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free will is just an illusion...people will most always...choose the so called " path "...of greatest pleasure...

Thanks, Ray. Perhaps you didn't notice, but I actually compared you to Zarathustra at one point a few weeks back - I said something sort of insulting like: "You remind me of Zarathrusta with a really bad hangover," or something to that effect. But seriously, you do strike me as something of a Nietzschean character, and I can't help but be charmed by that since he's one of my favorite philosophers (my favorite philosopher-writer! God, his prose...) I also greatly appreciate any serious thinker, and you're one of them. Nietzschean

I've been interested in philosophy since childhood, and tend to have friends who share that interest (some are academics, some not). I'm a lover of ideas, but have no formal training in philosophy.

Jeff

I think he's beens studying at Wikipedia, since those paragraphs were pasted from there.

Otherwise, I share your views about insight versus information. Still, you have to establish an overview of the salient questions before attempting an analysis of them - insightful or otherwise.

Problem is people do not know what the path of greatest pleasure is.

That's a politico-ethical issue, Twinself - how much individual autonomy is proper in a society? - nothing to do with the question of free will, which concerns the nature of human capabilities.

No, there is most CERTAINLY a problem of freewill but one that is evident to more penetrating, philosophically-inclined minds (that is to say, more introSPECTIVE minds), and has been for over two and a half thousand years.
The problem of freewill is very, very real and very, very complex. That we are determined to a degree in all our deliberations and therefore the actual outcome OF all our deliberations (and furthermore and moreover IN the outcome of all our deliberations), there can be no doubt [even BEFORE social influential forces BEGIN to act as ADDITIONAL deterministic agents]. I am talking about ‘inborn’ character-determination, and therefore the application of utterly different subjects to the same objective world and their supposed complete ‘freewill’ to choose in it. It is then a question of to what DEGREE we are determined (and therefore to what degree we are ‘free’), and which of our actions/non-actions pertain to our individual 'predetermination'.
A gross simplification of the problem [sigh, for it will leave many holes in it!] would be a man in a wheelchair coming out of a hospital who has the choice in front of his eyes to take the stairs or the ramp down to the pavement below.
A GROSS simplification, mind!
The ‘freewill’ to choose is objective appearance and not subjective reality [as OXYMORNIC as that may sound to those who UNDERSTAND the problem], since freewill is totally subjective and not objective at all, and appearance as such has always been attributed to the subject and ‘reality’ to the object.
[Quick dullard schooling (ha ha): the subject is that which knows but cannot be known (by its antithesis), the object - its antithesis - is that which can be known but cannot know (the subject)]
So . . . Outside the hospital, he could try to wheel himself haphazardly down the stairs to his tragedy and doom, or take the ramp. Even WE can determine his action/choice and WHAT determines it -before he even MAKES it. Because we can see what determines his choice.
Yet imagine this concept in abstracto? Imagine that the wheelchair under the man is his inborn character, predetermined and unalterable, and the two paths presented before him [stairs/ramp] are a metaphor of two abstract choices he can make given his predetermined character (physical/mental limits/advantages/disadvantages, character etc).
Which path does he take?
Ah, that his choice is determined to a great degree who can DISAGREE?; but it is NOT absolute robotic-determination and hereby hangs the ‘appearance’ of freewill!: for in a paradoxical sense, it IS robotic-determination!!! But the stimulus that controls it is OUTSIDE the proverbial ‘robot’.
You see, Freewill is a necessary illusion while we in fact conform to the absolute will of nature and the NATURE OF OUR WILL in accordance with it.

Part I (cont . . .)

My prison warden doesn't grant me any....

Part II (cont . . .):

We eminent minds KNOW that it is not possible that we are completely free-acting agents and are not deluded by the wrong (even evil) choices we have made in life, we do not feel GUILT for them as such; when we realise we took the proverbial ramp, we call it ‘right’, when we threw ourselves down the proverbial stairs we call it ‘wrong’ BECAUSE OF THE CONSEQUENCES in both cases. But sometimes we were compelled to go down the stairs by 'the forces that be' . . .
But to another man the stairs would have presented no problem and he may take either the ramp or the stairs. He may even opt for the ramp, but in abstracto the ramp is no more suited to him than the stairs are to the wheelchair user. He is just exercising his ‘freewill’ and enjoying the illusion!!!
Should he be a man in a wheelchair he will not ENJOY the illusion - for he will see it as just THAT before his eyes: an ‘illusion’ of freewill.
Bah! I have to take the ramp! Freewill to CHOOSE . . . Psh! Of course, the eyes of most minds are CLOSED to the problems of freewill.
On the other hand if the we, the wheelchair user, chose the path of most resistance to our ‘predetermination’ it is a fundamental mistake and we ultimately end up back in hospital a second time only to wheel out of it again and take the RAMP this time - if going down the stairs the first time DID NOT seriously set us back or even END us. Ultimately we HAVE to take THAT path or we do NOT progress - we even REgress. To our tragedy and doom!!!
No one can overcome the will of nature: there is really only one choice. The way of the will of nature [God’s will, for the God-heads] or the hospital! The rest is illusion with room in which to move - in the wrong direction.
Ah, but what moves us in the wrong direction? . . .
Do you see what I’m getting at? There really is only one choice. Do NOT eat the apple, with an interesting clause: that we are MADE to eat it even though we are told not to. It would APPEAR that there is a ‘choice’ but determinism reveals otherwise . . .
Consider the story of Adam and Eve . . .
Tell me my friends, if all this is the consequences of eating the apple, presented with the apple again, would we make the same choice?
Of course not.
Now, given my academic understanding of the problem of freewill, I am here inclined to recall the statement I once made that sometimes when I talk to ‘normal’ people I feel like a little girl trying to talk to her doll, and it makes ME feel stupid. I am not one for too many hugs and kisses . . .
Who cannot see that my character is utterly determined?
In fact, the best statement ever made on predetermination was made by Homer in the Iliad and placed into the mouth of Achilles: he is asked why he chose the life he did, only to reply: ‘I chose nothing: I was BORN this way, and this is the way I AM’.
This notion even predates the first philosophers, and the fundamental problem of freewill they took up when philosophy began in Greece; that is to say, as minds slowly awoke from their slumber of mysticism we now call their 'mythology' and started to question the Homeric notions of the Greek Gods and their validity. Even their - AUTHORITY!

