Did the Buddha teach we have choice? (aka The Great Free Will v Determinism Debate)

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Ceisiwr »

TheDhamma wrote:This sounds a lot like the free will vs. determinism debates.

Theists prefer free will
Atheists prefer determinism

Buddhas know Dependent Origination

:yingyang:

:meditate:

Why does D.O. include both? Also i wonder, does D.O. relate to the physical or just the mental?

It was after all a teaching of how dukkha arises, which is mental, so speaking in terms of determinism based on matter i dont know if D.O. comes into it

metta
Last edited by Ceisiwr on Thu Jul 30, 2009 9:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Is everything already determined?

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determined
this has several possibilities
deist - same as predetermined exept that everything that happens had an initial starting point and course which without other influences its target would fall in the predetermined bracket but as it does effects and alters the couse of everything else it comes into contact with.
science - same as above
theistic - miricles
There is a difference between the deist and science version of it, deist involves some kind of being or intelligence behind it, perhaps even intentional or not. Science leaves that out


Just because something is determined doesnt mean there is or was something doing the determining

metta
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by DNS »

clw_uk wrote:
Why does D.O. include both?
I'm not a buddha / arahant, but from my limited understanding everything is conditioned, but there is volition and effort and with Right Effort we can open up more and more possibilities, a sort of mix of some free will in a very deterministic world.
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Ceisiwr »

Mawkish1983 wrote:Science answer, quantum mechanics forbids determinism. Look up Heisenburg's uncertainty principal and enjoy :)

Thanks Mawkish, forgot about quantum mechanics lol



metta
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
Individual
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Individual »

clw_uk wrote:Greetings


The other tread that was about Intelligent design got me looking at the Big bang theory again. Does the big bang mean that everything is already determined? The Big bang, in essence, set of a chain of events that, several billion years later, caused life to evolve on earth and for humans to come into existence. I mean if you trace everything backwards through cause and effect it leads to you the big bang


I know its a wrong view in Buddhism but physical science seems to prove it

So, has everything already been set, like how the last domino is already set to fall when the first one fell?


metta
No, everything is not already determined.
The best things in life aren't things.

The Diamond Sutra
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Ceisiwr »

Hey Individual


No, everything is not already determined.

Could you expand on this? :)



metta
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Cittasanto »

they can be described in a manner which is similar, besides science doesn't say either way conclusively scientists do, whether there is or isn't may be infered to some extent depending on how we look at it, but this would still be a belief, plus the deistic model could be described without an entity in the same way.
I have noticed on a few occasions that Dhamma isn't necesaraly a secular or theistic system (names used for contrast only) it will sometimes apear to have one foot on both sides, there is a sutta where the Buddha gives an explanation which is a Dhamma explanation which had aspects of each of the sides of the debate within its dhammic interpretation, and another where a monk says to the buddha give me the answers to these questions and I will stay with you! to which the buddha said he never promiced such answers and he was free to leave if he wished to (these were the suttas I was thinking of earlier but still can not think of the names and these are very rough sketches of them), one of the questions being if there was a first cause to the universe.
I think we all know the buddha did not say a fist cause could be discerned and I think the evolutionist argument which you have used in another thread is possibly what the buddha meant (what caused the cause?) but if we say the first cause is the big bang and the numerous causes which led up to that is also part of the cause then the deistic model I used earlier could apply although this has the draw back of forming a theistic interpretation instead of a humanistic one which would be why the buddha said a first cause can not be known, which renders worshiping a first cause.......... unnessesary and prevents sliding onto either exream.

clw_uk wrote:
determined
this has several possibilities
deist - same as predetermined exept that everything that happens had an initial starting point and course which without other influences its target would fall in the predetermined bracket but as it does effects and alters the couse of everything else it comes into contact with.
science - same as above
theistic - miricles
There is a difference between the deist and science version of it, deist involves some kind of being or intelligence behind it, perhaps even intentional or not. Science leaves that out


Just because something is determined doesnt mean there is or was something doing the determining

metta
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Ceisiwr »

Is this what you were looking for?

"And did you ever say to me, 'Lord, I will live the holy life under the Blessed One and [in return] he will declare to me that 'The cosmos is eternal,' or 'The cosmos is not eternal,' or 'The cosmos is finite,' or 'The cosmos is infinite,' or 'The soul & the body are the same,' or 'The soul is one thing and the body another,' or 'After death a Tathagata exists,' or 'After death a Tathagata does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist'?"

"No, lord."

"Then that being the case, foolish man, who are you to be claiming grievances/making demands of anyone?


http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Ceisiwr
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Ceisiwr »

but if we say the first cause is the big bang and the numerous causes which led up to that is also part of the cause then the deistic model I used earlier could apply although this has the draw back of forming a theistic interpretation instead of a humanistic one which would be why the buddha said a first cause can not be known, which renders worshiping a first cause.......... unnessesary and prevents sliding onto either exream.

