Yes, I Could Have Done Otherwise

[Marvin_Edwards]

That was very well said and I agree with most of it. I disagree that this describes a situation where free will and determinism both exist, and I disagree that it does not matter if my choices are fully formed by the past.

There is no such thing as predetermination. No event is fully caused until its final prior causes have played themselves out. And we happen to be the final responsible causes of our deliberate actions.

[Belindi]

Chewybrian I find it odd that I can agree with so much of what you say, but still see things so differently. I will leave the mind-body problem, since there is another thread. I will only say here if you think your awareness is not affected by physical laws it is not clear why it must rely on physical components that can wear out or how the non-physical mind influences a physical body. But I am not claiming to know better. On the matter of free will, I think that if the determinist argument was that we are mindless automatons, or unreasoning biological robots I would agree with you entirely. But that is not how I see it. I will give you what sense I can make of it, and if you reply then I may learn from that.

Simply, obviously, what you do affects other people and the environment, and what they do and have done affects you. Those people and that environment have shaped you, made you who you are and in so doing shaped the choices you go on to make. You can’t escape this. The language you reason in, the ideas you learned at school or from books, other life experiences, learned cultural mores, genetic inheritance etc. all combine in the melting pot that is Chewybrian. Clearly you are always you making the choices you see fit to make, and we should remember that your choices affect you too. So in general it is good if people are willing to own their choices and the consequences of them (uncomfortable though it sometimes be), and seek means to make better choices in future. (Make ourselves better people perhaps). This, I think you may pretty much agree with, but not what follows. Let me play my version of Gilligan’s Island (whatever that is) and see where we get:

You are not an unconscious rock or an insect driven by instinct. You are a reasoning and self-aware being. That, I think, may delineate the extent of your freedom. But it is not trivial. You have drives and desires and you can also reason, reflect, and importantly, in the light of these things, choose. You can’t escape yourself, but you can to some extent choose how to shape yourself, and others, and the environment around you in so far as you are able. (I suspect I have lost you here).

You see, you start here with an argument you wish to refute:






And then go on to describe yourself doing just that. Let me address this:






People sometimes talk about determinism, physics or what have you as if the person, the mind, has either been eliminated or made inconsequential. What is left is something akin to a clockwork automaton. But you, the thoughts and feelings that make you who you are, and which influence the choices you make, do not evaporate under scrutiny. And you are not just acted upon, you also act. You make choices that affect just about your every waking moment, and your ability to choose is something which you can verify at any waking moment. This may be one of the most powerful and defining characteristics of your life. A key fact about what it means to be you and alive. You have not been somehow eliminated by theoretical reductionism. Your instincts are surely right here, Chewybrian. Our choices matter, and arguably because of this we have a responsibility to try and learn how to make better ones. We require this of our children, expect this of others, and we should expect it of ourselves. And we can be unhappy when they or we are perceived to trip up, make bad choices and get things wrong (as we sometimes must). We often seek to encourage people to make an effort here, and to learn how to make (what we consider) better choices. If they keep making what we consider dreadful ones, we may choose to limit the choices they can make.

So in my view we are not mindless, biological robots, and we are continually reshaping ourselves and the world by our actions. We can learn, as much by our mistakes as anything, and apply that learning to future choices. A key part of growing up is to learn to reflect on what the likely consequences of our choices will be and accept responsibility for them. And this is precisely because the world is deterministic. It doesn’t work otherwise. You can’t choose to be Socrates. You can choose to change your behaviour and be other than you are. If we have no control how would we ever grow up or develop? The world has shaped us in ways we can’t escape, and we in turn will shape it and ourselves in ways we can’t escape. But we can and do move on, and make choices about how to. It seems to me that your will is not “free”, but what would you have it free from? It is the case that your will is yours and yours alone. And it makes a difference. The universe shapes you, but you are still there, as part of the universe, actively involved in the process.

