So you think you have free will

Imagining rewind you assuming these mechanics, spatial causality, which is precisely what prevents free will, but it is what has to be proven.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your phrase, neither do I understand why spatial causality would prevent free will at all. The rewind argument is just a logical conclusion from libertarian free will: all conditions being the same, you will choose diferent things if the same thing happened twice. If it didn't, that means it's deterministic.
 
I always liked Rudolph Steiner's saying from his book Philosophy of Freedom: "You only have free will to the extent that you are conscious of what motivates you to action".

I think that's the key and, imho, what the whole story of the Expulsion from Paradise in the Bible is about. We mostly have the potential for free will, but we're still learning how to use it.

Looked at under Idealism, I get the same kind of feeling about free will. While we're still locked in our little egoic whirlpools, as Bernardo would say, we are being bombarded by influences all the time through our unconscious (i.e. little ripples traveling across the ocean of mind leaking into and effecting our whirlpools).
 
I always liked Rudolph Steiner's saying from his book Philosophy of Freedom: "You only have free will to the extent that you are conscious of what motivates you to action".

I think that's the key and, imho, what the whole story of the Expulsion from Paradise in the Bible is about. We mostly have the potential for free will, but we're still learning how to use it.

Looked at under Idealism, I get the same kind of feeling about free will. While we're still locked in our little egoic whirlpools, as Bernardo would say, we are being bombarded by influences all the time through our unconscious (i.e. little ripples traveling across the ocean of mind leaking into and effecting our whirlpools).

That's a good way to think of it. Reminds me of Sartre actually:

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
 
I always liked Rudolph Steiner's saying from his book Philosophy of Freedom: "You only have free will to the extent that you are conscious of what motivates you to action".

That's a good way to think of it. Reminds me of Sartre actually:
"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."

There is no two without three...

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

C. G. Jung
 
I always liked Rudolph Steiner's saying from his book Philosophy of Freedom: "You only have free will to the extent that you are conscious of what motivates you to action".

I think that's the key and, imho, what the whole story of the Expulsion from Paradise in the Bible is about. We mostly have the potential for free will, but we're still learning how to use it.

Looked at under Idealism, I get the same kind of feeling about free will. While we're still locked in our little egoic whirlpools, as Bernardo would say, we are being bombarded by influences all the time through our unconscious (i.e. little ripples traveling across the ocean of mind leaking into and effecting our whirlpools).

I don't understand very well this view. In Idealism, ¿what is the unconscious? I mean, as I understand it, idealism means everything is conscious, so how can there be anything that is non-conscious ( the unconscious)?
 
I don't understand very well this view. In Idealism, ¿what is the unconscious? I mean, as I understand it, idealism means everything is conscious, so how can there be anything that is non-conscious ( the unconscious)?

According to Bernardo, it is the self-reflective nature of egoic awareness that obfuscates what would otherwise be like a type of unity awareness. When you think about it, how can one strongly feel an ego (i.e. an isolated sense of individuality) and strongly experience unity consciousness at the same time? The two seem mutually exclusive. So, in order to have this experience we're having, one most forgo the higher awareness of unity consciousness, or rather it is obfuscated in the same manner the light from the stars are obfuscated by the light of the Sun during the day. The stars are still there, you just can't see them anymore. Under Idealism, the brain is just the image of this self-reflective egoic awareness partaking in space-time, but that unity awareness is still there behind the scenes just like the stars during the day.

Bernardo spends alot of time in his new book going over this stuff. You should check it out ;-)
 
Last edited:
According to Bernardo, it is the self-reflective nature of egoic awareness that obfuscates what would otherwise be like a type of unity awareness. When you think about it, how can one strongly feel an ego (i.e. an isolated sense of individuality) and strongly experience unity consciousness at the same time? The two seem mutually exclusive. So, in order to have this experience we're having, one most forgo the higher awareness of unity consciousness, or rather it is obfuscated in the same manner the light from the stars are obfuscated by the light of the Sun during the day. The stars are still there, you just can't see them anymore. Under Idealism, the brain is just the image of this self-reflective egoic awareness partaking in space-time, but that unity awareness is still there behind the scenes just like the stars during the day.

Bernardo spends alot of time in his new book going over this stuff. You should check it out ;-)

I'm sorry, but how does that answer my question exactly? If one "forgets" the higher awareness, then it wouldn't exist in idealism, since by forgeting it, you aren't experiencing it, and by not experiencing it, it wouldn't have existence in any sense. So how can there be a unity consciousness, if at the same time you are not conscious or experiencing it?

