Can you answer this Philosophical Question?

Question

Since my acts are caused by my choices and my choices caused by my beliefs and desires and my beliefs and desires are not in my direct control, how can it be that my acts are free?

Why or Why not do you agree with this?

No this is not my school homework. It is just a question that has been around for a long time.

But do you have control of why you believe in the way you do? If you did you can easily make yourself believe the sky is green, the grass is blue, right is wrong and wrong is nothingness correct? can you control the desire of thirst? or turn on or off seeing something that you like?

I'd figure I'd throw this into the mix

Answer 1

i desire candy, but i dont eat it, because my desire not to eat it is stronger. are both of these desires out of my control? my desire for candy came from my experience of eating it, and my desire not to eat it comes from my fear of getting cavaties.

the next day, i desire candy, but eat it. how can i be in similar situations with different results. i desired candy in both situations, but in only one did i eat the candy.

if desire was out of my control in both situations, then what caused my stronger desire to win on day 1, but not day 2. was it a random event? so, i can't go into a store and not know if i will ever have the right desire. how am i going to do anything, because i will never know if the right desire will be there when i need it. i fit's all just random desires, then maybe i should just stay home and play on yahoo answers all day, since i don't even know where i will end up when i drive, because i might have a random desire to drive a hundred miles away.

as you can probably see how ridiculous it would be to say that desires are the cause of all actions, or else wouldn;t they just be random, or is there some reason to their existence. well, if there is some reason to them, then they couldn't be random, they must exist for some reason. i like candy everyday, but only eat it one day and not the other, because of some reason and not a random desire over powering me.

are my reasons just random or arbitrary too. or are they based on something. was my reason of not wanting cavaties just a random reason for not eating the candy or was it based on something. if my reason for not eating candy was random,, then why did that reason come up and not some other reason, like because it was cold today. i didn't eat the candy, because it was cold today. so it seems that reasons couldn't be random too. or else nothing would make sense. the same for beliefs too. if desires, reasons, beliefs are out of our control, then what is stopping any random belief, desire, or reason from happening, thus causing us all to have random behavior and doing stupid things etc.

i hope you are getting the picture, because to say that we don't control our behavior or actions, because we dont control our beliefs and desires is the same as saying that what is not in our control is random. if im not in control. then who is? if it's society, then how is that possible, when society is just a bunch of individual people who are not in control either. then it must be god/God or something like that, but if it, then why would god/God make us go through the things many of us do? so again, if we dont control our desires and beliefs, who does.?

Answer 2

Beliefs don't just pop into our mind freely.
They take meticulous amounts of construction to make real
And when you find yourself believing something it's not simply possible to throw it out. Something must fight for it's position. You cannot just look down at the keyboard and "decide" to believe it's a giraffe. You can try, but that belief will be derided by so many others. The web of belief will scoff. You need compelling reasons, even if they are coerced, to believe something is the case.

That is-- outside forces control even these things.

I haven't proved this, but try-- seriously try to think your keyboard is a giraffe, the phenomenon confirms the suspicion.

All the cases where one may say "Aha! I've expressed direct control over a desire or belief!" it is on the basis of others~ on the backdrop of "options" but the BEST is always chosen. If you say "i have a desire to rape that women, but I don't, therefore I have control" this is a mistake. Because there are Greater desires and beliefs that command you to NOT rape the woman on the street-- the repurcussions, the inhumanity, the impossibility, the levels of pain and torture that can be imagined. Those are stronger. And it is always the strongest ones that win out. No belief need be full-valued, but the majority, the highest valence, the best assessment in that circumstance will always be the choice.

This idea, that we always choose the Best option, has no counter-example.

In educating someone you are not just informing them, you are indelibly changing the horizon upon which they may act, changing their future, making them different.

Answer 3

first of all, i'm too pragmatic to even really care. It doesn't matter what forces in the universe are acting upon me but i am going to sleep until 3:00 pm in the afternoon today after working an extra shift, which i choose to do cause im poor and i can't help it. I'm just poor and thats the way i was born into the world with no choice in the matter and no way of me deciding to change my place in the world. the logic is false. Action, that is act of doing somthing can be caused by many things. A autonomic reflex, such as blinking or flinching when your optical nerve relates that someone is about to hit you, just shows your central nervous system is working properly. and you don't want to get hit do you? or maybe you do, and you can overcome that natural response that all human beings have. And people can train themselves to do just that. Monks in Nepal can even decide to raise their core body temperatures on a really cold night in the mountains, and then lower it again. WOW!! Making a decision to do based on facts or regardless of the facts based on emotion and then doing is quite obviously under your control. If i desire to turn the air conditioner on because it is hot and i believe that such an action will be more comfortable and pleasing than the alternative and I don't turn it on I have made a choice. Everything in that scenerio was under my control. and of course your desires and beliefs are under my control. You ask where my beliefs come from, knowledge. and as a mammal with a higher functioning brain than the average bear, my knowledge base grows and changes and beliefs change with it. And my desires, the basic needs of my body, thirst, hunger, companionship, are also mine, who or what would contol them. And if a being is so influenced by it's hormones that it is a prisioner to its basic instincts, that being isn't human, sounds more like a beastie in the forest with no higher cognitive powers. People supress and deny their instincts and desires on a daily basis all over the world, clearly a choice. I have a question, is denying the existence of free will, tantamount to purposefully staying ignorant of the truth?

Answer 4

How are your beliefs and desires not in your direct control???

There is a difference between a mental abstraction and a physiological response to enviroment.

Thirst isn't a belief.

Anyone who believes the sky is blue controls that belief in the absence of better information to the contrary that the sky is green. That hardly amounts to forcing someone to believe it's blue.

Answer 5

How can you say that your beliefs and desires are not your direct control? Well it is true that you are influenced some factors but the final decision is still yours to take. Nobody dictates that you are to do this thing even you believe that it is correct but it is not your desire to do so. You are free..nodody can ever put you in a box..tell you what to do or what to believe, what to desire (well unless you are prison then freedom loses its meaning).You are free..but you just have to be responsible for everything you do. God bless!

Answer 6

Your actions are not due to the choices you make but what kind of person you are. Some people's actions are based on their emotions. Also You don't have to make a choice based on your beliefs. You may be forced upon a choice. And Desires should be in your control, else your life goes hay-wire. Your actions will always cost you something.

Answer 7

Well since I know that my desires and beliefs are in my direct control, I am sure that my acts are free...
We all at some point decide in what to believe, our desires my come without our consent at times, however they can be controlled with a bit of practice, thus putting choices in control, by letting you understand your options. At this point you should understand that your acts are forever in your control, seeing as to how we need not be sheep, we not follow, we all are capable of thought so we control our world and how we react to it.

Answer 8

I would put it differently- conscience actions are usually derived from behavior that is usually derived from perceptions that are usually derived from beliefs. Beliefs are learned or inherent. You have a choice to change your beliefs. You can change the environment that gives you the belief system or you can gain knowledge that will change it.

The false logic you give as an example: (A) causes (B), then (B) causes(C). (A) is not (X), therefore, (A) is not (Z).

It's flase logic because (Z) has not been precluded from (A).

An easier way to put it is; your beliefs and desires are in your direct control. Cults work on this principle of flooding your environment to alter your beliefs.

Answer 9

Um, faulty logic alert.

Since WHEN are your beliefs and desires NOT in your control? I would like to kill a number of people, I DON'T ACT ON IT. Also, you can change your beliefs by educating yourself. Your desires can be changed with wisdom and training, etc.

Its all a matter of wanting to change, trying, etc. Much like the Serenity Prayer, there are some things we can change, some things we can't and we need wisdom to know the difference.

Answer 10

Acts can be free because beliefs can be changed as we see fit, and while what we desire is not under our direct control, we can control how we respond to them. This in effect makes our acts free, our ability to change, and to control our responses to desires.
;)