You may ask, did you have to make a choice you made? I have heard it argued that if you rewind events back to the moment of the choice (or further back perhaps to the BB) you would make the same choice again. So what? Faced with the same decision, in the same context, thinking about matters for the same amount of time in the same way and evaluating information as you did before, you come to the same decision. Quite apart from the impossibility of it, this thought experiment reveals nothing useful. The same event is the same event. This is a tautology and does nothing to rob you of agency or to alter the fact that you made a choice. What matters about the choice is that it was you making it (not the BB). You can’t hide from that, (I know you don’t wish to), and if you don’t like your choices then you can choose to work at making better ones in future. And that wouldn’t be possible, and no responsibility would accrue, if the world were not deterministic and your will were not your own. Any abilities or limitations you have belong to you. You can work on these if you want to. You are who you are, you have done what you have done, and in the future you may choose to do things differently. When you make that future choice will it be one you have to make? It will be one Chewybrian chooses to make by virtue of being Chewybrian. It seems to me that is about as free as it gets or needs to.

We cannot step outside of the universe. We cannot reset its starting conditions. If it were not deterministic it would be a chaotic mess and we would not be here. Yet, apparently, roughly 14 billion years after that beginning, here we are, you and I. What is remarkable is that our thoughts, decisions, actions, will, for a little while in this tiny corner of the universe, play a small part in how it, and we, continue to develop. You can choose to view that how you will. To me it is a matter of wonder.

That was very well said and I agree with most of it. I disagree that this describes a situation where free will and determinism both exist, and I disagree that it does not matter if my choices are fully formed by the past.

The only reasonable breakdown is roughly the one you gave us, but you only labelled it incorrectly, in my view. This is 'influencism', if you will. We are influenced strongly by the environment, partly formed by it and then facing continuous pressure from it. Existence precedes essence, but essence is still a thing. As we grow, our power to overcome the environment grows, both through learning and through a conscious choice to exert our will. I share your sense of wonder about it. But, if I really believed it was fully determined then the wonder would melt away. Perhaps where we disagree is whether growth amounts to an accumulation of influences or an expanding free will or both. I would say it is both.

But, I don't just believe I have real choice because I wish to have it. I believe it because I see it and feel it at every moment, and because every other possible explanation for what is happening does not survive my own scrutiny as being plausible. Did God make me knowing in advance the choice I would make at every moment? Then why did God make me in a way that displeases him and why would he punish me for being exactly what he made me to be? Why would he reward me for doing what pleased Him if it was the only thing I was able to do? The God-free version of determinism seems just as implausible to me. If anyone really believed in determinism as strongly as I believe in free will they should try to jump off the Empire State Building without the slightest fear, knowing that whatever the result, it was fully unavoidable. Can you get your head around the idea that any decision you take will then turn out to have been the only thing you could have done, even as you turn and face yet another moment of choice? You can never avoid choosing, yet you can never choose either. Does that even begin to make sense?

Determinism, with or without God, must require unavoidable fate by definition. It's never a choice with more than one possible outcome if God made me to do only one thing, or if the past formed me to do only one thing. If the future is not set in motion by the big bang, with unavoidable outcomes at every turn, then the only thing preventing the unavoidability is true choice. If more than one thing can happen, then someone, somewhere must be able to make a real choice (not a reaction based on instinct, etc.). Clearly, to me. these real choices are taking place and outcomes are being altered by my choices and yours. The fact that I might not know HOW this is happening does not imply that I should deny that it is happening. This is doubly true when I can not conceive of a plausible way that the real choice is not happening.

Chewybrian wrote:

Existence precedes essence, but essence is still a thing. As we grow, our power to overcome the environment grows, both through learning and through a conscious choice to exert our will. I share your sense of wonder about it.

True, some people do learn from experience ; but some others suffer from crippling uncertainty all their lives, and some others gradually or sometimes suddenly lose their ability to reason.

My 'essence' is my personality, or my reason, or that of my past which I will be aware of at the moment of my death , or my main reason to stay alive. I can't define 'essence' otherwise. Can you, chewybrian?

[Sculptor1]

Lol
Yeah! Run away!! Run awat!

What a load. I gave you the most complete and thoughtful answer I could come up with (all the rest of that quote that you chopped out). I didn't play by your rules, and you don't like the answer, so you avoid addressing anything I said by pretending I 'avoided' your question. Nobody appears to be avoiding anything here but you.

The question was simple enough, but you did not begin to answer.

