Free Will - does it exist?

[PauliEffect]

Do you believe in the existence of free will, and what does it consist of?

Thomas Campbell holds the possibility that free will can be taken away from
an individual, which then becomes "retired", stored away in a box in the larger
Consciousness memory, like a piece of Data on a HD.

Full source is in this link -> here (http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2668#p3374), and the quote:

"...sometimes if a particular individual personality is unproductive it will be retired (absorbed) and
perhaps replaced with something more effective. However, that individual (as an very accurate statistical
model -- i.e., an assemblage of all the information that defined that individual personality along with
probability information) will still be present in the historical database and is fully accessible there - it's
just that new data will not be generated or updated to that personality file. That "retired" individual
personality could always be given a free will again and reconstituted as an active unit -- they are fully
defined in the database. Bottom line: If you want maintain the privilege of exercising free will, it would
be a good idea to exercise it effectively."

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I also include what I saw in PE-Queries8 (http://www.astraldynamics.com.au/showthread.php?14874-PE-to-ask-questions-PE-Queries8&p=117029#post117029) ->
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Monroe asks: "If you remove 'free will', where does it go?"

I wonder to myself, if free will is something which can be removed or
put back, what is it made of? A different substance than Consciousness?

My next thought is, why do he/they ask me this questions. I wait a moment.
There is a pause. Then I get a faint message: "Remember, there are
others. It's not for you alone."


Symbolic removal of a piece of free will (the blue cube) turns a being into a robot.
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/3813/freewillremoval.jpg

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A kingdom for your thoughts. :)

[CFTraveler]

I don't think free will is a 'thing' - it is simply a concept, and can be thought of many ways. If you can choose something over something else, it's called free will by some (me). Even if you ultimately can't be successful with that choice (the idea of the box where the effects are nullified) the choice to do something (or nothing, for that matter) is made.
So maybe the idea Campbell has about free will is the ability to affect environment- but I don't think that is free will, because the minute you chose to do something, you chose, and to me, that's what free will.
I suppose if you are an organic being that does not have the mental capacity to choose you don't have free will, whether you have the opportunity to exercise it or not.

[ButterflyWoman]

As usual, I agree with CFT. :)

I will share a bit more about my own experience of "free will", though. Some time ago, I was shown that it's really just an illusion. A complex one, but an illusion. I was quite disturbed by this and thought about it and went round and round with it for a long time, until I eventually saw that as everything is an illusion (i.e., nothing is the way it SEEMS to be from a human ego-self perspective), it doesn't really matter, and the unaware, unawakened, Self-oblivious, whatever you want to call it, pretty much always act out of programmed subconscious beliefs, anyway, so where is the "will" in that? Acting on unconscious programming hardly seems to have any element of "will" to it at all.

I would also suggest a simple Google search on the topic of free will and illusion. There's a great deal written about it in the fields of biology and neurology: https://www.google.com/search?q=free+will+illusion&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t It may give some food for thought, anyway.

[PauliEffect]

Well, yes, free will can be an illusion. But what about Creativity and Fantasy?

The cave paintings done by the first cave woman 29 000 years ago in France,
what was that the result of? Those painters were only active a very short time
also. Paintings found 4000 years later are much poorer in artistic qualities.

The choice to paint the first cave paintings, from where came that choice?

[IA56]

Well, yes, free will can be an illusion. But what about Creativity and Fantasy?

The cave paintings done by the first cave woman 29 000 years ago in France,
what was that the result of? Those painters were only active a very short time
also. Paintings found 4000 years later are much poorer in artistic qualities.

The choice to paint the first cave paintings, from where came that choice?

I do not Think you can call it free will, because all thoughts ever thought is in the air so to speak and you can come in touch with it when you are at right freeqvency, creativity and fantasy is the space from new thoughts come from, this I Believe to be true and I Think the first thought comes from the infinity and this I do not know who you can say is the first thinker :-)

[Saul]

I believe we are free only by the degree that we are able to surrender to the Divine.

The wise words of The Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi put in simply.

"Free will and destiny are ever existent. Destiny is the result of past action; it concerns the body. Let the body act as may suit it. Why are you concerned about it? Why do you pay attention to it? Free will and destiny last as long as the body lasts. But jnana transcends both. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Whatever happens, happens as the result of one's past actions, of divine will and of other factors.

