Why Free Will & Determinism Are The Same | Bernardo Kastrup PhD

Bernardo Kastrup argues why the dichotomy between free will and determinism is false.

In this Q&A, Bernardo Kastrup (Director of the Essentia Foundation) and Hans Busstra delve into the concept of free will through the lens of analytical idealism. Do we truly possess free will or does determinism deny this. Or could they both be true at the same time?

Copyright © 2023 by Essentia Foundation. All rights reserved.

[ashberrychapman]

This is a profoundly lovely discussion again thank you both. I certainly went through a long period of self-destruction - actually since my early childhood, and especially after my life and sense of self began to disintegrate when I was age 50. Marriage collapse, ten year divorce, during which time my new partner killed herself and I survived what would have been my suicide. Then many layers of self-inflicted traumas. Lack of self love. Self-loathing instead. Gradually I emerged. It hurts. Dabrowski - positive disintegration. There is a point to the pain. I realised I could ask for help. I realised I am still here for a reason; many reasons.
And so I align with the being of accepting and submitting to what happens - letting go of the belief that I know what is best for me, which at an existential level I do not (or at least I am still learning), and letting go the belief (conditioning) that somehow I can control our destiny.
Life is what happens to us and how we respond. Our freedom is in our responses. (For me) optimism is part of my fuel for wonderment. I am grateful for my traumas. Without them I would be far less grown emotionally and spiritually. I would be a lesser man. I want to be the best version of myself. Love and gratitude to you both, Alan Chapman

[tubal]

In Spanish, we have a sarcastic saying when someones says that things could have been different: "If my grandmother had wheels, she would be a bicycle". "Could have been" is all in your imagination, your grandmother is not a bicycle.

[danstoica]

Man has a method of choice that represents his current capacity but also the power to improve it in the future. This means that regardless of his existential level, man has free will. This means that man will live different experiences where he will have the responsibility to observe, think and understand them. He will improve his choice method by paying responsible attention to the present, by remembering the past and how much he was wrong or right in the choices he made, he will also think about the future through more realistic planning. Determinism only tells us that "the sky is blue", and does not emphasize the method of improvement and human power, because knowledge means power, and this is valid in a perfect form when it improves us, and through the good that it we do to ourselves, but which we must also do to those around us. Instead, what does man see when he sees his weaknesses and inabilities, he wants to believe that it is something he cannot change, because he has a weak will and most of the time he likes lies more than the truth, he likes to lie to himself, to lie and he gets used to being lied to. Most of the time, if he were honest or if he loved and valued the truth more, he would understand that everything that is negative can be changed more quickly, with the exception of a vice. But to fight a vice through will and understanding, it is necessary to find a very effective method, and then free will is tested very strongly. Then the brain is used by thinking as strongly as possible by analyzing the problem through as many observations as possible. So whether we think about the spiritual or moral aspect, or the existential one through which we make our thinking and intelligence more efficient, we can understand that in the long term free will is built from the best possible morality and the best possible efficiency of intelligence. Determinism only tells us that our actions are influenced by a chain of causes and effects, but man cannot notice that there are other chains of causes and effects in time that man chooses through free will. Changes do not take place immediately, because after free will no matter how beneficial it is, determinism is manifested, and then free will through the need or better said the responsibility or the awareness of the benefit of improving ourselves. So since the beginning there has been free will, and the determinism in which we can find ourselves at a given moment shows us certain specific states, but which can be changed through improvement through a feeling and thinking as efficient as possible through free will. Free will determines a certain form of determinism, and this is essential and cannot be confused with the latter.

[Suma-]

And this actually solved for me what is meant by surrender.. Thanks Kastrup!😊

[tracedinspace]

I've struggled to articulate this as well as Bernardo, but the idea I've punted around is that free will & determinism are a false dichotomy built on a faulty premise - the premise of a discrete self. Categorizations are purely the borders drawn onto the maps of our minds, but in reality there is no distinction. The land between nations is the same dirt. As the Buddhists say, one with everything. The idea here is that is-ness, the experience of being-at-large; this is free will incarnate. Debating if your mind is the originator of free will or the subject of determinism is categorically the same as debating if your left kneecap is the origin of free will or determined. The categories are false mental projections. Categorization is Wile E Coyote gleefully charging over the edge of the cliff and not falling because he hasn't looked down yet to see he stopped standing on ground a while ago. In order for you to have free will or determinism, you must buy into the idea of a discrete you - the crucial step which materialists have skipped and mystics have studied tirelessly. Is-ness is beyond category, inseparable, simultaneous, and our curse or cross to bear is the mind which exhausts itself cutting the world into the smallest quarks to answer a question it doesn't realize is born out of ignorance.

[Jen_lois]

But there is one thing sir...if we don't have free will, what does it mean to have willpower? How under certain circumstances are we able to act the way we had never acted before? How we change things suddenly by merey accepting that our choices if made consciously can have long lasting and satisfactory effects? What does it mean to be conscious otherwise? Apart from accepting our limitations that we can’t control what is happening, does this mean that we don’t accept our power over certain things, and not just a few things but every now and then and see which the best???