Borrowing your analogy; it is true the stars exist, but I can't see them. However in Idealism, as I understand it, if you don't experience something it isn't there, since there is no non-conscious reality. So, the fact that I can't see the stars make them literally non-existent.
 
I'm sorry, but how does that answer my question exactly? If one "forgets" the higher awareness, then it wouldn't exist in idealism, since by forgeting it, you aren't experiencing it, and by not experiencing it, it wouldn't have existence in any sense. So how can there be a unity consciousness, if at the same time you are not conscious or experiencing it?

That doesn't make sense though. Ever forget you were driving and become absorbed in a daydream? Under that same logic, your existence as a driver must not have existed because you forgot you were driving. That clearly didn't happen. Even in your everyday ordinary consciousness, you're experiencing a ton of stuff that gets obfuscated. Likewise with ego vs unity. Whether, or not, a brain comes into play, or we look at this under materialism or idealism, seems to be beside the point on this argument.

However in Idealism, as I understand it, if you don't experience something it isn't there

That's not at all what Idealism says
 
That doesn't make sense though. Ever forget you were driving and become absorbed in a daydream? Under that same logic, your existence as a driver must not have existed because you forgot you were driving.

I still exist, because I'm in a daydream. If I got daydreaming, I don't experience the driving. As I understand Idealism, if I don't experience the driving, I didn't drive at all.

That clearly didn't happen. Even in your everyday ordinary consciousness, you're experiencing a ton of stuff that gets obfuscated.

I'm sorry, but that sounds like an oxymoron. How can you experience something if it gets obfuscated ( as in, you didn't experienced it). Obfuscated, as I understand it, means you aren't aware of it. You can't experience what you aren't experiencing, it's impossible.

Likewise with ego vs unity. Whether, or not, a brain comes into play, or we look at this under materialism or idealism, seems to be beside the point on this argument.

I think it's central. You cannot claim that there are obfuscated sensations (non-experienced experiences) because that is a contradiction in terms.

That's not at all what Idealism says

So idealism allows for non-conscious entities to exist? Perhaps our disagreement comes in part because we hold diferent definitions of idealism. As I see it, Idealism doesn't allow for non-experienced objects to exist.
 
(non-experienced experiences)

I think this might be where you're getting hung up. In Idealism, there are no unexperienced experiences. You're coming at this from an egoic viewpoint, as if your ego is the lead mind and only what it experiences exists. This is not what Idealism says. Your egoic awareness is just a self-reflective loop (one of many!) of the Universal Mind. The UM experiences everything in existence even if your egoic awareness does not (from self-reflective obfuscation), so nothing is ever forgotten. This is why according to Bernardo, there truly is no unconscious mind, everything is in consciousness.

Take it like waves on an ocean. You'd just be a wave that forgot it is part of an ocean, or can't even see the ocean. You might think you swelled into existence just to crash right back out again. In the meantime, you're actually just part of the great big ocean that has a lot of other crap going on in it, whether or not the wave is aware ;-)

Really, nobody can explain this better than Bernardo, Why not go over to his forum and pose your questions? He almost always responds. Again, his new book is excellent, even if you don't buy into Idealism in the end, it has provocative ideas in it anyhow.
 
I think this might be where you're getting hung up. In Idealism, there are no unexperienced experiences. You're coming at this from an egoic viewpoint, as if your ego is the lead mind and only what it experiences exists. This is not what Idealism says. Your egoic awareness is just a self-reflective loop (one of many!) of the Universal Mind. The UM experiences everything in existence even if your egoic awareness does not (from self-reflective obfuscation), so nothing is ever forgotten. This is why according to Bernardo, there truly is no unconscious mind, everything is in consciousness.

Could you please define the following terms: Egoic viewpoint, self-reflective-loop, Universal Mind and Mind? Also, when you say "the UM experiences everything in existence", do you mean there is an external "everything", that is experienced by the UM?

Really, nobody can explain this better than Bernardo, Why not go over to his forum and pose your questions? He almost always responds. Again, his new book is excellent, even if you don't buy into Idealism in the end, it has provocative ideas in it anyhow.

I would if I knew his webpage, or who he is. But for the moment I prefer to understand it as you understand it. How followers of a idea explain things usually tells me a lot of how coherent an idea is.
 
I'm sorry, I can't see video from where I am. ¿what point are you trying to argue here Bucky?

