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by pmoriarty
1805 days ago
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"Contemporary Advaita provides many pointers, one of which is to observe your choices and try to find a force independent of observable causality chains." How can we observe causality? We can observe a sequence of events, but that one event causes another is not something we can observe. See Hume's critique of causality for more on this. |
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“I shouldn’t have rushed my nephew in the store.”
The inquiry goes something like this: what emotions did I have at the moment? Did I choose those or were they caused by something? What thoughts did I have? Did I choose them or did they spontaneously appear or were they caused by something like conditioning, habits, traumatic patterns? Were we on our way to a concert? Is my nature patient or not so patient and chill and when did I get a say in my preference in how my neuropathways will get organized? Was my nephew fascinated by those books? Did I choose him to be? Did he choose to have interest in some things and not others? Did he choose to have a bit of difficulty when transitioning away from interesting activities? Did I choose how I was treated when I was a child in his situation?
Given all of these, including feeling overwhelmed and out of options, and having only the tools I had at the moment, my existing genetic makeup, thoughts, beliefs and environment, can I find a force independent of all of these that made me raise my voice at the child?
No, I cannot. It happened and I kind of witnessed it but that’s it. What I call a choice or a free will, when unpacked, is a combination of infinite causality chains which happen to express themselves through me in this moment.