The Meaning of Life?

[anderako]

Choice exists, but the choices we make are all predetermined by our experience. In other words, we aren't the authors of our own lives, but rather the authors of the lives of everyone else.

[Jalpha]

I like the last part. That's food for thought.

[GenghisKhan44]

Effectively nature makes us do everything. All of our actions are determined by chemical reactions and their effect is determined by the way experiences have shaped the structure of our brains. Many people seem to take that as a reason to accept who they are and where they are in life. Many never consider that the rules impressed upon us from childhood are not absolutes. That we do have power over our own mind, our own perceptions and we have the power to modify our own minds. To develop yourself to take the actions you choose instead of the actions you have been taught. Or something. These are hard concepts to properly communicate.

Lemme see if I am understanding you correctly:
* You - the self - are a different thing from nature. Oké.
* You can control your natural mechanics - your mind and your body - and be responsible for your actions and thoughts.
* At the same time, only nature has control of everything you do - your thoughts and actions - and you are not at all the cause of them.

No wonder it's hard for you to communicate it. There's at least one contradiction here.

I propose this as the solution:
Leave the first assumption alone.
Change the second to: You can control some of your thoughts and actions, and are responsible only for those you have the power to control.
And the third: Some of your thoughts and actions are beyond your control or your responsibility.
And finally, one more: That which is in your control and that which is not can change under certain circumstances - at different times, with different bodily or environmental conditions, etc.

And you get something like this:

Human beings are unique in nature. One of the things that makes them unique is that they have some control over their actions and thoughts. Freedom characterizes properly human acts. It makes the human being responsible for acts of which he is the voluntary agent. His deliberate acts properly belong to him. BUT the imputability or responsibility for an action can be diminished or nullified - by ignorance, duress, fear, and other psychological or social (and I would add physical and metaphysical) factors.

It's a debate on the existence of free will. Free will may not exist, but self control does. That's important to note because it means you are accountable for your own actions, regardless of what external factors are imposed upon you.

What do you mean when you say "free will" and "self control"? The two seem synonymous to me. And free will is the power - the ability - to act or not to act. Free will is the ability to perform deliberate acts of one's own. And it does become more free when we choose to do that which we know and understand is good - especially when we feel like doing something else.

Or, as someone once put it, as a man is free to drink while he is drinking; he is not free still to be dry.

[anderako]

"How Can Mirrors Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real" -Friedrich Nietzsche

[Jalpha]

I don't believe myself to be something separate from nature at all. Quite the contrary, I am a piece of the universe just like any other, and with equal value to that of any other piece of the universe.

I find the concept that we can at times not be held accountable for our own actions hard to accept. I can concede it as a possibility but I find the idea distasteful.

Self control is just a simpler way of explaining the concept without drawing in a bunch of philosophical ideas related to free-will. I don't think it's a trait that sets us apart from anything in the animal kingdom. A dog can be taught to sit.

[GenghisKhan44]

I don't believe myself to be something separate from nature at all. Quite the contrary, I am a piece of the universe just like any other, and with equal value to that of any other piece of the universe.

Well, we are animals. We are natural beings. We are, categorically, part of the universe. I don't dispute that. And we do all operate in the universe.
But no one can dispute that the ends, the purposes, of human beings - collectively or individually - are different from those of other natural things. The pursuit of happiness, truth, beauty, and goodness is an uniquely human enterprise that no other creature arses about.

I find the concept that we can at times not be held accountable for our own actions hard to accept. I can concede it as a possibility but I find the idea distasteful.

I don't understand. You seem to accept the proposition that we are controlled by natural forces - brain chemistry, for instance. Am I wrong?

Self control is just a simpler way of explaining the concept without drawing in a bunch of philosophical ideas related to free-will. I don't think it's a trait that sets us apart from anything in the animal kingdom. A dog can be taught to sit.

So... you would say that self-control is Pavlovian conditioning, whereas you would distinguish it from free-will, which implies actual choice in the matter? Something like that?

[Acefirebird]

Choice exists, but the choices we make are all predetermined by our experience. In other words, we aren't the authors of our own lives, but rather the authors of the lives of everyone else.

I disagree. Our experiences our based off of choices we make, and not necessarily the other way around. You wont have a certain experience unless you make a certain choice. One experience can lead to multiple choices of what future experiences will look like but ultimately the path is chosen by the individual.
Even if that isn't true, even if everything IS predetermined, there is no point in thinking about it because we will always technically have choice, it's just predetermined choice.

[Jalpha]

I don't think we are superior to any other animal, if anything we are in a position where we should care for other species because that is within our abilities. Our path is different, with the adaptation of language, and ideas and thoughts being transferred from person to person down the generations, we have reached a point where we are conditioned from birth to behave as we do. Indeed from infancy we have a thirst to accept such conditioning, we seek it. Different, yes, but that doesn't make us any more important or less natural. Things like morality are social conditioning which is the lubricating fluid of our complex social society. We are taught what is good or bad, it doesn't come to us naturally. Empathy though has an influence also but mostly later in life. Good and evil don't actually exist, they are social constructs.

Just because chemicals in the brain provoke certain chain reactions which prompt thought and action doesn't mean you are at their whim. You can restructure the brain and reinforce it to produce outcomes you find desirable. I dislike the idea because it leads into a mindset where people accept their faults by blaming others and never make an effort to change and improve themselves.

On your last point perhaps, I have no well defined opinion on free will. In the end it seems inconsequential to me, I can shape who I will become in the tomorrows and hiding from the things in the past by blaming someone else is not healthy.

Acefirebird touches on the subject, I have no interest in debating the existence of free-will. It's a term tied to fate. That we are fated to act as we do, that our environment and experiences are predetermined and given a certain set of circumstances we will always choose the same option.

[MagicManICT]

We do have free will, but our beliefs and emotions interferes with many of the decisions we can possibly make. As Spock quipped, "There is always a choice." Our individual values dictate whether or not alternate choices are acceptable.

We could get very intellectual on the matter and start tossing out philosophy, but it really comes down to person being able to see outside their proverbial cave. It really is the best summation of the blindness of man to things that are beyond his understanding.

[dageir]

What's your point?

I think therefore I am?

I can't be sure anything is real except my own thoughts?

Are you a figment of my imagination dageir, sent here to taunt me?

Where are you going with this?

You can not be sure of anything, not even this sentence.