What do we mean by "will"? What should we mean by "will"?
I knew the day would come, and here it is: I am beginning my own thread on a topic of interest to me. Please be gentle with me...
The aspect of mind known as "will" is primarily, and most unsatisfactorily, defined by Merriam-Webster as "desire, wish, etc." In my view, the idea of reducing "will" to "desire" impoverishes the term. The normal definition for "will" in psychology/psychiatry is "the independent faculty of choice", in other words, "volition". Though better by characterizing the deliberate aspect of "will", I still find this definition wanting. The thought about "will" in philosophy seems long to have been similar to that in psychology: the mental faculty responsible for the instantaneous selection from competing desires.
Then came Schopenhauer, who, building on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, revolutionized the term. For him, the "will", as is so eloquently described on the Wiki, seems to have been "a blind, unconscious, aimless striving devoid of knowledge, outside of space and time, and free of all multiplicity". In this view, the will becomes less a faculty, less an ability or power, and more a source of constant impulse...from the biological perspective, an "instinct" (in the sense derived from it's constituent Latin etyma, "an inner prodding"), if you will. Though in my view excellent, there appears to myself to be one thing lacking in Schopenhauer's conception: what in particular does the will "strive" for? Schopenhauer would say that it strives to interpret and reconcile external objects to a coherent subjective worldview. My own idea regarding this, is that the "will" is that innate urge which impells man to strive to control events and to establish situations which are in concordance with a particular purpose, intent, goal or desire. This appears the only definition which might be used in describing a man as having "an iron will". In this, the "will" emerges as being quite approximant to Nietzsche's "will to power", or (somewhat less so) to Augustine's "libido dominandi".
So, what do we mean when we refer to "the will"? How can we best define this quite opaque term? Please discuss.
The aspect of mind known as "will" is primarily, and most unsatisfactorily, defined by Merriam-Webster as "desire, wish, etc." In my view, the idea of reducing "will" to "desire" impoverishes the term. The normal definition for "will" in psychology/psychiatry is "the independent faculty of choice", in other words, "volition". Though better by characterizing the deliberate aspect of "will", I still find this definition wanting. The thought about "will" in philosophy seems long to have been similar to that in psychology: the mental faculty responsible for the instantaneous selection from competing desires.
Then came Schopenhauer, who, building on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, revolutionized the term. For him, the "will", as is so eloquently described on the Wiki, seems to have been "a blind, unconscious, aimless striving devoid of knowledge, outside of space and time, and free of all multiplicity". In this view, the will becomes less a faculty, less an ability or power, and more a source of constant impulse...from the biological perspective, an "instinct" (in the sense derived from it's constituent Latin etyma, "an inner prodding"), if you will. Though in my view excellent, there appears to myself to be one thing lacking in Schopenhauer's conception: what in particular does the will "strive" for? Schopenhauer would say that it strives to interpret and reconcile external objects to a coherent subjective worldview. My own idea regarding this, is that the "will" is that innate urge which impells man to strive to control events and to establish situations which are in concordance with a particular purpose, intent, goal or desire. This appears the only definition which might be used in describing a man as having "an iron will". In this, the "will" emerges as being quite approximant to Nietzsche's "will to power", or (somewhat less so) to Augustine's "libido dominandi".
So, what do we mean when we refer to "the will"? How can we best define this quite opaque term? Please discuss.
Comments (63)
What should we mean by it, follows from all that.
If you have in mind a technical word which you will pronounce "will", then it can be whatever you like. Your own definition is fine, but do you connect it with a broader view?
If not, the technical meaning is not helpful.
Best, most unique definition presupposes there is one. Yet.....
Quoting Michael Zwingli
....suggests there isn’t.
Each be satisfied with what each thinks? It’s what we do anyway, so......
1. I will take you home. [assurance (of a future event)]
2. You will do as you're told. [coercion]
3. The rock will fall. [inevitable]
4. It's God's will. [desire]
Thus will is about ineluctability, like under duress, and an agency that desires that. In short, it's got to do with participation in the causal web as a cause and when that cause (agency) itself is causeless, we have free will.
I think Will has a very wide range of definitions and it is hard to say that one is the right one or to choose the most appropriate. It would be too risky.
For me Will is everything that includes the "ability of people to affect their lives on their own".
The part of the things that happen in someone's life and he actually has a "say" on that. He can interfere with his thoughts, choices and acts. The rest of the things are beyond his power to control or affect any of them.