Part III (cont:)

Who was it, Anaximander?, who said: ‘Man has made the Gods in his own image’?
The problem is as old as philosophical THOUGHT itself!
And it is one of the main pieces to solving the puzzle of the mystery and riddle of our existence, the knowledge of good and evil: the enigma of the metaPHYSICally true story of Adam and Eve.
The problem of freewill IS the tree upon which the forbidden fruit hangs!!! And the snake the influential FORCE. And - ah my friends! - Adam and Eve . . . hopelessly predetermined to fall prey to those influential forces and TAKE of the forbidden fruit. Ah!, and so . . . Did they really have the CHOICE not to take the apple? The freewill as such?
Of WHAT are they guilty?
Ah, God, once again I GLIMPSE you!

Tut-tut . . . hugs and kisses and all who here perceive no ‘problem’ as such!
Ah, but fortunate for them . . . here there be philosophers!!! . . .
We ancient agents of the mystery and riddle of existence . . .

Consider what a problem - IT IS!

Ah, Ray, meandering through the philosohical platitudes of free will for the sake of those who seem to beleieve that they are free will could be fruitless . Earthly choice (for me)is as you say, not really a choice at all, but an illusion, dynamically affected by all nature and its forces. We do however choose to live, if only for a time within the constraints of this paradox of nature. This may be the only moment of true will, free or otherwise, but is it because the bait (to live) physically is such a draw? If the bait controls our induction into life, we haven't lost life but merely chosen to go along with it.
Like most energy, the will chooses the path of least resistence to ground , no matter how willing we are to fly above it. Stick with your allegories Ray and you will see more of god, that is if your will allows it.

Perhaps what is wrong is any inherent moral compass we may have possessed.. has been numbed by externally imposed sanction motivated conscience... if the motivation to not do wrong is simply fear rather than any deeper basis, then we are not obliged to look inward..

As to free will, whilst I think we have the capacity to exercise 'free will' I think it has long since been overshadowed by external elements which manipulate our perceptions of the world... our thought our not necessarily our own anymore.

O

Good to see you back Aries !!

Hiya Riya.. good to be back..and good to see some interesting threads... ..

Like....why do we all care about the missing child Madelaine McCann and not about all the other missing children from the last year?

Hmm, are you saying here that if a person performs good deeds but only does so, for example, because their religion dictates that they do so, they may not necessarily be a good person themselves ? As in, they are only following a script but have no actual personal comprehension of what it means to be good, or lack genuine compassion or a moral compass ? If such a person is motivated only by fear, would that somehow demean or lessen their good works ?

Yes, wise one. It would. Because, in an individual, the true moral value of a given action is determined by its INTENTION, not by its outcome. If the outcome of an act or good work done out of fear is called 'good' it is merely the subjective VALUE of that action to another, and not the agent of the action who is 'good'. If a selfless action has value to another they will label it 'good' because it will be 'useful' to them.

If you were motivated out of fear to be selfless, no matter how much your acts were called good YOU would not be good. Just afraid.

Selflessness is labeled universally good and 'moral' because it is of benefit to others, selfishness labeled universally bad and immoral because it is of no benefit to others . . . but of supreme benefit to the one who is selfish. Likewise to those who are selfless without thinking (as Aries is beginning to touch upon), they just disadvantage themselves and advantage others either out of fear or to conform to convention. Where is the true moral value in their INTENTION?

I have always SEEN selfishness as good, and selfLESSness as bad. I have seen that the acts you people call good merely disadvantage me and mine advantage you and yours. And I have NOT gone along.

But I am one of those rare individuals who, should i carry out a moral act, completely selfless and at expense to myself, it will be a genuine moral act with no other motivation. It will have true moral value in its intention.

Most people with their moral philandering are like would-be mothers who love children but expect some form of payback in return for their love.

So, again, the true MORAL value of an action is determined by its intention. The ACTUAL value of an action, by its consequences. That is why 'If such a person is motivated only by fear', it would INDEED demean their good works.

. . . wise one.

I could be whipped every time I didn't throw my spare change to a beggar . . . so every time I throw a beggar spare change would it be an act of good I had done?

Aries is quite right . . . and quite smart.

It seems you are . . . how did she put it? . . . 'not obliged to look inward'

On the other hand, when it comes to me and morality, and my reversal of its conventional values, like my own mother once said, 'the love of decency may not fully abide in my boy, but for all the people who don't get along with him, he gets along perfectly fine without them - and so do we'. er . . . something to that affect . . . it was a long time ago . . .

I am beginning to wonder Ray if it is Buddhism that hads influenced you ..

If i may add .. Buddhism and Jainism are 2 religions which have an indepth scrutiny of act and intention as you have mentioned. And there is no bigger truth to good/not than the intention with which the act was committed .

Precisely a selfless act redeems you of association while elevating you in goodness.I believe so.

95.999%

Diogenes ... Excellent! in agreement with most of your long post!!


For the last paragraph ... After discussing differences between a dictatorship and a monarchy, I used to get the kids at school to reflect on the meaning of "Your freedom ends where mine begins" . Do you think it means the same as " My freedom ends where yours beginnings" ...