The class starts with this question because it is as humans that we are exploring the nature and practice of free will. You could say that we are the instruments. We "instruments" can both practice and try to understand "free will."
One of the links from the first day of class is the link to the video, "Il y a des gens qui ont du coeur," - "There are some people who have a heart." We start here so that we may remember that as humans, the most complete and balanced place to start is with the heart. The heart is mid-way between the brain and the gut - both of which are home to independent networks of neurons. They are connected by the vagus nerve which runs through the heart. (I recommend Dr. Barbara Fredrickson's book Love 2.0 for more on this.)
In our first class, we listed some thoughts on the question of what it means to be human on the whiteboard. (You can find the picture under Class 2.)
Here is a summary of the key features I would name as guiding our species in our evolutionary journey.
Humans are:
Each of these serves as an open umbrella of interwoven propensities and behaviors. For example, language and cooperation are fundamental to our being ultra-social. At the same time, throughout the history of our species the fact that we have been creative, imaginative, highly adaptive and restless to make things "better" shows itself in human history's sophisticated development of language and systems of cooperation.
But the story is more complicated, as we all know. That is why I also linked Dr. Viktor Frankl's presentation to the first class. It is by aiming high that we make our way through. Some may call this "transcendence." Others may call it "flow." Still others may call it "losing themselves in something bigger than themselves."
The argument of this class is more than that we humans have free will; the argument is that we live most fully into ourselves as we use it.
The arguments against free will are numerous and evidence based. In his book Free Will, Sam Harris makes the case that our sense of free will is an illusion, even as he acknowledges the importance of that sense.
My thought is that there is enough evidence in the world to make a case for almost anything. The question is not about what evidence is brought to bear, but what is actually happening in this Universe we inhabit. Science has a tough discipline. Its theories need to align with real world experience.
When we look at the sweep of cosmic history, 13.7 billion years, and the shockingly short period of human existence, approximately 200,000 years, we are able to see a pattern of development among humans that exhibits creativity and "stretching beyond." It is this "stretching beyond" that I refer to when I speak of free will. The "stretching beyond" involves moving out from the known into the unknown. It involves effort. It involves an inner sense of trust in one's safety and well-being. This is what us humans have done, and continue to do.
The surprising thing is that this effort, this turning of attention away from all you know and are comfortable with to investigate, learn and master something new, is deeply satisfying at the level of the biochemistry of the brain! "Pleasure is pleasure," may be the common understanding. However, at the neurological level, some pleasure is addictive while other pleasure constitutes learning.
We know it is pleasant to be warm, safe, clean, eat nourishing food, be healthy, laugh, engage in intimacy and reproduce. What I am suggesting in this course is that it is also our pleasure to learn to be aware and direct our free will.
The reason that "free will" can be shown to be illusory is because it is subtle. As pointed out in Bruce Lipton's article, "Revealing the Wizard Behind the Curtain," most of the things we take for granted at the conscious level are summary abstractions of things we have learned in the past. They may accord with our current reality. They may not. The point is that we are not conscious of them until we "get out of ourselves" and see ourselves from another viewpoint. This is a kind of "stretching beyond." It takes effort. It involves an inner sense of trust in one's safety and well-being. Asking the questions, listening to hear the answers, and then trying the unknown is one way to practice free will.
So far I have proposed a) that humans have free will, b) that it is our constitutional pleasure to use it. However, because most of what we do is governed by pre-conscious processes, we need to practice. Practice conditions and builds the neural pathways that become our unconscious.
Now is when we get to the ethics of the argument. The roots of ethics are in the Greek philosophers, most notably Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The word ethics is derived from the Greek referring to one's character. One's character is what one does habitually. One may use reason to give incentive to the development of one's character, but according to all three of these philosophers, one's flourishing rests upon practicing pursuit of an external aim. Socrates called it "justice." Aristotle called it "well-being" in the context of one's entire life, one's friends, and one's thriving children. No matter the word, the point is that we do it not because we "should" or "ought." We do it because it is the way that is better than any alternative.
This is the challenge for each of us, and all of us together. We are social animals and we are learning animals. We like to make things better, and we like to be "right." The problem is, it's really not possible to be "universally right." There is always someone who has a different point of view. In my free will, I can venture into the unknown, which is another person's known, and explore what "right" looks like from their point of view. When I learn, I will be that much more whole.
This now brings us to the question of evolution. Where is this all going? Does evolution have a direction?
Stay tuned for more questions!
