SELF DETERMINISM

dapperdobbs <@hotmail.com> wrote:
> If we may pause for a moment here at the point you make above ... I
> think the question is: Does man have self-determinism? Did God create
> man with a choice or choices?

      Here is my position.

      There are two kinds of freedom here that are usually confused by
the weak minded.

      1.) Freedom from determination.

      2.) Freedom to do what he wants.


      FREEDOM FROM DETERMINATION

      NOTHING can be free of its own nature.

      If it were, then its action would be utterly random, and as there
are more ways to harm than to help, this would be disasterous.

      Thus a free will, in the sense of free from being determined by
anything, is not desirable.


      FREEDOM TO DO WHAT HE WANTS

      Man has a will which is determined by his desires, the equation
that drives that will is

      DOING = WANTING + KNOWING.

      In other words, given what a man wants, he uses what he knows to
compute what he should do.

     A man can change his wants, but only if he wants to, thus at all
times his actions are computed from his desire and his knowledge.  His
computations can be wrong, held down sevens, etc, but the machine
continues as best it can.

     In this sense a man considers he has 'free' will, when his will is
free to follow what he has computed he should do.

     You put him in jail, and he wants to get out.  So he computes that
the way to get out is to open the door and leave.  But the door is
locked closed, so he can not pursue his desire, thus his will is not
'free'.

     This 'freedom' to do what he wishes, has nothing to do with freedom
from determination.

     One in fact hopes that a man *IS* determined by good will, no
matter how insane his knowledge or computations might be.

     Thus the first kind of freedom from determination is undesirable,
and the second kind is intimately desirable.

     A man can get into a state where he is forced to do something he
doesn't want to do.  When the forces determining his actions are not in
accord with his desires, knowledge and computations, then he has a
problem with himself.

      But even then the only 'freedom' he has lost is the freedom
to do what he wants and computes.
 
     One can force a man under threat and duress of pain for himself or
his loved ones to do something 'he doesn't want to do.' Notice when he
chooses to act, he is still choosing to act according to his own
computation and desires given the added data of threat and duress.
As bad as it sounds he is still doing what he wants.

     In otherwords being 'forced' to do something by the use of direct
force, or by the use of motivation through the threat of pain are two
completely different things.  The first is a violation of free will,
then second is simply freewill in action given the circumstances of
threat and duress.

     A man can also get into a state where inner reactivity takes over
for him and makes him do things that he has not computed to do.  He may
later try to make them right by finding computations AFTER the fact of
the action to make the action right.

      A spirit has another level of freedom, in that a spirit, unlike a
MEST machine, is not state determined by the physical universe.

     State determined means what the machine does next is a pure
function of its present state and circumstances plus or minus some dice
throwing in is internal mechanics.

     A machine is determined by its own nature and by the environment it
is in at the time.  State plus environment equals new state.

     Men as MEST BODIES, don't like to think they are robots, but like
any machine, they are robots to their nature and to their environmental
impingements.  That quantum mechanics allows for some randomness in
outcome, doesn't make the machine 'free', it makes it random.

     A spirit however can originate something NEW that is not a function
of anything that has gone before in the MEST universe, nor its present
state in the physical universe.

     Such prime postulates, as they are called, are still a function of
the nature of the spirit, but are not a function of the past or the
present environment.

     Thus a spirit has a level of being undetermined that a mest machine
or body/brain does not but it's still determined or constrained by its
eternal nature.

     Choice is the ability to compute many possible paths to a desired
outcome, and picking the one mostly likely to get there the fastest with
the least expenditure of energy or pain.

     Choices can be pushed to the limit when two people are starving to
death, and each has to decide whether to kill himself, or kill and eat
the other.

     Friendships, and prior relationship can affect the outcome of such
computations.

     The concept of 'free' will is used mostly to punish people, if he
chooses to harm someone and he gets caught, people chose to harm him
back, saying he deserved it.

     If the guy is FORCED to do something bad, either by others, or by
something physical or mental inside him, people can be forgiving, but he
may be done away with anyhow as an expediency.

     Basically it comes down to being a team, in which case people treat
each other with respect, or being in opposition, in which case all hell
can break lose.

     As for obedience, most morals hold man obliged to obey a higher
authority, be it the law of the land or the law of the sky.

     If he knows the law, and he knows others will try to punish him for
breaking it, and he breaks it, then by definition he gets what he
deserves and knows it, even if the law is unjust and the purveyors of
justice are all criminals.

     The legal adjudication of insanity is knows right and wrong, but by
right and wrong they mean LEGAL AND ILLEGAL, not morally right or
morally wrong.

     NO ONE EVER DOES WHAT THEY BELIEVE TO BE MORALLY WRONG OR NOT THE
BEST SOLUTION TO THEIR DESIRES (SAME THING), although they may be
computing under subtle but high duress from internal or external
factors.

      Thus man has a moral mandate to do what is right first, and what is
legal second, unless he has sworn to uphold the law right or wrong and
is allowed into office by others on the basis of that promise.  If he
finds that the law is immoral, he can put down his badge, dismiss
himself from his sworn post and its duties, and then break the law
meaningfully.

      That was more than you wanted, but there it is.

      Homer
Mon Nov 29 01:15:07 EST 2010