I dont say the big bang is the first cause, i lean more towards brane cosmology (ekpyrotic)



Of course its not definitive but it is interesting, i dont see this as a first cause either, i dont think there is one

metta
Last edited by Ceisiwr on Thu Jul 30, 2009 10:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
“The teacher willed that this world appear to me
as impermanent, unstable, insubstantial.
Mind, let me leap into the victor’s teaching,
carry me over the great flood, so hard to pass.”
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Cittasanto »

I believe the universe still has a bruise from the last contact.
Blog, Suttas, Aj Chah, Facebook.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
Mawkish1983
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Mawkish1983 »

Do we need two creation threads? :focus:

As I said, quantum physics shows that determinism is forbidden, the precise position and the precise momentum of a particle cannot be simultaneously known (not due to human limitation but due to a fundamental way in which the universe operates). Want evidence of this? Look at radioactive decay and quantum tunneling. We make use of these phenomena because of probability; so also look up the 'principal of equivalence'. If you observe a single radioactive atom there is no way to tell when a radioactive event will take place. We can analyse the statistics of a lot of such atoms, sure, but then only predictions can be made. The universe FORBIDS total knowledge. Determinism can only work in classical physics. Quantum physics is a rather large spanner in the works.

If we rewound the universe back in time to just after the big back then pressed play again, I think there is no reason to believe humans would still necessarily evolve (or at least, things would be different). Quantum physics and chaos theory working in unison.

It makes me wonder actually (and I know other physicists use this forum (mikenz66?) so please do help me out if I'm being stupid here), are chaos theory and the principal of equivalence compatible? I don't see how they can be, maybe chaos theory only applies to the meso-macroscopic? I don't know; shockingly I never studied chaos theory!
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Pannapetar »

Mawkish1983 wrote:As I said, quantum physics shows that determinism is forbidden...
Quantum mechanics does not disprove determinism in the physical world, because there are deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics. Personally, find that none of the deterministic interpretations, such as many-world, many-minds, Bohm-de Broglie makes intuitive sense, so I would -in agreement with the majority of physicists- keep to the probabilistic/indeterminist interpretation, but this is a metaphysical conclusion which goes beyond the realm of hard physics. It is a strong argument in favour of an non-determinist physical universe, but it falls short of being a proof.

Despite the notion of karma, Buddhism rejects "hard" determinism. Unfortunately, I cannot cite a sutta to support this right now, but the idea is that the radiant mind is the ground of becoming and that it operates in a not strictly deterministic fashion thus allowing for free will. This contradicts not only the idea of an ironblock universe, but also ironblock causality, namely that any number of existing states must result in exactly one future state. :juggling:

Cheers, Thomas
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by tiltbillings »

Pannapetar wrote:
Despite the notion of karma, Buddhism rejects "hard" determinism. Unfortunately, I cannot cite a sutta to support this right now,
"If any one says that a man must reap according to his deeds, in that
case there is no religious life nor opportunity afforded for the entire
extinction of sorrow. But if any one says that what a man reaps accords
with his deeds, in that case there is a religious life and an opportunity is
afforded for the entire extinction of sorrow."
AN I 249.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Mawkish1983 »

Pannapetar wrote:Quantum mechanics does not disprove determinism in the physical world, because there are deterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Well I've leave the philosophical interpretations to the philosophers. Heisenburg's uncertainty principal, however, is clear; the exact position and the exact momentum of a particle cannot be simultaneously known. Note that 'particle' is a bit abstract and the reason they're not known is because their 'position' and 'momentum' are defined as a probability distribution. Put simply, the universe makes it up as it goes along and there's no reason to conclude it would make the same thing up twice in the same situation. Like I said, rewind time and start again and you'll get something different. This is what makes quantum physics so different from classical physics.
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Re: Is everything already determined?

Post by Cittasanto »

hi missed this post?
yes it looks like it at first glance!
clw_uk wrote:Is this what you were looking for?

"And did you ever say to me, 'Lord, I will live the holy life under the Blessed One and [in return] he will declare to me that 'The cosmos is eternal,' or 'The cosmos is not eternal,' or 'The cosmos is finite,' or 'The cosmos is infinite,' or 'The soul & the body are the same,' or 'The soul is one thing and the body another,' or 'After death a Tathagata exists,' or 'After death a Tathagata does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata both exists & does not exist,' or 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist'?"

"No, lord."

"Then that being the case, foolish man, who are you to be claiming grievances/making demands of anyone?


http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Blog, Suttas, Aj Chah, Facebook.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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