/lit/ - Literature

>>12123407
Well the faggot on the left decided to make it an Axiom of his philosophy

>>12123407
reminder that it does not matter whatsoever whether free will actually exists or not so long as you have the sensation of being free

>>12123407

Because that's probably true. The problem, however, arises because people are locked into this false dichotomy of free will vs determinism, imagining determinism to require intent, which it doesn't. Rather, arbitrary laws and principles which govern the behaviours of inanimate objects and substances create causes and effects without an overarching goal or vision. Whereas people, once told that free will is an illusion, assume that you're asserting the opposite, which isn't actually the case.

>>12123407
because they cant get off they ass

>>12123656
the problem is that i don't

Existence is nothing but brain processing information (input) through senses and realizing action (output) according to its primitive mechanisms

>>12123407
Converts them into NPCs.....
I hate sam Harris so much. “Free will isn’t real but ummm we should just act like it is..... i believe in objective ethics to reduce the amount of “suck” or whatever but the implications of my doctrine on human culpability should just be ignored...”

Most if not everything humas do is pure instinct, then they later reason it with something else.

>>12123859
Think before you type

>>12123407
It's understood in Buddhist phenomenology that the "will" as is usually intuited/defined in Western philosophy is constituted of mental formations that are not-self - see the 5 skandas and concomitantly the 3 marks of existence.

Also it's hard not to imply metaphysical dualism with doctrine of free will.

>>12123407
Where does he get his central thesis of "maximising flourishing" come from. Wouldnt any premodern philosopher BTFO this guy easily?

They already gave up on being free which is why they took up meditation

>>12124852
based and bread-pilled.
Even if it wasn't your intention, this is the Catholic notion of Grace through faith AND works..
The experiential always supersedes the categorical

>>12124428
>Also it's hard not to imply metaphysical dualism with doctrine of free will.
This
You're never going to learn shit until you realize the unity of mind and body.

>>12123407
Because meditation makes you solipsistic and egotistical.
Meditation has the same sort of effect as certain drugs in that it gives you false insights and makes you believe yourself to be wise when you really aren't.

>>12125440
Sometimes.

>>12123407
Because there's no free will

>>12125440

>>12123656
second post best post

because there is no free will. And when you finally understand this there are two choices. One - you go on a nihilistic adventure and you quickly get into the bottom, it will probably end in a suicide or you try to accept it and embrace it. It will deliver you a lot of oceanic feeling and good humour.

meditation is a protip

>>12123407
Meditators oftentimes seek to detach their “awareness” from their thoughts and desires. Through this process they come to realize that the vast majority of what makes them do, feel and act in certain ways derives from parts of themselves over which they do not have control. This is a kind of deterministic realization: a great deal of what happens in and to you is beyond your control.

Meditative philosophies often justify such detachment based on a kind of determinism too. The universe will do what it does, the Tao will unfold itself according to the Tao, regardless of whether or not you try to stop it or make it do something else. Therefore, you might as well detach from your worries about doing something important, because everything that happens just happens regardless, and none of it matters all that much. This way of thinking provides a metaphysical justification for meditation, and long term meditators begin to see the world in these terms. In this way the act of meditating and the underlying philosophy become mutually reinforcing. One meditates to detach from fleeting phenomena which are ultimately out of one’s control, and in so doing one begins to see the world as just a bunch of fleeting phenomena, out of one’s control. This confirmation provides further justification for more meditation, which in turn leads to profounder confirmations, and so on.

>>12123407
It’s the truth, I didn’t know I was going to post this reply

>>12125508
>Through this process they come to realize that the vast majority of what makes them do, feel and act in certain ways derives from parts of themselves over which they do not have control.
To clarify, that's not some deep insight but more like a babby's first realization when it comes to meditative practices: you are given an insultingly simple task like "think about this" and then you realise that you aren't exactly free to do that and that your attention has its own peculiar dynamics outside of your immediate conscious control. With this you are already faced to question the free will even with pure phenomenology and without any metaphysical considerations.