If we're going the academic route, we define our context and our aim and justify a definition that suits, usually with the aid of some authority, whether historical or contemporary. Without context, the appropriateness of any specific definition is unresolvable.
Verbal senses:
1. I will take you home. [assurance (of a future event)]
2. You will do as you're told. [coercion]
3. The rock will fall. [inevitable]
Nominal sense:
4. It's God's will. [desire]
and in addition:
5. I will do as my will moves me. [personal faculty of choice]
6. During his captivity in Vietnam, John McCain showed himself to be a man of iron will. [firmity or fixity of purpose]
...which makes me think that the history of "will" as an English lemma plays a part in this. I personally don't know that history, whether "will" actually was first used in English as a auxiliary verb or as a noun. I feel that this is an important consideration, though.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes, I like those ideas, and the expression thereof.
Heheh... No sweeties coming my way from Baden this time, eh?
That's a good consideration as well. It jibes somewhat with my own definition of "will" as "the inner drive to control events and to establish situations which are in concordance with a personal purpose, goal or desire".
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" - Crowley.
To me this means irrespective of what other deem as 'good' or 'bad,' or 'right' or 'wrong' I should act as my will dictates and follow my path for my reasons not those imposed upon me by ideologies that possess people en masse.
I'm very fond of Nietzsche's views in this regard as they generally articulate a lot about how I view the world at large.
In the most colloquial sense 'will' could perhaps be parsed as 'pure determination'. I would extend this into what both Nietzsche and Crowley seem to mean to me ... that is to adhere to my individual will rather than piggyback on the power of others believing that having a piece of them is empowering for my individual being.
We could talk about any term endlessly and come up with various contextual uses.
I would REALLY like to see an archaic term to be resurrected ... ken. As in 'to ken something'.
It gets complicated for Nietzsche when you try and parse what ‘my will’ refers to. Nietzsche rejects the r idea of a unitary self or thinking ‘I’. He viewed the psyche as a community of selves and a multiplicity of conflicting drives. He even broke up the act of willing into a a tension between a commanding and an obeying. This certainly isn’t the ‘self’ and the ‘will’ of an autonomous subjectivity.
Yes, and this goes against all the Nietzsche-lite wanna be supermen who have read a few aphorisms and consider themselves Nietzsche's heirs. Do you have a few thoughts on how you think he saw 'my will' working?
Yeah sound similar indeed. But again it's only our own 2 more definitions among others.
You have written it again in another thread and I strongly disagree that Nietzsche was thinking like that. The way you describe it, is like Nietzsche didn't believe in person's individuality at all. And he was one of the greatest supporters of individual human spirit's power. And how eventually it is in our own hands.
For Will, imo, he was considering it as the most important "natural" power we have as to change ourselves and break our spiritual limits.Becoming Ubermensch eventually.
Good question.
On the one hand, Nietzsche stressed the plural and differentiated nature of psychic drives. On the other hand , he seemed to suggest this multiplicity of drives could be harmonized by some overarching cognitive structure into a unified Will to Power. But I dont think that means the overman settles for a final value system. Rather, the overman’s mastery of the Will to Power, as I see it, amounts to channeling all the psyche’s competing drives into a endlessly open embrace of novelty, contradiction , diversity and becoming.
“But every purpose and use is just a sign that the will to power has achieved mastery over something less powerful, and has impressed upon it its own idea [Sinn] of a use function; and the whole history of a ‘thing', an organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations and adaptations, the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random. The ‘development' of a thing, a tradition, an organ is therefore certainly not its progressus towards a goal, still less is it a logical progressus, taking the shortest route with least expenditure of energy and cost, – instead it is a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing, added to this the resistances encountered every time, the attempted transformations for the purpose of defence and reaction, and the results, too, of successful countermeasures. The form is fluid, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] even more so . . . It is no different inside any individual organism: every time the whole grows appreciably, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] of the individual organs shifts, – sometimes the partial destruction of organs, the reduction in their number (for example, by the destruction of intermediary parts) can be a sign of increasing vigour and perfection.”(Geneology of Morality)
But how do we change ourselves in such a way that we don’t end up simply regurgitating variations on old themes? We can’t simply deign to change ourselves in accord with our pre-existing purposes and goals. That was the old view of human progress, the movement along a pre-determined axis. But you’re not achieving real change and becoming until you learn to turn the frame on its head , to turn what seemed within the old scheme like evil into good and what seemed like good into evil. The Ubermensch performs gestalt shifts. He is not just another idealist toady aiming at ‘personal growth’.