One of the links from the first day of class is the link to the video, "Il y a des gens qui ont du coeur," - "There are some people who have a heart." We start here so that we may remember that as humans, the most complete and balanced place to start is with the heart. The heart is mid-way between the brain and the gut - both of which are home to independent networks of neurons. They are connected by the vagus nerve which runs through the heart. (I recommend Dr. Barbara Fredrickson's book Love 2.0 for more on this.)
In our first class, we listed some thoughts on the question of what it means to be human on the whiteboard. (You can find the picture under Class 2.)
Here is a summary of the key features I would name as guiding our species in our evolutionary journey.
Humans are:
- Individuals who become themselves most fully in communities
- Motivated by desire: desire for safety, desire to learn, and desire to "be right"
- Creative, imaginative, highly adaptive
- Restless to make things "better"
- Capable of self-aware reason
Each of these serves as an open umbrella of interwoven propensities and behaviors. For example, language and cooperation are fundamental to our being ultra-social. At the same time, throughout the history of our species the fact that we have been creative, imaginative, highly adaptive and restless to make things "better" shows itself in human history's sophisticated development of language and systems of cooperation.
But the story is more complicated, as we all know. That is why I also linked Dr. Viktor Frankl's presentation to the first class. It is by aiming high that we make our way through. Some may call this "transcendence." Others may call it "flow." Still others may call it "losing themselves in something bigger than themselves."
The argument of this class is more than that we humans have free will; the argument is that we live most fully into ourselves as we use it.
The arguments against free will are numerous and evidence based. In his book Free Will, Sam Harris makes the case that our sense of free will is an illusion, even as he acknowledges the importance of that sense.
My thought is that there is enough evidence in the world to make a case for almost anything. The question is not about what evidence is brought to bear, but what is actually happening in this Universe we inhabit. Science has a tough discipline. Its theories need to align with real world experience.
When we look at the sweep of cosmic history, 13.7 billion years, and the shockingly short period of human existence, approximately 200,000 years, we are able to see a pattern of development among humans that exhibits creativity and "stretching beyond." It is this "stretching beyond" that I refer to when I speak of free will. The "stretching beyond" involves moving out from the known into the unknown. It involves effort. It involves an inner sense of trust in one's safety and well-being. This is what us humans have done, and continue to do.
The surprising thing is that this effort, this turning of attention away from all you know and are comfortable with to investigate, learn and master something new, is deeply satisfying at the level of the biochemistry of the brain! "Pleasure is pleasure," may be the common understanding. However, at the neurological level, some pleasure is addictive while other pleasure constitutes learning.
We know it is pleasant to be warm, safe, clean, eat nourishing food, be healthy, laugh, engage in intimacy and reproduce. What I am suggesting in this course is that it is also our pleasure to learn to be aware and direct our free will.
The reason that "free will" can be shown to be illusory is because it is subtle. As pointed out in Bruce Lipton's article, "Revealing the Wizard Behind the Curtain," most of the things we take for granted at the conscious level are summary abstractions of things we have learned in the past. They may accord with our current reality. They may not. The point is that we are not conscious of them until we "get out of ourselves" and see ourselves from another viewpoint. This is a kind of "stretching beyond." It takes effort. It involves an inner sense of trust in one's safety and well-being. Asking the questions, listening to hear the answers, and then trying the unknown is one way to practice free will.
So far I have proposed a) that humans have free will, b) that it is our constitutional pleasure to use it. However, because most of what we do is governed by pre-conscious processes, we need to practice. Practice conditions and builds the neural pathways that become our unconscious.
Now is when we get to the ethics of the argument. The roots of ethics are in the Greek philosophers, most notably Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. The word ethics is derived from the Greek referring to one's character. One's character is what one does habitually. One may use reason to give incentive to the development of one's character, but according to all three of these philosophers, one's flourishing rests upon practicing pursuit of an external aim. Socrates called it "justice." Aristotle called it "well-being" in the context of one's entire life, one's friends, and one's thriving children. No matter the word, the point is that we do it not because we "should" or "ought." We do it because it is the way that is better than any alternative.
This is the challenge for each of us, and all of us together. We are social animals and we are learning animals. We like to make things better, and we like to be "right." The problem is, it's really not possible to be "universally right." There is always someone who has a different point of view. In my free will, I can venture into the unknown, which is another person's known, and explore what "right" looks like from their point of view. When I learn, I will be that much more whole.
This now brings us to the question of evolution. Where is this all going? Does evolution have a direction?
Stay tuned for more questions!
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