[chewybrian]

Chewybrian wrote:

Existence precedes essence, but essence is still a thing. As we grow, our power to overcome the environment grows, both through learning and through a conscious choice to exert our will. I share your sense of wonder about it.
---

True, some people do learn from experience ; but some others suffer from crippling uncertainty all their lives, and some others gradually or sometimes suddenly lose their ability to reason.

My 'essence' is my personality, or my reason, or that of my past which I will be aware of at the moment of my death , or my main reason to stay alive. I can't define 'essence' otherwise. Can you, chewybrian?

I think your essence is the real you, deep inside. It represents your ideals of the way the world should be, the way you and others should act. It starts as simple curiosity and a will to survive. With knowledge, it grows into a will to become your ideal self, matching the best options from the possibilities of which you have become aware. It is limited by the scope of your knowledge. This knowledge is further limited by the roadblocks within your mind, by past misinformation, by unfair descriptions of yourself and your abilities imposed by others. You may have all sorts of prejudices or cognitive distortions or wishful nonsense that get in the way of discovering or exerting your essence. But, it is still in there. If you were able to be put in ideal conditions, with optimal support from others, and nothing but pure truth to be found at every turn, then it would surely emerge and grow into something special. I agree with Socrates that people only act immorally out of ignorance. If they had full knowledge, they would see the benefit of doing the right thing and naturally want to do it. When you think you see some benefit in a selfish indulgence, you are simply driven to act by bad information or a broken perspective on the world. Since the world is filled with broken people spouting misinformation, it's nearly impossible not to be dragged in in some ways.

Since you can't avoid interacting with the world, your essence is partly shaped by it. But it is not fully controlled. As you learn, your spectrum of choices grows. Ideally, this does not negate but only enhances your freedom. But the world is not an ideal place. Experience influences your choice, but not by brute force. When I was young, I might have put my hand on the hot stove, not knowing the danger. So, I learned. But, knowing the stove is hot does not force me to avoid putting my hand on the stove afterward. It only shapes my will into something stronger and more useful. Now I know how to use the stove to cook, but I can still burn my hand at will if I really wish to do so. I could also learn bad information and shape my future self in an unhelpful way as a result. Maybe I help someone and they take advantage of me. I might 'learn' that helping people is for suckers, and avoid helping others going forward. There is a randomness to experience, and if I am not good at separating particulars from general principles, I'm apt to develop all sorts of warped ideas about the world that won't serve me or others well.

I'd say your essence is what you might have been under ideal conditions. Despite the crap conditions of the world, you may still approach it through effort if you are inclined to try. It's always in there acting as your conscience if you are willing to listen. We know what we should be doing, but we give up to various degrees and let the world beat us down or entice us to take the easy way out.

I'd say both our answers are unsatisfactory, though, as it is such a difficult thing to understand and describe.

[chewybrian]

What a load. I gave you the most complete and thoughtful answer I could come up with (all the rest of that quote that you chopped out). I didn't play by your rules, and you don't like the answer, so you avoid addressing anything I said by pretending I 'avoided' your question. Nobody appears to be avoiding anything here but you.

The question was simple enough, but you did not begin to answer.

I don't understand why you have become so cartoonish in your responses, first to TS and now to me. You refuse to answer questions and accuse others of refusing to answer. You seem to have some weird idea that you should be able to orchestrate a Socratic dialogue to drive us herd animals into agreement with your position, and you seem to be very upset that we won't stay inside the fence lines for you.

I'm here to try to learn, not to try to 'win' at all costs. I gave you my full and true opinion at the 'risk' of being shown to be ignorant or just plain wrong. I don't care if you or someone else proves me to be either. I should thank you if you do, so that I can learn and become better. But, you're not even trying to teach, even if you do have the right answers.

Do you think the real Socrates went around screaming at people: "FFS, ANSWER THE QUESTION!"? Your presence in this thread to this point has been a sad joke. I imagine you can do better, but I can't imagine why you do not. If you think my answer was incomplete or incorrect, then say how it was. Tell me what you think my answer could have been or should have been. Direct me to the type of specific answer you expect of me, and maybe I can summon that type of answer. If I make my best effort, and you simply label it as no effort with no further comment, then how in the world could I learn from you?

[Steve3007]

I don't understand why you have become so cartoonish in your responses, first to TS and now to me....