That's odd, if he truly thought it to be not just blind, not just unconscious, but aimless as well.
No he isn't just another one idealist. For me he is the Greatest one! He was believing so much in personal growth but his "method" included intense, hard, "painful" inner battle that each of us has to give individually. We need Will made of Steel for a battle like that! And Nietzsche believed that we do have that capability! That our Will can achieve that.
Nothing alike with the nowadays bullshit life coaching personal growth method.
Quoting Joshs
Exactly. And that's a personal inner fight.Nietzche valued these battles the most! And that's why, imo, he did believe in people's "self" and individuality.
"Our fights with ourselves for changing matter! Cause that's how we prepare the path for the Ubermensch", he wrote.
Was a bit dry, yeah. :smile:
Evidence? Where did you get that from. Not refuting it just curious as I've not read all of his stuff.
There’s a good section about the self in the Stanford Encyclopedia’s article about Nietzsche.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/
“…the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon:… Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of “the soul” at the same time, and thus to renounce one of the most ancient and venerable hypotheses—as happens frequently to clumsy naturalists who can hardly touch on “the soul” without immediately losing it. But the way is now open for new versions and refinements of the soul hypothesis, [including] “mortal soul”, “soul as subjective multiplicity”, and “soul as social structure of the drives and affects”… (BGE 12)
Quoting Ciceronianus
Oh, good catch! This might be an example of my imposing my own definition upon the old German's ideas. You are right, of course: while "blindness" might be able to jibe with the effort that I describe, "unconsciousness" and "aimlessness" cannot. As previously stated, my personal view of the "will" as a unique term (one which has a meaning not shared by any other lemmas, so having no synonyms) is that it means the incessant, insatiable drive (or instinct, if you will) to conform objective reality to a subjective worldview. Though I agree it is "blind" in it's need to conform all reality to a particular worldview, I do not share Schopenhauer's opinion this will is necessarily unconscious or at all aimless. Rather, I feel it to act quite within the realm of consciousness, as an individual percieves an aspect of reality and determines either that, "I agree with this...let this stand", or that, "I do not want this...I will not abide this". Because the will strives constantly to realize a particular subjective worldview, neither is it aimless.
This accords well with the definition of "will" as "firmity of purpose" or "fixity of intent". As I say, however, I think this only part of the picture.
Good heavens, this is not Aleister Crowley, the English occultist, is it?
Yes it is.
The fact regarding Crowley is, that I would not have expected to find such a man's, make that such a showman's, "philosophy" (used loosely) to be taken seriously by anybody on this site. I don't know a whole lot about the man, but he does appear to have been more than a bit deviant, in all senses of that word. Not that I purport to ajudge a person by his looks, at least by his looks alone, but simply regarding a photograph of Crowley seems to tell all kinds of tales.
@I like sushi initiated a thread in which he used the unique term "philossilized" in decribing certain lemmas. I suggest that "will" is quite an "unphilossilized" term, with meanings having historically been whatever the individual philosopher determined. In this, it has seemed like a type of "floating" term with meanings varying within a range. That is one of the reasons underlying this thread.
Understood.
I’m just happy the subject here doesn’t have “free” attached to it.
I never said that. The discussion is about 'will' and Crowley (regardless of what you think of him) did have some things to say about 'will' in a more 'religious' sense.
Quoting Michael Zwingli
If you can get past that you'll find an interesting story.
A better quote would be (to paraphrase) 'the biggest mistake is to set obtainable goals'.
It was a pun ;)
Ah, sorry about that. I didn't mean to insinuate anything about yourself. Considering myself a pagan, I have things against folks like Crowley, Helena Blavatsky, and Edgar Cayce who, drawing from the more superstitious elements of ancient paganistic systems and employing them often bufoonishly, give paganism in general a bad name. As for Crowley in particular, some of his thought sits well with me, but even with that the mode of expression and the antics bother me. :victory:
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" - Crowley. [...] To me this means irrespective of what other deem as 'good' or 'bad,' or 'right' or 'wrong' I should act as my will dictates and follow my path for my reasons not those imposed upon me by ideologies that possess people en masse. [...] A better quote would be (to paraphrase) 'the biggest mistake is to set obtainable goals'.
Given Crowley's libertine lifestyle, I'm not sure that you are reading this quote from him quite right, but I like the ideas that you have derived from it, nonetheless.
