When we do what our heart tells us, then what we do for sure is influenced by what our heart tells us. Why isn't this cause and effect? And, if it wasn't, then it won't be something we could ascribe to a time-enduring person, as every act of free will necessarily can't be a result of the past, or it won't be called free.

And, of course we make decisions. But this decision-making process isn't an indicator of a person's free will.

Spooky

Quote usetawuz:
"My point was that free will exists and it is not reliant on the immediate past for it to be an independant action."

That's what I'm saying, it's even that free will must not be reliant on the past in order to be free. But when we accept free will, we have to bury the image of a world of cause and effect, and furthermore the image of a person which endures over time. Because every moment then would be a single moment, if you so want, in every moment the world would be created new, with no respect to any other moment.

Spooky

Just in case this was missed (hello Spooky, I see you're on line ).

Just as the rules of football don't apply to the game of baseball, sometimes the rules of our philisophical ideas don't apply to life as it actually is.

Recoverer wrote:
"On the other hand, if he doesn't allow an emotional attachment to bind him, then he will have the freedom to make the decision that best suits his needs."

He will chose depending on his experience, on his thinking, on his analysis of the situation, on what his heart tells him. If you so want, that is his freedom. But that doesn't mean he has free will. Because every dependance would make the will dependant, therefore not free. The term "free will" doesn't allow to use "free" in a relative sense, like we can say someone who has more money is more free in order to chose things to buy than someone who has less money, no, every little bit of dependance renders "free will" impossible and, the other way round, every bit of free will would break the continuity of a person and makes the existence of a person as an enduring entity impossible.
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Recoverer wrote:
"Life isn't a game of philisophical intellectualization that is defined by whatever supposedly sophisticated concept we came up with."

Yes, but "free will of a person" is as well an intellectual concept.
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Recoverer wrote:
"If a person studies and practices really hard so he can create music that touches the hearts of others, their inspiration dooesn't get negated by claiming that free will has nothing to do with it."

Of course not, because if I would say that free will has nothing to do with it, I actually would appreciate that person for his/her inspiration. In contrary, if I would say free will had something to with it, I would not appreciate that person, but some free will. Because it can't be the free will of this person, because every act of free will would cut the continuity of a person, as free will would not be related to the past, and so cannot be owned by a person. Person and free will are two incongruent concepts.
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Recoverer wrote:
"The idea of having the ability to act in a manner that is completely independent of the circumstances one finds one's self in, has nothing to do with reality. Why encase one's self in a way of thinking that doesn't have anything to do with reality?"

Yes, that's why I criticize the "person's free will"- concept.
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Recoverer wrote:
"There are occasions when something doesn't become true, simply because we can think about it."

Yes. But it is even less probable that something which is contradictive can be true.
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Recoverer wrote:
"Just as the rules of football don't apply to the game of baseball, sometimes the rules of our philisophical ideas don't apply to life as it actually is. "

"Free will" IS a philosophical idea! As well as "cause and effect". Our most basic ideas of reality, if not the basis of this physical reality itself, are such ideas. If they are correct or "right", we don't know. But we can investigate if ideas can be together true, or if they are contradictive. To think about this can uncover and destroy incoherent belief systems.
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Spooky

Yeah, what Pat said.

When we are involved with a particular set of circumstances, why would we act in a manner that has nothing to do with these circumstances?

Pat E. wrote on Mar 1^st, 2010 at 2:30am:

Pat, thanks for your input.
Yes, it must seem a bit far out to deny free will. But after a while of thinking I came to the result that actually proposing free will while at the same time accepting cause and effect is the thing which is far out.
   Let's take your case with the two paths in a wood. Sometimes I would think a while about which way to go, have I been there before, is it safe, is it going in the right direction, and many other things would come into my mind and finally I would decide from that which path I use. Sometimes I don't think much about which path I should chose, one of them just seems right and I walk that path.
   But this all is not an indicator of free will. It is all an indicator of our continuity of our person in time (if we assume there is time). I think this is the normal view. A much more bizarre view (for most people I think) would be we'd have free will, so that our decisions are made by (at least an element of) a time- and cause- independent source, which would result in the fact that there would be deeds done for no reason, no cause, uncaused.