Are you not familiar with Sculptor's usual style of posting? He's said that "run away!" thing to me in the past too. I think he's said it to lots of people, as well as, of course, all the sweary stuff, combined with the fearsome scowl of Kirk Douglas. I guess different people have very different ways of talking, some sounding a lot more aggressive/mocking than others, but I suspect that if we were all talking face-to-face those differences wouldn't seem nearly as big because we'd see much better the intended tone of the words.

[chewybrian]

I don't understand why you have become so cartoonish in your responses, first to TS and now to me....

Are you not familiar with Sculptor's usual style of posting? He's said that "run away!" thing to me in the past too. I think he's said it to lots of people, as well as, of course, all the sweary stuff, combined with the fearsome scowl of Kirk Douglas. I guess different people have very different ways of talking, some sounding a lot more aggressive/mocking than others, but I suspect that if we were all talking face-to-face those differences wouldn't seem nearly as big because we'd see much better the intended tone of the words.

It always seems abrasive, but it's gone off the chart here. I suspect it's a ploy to intimidate people. If you can leave a vague impression that you know more than everyone else, that your position is undeniable true, yet they are not 'worthy' of knowing why if they are too dumb to see it for themselves, then some people will be frightened into backing down. I can't be intimidated, not because I know I am right, but because I don't care if I am right. I care more that I am willing to see a new and better idea for what it is when it is presented to me (when someone bothers to express their position...).

[Ecurb]

.... combined with the fearsome scowl of Kirk Douglas.

If Sculptor was captured by the Romans, I doubt any of his cohorts on this board would say, "I am Spartacus."

[Steve3007]

[Wossname]

y chewybrian » Today, 1:14 am

But, I don't just believe I have real choice because I wish to have it. I believe it because I see it and feel it at every moment,

I hear that and I agree with it.

I am an atheist chewybrian, so prefer to leave God out of this if you will (ha!). If God exists He /She/It has much to answer for in my book, not least an appalling sense of humour.

You believe, I think, that a deterministic universe robs you of agency. You believe determinism makes you a clockwork being in a clockwork universe unable to make real choices. Your notion of “essence” seems close to what I simply take as “who you are”; both are vague but I think they point to a similar concept. Except I do not see that who you are can be divorced from a deterministic universe. I believe real choice can only occur in a deterministic universe, and your mind and capacity for reason mean you are not mere clockwork.

Understand that, like you, I insist that you are making choices. Your choices are yours, not mine. You are not free to make mine nor I yours. You are free to make your own, and they are not made until you make them. And you will decide how you will make them and what they will be. Who else could? Who else would you want to? You are part of the universe and not free to be other than that. And you, by virtue of being you, and the choices you make, continually shape the universe you are part of and are shaped by it. The fact that the universe is not and never has been under your control does not mean you have no control over yourself. You are not required to be omniscient and all-powerful to make real, meaningful choices. And your choices don’t need to mean anything to me or anyone else, and we are not required to agree with them. That is why they are yours, and real.

It may be that you are emphasising the “free” in free will, in such a way that I believe it is an incoherent idea, while I am emphasising the “will”. We both agree we have a will, an ability to choose, which we can demonstrate at any moment. If I have you, you believe a deterministic universe reduces the expression of that will to something akin to a deception, giving the impression of choosing but making real choosing impossible. We are effectively reduced, our agency evaporating under the cold light of determinism. But I do not see it that way. The whole point is that I do exercise my will, it is me still choosing in the light of my wishes and reason, and I have lost nothing in this analysis.

The “free” kind of choosing you seem to be looking for appears to me disembodied. Not affected by anything. Therefore not affected by you, and your values and your reasoning. That does not look like choice to me. That looks like chaos or madness. You will (I hope) not choose to step off a tall building precisely because of the determinism you dislike, the knowledge that you cannot fly, and because you have a personal desire not to be harmed. It doesn’t really matter where that desire originates. The point for me is that It is yours to do what you want with (act on it, reflect on it, or reject it). It almost seems as if the kind of choosing you think of as real is divorced from circumstance, ultimately self-caused or godlike. It may be I have not properly understood you, so by way of checking we understand each other, perhaps you will tell me what, if anything, is wrong with the following:

There stands chewybrian, and he asks “Do I have free will”?
“You have a will that you can exercise according to your own reason and desires” I reply.
“Yes but I did not choose to have this reason and these desires” chewybrian replies in turn.
“You had a hand in it” I say.
“Yes but those decisions were affected by events leading all the way back to creation” chewybrian replies, adding “I did not cause that, and so I am not completely free”.
“I agree”, I say. “Meaning no offense, you are not a god”.
“Then I might as well throw myself off of a tall building!“, chewybrian declares.
“It’s your choice you mad bugger”, I say (again meaning no offense), “but it seems a dashed odd thing to be so het up about”.