Actually, MasterWu, that video is good too, they really hash out Bernardo's take on Idealism. Probably why Bucky posted it - wasn't meant to be an "argument", just a helpful resource to learn more. Try and watch it elsewhere if you can.
 
I think Bernardo has an interesting take, though I do have some reservations. Admittedly I've not yet gotten to WMiB.

Still working through Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide.
 
I think Bernardo has an interesting take, though I do have some reservations. Admittedly I've not yet gotten to WMiB.
Still working through Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide.

I still have some reservations too, although it may just be with Bernardo's take on Idealism, rather than Idealism itself. Been meaning to read other books on Idealism, but I don't even know where to begin. Know any that are good? Is that book you mention on Idealism?

If you're like me WMiB may clear up problems as it creates! Definitely a good read, though.

That said, I do like the direction Idealism is heading in ... I think it jives up with a lot of comparative mythology, what comes out of the mystic experience, the psi evidence, and possibly even the direction modern physics is heading in.
 
I still have some reservations too, although it may just be with Bernardo's take on Idealism, rather than Idealism itself. Been meaning to read other books on Idealism, but I don't even know where to begin. Know any that are good? Is that book you mention on Idealism?

If you're like me WMiB may clear up problems as it creates! Definitely a good read, though.

That said, I do like the direction Idealism is heading in ... I think it jives up with a lot of comparative mythology, what comes out of the mystic experience, the psi evidence, and possibly even the direction modern physics is heading in.

Sadly no, Aquinas is a book about Aristotilean conceptions of reality - teleology (think syntropy!) and Platonic Forms within matter instead of in some other realm. But like Bernardo & Sheldrake the author (Feser) believes (at least some) qualia exist in the world instead of in our skulls.

I definitely plan to read WMiB at some point. My biggest hang up is the idea that Mind is non-spatial...admittedly Morhroff comes to same conclusion via a rigorous look at QM, and it would help make sense of superposition...but I can't wrap my head around it. That said Neutral Monism, my preferred choice, has its own difficulties - one of which is collapsing back into Panpsychism or Idealism....
 
This is why I tend to just ignore the free will debate; under free will denial, all possible outcomes from a given event are claimed as proof that free will is bunk. Unfortunately, proper science* requires there at least two possible outcomes in any given study. So taking a binary choice (red or blue shirt) and claiming that both shirts prove your point means the example is unfalsifiable and thus invalid. At this point one might as well invoke Descartes' demon.

I agree with this. Free-will skeptics can almost be counted on to eventually bring up the "heads I win tails you loose" vignette, in the exact same fashion that they complain woosters bring up the "why is there something rather than nothing" question.

One of the interesting questions that I think gets overlooked is what exactly is indeterminism/randomness? Because it seems to me random events are acausal, and this would seem to spit in the face of logic. I can't imagine too many logicians would've taken randomness seriously if not for the fact that we seem to have strong proof at the QM level, which leads to arguments about the possibility of randomness at the macrolevel. (As Chomsky and Sheldrake note*, what we have in science are regularities. Whether we can upgrade these regularities to definitive, universally applicable laws isn't clear**.)

Thus it seems to me the choices are not determinism or indeterminism, but rather Determinism and Something-We-Don't-Completely-Understand.

*Sheldrake does so in Science Set Free, Chomsky does in this talk FDRS posted awhile back:


**Nancy Cartwright's No God, No Laws & Freya Matthew's Panpsychism Paradigm. Basically both papers deal with similar issues. Cartwright notes that many "laws" are established in laboratories, and thus whether they have universal applicability outside the lab is questionable. As an atheist, she basically rejects the idea that Laws of Nature could exist as brute facts.

Matthews touches on something I noted when describing the lecture given at my Sunday Assembly attendance. (Will try to find the name of the actual physics prof who gave it.) Basically the laws of physics don't have anything holding them fixed, and thus there's no guarantee regarding whether or not they can change at any given time. In her words:

To the extent that physics continues to source fields and forces to particles of various kinds, it affords no logical assurance that the universe will continue to be governed by these laws, nor hence that it will continue to hang together.The laws holding the elementary units together might simply collapse, and physical chaos ensue. In other words,such a physics cannot explain the coherence of the world; this coherence remains a fortuity. In this sense, physics remains subject to Hume’s anomaly. There can, Hume pointed out, be no logically necessary connections between distinct existences. To the extent that physics posits a universe of logically distinct existences, it cannot explain why these existences are held together by the observed laws of nature.
 
Back
Top