Free will-- revisited.
Can we control our minds?
"Today we feel good because things are going well; tomorrow we feel the opposite. Where did that good feeling go? New influences took us over as circumstances changed: We are impermanent, the influences are impermanent, and there is nothing solid or lasting anywhere that we can point to.What could be more unpredicatable than our thoughts and emotions: do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? Our mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: It comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past."
Sogyal Rinpoche from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, pg. 27.
If we cannot control our minds, can we be truly responsible for our actions?
"Today we feel good because things are going well; tomorrow we feel the opposite. Where did that good feeling go? New influences took us over as circumstances changed: We are impermanent, the influences are impermanent, and there is nothing solid or lasting anywhere that we can point to.What could be more unpredicatable than our thoughts and emotions: do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? Our mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: It comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past."
Sogyal Rinpoche from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, pg. 27.
If we cannot control our minds, can we be truly responsible for our actions?
posted by spankidiots at 8:47 PM
3 Comments:
hmmm... though i do believe you on the point of not being able to fully control our thoughts, i do believe we are responsible for our own actions. You're saying the thought that we receive at the moment before the action, even though we might have not even been able to control that thought, will ultimately decide what action we need to take. But, i believe that we still have the choice to act upon the situation however we like. I do believe that we are responsible for our own actions because the person that has that thought has the final say what to do, not just an impulsive decision on what our mind says.
You said:
"even though we might have not even been able to control that thought, will ultimately decide what action we need to take. But, i believe that we still have the choice to act upon the situation however we like."
In response, take this scenario:
Ted thinks "I really want to kill Phil." At this point Ted has two choices: to kill Phil or not to kill Phil.
You say that Ted is responsible for his actions because he can make a choice. I agree, he can make a choice, but the question must be asked: Why will Ted make the decision he makes?
This is how I think Ted would make his decision:
"I could kill him, but what if i get caught? Would I get caught? There'd probably be a lot of blood. I may be able to avoid the blood, but maybe not...I say it's
50/50. So that means half the time i'd spend the rest of my life in jail and the other half of the time i'd live in fear of getting caught. That would not be a good life, Phil is not worth screwing up my whole life over, so I'm not going to kill Phil."
At what point have we, or Ted, chosen the thoughts we're having? Is it not just a causal string with no ending? There's always a cause to every thought-- even the ones we make rationally. I agree, a decision is made, but it is not US (as if we are a permanent thing) that makes the decision, but nature, the movement of the universe, the happenstance of having our minds in a certain place at a certain time where billions of years of events, in a vast space, have enduced waves of physical and mental events (as if they are different!) that have culminated to give us the present moment where we are lead to act in the only way we could ever
have acted! This event is the sum of all the causes before you-- how magnificent! Each moment, we are the lucky beings who in the causal scheme of things
are capable of being aware of the causal scheme of things!
Then under what circumstances could we be truly responsible for our actions? It seems to be responsible for our actions we would have to claim to be responsible for the configuration of the universe.
good point there buddy, no matter my opinion on things you always seem to find a way to turn it around! Good work.
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