That is how your argument seems to me. I think you always exercise your will in a context. The context is the choice before you and how you think and feel about the options. Absent a context there are no choices to make. When you make a choice then that just is you choosing. It seems daft to me to think you lack real agency because you are not a god (and possibly a mad one with an appalling sense of humour). And I retract my second sentence.

[Belindi]

Chewybrian wrote:

Existence precedes essence, but essence is still a thing. As we grow, our power to overcome the environment grows, both through learning and through a conscious choice to exert our will. I share your sense of wonder about it.
---

True, some people do learn from experience ; but some others suffer from crippling uncertainty all their lives, and some others gradually or sometimes suddenly lose their ability to reason.

My 'essence' is my personality, or my reason, or that of my past which I will be aware of at the moment of my death , or my main reason to stay alive. I can't define 'essence' otherwise. Can you, chewybrian?

I think your essence is the real you, deep inside. It represents your ideals of the way the world should be, the way you and others should act. It starts as simple curiosity and a will to survive. With knowledge, it grows into a will to become your ideal self, matching the best options from the possibilities of which you have become aware. It is limited by the scope of your knowledge. This knowledge is further limited by the roadblocks within your mind, by past misinformation, by unfair descriptions of yourself and your abilities imposed by others. You may have all sorts of prejudices or cognitive distortions or wishful nonsense that get in the way of discovering or exerting your essence. But, it is still in there. If you were able to be put in ideal conditions, with optimal support from others, and nothing but pure truth to be found at every turn, then it would surely emerge and grow into something special. I agree with Socrates that people only act immorally out of ignorance. If they had full knowledge, they would see the benefit of doing the right thing and naturally want to do it. When you think you see some benefit in a selfish indulgence, you are simply driven to act by bad information or a broken perspective on the world. Since the world is filled with broken people spouting misinformation, it's nearly impossible not to be dragged in in some ways.

Since you can't avoid interacting with the world, your essence is partly shaped by it. But it is not fully controlled. As you learn, your spectrum of choices grows. Ideally, this does not negate but only enhances your freedom. But the world is not an ideal place. Experience influences your choice, but not by brute force. When I was young, I might have put my hand on the hot stove, not knowing the danger. So, I learned. But, knowing the stove is hot does not force me to avoid putting my hand on the stove afterward. It only shapes my will into something stronger and more useful. Now I know how to use the stove to cook, but I can still burn my hand at will if I really wish to do so. I could also learn bad information and shape my future self in an unhelpful way as a result. Maybe I help someone and they take advantage of me. I might 'learn' that helping people is for suckers, and avoid helping others going forward. There is a randomness to experience, and if I am not good at separating particulars from general principles, I'm apt to develop all sorts of warped ideas about the world that won't serve me or others well.

I'd say your essence is what you might have been under ideal conditions. Despite the crap conditions of the world, you may still approach it through effort if you are inclined to try. It's always in there acting as your conscience if you are willing to listen. We know what we should be doing, but we give up to various degrees and let the world beat us down or entice us to take the easy way out.

I'd say both our answers are unsatisfactory, though, as it is such a difficult thing to understand and describe.

you say "it starts with ------" . So I take it the real "you" is born at the birth of the individual.

You say "It represents your ideals of the way the world should be". But how can that be when some people, because of their circumstances of environment or genes , cannot learn any ideals?True, you say there are "roadblocks"and you say the real you is still "in there".But some children lose the will to survive and learn, so according to your theory of the persistence of "real self" these children have lost that.

I whole heartedly agree with you that learning is cumulative.I agree with Socrates and you that people only act immorally out of ignorance.

