"I'm not hiccuping...it's hiccuping me". This was a child's response to a mother's command to stop hiccuping. I recalled this quip in reconsidering my position on free will.
Human beings are essentially storytellers. We observe an event and then consciousness comes up with a likely narrative to explain it. The illusion compels an aura of control, of truth.
Yet, I no longer doubt that consciousness is a stage, an adaptive feedback stage, upon which life is more or less played out. It is just part and parcel of a whole that features recursive dialogues with everything else such that it is impossible to determine ultimate causes of behavior.
I clearly have causal power, the typed characters of this blog entry can attest to that. However this may not come from some mysterious will, but from the complex and dynamic relationship that occurs between systems within systems, between my internal world and the external world. It is proximate cause. Sound enough to hang responsibility on, for ultimate cause extends back ad infinitum and possibly disappears all together.
So, things may be deterministic at the design level. But, we operate at the physical level. Minus a "departure" point, true oneness (if it exists) has a more solid footing. Compassion has a mirror. And, lest I become despondent, emergence sets up on the horizon.
6 comments:
I admire your very unique point of view. you're a thinker.
PINK GINGER: I enjoy your point of view as well. 'Twas a nice emotional tug your fireflies stirred.
Being the proximate cause with the ultimate cause "disappearing altogether..."
How does an ultimate cause disappear but remain causal?
PAUL: The mystery seems to compel the question. Its like searching for an answer one could never be satisfied with. Any "answer" I've ever had was fleeting.
Its enough for me to feel fortunate to ask the question and sense being navigated along the way.
Yes, I would agree with these views which you have so clearly expressed!
Even though I asked "How does an ultimate cause disappear but remain causal?" I felt like I had a sense of what you were trying to get at.
Maybe the ultimate cause is the primal act of creation - say the Big Bang. Even things far removed in time issue from it - everything does - but because the system has randomness as well as order, any given specific event is indeterminate because of the sequences of more minor and proximate causes that led up to it.
Post a Comment