Are we self-determined or hopelessly destined?
SportsThere is a provision until humanity rises from the dead, among the Nesesatians and free will advocates. —Rumi
A fascinating, perplexing and controversial subject of fate versus determinism.
Fate can be described as what awaits us after we make a decision based on free will and determinism that insists that even our choices are predetermined, reducing free choice to mere illusion; effectively reducing us to, as one author put it, “a rudderless barge on a raging river.” Or as another quoted, “that humans are nothing more than meaty computers spitting out the behavioral results of some inescapable neurogenetic program.” So are we controllers of our destiny or enslaved by it?
This is a subject that can become complex and convoluted as there are diametrically opposed points of view, deep into it. Therefore, it is more than a difficult problem to tackle, to say the least. The intent of this article is to stimulate new and deeper thinking about destiny, not necessarily arriving at one answer out of all the answers, but through intellectual honesty, perhaps getting closer to the truth. It requires looking at it with as objective a mind as one can conjure, and releasing preconceived notions hard and fast. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, “convictions are more deadly enemies of the truth than lies.”
choice
Like all other species, man was at one time under the powerful influence of programmed instinct, an automatic reflex action of behavior without a second thought, but we as humans have evolved into creatures unlike any that have existed before. existed, in the sense that we transcended that instinct. programming, making us aware of the new evolutionary fact that we are free from such reflex action through the immense power known as conscious choice.
All my life I have been passionate about the philosophy that conditions are meaningless…it is our deliberate thoughts and actions that create our conditions. One of my first insights into this knowledge came from the words of the father of American psychology, William James:
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their mental attitudes.”
More inspiration came from the great James Allen:
“Men and women make themselves by virtue of the thoughts they choose and encourage. The mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as it can hitherto having been woven into ignorance and pain, may now be woven into enlightenment and bliss.”
These men and others like them empowered us with the knowledge that choice, not chance, determines human destiny. Our philosophy regarding fatalism or free determination of our destiny will strongly affect our behavior. If you believe in self-determination you will tend to be proactive in directing your life path. If you believe in established fatalism, you will tend to take far fewer steps to determine your life. Therefore, if self-determination is true, a fatalistic person writes a self-fulfilling prophecy about his future that is much less than it can be. Many times, a person’s proclaimed belief in fatalistic determinism is simply a self-deception tactic to stay in their comfort zone and avoid exerting courage and effort to grow or change.
But there is still more.
Determinism
For 150 years, classical science defended the view of universal causality where one act begets another as in a series of dominoes that act on each other falling in a fascinating and fascinating pattern, also known as determinism. What happened will cause something else to happen and in theory if you know the whole workings of a system you can predict what will happen in the future and it cannot be altered.
Supporting this is what is known as the law of the excluded middle, that there are only two propositions, true or false, there is no middle ground. Just as the events of the past are true, there can only be one true future that cannot be altered, and the fact that it is going to happen guarantees it, just like the song Che Sera Sera Whatever it is, it will be. From the looks of it, nothing we can do will alter the future; controlling our destiny is useless, and this argument is convincing.
God and free will
Man’s free will has always been taken for granted and accepted as fact. We feel it instinctively as we go through life making countless decisions every day. However, recently, this premise has been challenged by science, where measurements of the cerebral cortex indicate the thoughts that we believe to start from the subconscious seconds before our consciousness becomes aware of them, without having direct control over what we think. comes to mind, the choices predetermined by the circuit. of the brain See my article, Is Free Will an Illusion? Free will is undermined by forces in our DNA and influences from our environment. As Sam Harris, author of Free Will, points out, if he had the same DNA and grew up in the same environment as a serial killer, he would do exactly the same thing as that person.
It seems that the belief in God and free will is contradictory, supporting free will as an illusion. To believe in the traditional God is to believe that he is omniscient and has foreknowledge of our choices and what the future will bring; predetermined so to speak, which means that no matter what we do, we have no control over our destiny. And if that is the case, we cannot be held responsible for those actions, making the concept of reward and punishment unjustifiable, cruel and meaningless. The Bible itself makes this argument in Romans 9:18,
“Therefore, God has mercy on those who have mercy, and hardens those who want to harden. One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For those who resist his will.”
Einstein was a determinist who believed in the universal operation of the law of causality and, therefore, a God who rewards and punishes was inconceivable to him because,
“Man’s actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God’s eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the movements he experiences.”
QuantumWorld
Enter quantum physics, turning classical physics and determinism on its head. What it is telling us is that we are in a universe of all possibilities, and not all things can be accurately predicted anymore. Physicists cannot always know exactly how something will turn out before it happens through universal causality, our actions do not unfold mechanically. Observing the behavior of matter at the atomic level exhibits a fundamental indeterminism, an inherently random existence, a strange world in which the mere conscious observation of atomic particles changes their behavior.
what to do with all that
As you can see, handling this question is a challenging prospect. And being a little confused is okay because it helps us look at it on a deeper level and away from a hard and fast conviction that is probably false.
Reading some philosophers about the genetic factor of DNA influencing our choices, one eloquently points out that genes do not make decisions, but humans do. We are complete organisms of which genes are a part, but we are not reduced to the mere sum of our parts, there is a powerful synergy where we are much greater than the sum of those parts.
As these involuntary thoughts and impulses well up from our unconscious, there is the conscious mind that can act as a mediator to evaluate instead of us reacting like an automaton to those impulses, taking them into the realm of choice, therefore, the mind conscious has the ability to override preprogrammed DNA.
Regarding determinism, philosophizing Corliss Lamont enlightens us with,
“Determinism is logically self-defeating. For when the determinist propounds his theory, argues insistently for it, and rejects the doctrine of free choice, he is all the while implicitly asserting that he bears the responsibility of adopting his thesis and has therefore freely chosen between true and false. .”
Looking more closely at the law of the excluded middle, it is quite obvious that this fatalistic view is absolutely true for the past, but for the future it is much less obvious. When it is set there in a single future and cannot be altered, how can something that has not yet happened not be altered, leaving, in my opinion, the future in flux, as revealed by quantum physics?
While it is true on a subconscious level that our emotions play a powerful role in influencing what we believe and what we act on that we are not aware of, our brain is built from the quantum world. Particle physicist Henry P. Stapp believes that there is a quantum consciousness that transcends the physical and supports free will.
I have not come to a conclusion – completely convinced one way or the other – except to say that in some strange and paradoxical way, both human freedom and determinism are true. That although they are opposites, they are still united. All opinions have merit and are convincing. In many things, a question is closer to the truth than the certainty of a belief, and it is much easier to gravitate towards a belief than to sincerely weigh all the elements of a question. I hope I have contributed something here to contemplate further. I leave you with this thought on human consciousness from Karl Marx,
“A spider performs operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee shames many architects in the construction of their cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this: that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it into reality.”