderators: I put this in the advanced categories because I feel that it’s an important philosophical question in regards to our Buddhist practice. Though, since its not inherently Buddhist feel free to put it into General Banter if you want.
What do people think of free will? I’ll share my current views on it and would like to hear what others have to say about it.
Arthur Schopenhauer said "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills". This kind of sums up how I feel about it. In Buddhism our condition is sometimes described as a person who is being swept along by the current of a fast moving river. In our lives situations arise due to our karma and we respond due to our kleshas or conditioned responses, generating more karma and reinforcing our mental habits, thus perpetuating an endless cycle.
However, I think the problem is in the way free will is often interpreted. While we can’t will what we will, that doesn’t mean we don’t have choice. While our choices are influenced by our conditioning we have many different conditioned forces within us and it can’t be determined linearly which option we choose. Follow this link for a quick and easy experiment on freedom of choice .
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/freewill1.html
From a more scientific point of view the gross world of matter seems to behave in a fairly deterministic way. When we get down to the quantum level though things are decidedly non-deterministic. Phenomena are described in terms of probabilities and not certainties. According to chaos theory 2 systems starting under the same conditions can’t be predicted to end up in the same place. The basic premise of a deterministic world view is that if all phenomena can be known and tracked then future outcomes can be predicted and thus will always be so. However, quantum uncertainty says that the states of all phenomena cannot be known, not because we’re not smart enough to figure it out, but because it’s the nature of quantum phenomena to be non-determinate.
I think that through the application of awareness we can see through our conditioned responses and choose to act in a different way. Even from a completely deterministic view, if we become aware of our patterns that adds new information to the system thus changing the ultimate outcome.
To tie this into the scientific world, I think that awareness is like the indeterminate wave function of phenomena and our conditioned reactions are like the particle function that does behave in a more deterministic fashion. So the more we can live in that non-conceptual state the more freedom we have to engage in a situation skillfully according to the needs of the time and less in a predictable, conditioned way.
Anyway, I’m still trying to get my head around this and haven’t really studied it in any real depth so I’d like to hear what others have found.
What do people think of free will? I’ll share my current views on it and would like to hear what others have to say about it.
Arthur Schopenhauer said "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills". This kind of sums up how I feel about it. In Buddhism our condition is sometimes described as a person who is being swept along by the current of a fast moving river. In our lives situations arise due to our karma and we respond due to our kleshas or conditioned responses, generating more karma and reinforcing our mental habits, thus perpetuating an endless cycle.
However, I think the problem is in the way free will is often interpreted. While we can’t will what we will, that doesn’t mean we don’t have choice. While our choices are influenced by our conditioning we have many different conditioned forces within us and it can’t be determined linearly which option we choose. Follow this link for a quick and easy experiment on freedom of choice .
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/freewill1.html
From a more scientific point of view the gross world of matter seems to behave in a fairly deterministic way. When we get down to the quantum level though things are decidedly non-deterministic. Phenomena are described in terms of probabilities and not certainties. According to chaos theory 2 systems starting under the same conditions can’t be predicted to end up in the same place. The basic premise of a deterministic world view is that if all phenomena can be known and tracked then future outcomes can be predicted and thus will always be so. However, quantum uncertainty says that the states of all phenomena cannot be known, not because we’re not smart enough to figure it out, but because it’s the nature of quantum phenomena to be non-determinate.
I think that through the application of awareness we can see through our conditioned responses and choose to act in a different way. Even from a completely deterministic view, if we become aware of our patterns that adds new information to the system thus changing the ultimate outcome.
To tie this into the scientific world, I think that awareness is like the indeterminate wave function of phenomena and our conditioned reactions are like the particle function that does behave in a more deterministic fashion. So the more we can live in that non-conceptual state the more freedom we have to engage in a situation skillfully according to the needs of the time and less in a predictable, conditioned way.
Anyway, I’m still trying to get my head around this and haven’t really studied it in any real depth so I’d like to hear what others have found.