[JacbIAm]

Note that determinism is not the same as pre-determinism, which has been completely debunked by quantum theory (basically Einstein's famous saying "God does not play dice" was debunked by further scientific experiments in quantum mechanics after hia death, which is very widely accepted).

So things aren't pre-determined, meaning there is a newness, a creative freshness in every moment (despite the obvious aspects of reality that in fact are influenced by past events, however the quantum fluctuations that create newness can never be predicted, thus they cannot be predetermined).

So things happen, bur what causes them to happen? This is a question that at this point of our scientific level of understanding we have no answer to.

On a philosophical level, as Kastrup does, we can then call this creative force free will (personal) or determinism (impersonal), both being technically true, as they both represent the two aspects (personal and impersonal) of the Universe.

So, indeed in that sense, it could be called the "same thing".

[ainstolkiner]

The discussion will always remain superficial until the “you” who is making choices in brought into question

[monkeypanda-ibcz]

“Dualism is samsara in Sanskrit; ka 'khorwa (ka 'khor ba) in Tibetan. It means going round in circles: the process of failing to get what we want through the very methodology of trying to get what we want. Samsara is the self-defeating process that dualistic beings continually re-enact until they begin to feel suspicious about it.”

- Khandro Déchen and Ngakpa Chögyam

10:54 “The universe […] is an organism, it interacts, it has a parity of purpose and a harmony of identity. Most questions on the order of, “Why are we here?” can’t be answered because they presuppose that each of us is discrete, set off from the universe or environment, confronting it rather than a subsection of it.”

— Philip K. Dick, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick

[MontyShipman]

We make choices, but we don't choose what choices we make.

[sambo]

I think the same. Free will is the unfolding of nature - "could have been" is the same as imagining you were someone else.

[texastexas]

Every choice (thought generation, image formation, followed by action) we make is a product of the past memories (preconditioning, habits etc). In other words, we are prisoners to our own past. The future is just a form of the modified present (present is modification of the past moment to moment). Therefore, there is no such thing as free will. The only way to take control is to dissolve the past so that future decisions are no longer dependent on conditionings from the past.

[SessleIsosceles]

I can choose to create or expand upon what my nature is, through repetitive action, this is an exemplary embodiment of free will

[whitb]

"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." - Schopenhauer

[Demidark]

The discussion of free will vs determinism always address the “could have been” but always seem to ignore the other side of the coin: “what can be”. And I think that’s what many people mean when they refer to free will. It’s the agency to logically choose future actions and behaviors and change habits and choices over time.

[WalkerBetweenWorlds]

This is basically what “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” means in practice, once you strip away some of the esoteric language. Things doing what they do because of what they are. Crowley’s contention was that we are apparently the only species that actively strives to set ourselves against our own nature and that we should then make the conscious choice to discover what we actually are and live in accordance with that.

[FlowingWakefulness]

It is remarkable to witness how influential was for Bernardo to have a conversation with Tantric teacher Igor Kufayev a couple of years ago, even if Bernardo would not admit it publicly.

Particularly how that showed itself in the conversation that followed with Swami Sarvapriyananda of Vedanta Society where Bernardo, encouraged by Igor to delve into great Indian spiritual tradition, came equipped with some basic information coming from Vedic thought.

If Bernardo continues delving into Tantric and Vedic wisdom it’ll give him even more clarity on this question of Free Will vis a vis Determinism. For despite undeniable brilliance displayed in this excerpt there are mixing of levels of Reality when it comes to how Will functions at each of its respective levels of manifestation.

[simka]

I like Bernardo's reasoning here, and I agree with it for the most part. However, I think that I would put more of an accent on the fact the human nature - which, unlike the nature of any other entity in Nature, is self-transcending - is such that this temporary "physical" form, i.e. the body, which I mistake to be the locus of my identity, gets conflated by with the true Self: the Universal Will, which is the True and Supreme Identity.

The upshot of this mistaken identity is that, as soon as one awakens to realize that the "I" - my real identity - is not associated with this body, but rather with the Universal Will who has only temporarily disassociated itself into 8 billion+ vessels that I like to call "T.E.L.O.'s" (temporarily extended limiting objects) - or bodies - then "I" am given a choice to exercise the ultimate decision of free will of any volitional being, and the highest state of freedom that a human being can achieve: either to choose to follow the petty passions and desires associated with the illusory ontology of the finite microself; or to give oneself over to the inner call coming from the higher ground of the infinite MacroSelf, my Supreme Identity with the Universal Will.

[milainkstincto]

I always find it amazing that those guys ( the ones who are considered the contemporary great minds and philosophers) are so keen to talk about how they are able to grasp what nature is itself, plus countless ontologies on the "nature of nature" deep down to the very fabric of the universe with so much confidence that they know what they are dealing with, yet none of them is able to bring forth some ideas on how can humans live in this world without destroying themselves and "nature".. maybe "nature" wills or "chooses" this too..

[saxtant]

Every choice is not determined, because the act of me saying that could be denied by choice immediately, choice implies being in the moment only with decisions, anything that came before can be known to choose from and anything afterwards can choose the same way, even for or against this whole statement.

Eliminate regret from your life, I concur.