Free Will

 There are many research that has been done and that are floating around that present a case against “free-will”. It seems consciousness (or the conscious agent) is not the progenitor or wielder of the “will” that the human or any entity ‘seems’ to execute. The consciousness or the conscious state, conscious about the decision made or option chosen, exists or comes to existence or appears to come to existence after the decision is made.

In Bhagavad Geeta/Gita, Sri Krishna, in Chapter 5 stanza/verse 14, says:


This says that: the owner of the body, that the Jiva-Aatma – the self or consciousness – is, does not create any karma – act or action and neither does ‘it’ create the karma-fala – the result/fruit of action. This all (karma and karma-fala) is created and is done by the Gunas (properties) of Prakriti (Nature).

How convenient, isn’t it?

Also, verse 30 of chapter 13 says:


This says that: One who sees/realizes that all actions are performed by the body, which orginates from the Nature (Prakriti), and one who realizes that the ‘self’ (Aatma) does Nothing, that ‘one’ is the only one that actually ‘sees’/realizes.

It seems that this ‘I’ or the consciousness, that appears or feels like an ‘agent’ making the decisions, is after all in fact just a mask or a representative face, like screen to a CPU in computers, just there for display to that ‘self’.

But the question is, who should we consider or refer to as or what should we define this ‘I’ or ‘self’ as? Just as that state of awareness/consciousness/conscious experience? Or as that whole thing, that biology, that makes the choice or defines the decision making or choice?

This whole argument looks a lot like the conservation or invariance principle or idea in Physics. For example, first matter/mass (rest mas) was thought to be conserved, then it was found that the amount of matter changed. Later this ‘conservation’/’invariance’ thing and its definition was expanded and generalized to include energy as well. So now matter-energy was the conserved or invariable quantity in the universe. Similarly, we earlier considered Euclidean space and Galilean transformations and their corresponding invariance and invariant quantities, then expanded this to Special Relativistic Invariants and invariance in its corresponding transformation – the Lorentz transformation. Then later this was generalized further to General Theory of Relativity and the invariants and invariance to its corresponding invariants and invariances in this more General space of existence.

We all are constantly trying to find that which is absolutely invariant i.e. is Absolute (absolute absolute). The fundamental/more fundamental, and eventually the most fundamental, laws of Nature, that includes and extends beyond Einstein’s relativity, all are that search for that ‘Absolute’. These, so called “laws” or workings, of Nature is indeed the modern God(s). Our quest for that absolute (relative or absolute), that Permanence (relative or absolute) or Immortality (relative or absolute), is still going on.

In the early days, we devised something like deities to explain the happenings around, all in search for certainty and to ensure our control over the surrounding, be it body or otherwise, and thus try to ensure survival or increase our chance of further existence and make it as stable as possible, potentially to forever. This is nothing other that the ‘climbing the steps of the infinite ladder of Immortality’ and the eventual search for the Absolute – the Permanent.

But anyway, lets return to our free-will topic. Now just as in the conservation or invariance case, we can increase the boundary and definition and relax the inclusion/exclusion border of what ‘I’ or ‘self’ is.

[By the way, just as in case of conservation and the invariance and the laws of Nature, we are constantly searching for the Absolute – the Permanent/Immortal, in the ideas of Aatma].

Consciousness might not be the complete package when we consider ‘I’ or ‘self’. Maybe ‘I’ is greater than and superset of consciousness, or maybe ‘I’/’self’ and consciousness are the same and are the subset of what the “entire thing” is. It depends on what we consider ‘I’ as; as the consciousness or the ‘entire thing’. If ‘I’ is not taken identical to consciousness, then ‘I’ is the entire thing and is the superset of consciousness. If ‘I’ is taken identical to consciousness, then ‘I’ is not the entire thing and is the subset of the entire thing.

The other thing to consider is, is ‘I’ ‘separable’ from the ‘entire thing’? Is consciousness ‘separable’ from the ‘entire thing’? Or are they all the whole unbreakable, package? Are they all the single Quantized/Quantum thing?

In the question, “Do we (‘I’) have free-will?”, we have no clear definition or knowledge of what ‘we’ are or what ‘I’ is, we have no clear definition or knowledge of what ‘free’ is/means and what ‘will’ is? Though this might be clear in traditional conventional sense, but in modern sense and in terms of modern ideas that might not be so clear. If it’s about the ‘sense’ of control or will or freedom or free-will, then because this sense prevails, the free-will is there, after all the consciousness is part of whatever is executing the will or action. It is executing will, it is the one that’s conscious.

Also, maybe the consciousness of body ‘A’ that is or (later) becomes conscious about the decision, by ‘A’, and that’s responding or communicating (like the representative), is different and not the consciousness that that ‘decision-making’ itself is. So maybe the conventionally or traditionally, so called ‘I’ is the representative consciousness (like the spokes-person) and the ‘decision-making’ is the consciousness that is not this ‘representative-consciousness’ or ‘I’. They’re two different states, different information bits or different collection of bits, corresponding to the same body/brain.

In the idea of State[ment]verse, these are just states/statements. The consciousness/conscious-state in experimenter/neurologist (‘N’), that becomes aware/conscious of the choice made by the person that’s the subject of experiment (‘P’) beforehand, is one state, the conscious-state corresponding to ‘P’ that is realized or conscious of the choice it apparently made (i.e. that supposedly its ‘brain’ made) is ‘another’ state. Also, the ‘decision-making’ is also just ‘another’ state. These states are fundamentally not related, but are related in conventional sense of the ‘world’ or universe or NATURE.

The idea that ‘free-will’ (or not) is undecidable and unknowable and undefinable/indefinite, is presented in this article:

https://dhiresh114.blogspot.com/2021/08/founding-basis.html

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