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Philosophy

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  • "... if you really pay attention to that process, you truly have no idea who is coming up with these questions and who's weighing them and who makes the final decision. It just… happens." Introspection often creates biases. In this particular case, when you are trying to pay attention to your own decision making process, the part of you who is paying attention is not the part of you who is deciding. So the observing part of you will lack a sense of deciding (will not feel like it is deciding), since it is not in fact deciding but observing the part of you that is deciding. Commented Sep 8, 2023 at 10:25
  • That is an interesting perspective. But then, the part of me that is consciously focusing its attention, the "me" that is observing, my conscience experience, apparently isn't the one making the decision. The decision is made by some part of "me" which "I" am not focussing on at the moment. So… it's not my "free will" making any decision, the decision is being made without my doing by some part of "me". Commented Sep 8, 2023 at 10:48
  • It's the "free will" of that part of you making decision A. That part of you paying attention has made its own decision, decision B, which is to pay attention to how decision A is made. But it has not paid attention to its own decision B. Commented Sep 8, 2023 at 11:01
  • Then it seems to come down to a discrepancy of the term "free will". I would think that only the conscious part of "me" could make "free willed decisions", if anything. If some part of "me" can make decisions without me being consciously aware of it or consciously doing it, then it is an automated process in some sense or another which I'm free to consciously focus on or not. That's "inside the box" free-will to me. Commented Sep 8, 2023 at 11:08
  • Personally, I don't like the term "free will", find it ambiguous (other than in legal language where it clearly means "by one's own desire or decision, unforced by others"). In philosophy, I prefer the term "free choice" or even better, "agency". But that's semantics. Commented Sep 8, 2023 at 11:49