Inanimate things can't choose at all so they are what they are ever since they began to exist. Even granite rocks can be eroded an split asunder and that too is what the rock is ; it's history defines its future.iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun May 08, 2022 5:22 pm The Paradox of Free Will
Dennis Waite at the Yoga International website
Yes, but, again, the issue here is not whether these things are reasonable to note, but whether we were able to note something other than what we did note because we thought about them some more and changed our minds of our own volition. It's not that someone argues with others precipitating consequences but whether both the decision to argue and the consequences are or are not together as one in the only possible reality given the only possible world.Most people believe that they are the body and mind and those are affected by our actions. A diabetic, eating sweets without careful consideration, may end up in a coma. Someone who argues with everybody and openly insults others is likely, eventually, to receive a punch in the nose. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says that, as we act, so we become—a person doing good becomes good, one doing evil becomes evil. This is all from the empirical, or vyavaharika, viewpoint.
That's what can't be pinned down here. Or if it has been pinned down definitively, link us to the argument and the evidence backing it up such that you can demonstrate that in so doing you did so while in possession of free will.
That folks from the West might think about all of this differently from folks in the East doesn't make that go away.
Or, rather, it doesn't for me.
Same thing. How does one go about addressing this given Schopenhauer's conjecture that while you can do what you desire, you cannot desire what you desire. Ever and always back to the profound mystery embedded in the reality of mindful matter emanating from brain matter either wholly in sync with the laws of matter or not. This going all the way back to what can only be the profoundest mystery of all: existence itself.Traditional Advaita explains this using the concept of samskara. Whenever someone performs an action with the desire for a specific result (whether for oneself or another), a samskara is created for that person. These accumulate and determine the situations we will be presented with in the future. Our samskaras will influence the scope of our future actions and also the tendencies that we have to act in a particular way (vasana). Any samskara that is not exhausted in this life will carry forward to determine the nature of our birth in the next.
Why this existence and not no existence at all? Why this existence and not another? Then those who interject at this point and insist it all goes back to God.
I also suggest that given some measure of free will, how is the samskara -- "mental impressions, recollections, or psychological imprints" -- not just another manifestation of dasein.
Why does someone perform this action given this desire when others in the same situation perform different actions derived from different desires?
We humans are very much living things as we even have insight into our own aliveness. This insight gives us a lot of choices whereas the rock has no choices at all. Our futures, unlike the futures of rocks, are not determined by our histories . The extra choices we have are not determined by so-called "Free Will" but vary in quantity and quality according to how much knowledge and judgment the individual possesses.