Papus79 wrote:Will's one of those things where I see that we receive it from outside - ie. our internal hungers for x, y, or z, etc. that you could plot on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as well as the pressures and complexities that we take on from the nature of our social environments. Seems like for most of our lives we're in an effort to tune, modify, and cultivate the way our various lines of will surface, how we'll socially mediate the, how we'll internally mediate them, and we do a heck of a lot of sublimating as well - ie. there are plenty of times where you'll feel a strong will do one thing, it won't be appropriate to the situation, so you figure out how to exchange the currency for something you can apply it to.
I really have to posit the roots of will as evolutionary because the growth of bodies seems to be a mutual benefit situation and with moving bodies that benefit would seem to come through focused agency. As for Free Will, whether it would make me friends here or not, I have to side with the Sam Harris camp for reasons that seem even more obvious to me than whether or not we make our decisions 5 or 7 seconds after our brains process them - ie. we're in a structure of time where ultimately only one outcome or branch of outcomes is real with everything considered and there's no way to rewind time, play it 1, 10, 10,000, or a trillion tmes over and expect a prior state to lead to a different result. The implication of that last part is that our lives from birth to death are probably frozen in the same way they would be if they were recorded on DVD or Blu-Ray (random background flux of the universe also being something where it interjects where it does and, perhaps for my own lack of creativity, I can't think of how an experiment could prove that it's really random rather than complex to the point of chaotic appearance). I think for pragmatic reasons we're forced to admit that we're agents for the forces that come out of us and, if we do something grossly negligent and some type of tort or even tort plus punitive damages need to be levied that there's no one else for those damages to be levied against other than ourselves.
You're mixing up modern things that are from outside, as far as the surrounding culture is outside, like a good T-shirt, and real drives like sex, acceptance by the group, food, shelter etc
If drives like those have a reality it is because they connect with a drive to be accepted by the local group. There isn't,as far as I can see any relevance to the question of what will is, or whether or not it exists.
-- Updated February 28th, 2017, 3:07 pm to add the following --
It seems to me that most posts here are just dogs barking at noise in the dark. There is minimal engagement with other's argument and a lot of argument that is not worth engaging with.
Most of the points and counter-points are more about the language used than about what people actually mean. As far as I can see most of the barking is about the particular words people use, and if there was an agreed vocabulary, much of the argument would disappear. I suspect his is true of most of philosophical disputes. When we raise an important and humanly significant subject like, "Will", lots of people feel threatened by it. They trot out all the learned responses to the topic. What we need is a structured response to the topic such as;
What is will? How exactly is the OP defining it? Can we begin to accept that definition?
If the answer is, "No," then the rest of the conversation shouldn't happen.
It is fairly clear that there is no generally agreed definition of what will is or could be or if it even exists at all, so the rest of this conversation is pointless.
WHAT ARE YOU ACTUALLY ARGUING ABOUT? This is supposed to be a PHILOSOPHY FORUM.
-- Updated February 28th, 2017, 3:10 pm to add the following --
It seems to me that most posts here are just dogs barking at noise in the dark. There is minimal engagement with other's argument and a lot of argument that is not worth engaging with.
Most of the points and counter-points are more about the language used than about what people actually mean. As far as I can see most of the barking is about the particular words people use, and if there was an agreed vocabulary, much of the argument would disappear. I suspect his is true of most of philosophical disputes. When we raise an important and humanly significant subject like, "Will", lots of people feel threatened by it. They trot out all the learned responses to the topic. What we need is a structured response to the topic such as;
What is will? How exactly is the OP defining it? Can we begin to accept that definition?
If the answer is, "No," then the rest of the conversation shouldn't happen.
It is fairly clear that there is no generally agreed definition of what will is or could be or if it even exists at all, so the rest of this conversation is pointless.
WHAT ARE YOU ACTUALLY ARGUING ABOUT? This is supposed to be a PHILOSOPHY FORUM.