I don't agree with "your essence is what you might have been under ideal conditions". What are ideal conditions? Some individuals have to conform to horrible cultures in order to stay alive, and that is their only medium in which they can learn anything. So to be consistent you would have to condemn some cultures. If you condemn any culture as a determinant of whether or not the essence thrives then you have endorsed one of the only two pillars that support determinism, the other pillar being the individual's genetic inheritance. There is no space left in which to insert Free Will.
Nor do I agree that "it's always in there acting as your conscience-----". My conscience is those parts of my conscious awareness that have been shaped by parents and various significant others. Some consciences are shaped by bad significant others and the individual can't chose or avoid their malign influence .The poor child is pushed out of his mother's vagina into whatever awaits him.

[Syamsu]

As you already know, the concept of choice can only function, with the agency of the choice being a matter of chosen opinion.

There must be freedom in identifying the agency of a choice, in order to preserve the freedom in the concept of choice. As is obvious.

Your argumentation makes no sense because you seek to make everything cause and effect, while proposing a mechanism which is not cause and effect. While your mechanism of choosing appears consistent with what cause and effect does, the mechanism itself is not cause and effect. So then really, you throw out cause and effect just the same, as when you would propose a mechanism of choosing which was not similar to what cause and effect does.

One only needs to combine cause and effect, with possibility and decision, and not make possibility and decision into something similar as cause and effect. A universe where both cause and effect, and possibility and decision, are real.

And the obvious solution would be that a cause and effect belong together as one thing chosen.

I choose to fire the gun, the cause is the gun firing, the effect is someone get's shot.

The agency of this choice, be it hate, joy, love, whatever, is categorically a matter of chosen opinion what it is.

[chewybrian]

you say "it starts with ------" . So I take it the real "you" is born at the birth of the individual.

So, it's up to me, then, to answer the question of when life begins? Should I go ahead and solve that abortion dilemma while I am at it?

I think you have a small spark as soon as you are alive. It starts as a simple will to survive and satisfy instinctual desires. As you gather information, your personal universe of possible desires and ways to satisfy them grows. But, the fact that you need information to be able to make complex decisions does not negate the fact that you are making the decisions. You decide how to process the information, and as you grow. you diverge from the pure influence of instincts and environment and assert yourself to some degree. This divergence requires effort, so you may branch off more or less depending on your decision of how hard to try.

You say "It represents your ideals of the way the world should be". But how can that be when some people, because of their circumstances of environment or genes , cannot learn any ideals?True, you say there are "roadblocks"and you say the real you is still "in there".But some children lose the will to survive and learn, so according to your theory of the persistence of "real self" these children have lost that.

I whole heartedly agree with you that learning is cumulative.I agree with Socrates and you that people only act immorally out of ignorance.

I don't agree with "your essence is what you might have been under ideal conditions". What are ideal conditions? Some individuals have to conform to horrible cultures in order to stay alive, and that is their only medium in which they can learn anything. So to be consistent you would have to condemn some cultures. If you condemn any culture as a determinant of whether or not the essence thrives then you have endorsed one of the only two pillars that support determinism, the other pillar being the individual's genetic inheritance. There is no space left in which to insert Free Will.

Do I condemn some cultures? Yes. But I don't condemn them as "a determinant of whether or not the essence thrives". I condemn them as a negative influence. The word "determinant" is loaded with the preconception that we are all plastic bags floating in the wind, waiting to be pushed around by the next external event. Rather, we are like birds flying in a hurricane. We can decide to rise or fall, or try to fly into a wind that at times might be strong enough to push us in the wrong direction anyway. But, the important point is that we can fly. Some cultures enable people and some cripple them, but never completely and universally. If you access your will and embrace it, you can always fight back. Look at people like McCain or Admiral Stockdale, who maintained their will despite every imaginable attempt to break them down. The culture of the prison camp was, by design, trying its best to break them down, yet it was not universally successful. The outside world can always influence me, and sometimes it is so strong that I may be tempted to cave in and give up hope. Some people emerge well and strong from the crappiest environments, and some fall from grace despite having every possible advantage and plenty of support from people around them who care. If a flock of birds encounters a hurricane, most of them might get pushed along, but a few might rise above it or go around it through great effort.

What does all that say? It says that the world can influence me in some ways despite my efforts, and in other ways if I fail in my efforts, or fail to try. If I am 1% free and 99% influenced, I am still free. But, when it comes to my desires, aversions, preconceptions, opinions and intentions, these are mine alone, and I can shape them as I wish.

