I'm gonna lay out an example, because this is important.Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 amThere's a recursive nature to the proposition that you can "freely opt" to think or feel everything you think or feel, which makes the proposition itself dead in the water. Do you see the recursiveness, the infinite regress, yourself? I can explain it if you don't.iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am The point some hard determinists argue is there is nothing at all that we think, feel, say or do, that we were ever able to freely opt not to.
So, I don't necessarily disagree that you can choose how you feel or choose what you think, to some degree, but that choice is... fundamentally limited. Let me demonstrate.
So here's an internally narrated example of me making a choice to change how I feel - every choice is indicated by --:
So, here, I made a choice to go take a shower, so I changed my own feelings, right?I wake up
I feel groggy
I don't like feeling groggy
I want to change that
I know what will make me feel less groggy, a shower
-- So I choose to
-- go take a shower
<And after the shower I don't feel groggy anymore, so I chose to change how I feel>
BUT, my choice was the direct consequences of thoughts I didn't choose. I didn't choose to think "I want to change that". I didn't choose to think "a shower will make me feel less groggy". These thoughts just happened to me. I thought them, I didn't choose to think them, the thoughts occurred to me, happened to me.
But you object, perhaps. Perhaps you say, no no, for me it was a choice to think I want to change that!
So I respond, you wanted to want to change that? Okay, so that just adds another thought to the chain of thoughts
It's still based on a thought that you didn't choose to have, you've just moved that thought one thought further back in time. Before, you didn't choose to have the thought of "I want to change that", now the case is barely different. You chose that thought, but it's the direct consequence of a thought you didn't choose.I wake up
I feel groggy
I don't like feeling groggy
I want to want to change that
-- so I choose to think
I want to change that
I know what will make me feel less groggy, a shower
-- So I choose to
-- go take a shower
<And after the shower I don't feel groggy anymore, so I chose to change how I feel>
Let's say you object again. No, I chose that one too! You say.
So you wanted to want to want to change how you feel?
Okay, here we go again
Once again, it's just the direct consequence of thoughts that happen to you.I wake up
I feel groggy
I don't like feeling groggy
I want to want to want to change that
-- so I choose to think
I want to want to change that
-- so I choose to think
I want to change that
I know what will make me feel less groggy, a shower
-- So I choose to
-- go take a shower
<And after the shower I don't feel groggy anymore, so I chose to change how I feel>
You can keep going, you can insist you're making an infinite sequence of choices to want to want to want to... times infinity.
But we've just woken up, we've been awake a finite amount of time. We don't have enough time to have had an infinite sequence of thoughts and choices. So eventually, it has to stop, there has to be a thought that kicked this all off that you didn't choose.
Philosophers approaching the free will problem have, for a very long time, had a problem with the infinite regress inherent in some people's view of free will.
This is a problem whether determinism is true or not. Determinism neither harms nor helps this problem. Indeterminism neither harms nor helps this problem. Even dualism neither harms nor helps this problem. Whatever choice you make, eventually you can trace it to a thought that you didn't choose to have.Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
I'm not denying we can make choices, and I'm not denying we can choose to some extent what to feel or think, but if we do choose that, that chain of choices can't be infinite. We can't choose every thought and every feeling back for eternity, the choices started somewhere, and that means they had to start with thoughts we didn't choose.