0
Comments
We really have to define "free will" to make any sense of it. Since everything is impermanent and not-self, there's no "agent" or "self" that is somehow outside of causality/conditionality. There are decisions made, choices made... will is exerted, but it's all within an interdependent reality where conditions are the only true master. The further down the rabbit hole we go into realizing we're not separate entities, but rather fully interdependent conditioned phenomena, the less we attach to ideas of "free will" because there's no one to have it.
I have spent a lot of time studying this over the years, from a western philosophical point of view. Thought I was all clued up on the arguments for this great philosophical battle....
But it was only once I started to see the world through dharmic eyes that I realised how the entire notion of a debate between freewill and determinism is mistaken. Profoundly mistaken.
Now I see the answer as simple: There just is no agent, no doer, no chooser; they are all illusions; just like the more obvious illusions of ego or object.
Q: Do I choose to do X?
A: Not in any meaningful sense. The aggregate antecedents of X bring X about but X happening is not distinct from those antecedents. Its all interconnected and there is no agent or choice distinct from these interconnections.
Q: Could I have not done X?
A: In an indeterminate universe like ours, yes, but that counter-factual is no more distinct from the conditions than the bringing abut of X.
Q: Am I responsible for X?
A: Socially, morally, legally etc, yes, in the same way as I am treated as an individual by society.
A: Dharmicly, I don't think responsibility comes into it in any meaningful sense. I am not responsible for X, but I will be connected with the Karmic fruit of X.
So, that's my take:)
Namaste
I'm not trying to argue against what you said because you address it in the other two questions. Just saying that linear causality is the way this arguement is usually presented.
"Any kind of determination whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen, whether gross or subtle, whether in oneself or external, whether inferior or superior, whether far or near must, with right understanding how it is, be regarded thus: 'This is not mine, this is not I, this is not my self.'
Yes it is. and I think of you wanted to debate analytically with philosophers using your idea of a causal web there may be interesting things to be found and said. Not sure what though!:)
Well wishes
reacting is unconscious. responding is totally conscious.
reacting is based on our predetermined karma/thinking/conditioning.
responding is based on the situation on hand. seeing it with fresh eyes. stopping and watching. feeling out what needs to happen.
Are we all destined for enlightenment? Who knows, but if you just forget about the path it'll probably never happen I guess
Ok then, who or what makes the choices?
namaste
Don't confuse it with determinism though, because there is no-one to be determined.
Ok, randomness maybe, but that still doesn't imply choices are free.
If its not determinism what is it? Just because there is no one to be determined doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Could you explain a little more?
Thanks for the responses everyone, my thoughts on this are still pretty unformed and challenges help sharpen my ideas.
My guess is that the human brain has a similar complexity, which makes thinking a seemingly chaotic process; predictable to some extend and ultimately unpredictable like the weather.
There’s a difference between the weather and the processes in my brain.
The brain produces conscious experience and as far as we know the weather does not.
This consciousness gets information about what the brain is doing.
But consciousness has zero influence.
The sequence is
1. the brain makes a decision
2. it starts to execute this decision
3. it makes the information conscious (a split second later)
4. this conscious information matches what happens immediately after
5. We think we really are someone and we feel like we are operating the
buttons
I’m no neuro-scientist (as you may have noticed) but this is my amateur understanding.
So how can we practice? How can we attain enlightenment? How can we put on our socks?
We just do it.
There’s no escape from the illusion of free will.
Even if I try to stop making decisions; that appears to be my decision.
We just have to accept that “being a person who’s making choices” is what this non-personal, determined process looks like and feels like for "us".
Just my 2 cents of course.
The rest of your arguement gets at the crux of the issue though, whether conciousness is just an illusion or not. I don't know but current neuroscience says that the mind has downward causality and can influence the wiring in the brain.
Processes in the brain can form loops.
Such a loop would look like “mind having downward causality”.
The brain decides we practice meditation. As a result our brain gets more adapted to doing meditation and decides to do some more.
The involvement of our consciousness in the decision is an illusion.
All again imho and so on.