>>12125531
Are there any qualitatively different and deeper insights to be gained from meditation? From what I understand most of them are just variations and complications of this essential theme.

>>12125545
I'm not a great specialist, but from what I understand, meditation is first and foremost a training for a skill of paying attention to what goes on in your mind as well as the skill of moderating your thoughts and shaping them into what you'd like (such a description raises a lot of questions about what is "you", but you can provisionally understand it as a division of yourself into "free" part and "non-free" part, with the former learning to understand and control the latter; of course such an understanding is grossly wrong within the Buddhist phenomenology). That these skills can be trained by anyone (they don't require any special talent) and that they are immensely useful seems obvious, but whether using a particular book or studying under a particular teacher would help you gain them is always an open question.
Going back to realisations, I think there are realisations that come from watching the process of your thoughts unfolding (that is one learns that one has some inner structure in one's personality and soul), there are realisations that come with the general calming of thoughts, when you stop thinking about the most immediate and the most unimportant things and look back at whatever you stacked in the back of the mind, and then there are realisations along the lines of the ideology you approach the meditation with, be it Buddhist, Christian or whatever, and that would probably be highly individual

>>12123407
>meditate because it gives you more control
>say there is no free will
The absolute state of pop-philosophy.

>>12126230
Aren't stemfags supposed to be deterministic or are you one of those deus vult fags from /pol/.

>>12123407
Neither of these guys are "long time meditators" Actual long time meditators have upwards of 60,000 hours of practice because meditation is basically all they do since they're old enough to practice and true Western masters are the types that take year long retreats just to practice.

These kinds of people exhibit completely different brain functions when studied in laboratories and their philosophies seem to differ greatly from that of Harris.

You can't trust anything a Jew says about free will.

>>12123407
Because they wouldn't have started meditating unless they thought that already.

>>12126303
isn't Sam Harris a rich kid and spent his mom's money in meditation retreats when he was young?

>>12123407
Meditation makes you realize there is a mechanical process inside you that has partially an autonomy on its own. The same way if you constantly gorge on McDonalds you will shit fat turds. So if you overload on pornography your being and mind will be affected by that. That doesnt mean there is no free will. There are material factors in your body influencing you but you still consent to the action. That is why fasting is smart, since it strengthens the Spirit and lessens carnal apetites which cause imbalances in your mechanical processes that shape your thoughts. However due to original sin it is impossible to reach some sort of perfect control over your will. It is always fundamentally corrupted to some extent. The Holy Spirit that is inside you "accuses" you when you (a combination of flesh and spirit) have done wrong. Moral compass comes of the spirit. Fasting and meditation/prayer is a way to strengthen it. If you're not hearing the inner voice you should be concerned. That is why the people who are the most in error are not even aware of it, they are deaf to the spirit. Ideologies who renounce the spirit can only be demonically influenced. There are philosophers who there is no doubt produced thought that is hostile to the spirit. It is not hard to find out which ones fall into that category. In fact we are reaching almost complete denial of holy spirit today which is the unforgivable sin (how can a person who doesnt even think he is wrong be forgiven?).

>>12126376
Ruined it with the deus vult faggotry and the spooks.

>>12126411
A strong and immediate negative physical reaction to the things of God and faith is one of the key signs that your thought process has been deteriorated by feasting on things hostile to truth, spirit and God. If reading that last three terms (truth, spirit, God) alone resulted in an interior feeling of cynicism, pride, derision you can be sure your thought process likely suffers from demonic corruption to some extent.

>>12126428
Not cynicism, just pride.

>>12126449
One is enough

>>12123407

because they bandwagon ideas from the people they've been meditating around long term!

I meditated for a decade. going from anti-theistic to Buddhist to eventually straight up Protestant Christian.

I know a huge network of similar people to me as well

same goes for psychedelics

>>12126533
Do you mean your parents were some new age hippies that though yoga was meditation and now you are rebelling by being pseudo christian ?

>>12123407
no, consciousness of a determination already places you beyond it, what registers the mechanisms of the personality can't itself be mechanism