Implications of the delusion of freewill

in #philosophy8 years ago

Two weeks back I wrote about the delusion of freewill and how the thoughts that arise in our consciousness from moment to moment come from the arrangement of neurons in our head which in turn is the result of the genetics you get and the experiences that you have from the moment you are born. A lot of people might want to intuitively disagree with this thought because it seems to be disempowering. But I see this idea as an extremely empowering idea. The implication that I draw from this is I am not the entity that I think I am isolated in space and time. Rather I am the universe in motion. I am result of what my parents and the environment have made me to be and my parents inturn are a result of what their parents and their environment have made them to be and this process can be traced right back to the first humans and even further back to the first primates and with sufficient regressions you would get right back to the big bang. This has really strong implications for how we view the world around us. It is kind of like one of your fingers having a conscious experience by itself and the finger doesn’t feel like it is part of your body (as a matter of experience). It knows that the well-being of the body is important for its own survival but apart from that it does things based on its own self-interest (competing against other fingers, not giving a shit about the liver and stuff like that). If only the finger knew that it was a part of the body and not an individual entity maybe it would have acted differently.    The other profound implication of realizing the delusion of free will is that there is no justifiable reason for anger, hatred or any other emotions on those lines. To understand what I mean when I say this let us take an example. Suppose you go to a zoo and fall off to sleep and you wake up to a strange sound. You open your eyes and turn back only to find an alligator coming towards with wide open jaws. You jump out of your chair and manage to run towards safety. How would you view these events after the dust settles. You might find it a little traumatic, you might find it amusing and you will definitely have an interesting story to talk about in every cocktail party. In the same story if you replaced the alligator with a man, your reaction to the event might be quite different. You might have mental stories playing in your head over and over again of how that person should be punished for what he was about to do. This difference in perception of the events arises out of our idea that an alligator was doing what alligators do, it wasn’t being vicious or anything. But the murderous man on the other hand was being vicious and acting of his own accord and chose to do what he did. But truth be told if you were him, (bear in mind I am not saying if you were in his place) (because the true meaning of being in someone's shoes is to be the same as them atom for atom) you would do the exact same thing. People do what they do because of the kind of experiences they have from childhood and the genetic makeup that they get. If you really do understand the concept of the delusion of free will you will see that there is no ground for negative emotions towards other people.   This topic is a bit deep and confusing, if you guys have any questions please do let me know I would be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.  

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"But truth be told if you were him, [...] you would do the exact same thing."

That's axiomatically true, I don't think it proves the point the article is trying to make.

Cats can't taste sweet, if you were a cat, you wouldn't be able to taste sweet, because you're a cat. It's a bit circular.

"If you really do understand the concept of the delusion of free will you will see that there is no ground for negative emotions towards other people."

Well well, no need for that now, as it's not like the reader has a choice, according to this philosophy!

In the end it all boils down to belief, I guess. I prefer to believe I can influence the way my life unfolds, rather than being a ghost of a puppet, doomed to think it can make a change and improve, while in fact the whole script was already set in stone.

It's like that movie, The Life of Pi. My story is a better story.

A good summary^^ I would recommend the use of alinea's to make it more readable though. In any case, this is something I've thought about the last couple of years. It's not something I assume as fact, but I do accept it as the nearest truth I can get for now. It helped me accept so many things in life and it just makes me at peace with the world.

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