/lit/ - Literature

Any good /lit/ discord servers that still exist?

The question of free will is the constituting necessity that we must either completely prove or absolutely absolve. This is not a question of how empirically verifiable the premise is through our scientific tools. Rather, it is a question of how people behave and act in the manner they do, and to what extent is this behavior and acting controllable by external forces, if it is not already entirely controlled.

We may posit that a person has autonomy; that being in sound mental faculty, they are able to make rational decisions which reflect an inner “spirit”, which wishes to make its “will” on the surrounding environment. This “spirit” has desires, wants, needs, dislikes; but where is the origin for such things? Claiming a supernatural or outside force seems to be illogical. The post-modern world has established, matter of factly, that a divine touch through some unexplained medium is relatively impossible, and that those who claim to have a clarity of the such are mentally unsound and at best, relegated to an institution for theirs and societies well-being.

So, why do we humans behave in the way we do? What compels us to being that which we are? The former discourse being a study of one’s nature; the latter a Cade of ones internal genetics. However, as modern empiricism has shown us, genetics are no longer a verifiable end-all determinant of behavior to the degree we thought it might be. We know that as humans, we tend to be a reflection and product of our environment, and that through this circumstantial environments, we are limited in not only experience, but also un-experience. We know what we know, and we know what we do not know; and how this knowing and unmoving manifests a preordained form which determines our inner being, the thing we call “ourselves”, which as stated, is wholly limited to circumstances; environment.

Anyone suggestion of being and becoming outside of this frame will require nothing less than extraordinary proof, for extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And to what extraordinary claims might be made in offense of the latter posited thesis of a determined being? One might claim a many thing, of which I feel a lack of thorough examination is relatively unrequited, considering the pervasive intellect which should be present in the individual reading this text.

To begin this brevet but sound discourse, I would like to examine the nature of the mind. Against the notion of a mind which is not beholden entirely to external forces, those in defense of such a thesis claim a supernatural conscious; a claim that man is a supra-natural phenomena which defies the logic of his preceding and humble origins. Man is said to have a free-will. He is said to be in possession of sound faculty. To be entirely steadfast in realization of his being. That, provided the circumstances of decision, he is able to draw upon a force which is not present in any physical being to exist heretofore.