Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Naturalistic Interdependence
Zelkova
Explorer
I found the following on naturalism.org. What do you guys think about this sort of interdependence?
A naturalistic understanding connects the human organism to the larger physical world in all respects, via genetics and environmental influences. Since we don’t, on this understanding, exist as independent, immaterial agents directing our behavior from a causally disconnected vantage point, this means we don’t have free will in the traditional sense. We cannot have done other than what we did in a given situation.
This means that persons are not first causes; rather they are links in the natural unfolding of the world in space and time. As much as we experience ourselves as separate egos, deliberating our fates one decision at a time, our very deliberations are entirely included in this unfolding.
A naturalistic understanding connects the human organism to the larger physical world in all respects, via genetics and environmental influences. Since we don’t, on this understanding, exist as independent, immaterial agents directing our behavior from a causally disconnected vantage point, this means we don’t have free will in the traditional sense. We cannot have done other than what we did in a given situation.
This means that persons are not first causes; rather they are links in the natural unfolding of the world in space and time. As much as we experience ourselves as separate egos, deliberating our fates one decision at a time, our very deliberations are entirely included in this unfolding.
0
Comments
Decisions happen/are, rather than are made by an agent.
Perception happens/is, rather than an agent perceives.
And so on.
We only have free will if we perceive that we have free will, as being "independent souls" who exert control. On the fundamental level of life (and death), there are only interactions and conditions, and these determine what happens from moment to moment both internally and externally, and between internal and external (making self/internal and other/external merely relative terms... there is no separation at any level in truth).
So "free will" is on our mundane, every-day level where we think we are independent beings with a separate core that makes "unconditioned choices"... choices by its own "will" rather than because of fundamental conditionality. It's not "false", it's merely only true if we look at life from a dualistic standpoint rather than a non-dualistic whole/emptiness that is selfless in nature.
Suffering leads to seeking freedom, and association with the Buddha's teachings can lead us to the path to that freedom/unbinding called Nirvana. We eventually lose this concept of free will, but that doesn't mean we stop making decisions... we just see it in a different light (from a different perspective).