For many years, I was stuck in a spiral of depression and anxiety which felt like it was coming from the outside, and therefore seemed unsolvable. I grew up in a culture of denial (raised Catholic), a culture which put such a stigma on mental illness that I was afraid to ask for help even in the times I was not in denial. I live in a culture nearly fully focused on external goals and 'cures' and alleged sources of happiness (USA). So, I pursued these alleged answers to my problem and always found them hollow, and continued to fail and suffer despite misplaced effort.

Finally, I "met" Epictetus, and for the first time someone showed me a way to address my problems from within. I had to learn a perspective that is outside my culture and experience before I could make progress. But, I also had to choose to accept it. You could present the ideas to many other people going through the same problems, and most of them would not make progress. These ideas are not like penicillin. They only work if you choose to embrace them. These ideas would have no positive effect without a free will, but because you have a free will, they have no power over you but that which you allow.

Nor do I agree that "it's always in there acting as your conscience-----". My conscience is those parts of my conscious awareness that have been shaped by parents and various significant others. Some consciences are shaped by bad significant others and the individual can't chose or avoid their malign influence .The poor child is pushed out of his mother's vagina into whatever awaits him.

When I was young, it was culturally acceptable and expected to hate gay people. We were taught that it was a sin, and they were all going to hell. We played "smear the queer" and called people names that meant they were gay as an insult, both as a joke to friends and a serious insult to enemies. In my head, I always felt sorry for these people, but I never spoke out for them. I didn't agree with the culture, but I quietly went along with it because it was so universal. As far as I knew, I never even met a gay person as a child, so it was difficult to know the truth, anyway.

My point is that my conscience never veered from what I saw as the truth. I never agreed with the culture of hate, even as I didn't fully understand it as a child. When the culture changed, the view that I already had inside became acceptable, and I could voice my real opinion without so much fear that it would be too costly to be truthful. The culture didn't shape my conscience. It simply pushed it down out of sight of others. It only repressed my opinion, but it did not create it. I imagine people older than me had a similar experience in their understanding of other 'races'.

Is seems like we have such a great need for friendship and acceptance that we would rather do the wrong thing than be ostracized from the group. The pressure to 'go along to get along' seems to be a very powerful force that helps to explain racism and Nazism and a lot of other things people have embraced instead of their own conscience. But, it doesn't mean they did not have a conscience inside, that they didn't know right from wrong. They just figured doing wrong was a less terrible choice than being alone (or worse).

[Terrapin Station]

you say "it starts with ------" . So I take it the real "you" is born at the birth of the individual.

So, it's up to me, then, to answer the question of when life begins? Should I go ahead and solve that abortion dilemma while I am at it?

I think you have a small spark as soon as you are alive. It starts as a simple will to survive and satisfy instinctual desires. As you gather information, your personal universe of possible desires and ways to satisfy them grows. But, the fact that you need information to be able to make complex decisions does not negate the fact that you are making the decisions. You decide how to process the information, and as you grow. you diverge from the pure influence of instincts and environment and assert yourself to some degree. This divergence requires effort, so you may branch off more or less depending on your decision of how hard to try.

You say "It represents your ideals of the way the world should be". But how can that be when some people, because of their circumstances of environment or genes , cannot learn any ideals?True, you say there are "roadblocks"and you say the real you is still "in there".But some children lose the will to survive and learn, so according to your theory of the persistence of "real self" these children have lost that.

I whole heartedly agree with you that learning is cumulative.I agree with Socrates and you that people only act immorally out of ignorance.

I don't agree with "your essence is what you might have been under ideal conditions". What are ideal conditions? Some individuals have to conform to horrible cultures in order to stay alive, and that is their only medium in which they can learn anything. So to be consistent you would have to condemn some cultures. If you condemn any culture as a determinant of whether or not the essence thrives then you have endorsed one of the only two pillars that support determinism, the other pillar being the individual's genetic inheritance. There is no space left in which to insert Free Will.