I don't think that means anything in the way you've framed it. The 'pagan' religion isn't a separate entity but rather an amalgam of ideas based on some belief in a common origin (Indo European heritage of ideas/concepts), but in the more New Age modernised Western form it is more or less an attempt at doing something like outlining a common system in human behavior.
The actual event of 'Magick,' as Crowley termed it, is something very much more about memory systems, understanding and 'manipulating' (so to speak) oneself and some psychological tricks along the way that help all these things work together.
Witchcraft and/or Wicca and such are sometimes labelled as 'pagan' but I'm not entirely sure that makes any sense as 'paganism' is a term for a vast array of religious idea outside of Christianity and absorbed by Christianity.
The underlying principle of Occultism in general appears to be the understanding that one's cosmological view (or mythos) can be shaped like a piece of clay. Generally people don't do this kind of thing because it is classed as 'insanity' and such, and others merely 'play' at practicing such techniques and are simply idiotic or foolhardy.
I think the closest 'accepted' approximation of such a practice would be with Carl Jung and something he termed 'Active Imagination'. Other instances in history would come from the likes of Giordano Bruno (very strong tie to mnemonic systems there), and there are more recent investigations into such memory techiniques and ways to read knowledge via myths and rituals (children's rhymes, songs and dances).
The whole area is quite fascinating and too often brushed under the 'whacko' carpet sadly. Francis Yates did some brilliant scholarly work in this area.
Anyway, we're straying WAY off topic here .. my bad :D
Nietzsche's "will to power" seems as if it would be an independent concept, even to Nietzsche himself, from bare "will". Given the semantics of the noun phrase, one could say that "will" in "will to power" might mean "desire"/"longing", as in Merriam-Webster. Alternatively, which I rather think the case, it might refer to the concept of "will" posited by Schopenhauer, who seems to have had a significant influence on Nietzsche's philosophical development, and so "a ceaseless, endless striving". Of course, it might also mean the stronger "lust", as in Augustine of Hippo's "libido dominandi", but I rather think not.. Would you fellows say that this seems correct?
Quoting Michael Zwingli
Schopenhauer certainly influenced Nietzsche, but I think in the case of the will, Nietzsche departed significantly from Schopenhauer’s notion. All notions of
will for Nietzsche are variations of will to power, and i’m the quotes below you get a feel for how ‘willing’, like ‘thinking’ is not a unitary phenomenon, but a multiplicity of tensions.
“There are still harmless self-observers who believe in the existence of “immediate certainties,” such as “I think,” or the “I will” that was Schopenhauer's superstition: just as if knowledge had been given an object here to seize, stark naked, as a “thing-in-itself,” and no falsification took place from either the side of the subject or the side of the object.”
“ Philosophers tend to talk about the will as if it were the most familiar thing in the world. In fact, Schopenhauer would have us believe that the will is the only thing that is really familiar, familiar through and through, familiar without pluses or minuses. But I have always thought that, here too, Schopenhauer was only doing what philosophers always tend to do: adopting and exaggerating a popular prejudice. Willing strikes me as, above all, something complicated, something unified only in a word – and this single word contains the popular prejudice that has overruled whatever minimal precautions philosophers might take. So let us be more cautious, for once – let us be “unphilosophical.” Let us say: in every act of willing there is, to begin with, a plurality of feelings, namely: the feeling of the state away from which, the feeling of the state towards which, and the feeling of this “away from” and “towards” themselves.
But this is accompanied by a feeling of the muscles that comes into play through a sort of habit as soon as we “will,” even without our putting “arms and legs” into motion. Just as feeling – and indeed many feelings – must be recognized as ingredients of the will, thought must be as well. In every act of will there is a commandeering thought, – and we really should not believe this thought can be divorced from the “willing,” as if some will would then be left over! Third, the will is not just a complex of feeling and thinking; rather, it is fundamentally an affect: and specifically the affect of the command. What is called “freedom of the will” is essentially the affect of superiority with respect to something that must obey: “I am free, ‘it' must obey” – this consciousness lies in every will, along with a certain straining of attention, a straight look that fixes on one thing and one thing only, an unconditional evaluation “now this is necessary and nothing else,” an inner certainty that it will be obeyed, and whatever else comes with the position of the commander. A person who wills –, commands something inside himself that obeys, or that he believes to obey.
