Free Will – follow up 1
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.
[Additional]:
In the experimental setup, the decision is made prior to there existing consciousness or conscious state about the decision made. For the consciousness-‘I’/’self’, it is in control, it is conscious of being in control and making decisions, it is the consciousness about making decision and being the controller. The “whole thing”, i.e. the ‘being’, is conscious about being in control, and maybe the ‘consciousness’ that we refer to as ‘I’ is this consciousness that belongs to this being, which an be considered as the actual ‘I’ (the complete ‘I’) if we consider the ‘entire thing’ or ‘entire being’ as ‘self’. But if we expand ‘I’ or ‘self’, or its border/boundary/limit, beyond ‘consciousness’ that we generally refer to as the ‘I’, and consider the entire biological or any entity or being, the consciousness of which we only consider as ‘I’, as ‘I’, then we can even extend this border further to involve the ‘external’ environment or the entire universe as ‘I’.
But, the consciousness may just be a part of the entire being, the entire being being the actual ‘I’/self. The consciousness that we conventionally associate with the notion of ‘self’ or ‘I’, is conscious of ‘being in control’. So the consciousness might very well just be the/an expression or reflection or representation of this ‘entire being’, in or as some other state, just like the display screen of a computer is for the actual CPU stuff or processing or decision-making going on. That ‘whole being’ or that decision-maker or that decision itself is in control and the consciousness that we call ‘I’ is just the expression/representation of that being or doer or decision, which actually is the ‘I’ or which is the actual ‘I’.
So, ‘I’ that we conventionally associate with consciousness and consciousness only, is the image or just conscious/consciousness version of that whole being – the actual ‘I’. This conscious/consciousness ‘I’ or the conscious experience of being the controller may just be that representation of the ‘controller’. This consciousness ‘I’ is no different than that entire being or decision-maker or the decision itself in a sense that the consciousness ‘I’/self is just another expression of the actual thing or controller.
The consciousness that we consider traditionally or conventionally as ‘I’, may very well be just another state of this ‘entire thing’ (call it brain or whatever system or system/collection of information it is). Also, there is no single consciousness, or the traditional/conventional ‘I’ or ‘self’. Consciousness, or rather the conventional ‘I’-consciousness, that we conventionally call ‘I’, is (or maybe) just another of (or one among) many consciousness and types of consciousness.
The consciousness associated conventionally with the notion of ‘I’ is just another state. Any particular ‘I’ of course is one among many events in time, these events called I/consciousness may or may not related to each other. For example, one “I’, ‘I-1’, may relate itself to another ‘I’, ‘I-2’, and may relate/identify I-2 as its ‘past self’, or I-1 may not relate to I-2 at all, or may relate to it as its cousin or children or any body or anything.
The consciousness associated with the ‘I’ maybe just another state or call it ‘brain-state’, and also the consciousness that is or isn’t the ‘decision’ itself maybe just another state. Some state(s) maybe not be the conventional ‘I’-consciousness or conventional ‘I’-type consciousness, and some are. The thing that we refer to as us or as ‘I’/self maybe just this ‘I’-type consciousness or state, among many ‘I’s or ‘I’-type consciousness (for example: the ‘I’ in the past and/or the ‘I’ at present, Or the ‘I’ in this body or associated with this body called ‘Dhiresh’ and/or ‘I’ in or associated with some other body called ‘Hari’), and among many types of consciousness or among many consciousness or states.
So, you are not just one thing, at the fundamental level. The thing one calls ‘I’ is not the one particular thing/state, at the fundamental level. Of course it is for itself but not with respect to the ‘other’ or with respect to every thing or with respect to any thing that is not itself. The association or sense of relation of the present state with another state (say for example with the ‘past state’ that one identifies itself with or is conscious about identification), something that does not exist or is non-existence with respect to that ‘present-state’, is about Absolutism. It is about the extension or expansion of one’s existence by that entity or existence as much a can throughout the existence or space of existence, and ‘move’ or tend to expand to the or with the goal of absolute uniform existence, i.e. to the entire existence-verse, and tend to attain the existential Permanence/Immortality and existential Absolute. It’s about attaining the Immortality/Absolute in existence, i.e. about existing for ever. It’s about trying to attain this existential immortality, to exist as much as possible and to attain the apparent or apparently possible infinite existence, to attain the apparent potentially infinite existence.
In simple words, it’s just about surviving as much as possible and to attain the apparent Permanence/Immortality/Absolute-Existence, which by the way is impossible.
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:
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