Do I condemn some cultures? Yes. But I don't condemn them as "a determinant of whether or not the essence thrives". I condemn them as a negative influence. The word "determinant" is loaded with the preconception that we are all plastic bags floating in the wind, waiting to be pushed around by the next external event. Rather, we are like birds flying in a hurricane. We can decide to rise or fall, or try to fly into a wind that at times might be strong enough to push us in the wrong direction anyway. But, the important point is that we can fly. Some cultures enable people and some cripple them, but never completely and universally. If you access your will and embrace it, you can always fight back. Look at people like McCain or Admiral Stockdale, who maintained their will despite every imaginable attempt to break them down. The culture of the prison camp was, by design, trying its best to break them down, yet it was not universally successful. The outside world can always influence me, and sometimes it is so strong that I may be tempted to cave in and give up hope. Some people emerge well and strong from the crappiest environments, and some fall from grace despite having every possible advantage and plenty of support from people around them who care. If a flock of birds encounters a hurricane, most of them might get pushed along, but a few might rise above it or go around it through great effort.

What does all that say? It says that the world can influence me in some ways despite my efforts, and in other ways if I fail in my efforts, or fail to try. If I am 1% free and 99% influenced, I am still free. But, when it comes to my desires, aversions, preconceptions, opinions and intentions, these are mine alone, and I can shape them as I wish.

For many years, I was stuck in a spiral of depression and anxiety which felt like it was coming from the outside, and therefore seemed unsolvable. I grew up in a culture of denial (raised Catholic), a culture which put such a stigma on mental illness that I was afraid to ask for help even in the times I was not in denial. I live in a culture nearly fully focused on external goals and 'cures' and alleged sources of happiness (USA). So, I pursued these alleged answers to my problem and always found them hollow, and continued to fail and suffer despite misplaced effort.

Finally, I "met" Epictetus, and for the first time someone showed me a way to address my problems from within. I had to learn a perspective that is outside my culture and experience before I could make progress. But, I also had to choose to accept it. You could present the ideas to many other people going through the same problems, and most of them would not make progress. These ideas are not like penicillin. They only work if you choose to embrace them. These ideas would have no positive effect without a free will, but because you have a free will, they have no power over you but that which you allow.

Nor do I agree that "it's always in there acting as your conscience-----". My conscience is those parts of my conscious awareness that have been shaped by parents and various significant others. Some consciences are shaped by bad significant others and the individual can't chose or avoid their malign influence .The poor child is pushed out of his mother's vagina into whatever awaits him.

When I was young, it was culturally acceptable and expected to hate gay people. We were taught that it was a sin, and they were all going to hell. We played "smear the queer" and called people names that meant they were gay as an insult, both as a joke to friends and a serious insult to enemies. In my head, I always felt sorry for these people, but I never spoke out for them. I didn't agree with the culture, but I quietly went along with it because it was so universal. As far as I knew, I never even met a gay person as a child, so it was difficult to know the truth, anyway.

My point is that my conscience never veered from what I saw as the truth. I never agreed with the culture of hate, even as I didn't fully understand it as a child. When the culture changed, the view that I already had inside became acceptable, and I could voice my real opinion without so much fear that it would be too costly to be truthful. The culture didn't shape my conscience. It simply pushed it down out of sight of others. It only repressed my opinion, but it did not create it. I imagine people older than me had a similar experience in their understanding of other 'races'.

Is seems like we have such a great need for friendship and acceptance that we would rather do the wrong thing than be ostracized from the group. The pressure to 'go along to get along' seems to be a very powerful force that helps to explain racism and Nazism and a lot of other things people have embraced instead of their own conscience. But, it doesn't mean they did not have a conscience inside, that they didn't know right from wrong. They just figured doing wrong was a less terrible choice than being alone (or worse).

Just curious about how old you are and if you grew up in a particularly religious culture/environment. I was aware of some people being bigoted against gays or being racist, etc. but neither were a norm/neither were acceptable in my social circles. I was born in 1962 and grew up in a very non-religious environment, but maybe you're older than I am.

[Terrapin Station]

Oops--I see you already said you grew up in a strongly Catholic culture. Still wondering if you're older than I am, though.

Regarding religion, I was brought up rather unusually in that I had more or less no notion of any religious ideas until I was around 15 or 16. And then when I finally learned something about religions, I was like--"Wait, you believe what??" I thought it was some sort of practical joke at first.