Random Musings...Free will...

Bild von the_iop auf Pixabay

Everybody seems to have the impression that they are interacting with their environment on the basis of freedom, with a free will. Free will is the idea that I am the source of my thoughts, and in control of my physical form. To choose what to do next, requires a thought process. It requires a moment of consideration, or actively considering the choices. Time consuming, if you will.

Sport shows that choosing can happen automatically, with training, and it is actually preferred. For example, a fighter trains technique in order be able to react, opposed to thinking about a possible reaction. Runners train running technique to keep their minds off their feet, while in a race. The training is to trigger, what is referred to as "muscle memory". I would suggest that the training is basically learning to put thought aside and let natural tendency work. And, driving is a really good example. Ask yourself, after you've been driving any length of time, if you need to actively choose a direction at each intersection, or do you know you need to go to work, and the car just gets you there.

Let us go from the idea of evolution, for the sake of discussion.

Intelligence emerged as a result of the evolutionary process. It all may have started in some heated, chemical soup. Elements combining into molecules, combining into bigger molecules to eventually combine into living things. Those living things crawled out of the soup, and kept the process going, by way of sexually transferring molecules from one to the other. Eventually, monkeys were showing up. I would suggest that as the monkeys started learning, they had to transform into humans. Now we're here, intelligent, and still learning.

All of this was based on natural processes, which is physical. The brain is basically a physical component of the human entity. It is dependent on natural laws. But, we all seem to be under the impression that we no longer answer to nature, but to ourselves. We seem to believe that we have transcended nature. I hate to be the bringer of bad tidings, but nature is the cage we can't escape. Its the god we can't transcend. All things, human or otherwise, must abide by natures principles, from which all of nature's laws emerge. Monkeys didn't transcend nature, nature provided a path to transcend monkey.

That is why we can't claim free will, unless we go the spiritual way, where an intelligent creator has given us a free will. To go this route is to turn down evolution, and name that almighty creator the source of all natural principles, from which nature's laws emerge. That creator is not bound by nature, and has the power to grant free will, or at least the illusion of free will.

Just random musings.