But now we notice the strangest thing about the will – about this multifarious thing that people have only one word for. On the one hand, we are, under the circumstances, both the one who commands and the one who obeys, and as the obedient one we are familiar with the feelings of compulsion, force, pressure, resistance, and motion that generally start right after the act of willing. On the other hand, however, we are in the habit of ignoring and deceiving ourselves about this duality by means of the synthetic concept of the “I.” As a result, a whole chain of erroneous conclusions, and, consequently, false evaluations have become attached to the will, – to such an extent that the one who wills believes, in good faith, that willing suffices for action. Since it is almost always the case that there is will only where the effect of command, and therefore obedience, and therefore action, may be expected, the appearance translates into the feeling, as if there were a necessity of effect.
In short, the one who wills believes with a reasonable degree of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he attributes the success, the performance of the willing to the will itself, and consequently enjoys an increase in the feeling of power that accompanies all success. “Freedom of the will” – that is the word for the multi-faceted state of pleasure of one who commands and, at the same time, identifies himself with the accomplished act of willing. As such, he enjoys the triumph over resistances, but thinks to himself that it was his will alone that truly overcame the resistance. Accordingly, the one who wills takes his feeling of pleasure as the commander, and adds to it the feelings of pleasure from the successful instruments that carry out the task, as well as from the useful “under-wills” or under-souls – our body is, after all, only a society constructed out of many souls –. L'effet c'est moi:?? what happens here is what happens in every well-constructed and happy community: the ruling class identifies itself with the successes of the community. All willing is simply a matter of commanding and obeying, on the groundwork, as I have said, of a society constructed out of many “souls”: from which a philosopher should claim the right to understand willing itself within the framework of morality: morality understood as a doctrine of the power relations under which the phenomenon of “life” arises.”
Your post has me quite excited for digging into the heart of what I am trying to understand about "the will": what position does it occupy within the architecture of the human mind, and how can we best describe what it is and what it does?
Quoting Joshs
I never thought to regard "willing" and "thinking" as a dichotomy, but now that you mention it, it can certainly be regarded as such! Let me ask you: if the "will" forms a dichotomy or duality with the "intellect", the rational dimension of the mind, how do you opine it relates to the "affect", the affective dimension of the mind...the seat of the emotions? I ask this because I have long considered "will" to be emotionally based, and so constituent of the affective mind, but after thinking about the matter in creating and observing this thread, I am no longer sure that such a notion is reflective of psychic reality, but rather that "the will" is either separate from both thinking and feeling, and working in concert therewith, or rather, which is different, "will" is a product of the 'marriage' of feeling and thinking.
Quoting Joshs
When you use the term "affect", do you essentially mean "emotion" or "feeling", as I do, or something else? It seems almost as if you might be using "affect" to mean "faculty". An incomplete understanding of meaning can lead one terribly astray when working with another to understand anything highly abstract. By "affect of command (self-command?), do you mean "feeling of command", or perhaps "faculty of self-command"?
Could it be that "will" arises when perception, being closely attended (as it ever is) by a "feeling", a particular complex of emotions, results in an imperative thought...a "thought of command"? If so, what does this tell us that "the will" is, and where does it reside with respect to the major dimensions of the mind? In other words, perhaps we can better understand, at least theoretically, what "the will" is by concieving the relationships between the acts of "willing", "thinking" and "feeling". The primary question pertaining to the development of such a conception would seem to involve whether "willing" is validly considered as a domain equal to those described by the words "feeling" and "thinking".
Though I m really flattered by your comment. Please don't. It's true that Nietzsche is one of my favorites (not to say the most one), but I m far from considering myself as a Nietzsche expert.Trust me.
For me if you are interesting in Nietzsche's views (or any other philosopher), better to study it on your own and get your own outcomes out of it. Not surely the right ones but surely your own ones!
I have read academic opinions of Nietzsche's work and I strongly disagreed. But again since I can't have a chat with Nietzsche himself and ask him, I could never be sure that my view is the right one.
As for Will, imo, in Nietzsche Will of Power is just a "branch" from the tree of Will. And not Will itself. He gives Will a huge significant value that covers all human aspects and characteristics. Power among them for sure. But more as a Will in general for each person to Thrive spiritually.
Yes, I think this is true. Will was certainly a central concept in Nietzsche's philosophy, largely due to the influence of, and as an answer to, Schopenhauer.