There are only two ways to conquer destiny or be independent of it. One is to enquire for whom is this destiny and discover that only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self and that the ego is non-existent.

The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realizing one's helplessness and saying all the time, 'Not I, but Thou, oh Lord' and giving up all sense of 'I' and ‘mine’, and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you. Complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self-enquiry or bhakti marga (path)."

[CFTraveler]

There are only two ways to conquer destiny or be independent of it. One is to enquire for whom is this destiny and discover that only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self and that the ego is non-existent. Keeping this- I like it.

[Reav3R]

I've said this before: Free will, whether in its true meaning or in any meaning is merely an illusion and can't be real. We are nothing more than CPUs proccessing a program (human, animal, etc.).

*

There are infinite parallel universes; "we" are experiencing everything at the same time. All of the possible choices are already made and consequences experienced. The only choice we have is this: Which one of those realities we want to actively experience with our current conciousness.

*
" The created will always create in the image of their creator ". Existance is the ultimate computer. God is a CPU. Human race is a CPU core. We are CPU threads and our conciousness is just a program. We created computers because we ARE "a computer"...

[Frater.Akenu]

Free will doesn't exist, huh? I was always curious why do people think there is no free will...
Yes, our perception of reality in mortal bodies is limited. We have but few imperfect senses and imperfect bodies, we also have imperfect society we live in, but we chose it this way. We always choose which incarnation we want to take, that's our free will.

Close your eyes and breath deep, now think for yourself: "BKLSDAJFLASKFJL". Mind isn't limited at all, mind is the perfect state of being, so powerful that it can bend physical reality, without that Magick wouldn't be possible. And that we can make our decisions to change our future and we can use Magick to change present is the proof of free will. And nothing can take this from you. Yes, you can have an accident which will cut consciousness from physical body, yes you can fall down for a strong suggestion and your body will do what suggestion says, but your mind is still free. Papus did a lot of tests with suggestions and he found out that people with strong morals couldn't be influenced to do things against their will. He tried to suggest one boy from rich family to go and steal something from a person nearby. Suggestion was set but when he was to do the job, he switched off. His own will was so much against the suggestion so he rather fell unconscious instead of accomplishing the task. We do have a free will.

[ButterflyWoman]

Had a rather in-depth discussion on this very topic with my husband (yes, we have those kinds of conversations). He was talking about the work of a particular contemporary philosopher and I was trying to wrap my brain around the worldview/framework that would even give rise to this question (I was there once, obviously, but it's so "gone" I can't go there any more, which is an interesting experience, to say the least).

In the end, the conclusion was that the problem with "does X exist" is the definition of "X". What, exactly, are we talking about when we say "free will", anyway?

Note that this is more of a rhetorical question than anything else, though it might give someone some fuel for the fire of awareness (or not).

Personally, I've actually come to a place where questions like this are no longer important or even meaningful. The framework just isn't there any more. The whole "death of the seeker" thing, I guess. It is interesting to observe my absolute inability to get back to that mindset, to that framework that would make the question even valid. This thread was the first time I'd really observed/experienced this so clearly. It's kind of weird, in that existential way that these things are...

[PauliEffect]

I've found another one of Campbell. He opens the possibility for Consciousness only using a
simulated free will or limited free will, source is -> here (http://www.my-big-toe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=75#p75):

"I suggest a simulated free will is free enough to make our virtual PMR an effective school.
That is practical free will and uncertainty is a built in feature of the system — there are always
unknowns. Jumping out to AUM’s level, the complexity is so immense -- imagine an analytic
(deterministic) function with a billion trillion independent interactive variables — a space with
a billion trillion dimensions, i,e,. orthogonal unit vectors . Lots of choices where the outcomes
may well be unfathomable to a finite AUM."


AUM is the EBC (Even Bigger Computer), all there is, Digital Data, Consciousness.

According to Campbell, a simulation needs the input of free will to make a working,
unpredictable simulation. If no unpredictability existed, AUM could just calculate the
result in advance, without the need for a simulation = running physical reality with
live entities who contain free will.