To me it is like I’m trying to see through the illusion of “self”.
:scratch:
Okay, I’m trying to experience the illusion of trying to see through the illusion of “self”.
And that would be an illusion too.
Got to stop now am getting dizzy of thinking so hard.
:eek2:
So free will is an illusion in terms of the small 'I', but possible it exists in terms of the Absolute. A Buddha for me might be big 'I' with a body (till it dies, beyond death I haven't thought what my speculation would lead).
Making any sense? No? Ok, let's see what others have to say about my theory...
I also like your notion of our basic nature having some "push" that causes us to move towards liberation.
Anyway, before an hour I read this article on Wikipedia about Nirvana and realized that, again that Buddhism is so vast and there so many interpretations of Shakyamuni Buddha's sayings (if they are indeed his, in the suttas or sutras), that I am starting to thing that even Buddhism in an illusion too made up from human beliefs and ideas, and maybe not from the Sidarta Gaudama...
The more freedom, the more "free will" in respect to responding to experience.
Regards
We still have the free will to seek out as much information as possible about what we choose to believe, and then decide on where to put our faith. We have the option to directly experience something first as opposed to automatically believing in something. This is the benefit to living in the human realm. We have the option to create kusala (meritorious) karmas and paramis (a lifetime of perfected qualities) or not to do anything. The choice is ours.
with metta
Science says alot and enough about the constituants of human motivation.
"The Buddha defined kamma (literally 'action') as intention, and he essentially took the position that we, as sentient beings, have functional choice via intention operating within a broader framework of causality that conditions the choices available to us at any given time."
This sounds quite a bit like the argument I've been trying to make. If you have the time could you elaborate or link some source? Thank You.
Cetanā is volitional intention, the will-to-do, the intentional directing of the mind. It is functional choice. Just because a particular mind-stream doesn't have all of the optimal requisite causes and conditions in place to always make the most optimally efficacious choice doesn't mean that cetanā isn't functional choice.
Contact is concomitant with volitional intention. The path includes developing fundamental attention (yoniso manasikāra), right effort (sammāvāyāma), and right exertion (sammappadhānā), which condition desire (chanda), volitional intention (cetanā), and so on. Functional choice isn't independent of other causes and conditions -- it operates within the same conditioned mind-stream. But it does operate, and it does so in consort with desire and attention, etc. Hence there is no need for Cartesian notions of free will or Upaniṣadic notions of a permanent, unchanging Self for there to be functional choice. In fact, these non-Buddhist systems are not sustainable precisely because of the interdependence of phenomena: i.e. an unchanging agent cannot engage in actions, etc.
Moreover, just because there is no permanent undying self as the agent controlling the aggregates or within the aggregates does not mean that there is no conscious, functional, volitional self-agency operating. AN 6.38 Attakāra Sutta:
"This, master Gotama, is my my doctrine; this is my view: There is no self-agency/acting (attakāra); there is no other-agency/acting (parakāra)."
"Never, brahman, have I seen or heard of such a doctrine, such a view. How indeed can one step forward, how can one step back, yet say: 'There is no self-agency/acting; there is no other-agency/acting'? What do you think, brahman, is there such a thing as initiative?"
"Yes, sir."
"That being so, are beings known to initiate?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, brahman, since there is such a thing as initiative and beings are known to initiate, this among beings is self-agency; this is other-agency."
"What do you think, brahmin, is there such a thing as stepping away ... such a thing as stepping forward ... such a thing as stopping ... such a thing as standing still ... such a thing as stepping toward?"
"Yes, sir."
"That being so, are beings known to do all these things?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, brahmin, since there is such a thing as stepping away and stepping forward, and the rest, and beings are known to do these things, this among beings is self-agency/acting; this is other-agency/acting. Never, Brahmin, I have seen or heard of such a doctrine, such a view as yours. How indeed can one step forward, how can one step back, yet say: 'There is no self-agency; there is no other-agency'?"
So even though we are conditioned beings and devoid of self, the Buddha still said there is cetana, volitonal action, or 'choice'.