Timeline for Why is the statement about "Freewill is an illusion" considered profound?
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| Jan 18, 2021 at 17:54 | comment | added | TKoL | Yeah, I think we're agreeing with each other. And even if you feel like you ARE controlling your thoughts, how are you controlling the part of your mind that's controlling your thoughts? I feel like it's conceptually impossible to have the level of control required here -- we cannot control our own mind down to the base level, even if some level of our mind might be able to control another level of our mind. | |
| Jan 18, 2021 at 14:51 | comment | added | snew | Yes @TKoL, I think meditation practitioners would agree that it is "thoughts all the way down"; that thoughts do not flow continuously, but jump each fraction of a second, in sequence, from one thought to another. Each thought in the sequence may be governed by previous thoughts and by external stimuli. As to the notion of control, I am referring to a perception (or illusion) of control. Most of us have a vague perception that we are in control of the flickering thoughts that flit through our minds. If you sit quietly and observe your own thoughts, you will not experience this perception. | |
| Jan 18, 2021 at 14:26 | comment | added | TKoL | @snew I take issue with the whole concept of 'controlling ones thoughts' to begin with. What is it that's controlling my thoughts, if it's not other thoughts that I'm having? It's thoughts all the way down! If I think thought A, but I only thought A because I had the thought, "I want to think A", then what made me think "I want to think A"? | |
| Jan 18, 2021 at 14:15 | comment | added | Stewart | The idea that each of us has a different competency in free will would also account for the great controversies and conflicting theories. If my experience of free will is different to yours, we are bound to come up with different theories of how it works. | |
| Jan 18, 2021 at 14:14 | comment | added | Stewart | Surely this is no more profound than discovering you are not good at tennis, unless you practice? The idea that free will might be obtained by anyone who kept trying and reaching for it, I find that far more profound. Akin to the surge of pleasure when you discover you might be good at some activity after all. Except being competent at free will is something which would underpin every other activity of life. For example, Fred gets good at tennis by not-free-will practice (his parents made him do it) but then Fred gets good at free will; I reckon this would also increase his tennis ability. | |
| Jan 18, 2021 at 12:59 | comment | added | snew | ...It is this direct experience of ones lack of control over one's thoughts that many people find profound (not an academic interest in reading what I have just written). | |
| Jan 18, 2021 at 12:59 | comment | added | snew | @Stewart points out that it is conceivable that in order to attain the state in which one exercises free will it might suffice to become more adept at meditation than Sam Harris. This only means that it is a logical possibility that a small number of individuals might have control over their own thoughts. For those of us without this mental control (presumably almost all of us) it does not require a high level of meditation training to directly verify (by observing our thoughts) that our thoughts do enter our mind without our having any control over them... | |
| Jan 18, 2021 at 11:29 | comment | added | Stewart | "You do not have to be good at it" - maybe that's the point. If you practice meditation, you become good at it. You can take control of those thoughts. Just because they "enter the mind unbidden" today, doesn't mean it has to be that way. A person who is not free can still hope and try to become free. Just because Sam Harris has no free will (by his own testimony) doesn't mean it's true for others. | |
| Jan 17, 2021 at 23:55 | history | edited | snew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 42 characters in body
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| Jan 17, 2021 at 22:01 | review | First posts | |||
| Jan 19, 2021 at 6:52 | |||||
| Jan 17, 2021 at 21:59 | history | answered | snew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |