/philosophy/ - Philosophy

What do you think is the main driver of human action? Free will in the view of existentialists, in which the free choice of each of us is the ultimate point of reference? A model of behaviorist determinism, reducing human activity to the rank of an automated response to an external stimulus? Or maybe some mixed model?

Free will means you get to do what you want. Anyone who says free will does not exist because of some argument about how the brain works is a moron. They have misunderstood not only what free will is but convinced themselves that they understand how the brain works to such a degree that they can be sure it is deterministic.

Every study of actual human behavior shows that human behavior is unpredictable. The very fact that people have personalities proves determinism wrong.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a good estimation of what motivates people, but because people are unique there is no correct, definitive answer. Different people are motivated by different things.

>>7126

From the other side , the natural way is that the way we perceive the world is conditioned by the knowledge we have about it, hence we can not say that we have an unhampered choice, because we will act differently in a specific situation if something significantly changes our perceptions problem. If, for example, I see a man in rags poking around under a shop, I want to give him a few dollars. If, however, I know that it is really a rich man who only wants to extort donations from passers-by, I will not give him anything. It is not the case that at the moment of making decisions I see the whole spectrum of possibilities, but rather irrevocably I choose the one that is the closest to my devotion, determined in turn by external factors. And even science refutes the existence of free choice. A few years ago, research on brain function was conducted in the USA, in which people were connected to machines registering brain work, and then they were ordered to perform various commands, move their hands, close their eyes etc. It turns out that the brain sends a signal to nerve cells movement for a hundredth of a second before the brain thinks about it. So where is the choice here?

>>7129

>It is not the case that at the moment of making decisions I see the whole spectrum of possibilities, but rather irrevocably I choose the one that is the closest to my devotion, determined in turn by external factors.

But you have made a mistake, for it is by the external factors that you judge, but the act of judging itself is internal and within your own control. You do care that the beggar is actually a rich man, but it is within your power to not care, and this cannot be taken away. Further, we should not rest philosophy on science, but science must conform to sound philosophy. Science has no voice. To the extent it can speak, it can only speak of particular facts. It measured a certain activity in the brain at a certain time, it measured a certain signal in a certain nerve at a previous time. Beyond this science can say nothing, because science has no mechanism to justify saying more.

>>7129

Once again you don't understand what free will is. Free will is not the power to know everything and make decisions on it. It is simply the power to act on your own decisions.

To your second point, what you are describing is a reflex. Your reflexes also come from your brain, just not a conscious part of it. You can train your reflexes to do what you want. It does not disprove free will at all. Reflexes don't overpower your free will, they predict it and act accordingly.

Both. Free will by the grace of God determines his ends

Determined by who? Determined by whose presumably free will? If by determinism you just mean that all things are a logical consequence of another, we have free will so long as "free" isn't defined as breaking the physical, consequential laws of the universe.

>some metaphysical external force pushes people towards a certain "good" direction, a "maximum potential" that is the best self one can be

>people choose to ignore these "signs", wander from the path

>the longer one strays from the path, the further one distances themself from their maximum potential

>these signs become larger, more detrimental, more punishing the further one strays from it

>once the person makes choices to wander so far from the path, a cataclysmic life event occurs

>people can learn from this and work back to the "good" path towards their goal or not

>people who do are able to get back on the "good" path relatively quickly and with few (if any) true obstacles

>people who do not are permanently stuck outside of this good path and will face nothing but hardships for the rest of their lives

>many/most people balance bad and good to the point of never understanding their true goal, but never seeing cataclysm

>people generally "know" what they "should do" to stay on the path, but very few (if any) people ever truly reach that max potential

I don't believe in determinism in the sense of Greek Fates, but there is a given purpose. Free will does only harm. People know this and try to do what they can to cast it away in attempts to rid themselves of suffering and responsibility for the potential failures of their actions.