Hi again, pneo, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think they helped me to make major progresses in understanding where you are coming from.
Well, if you believe the sentence "I can change myself" has any meaning, then choice is relevant, if not a prerequisite. If not, then not. In the standard understanding of words like "striving" and "improving" many people implicitly assume that the agent is making choices.
The sentence I can change myself does not make sense to me. Moreso it seems to be a mere paradox and raises a lot of questions, particularly if assuming me to be having choice. It can only be based on the idea that there is a. the me (who is the choosing part), and b. the myself (who is subject to this choice). I find this sentence very confusing without further clarification.
I experience changes would be my wording.
So, I see that you have a deep and subtle understanding of these things.
I do not really think this is about understanding things. For me it is about how we perceive, organize and conceptualize; I am interested in investigating what are the reasons that determine me, you and everyone else to do it the individual ways we do, and which implications come with which concepts, as well as how those concepts again co-determine our future experiences.
I am assuming that we hold our views because they appear to us to be advantageous (in whatever way) over others, and I am interested in learning what the advantages are that others see in their way of conceptualizing.
Much of my argument is not philosophical, so much as psychological: and you seem to have structured a psychology for yourself in which you don't feel that you have a power to choose, but are perfectly content with action.
That's interesting.
The interest in the way the other person structures a psychology for himself is mutual. Although formally discussing philosphical concepts, this is my underlying motivation in this conversation, too.
Although initially I was particularly interested in the question what the psychological reasons for and implications of are in reifying one´s personal experience into the abstract idea of freewill as the human condition and assembling entire worldviews around it, I now seem to understand that you have a similar pragmatic approach as I have and that you speak in terms of choice merely for describing your personal experience.
Thus, I am fine with dropping the human condition thing in favour of looking deeper into the aspects of structuring a psychology for oneself that is based on the assumption of having choice (vs. one that doesn´t).
That was actually my intention when repeatedly asking for the advantages that a person like me - who does not structure his psychology in this way - might be missing.
The aspects so far mentioned (change, striving, improving, feeling powerful) are not prevented in the way I experience and conceptualize, in fact they are essential parts of it (except for the power-thing, which I don´t seem to care too much for).
In return, I mentioned that which I find highly advantageous about abstaining from thinking of myself and fellow beings as having choice: It renders judging me and them obsolete.
I don't know what the experience of being an animal is. Except for the human animal.
I would even limit your knowledge to the experience of this one individual human animal that you are.
So, this is why I think it is more a psychological question; it is a question about the experience of sentience. In my experience of sentience, and the language I use to describe it, I very much do have the experience of "choosing" from among several available selections. Like you, I recognize that it may very well be that this experience of choosing is something of an illusion, that only one selection is ever actually available, and the selections I do not choose were never more than phantom thoughts in my brain.
As already said above, I am fine with concentrating on this aspect, and I am sorry for insisting so long on an aspect that is not of interest and relevance to you.
And my underlying question is exactly to this point: If, as you assume, you
choose to think in terms of choice what criteria do you
choose to apply so that your resulting choice is to think in terms of having choice rather than not?
Now, it sounds as though you have a different experience, or else, you have thought the issue through so deeply and embodied it into your worldview with such a degree of integration, that this idea of choosing from different selections is not interesting to you; and the notion that "fate" in the sense of the consequences of causality is the determiner of all events does not bother you.
I think it has nothing to do with thinking things through particularly deeply, it´s more about having different experiences. Fate in the common use, however, seems to have quite some connotations that make it inappropriate for me to use it when describing my way of experiencing things.
I wouldn't call that freakish at all, but when you debate this issue with people less sophisticated than yourself, remember that they do have that experience, and have attached the reality of sapience very strongly to the belief that a sapient entity has the power of choice.
I wasn´t aware that you perceived yourself as less sophisticated than me. I certainly don´t.
The above paragraph brings me to the question: Do you choose your experiences?
We could get into some more finely detailed discussions of free will in a deterministic universe, but ultimately, these are all just words, they don't amount to a hill of beans in the end.
Agreed, I have already gotten over it.
Ah, and here is where we get to my philosophy: that the pragmatic level of human language and experience is more important than any philosophical description of the human condition.
I find myself in complete agreement with you here.
Yes, you see, I think "I make this choice" is a much more important statement than "man has choice." Like you, I am willing to cede that under certain philosophical definitions of "choice" humanity may very well not have choice. However, in every imporant respect, "I make this choice."
How exactly do you
choose what is important? And based on what criteria do you
choose the notion that the idea of making choices is advantageous over the idea of performing actions?
I currently am determined to not experience myself as making choices. All I am asking for are potential factors that might henceforth determine me to experience myself as making choices.
Except that since all velocity is relative, it turns out is actually a perfectly accurate concept. In the frame of reference of the observer seated next to an attractive girl on a park bench on Earth, the Sun absolutely does rise. In the frame of reference of the energy-being strolling among the plasma flares of the sun... not so much.
Ok. In the same way I see a difference between perceiving (choosing to perceive?) oneself as choosing and notions such as god has given us freewill or man has freewill. But in the meantime we have agreed that these differences are not the appropriate topic for you and me to discuss, because we both consider such statements unimportant, so I´ll rest that case.
