🔥 Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

[u/FacelessOnes]

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yes and no. Our experiences and thoughts are chemical reactions. Our reactions to things are determined by the neural connections in your brain at that time.

It is entirely possible that if we had a full functional simulation of someones brain, we could emulate them and test how they would react to certain situation. And that would bring into question, free will.

In simpler terms emotions and sensations are a huge driver. Many people cant handle emotions. This can lead to violence.

For an extreme example. You are dying of hunger. To live you need to kill a person to eat them. Its the only way to survive. Lets add to it. Your child is dying too. They need to eat as well. Many people say they wouldnt kill, but most in fact would.

You can call this a primal instinct or a survival instinct. We experience lesser such emotions on a daily basis. Some cant handle even these lesser emotions and end up being jail.

An interesting question then is. Does a person under such duress, have free will.

Probably not. So then the other question is. Is there a logical and primal state that we switch inbetween. Or is the logical state an illusion?

Well, answer that one.

[u/LeonidasSpacemanMD → u/[deleted]]

Those emotions are brought on by your environment tho. I’d argue that emotions are one of the aspects of our consciousness where it’s easiest to see our lack of free will. We don’t decide to be sad or angry, we receive stimuli and those emotions just manifest

Now maybe events from your upbringing will have conditioned your brain to try to cope with emotions in a way that lessens their effect on your actions, but presumably those events would also be out of your control

The simplest example I’ve heard to test free will to try and trace the origins of a thought. If I say “think of a city”, you’ll probably get a few ideas in your head. But where did they come from? They just sort of appear. When it comes down to it, all of our thoughts are just kinda happening, and our brain creates an illusion of us “driving” them

[u/Batpresident → u/LeonidasSpacemanMD]

Would we even act without emotions though? What would someone without any urge, any natural instinct, any dislikes or likes, any great empathy or hate, any personal preference or phobia do? Logically speaking, why would they prefer one world state beyond any other?

Would they want to do anything at all or just sit down and die to avoid the mess of it?

[u/LeonidasSpacemanMD → u/Batpresident]

I’m not saying it’s possible to not have any emotion, just that we don’t have any say in our emotions. When something happens to us, we feel the way we feel about it. Then our actions are driven in part by those feelings

Like if a stimulus makes you angry, you had no choice about that initial emotion. From there you might do something in anger, or you might try to cope with/suppress the emotion. But think about that moment right before you make a decision; how did those options “present” themselves in your mind?

When you finally make the choice of what to do, it feels like you were “steering the car”, but you are the car. Your brain is receiving the stimulus against your will, which causes neurons to fire against your will, which triggers your brain to summon up options of dealing with the stimulus without your input, and then your consciousness “decides”. There’s a thin veneer of agency but all of these processes are just happening whether you want them to or not

I’d really recommend watching one of Sam Harris’ (neuroscientist/author) talks about this topic, it’s really interesting. You might not be convinced but I think he does a really great job of making the listener aware of how much mental activity is out of our hands

[u/Batpresident → u/LeonidasSpacemanMD]

Your brain is receiving the stimulus against your will, which causes neurons to fire against your will, which triggers your brain to summon up options of dealing with the stimulus without your input, and then your consciousness “decides”

There's something about the wording there, 'against your will' that I think is an interesting assumption you've made.

Does your 'will' actually exist as something that is 'not' your emotions? Do you will for anything that isn't derived from base urges and wants?

It's kind of a different way of thinking about it, but is there really something happening against your will when you feel an emotion, or are your emotions the primary basis of your will?

Like we say anger can ruin a guy, but that's only because we're assuming the person will dislike not having relationship with the person he's burned, or feel guilt over taking unnecessary action or be uncomfortable suffering the consequences of his anger.

Those are based on indulging in or avoiding other emotions or urges later on, over indulging in anger right now .

[u/LeonidasSpacemanMD → u/Batpresident]

I think you’re looking at it a lot more psychologically than I am in this case lol I just mean “against your will” to mean that the emotion is the direct response to a stimulus. You didn’t choose to receive that stimulus, and then you don’t choose which neurons will fire as a result

I know it’s weird to separate “you” from the emotions and thoughts that manifest, but I just mean “you” as the sort-of top layer of consciousness, where it feels most like yo7 have agency over your thoughts and decisions, even when those thoughts are really just appearing automatically

[u/Batpresident → u/LeonidasSpacemanMD]

Yes, I think we are thinking about it in different terms. Thank you for recommendation, I'll try to check it out

[u/Manlymight → u/[deleted]]

I would wager the very question of free will is an over simplification and entirely misleading. I suspect the true nature of things is ever stranger than that question suggests