Recoverer wrote:
"When we are involved with a particular set of circumstances, why would we act in a manner that has nothing to do with these circumstances?"

The answer is: We would act in a manner, which would have nothing to do with the circumstances, if we had free will.
   That is the consequence when assuming free will. Independence of the circumstances. Or is it not?

Recoverer wrote:
"They basically state that we seek to develop ourselves in a  balanced (organized) way, which would be impossible if we didn't have free will in some way."

"Developing" requires to build on something which is there. It needs history. Just like learning, evolution etc...
   Free will is the opposite. It breaks the continuity. It is the very meaning of "free will" that it does not depend on anything else. Can't you see how ridiculous that is together with the assumption of "cause and effect"?

   If you really want to stick to "free will", the only logical solution would be to deny linear time together with causality, and propose that only the moment, the now, the present is real, and the "past" only is an imagination in this moment.

I don't say it's this or that, I only want to show the possibilities and non-possibilities, how they are in my view.

Spooky

Thanks for the interesting replies folks.
However, I had a far more prosaic hypothesis in mind.
Various times in my life I have met people through 'seeming chance' who have been pivotal or important in my life, either for many years, or just a short while.
So, to give a theoretical scenario:
You travel to work one day by a route that you wouldn't normally take and as a result you meet someone who will be important in your life -it could be a future partner, employer or co-worker, guru, or someone who is (pre-life review) destined to help you in some way. That scenario unfolds.
But if on that particular day you decided to travel to work by your usual route or an entirely different route, then you wouldn't meet that person and that scenario wouldn't occur.
Has your freewill changed the future? Does the option of meeting that person still exist in a parallel universe somewhere? Has our total selves experienced ALL the possibilities that we could have experienced through all the freewill decisions that we have made /are going to make/ missed out on this time?
Or do we have to wait for another incarnation to meet that particular person and play out what we should have done this time around?
I've heard it said that in each life we have probabilities of what will happen to us and the people that we will meet, but the free will that we exercise is constantly changing the future in the details, but maybe not in the broad outline. What we decide can change things, and our guides, Inspecs and Excoms have to resort to 'Plan B'.

Any comments?

Best wishes,
David.

detheridge wrote on Mar 2^nd, 2010 at 10:51am:


If the two people are destined to meet for a purpose, I believe it will happen.  Maybe it didn't happen that day, but why couldn't it be arranged to happen on another day under other circumstances? 

We here in the physical have free will, but we as our higher selves also have free will.  Before we came into this life we used free will to make plans to meet, then here in the physical we have to contend with all sorts of obsticles that make life challenging.  But there isn't just one chance to get things right.  We get many chances.  We also get help that we don't know about.  This is what is meant by synchronicity, coincidence, and serendipity, and terms like that, where we go "Whoa, what are the odds!" 

I'm sure it's likely that not every plan gets carried out according to plan.  But maybe when the time came down to it, other circumstances were more important?  Maybe something changed, or maybe one of those people chose not to follow through with the plan?  We can only be responsible for our own choices and have to allow others to be responsible for theirs. 

And to add to that, I really do believe that any given moment in time our conscious intent can override some of those previous plans and make them "outdated" so to speak.  I say this because I believe we come into life with lessons to learn.  If one lesson gets learned more easily and quickly than planned, it might make some pre-arranged meeting not be necessary anymore.   

So maybe it's a matter of being the optimist or the pessimist.  Rather than looking at things as being something missed out on, maybe it is a case of being a necessary change that holds a higher purpose than we are aware of at the moment.  Maybe something even better is in the works at the moment, trying to unfold. 

We must place more importance on the now moment than on "what is meant to be".  Because if what is meant to be really does happen no matter what, then it will happen no matter what, right?  But if our conscious will and decisions really do hold the power to make a change and make a difference, then we should never be afraid of anything. 

But I'm a Libra.  I think there's a balance to all things, even if we'll never figure out what it is and how it works.