While I was doing some research on "will" a few months ago, I found online an article by one John Skorupski about the philosophy of John Stuart Mill from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy which discussed Mill's concept of "will", which is remarkably close to my own. I liked it so much, that I added it as a quotation to the English Wiktionary page on "will". Read the excerpt below:
Mill’s case for the claim that happiness is the sole human end, put more carefully, is this: ‘Whatever is desired otherwise than as a means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness, and is not desired for itself until has become so’ (1861a: 237). Nothing here assumed Hume’s view that every action must ultimately flow from an underived desire. That is a quite separate issue, and Mill’s view of it is closer to that of Kant or Reid than to that of Hume. He insists ‘positively and emphatically’ that the will is a different thing from desire; that a person of confirmed virtue, or any other person whose purposes are fixed, carries out his purposes without any thought of the pleasure he has in contemplating them, or expects to derive from their fulfilment. (1861a: 238) This distinction between purpose and desire is central to Mill’s conception of the will. When we develop purposes we can will against mere likings or aversions: ‘In the case of an habitual purpose, instead of willing the thing because we desire it, we often desire it only because we will it’ (1861a: 238). Every action is caused by a motive, but not every motive is a liking or aversion: When the will is said to be determined by motives, a motive does not mean always, or solely, the anticipation of a pleasure or of a pain…. A habit of willing is commonly called a purpose; and among the causes of our volitions, and of the actions which flow from them, must be reckoned not only likings and aversions, but also purposes. (1843: 842) The formation of purposes from desires is the evolution of will; it is also the development of character. Mill quotes Novalis: ‘a character is a completely fashioned will’ (1843: 843).
Please render your thoughts on this passage and discuss.
Clearly, "blind, insatiable drive" is how Schopenhauer viewed will; it is this that he called the will. I disagree, however, that he "made a definitive case" for this. I feel that Nietzsche's conception of will can be viewed as a partial renunciation of Shopenhauer's. Rather, I would be disposed to call such an "aimless, insatiable desire" as that which was indicated by Schopenhauer, the libido, as in Augustine of Hippo's particular usage in his concept of libido dominandi. I say this because I view the will as having more to do with intent and purpose than with desire or longing, as indeed did John Stuart Mill, which fact is made obvious in the passage quoted above. If this is true, of course, "will" is far from blind and insatiable; rather, it is focused, and is satisfied by a realization of intent...by a fulfilment of purpose. My concept is that, where there is no purpose, there can be no will, but rather exists only the aimless longing indicated (and misnamed??) by Schopenhauer. In this conception, will is closely associated with Viktor Frankl's "search for meaning" which he hypothesized as being universal in man. Indeed, such opposing considerations are the reason that I entitled this thread as I have.
A most interesting post-Michael, but as with Victor Frankl, the search goes on. This is why Nietzsche's fear for humanity was so great in the face of Nihilism and his statement that he was not at all sure that humanity could live without its myths, read delusions. A great deal of philosophy goes down the tube when one realizes that the notion of free will, is just that, a notion, it has no foundation in reality. Nietzsche was once a great fan of Schopenhauer, he made his bones in critiquing Schopenhauer, he owes much to Schopenhauer, and that negative mess Christianity. Intent and purpose, one can have intent, but one cannot intend what that intention is going to be, that has an evolutionary history along as the first replicating cell. This is mind blowing I realize, what is society going to do in the face of no sin and no real guilt, the holy men will be seen for the frauds that they are, the judicial system will be turned upside down, but just maybe, humanity will begin a new evolutionary development, one that faces the true mind blowing complexity that reality is. Two areas to watch, neurology and chaos theory in the unfolding complexity of a greater reality/humanity. Meaning is a subjective quality, a biological readout, it forces it way into greater objective understanding, which again must be interpreted through biology.
Consider the organism/humanity as a reactionary creature, this at least is pointing in the right direction.
1. A desire, an intent. It was God's will that Jack go to San Francisco. By the way, where's @Jack Cummins?
2. A natural tendency. Water flows downhill. Entropy always increases.
Schopenhauer's will combines elements of both. Is there a difference between the two, does it even matter?
Hm, Mafo (since I think this a better nickname for you than "Fool"...I can call you "Mafo" when I am pleased, and "Mofo" when I am not :wink:), I am not sure that either of these sense-definitions are among the best, or indeed, the most generally accepted for "will". Note that the definition as relating to "desire" is noted as being archaic/obsolete in the Wiktionary page (under "Noun", senses 6 and 7):
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/will
Within philosophy, "will" has had many definitions. Certainly, Schopenhauer related it to desire, as a superlative and insatiable form of longing. Others, such as Nietzsche and Mill, had ideas which differed variously by degree, with Mill's being quite opposite. Do you not think that "will" has something essential to do with "purpose" and "intent"?
I wonder, do those of your post reflect your own conceptions of "will", and if not, where did find these senses?
Will, I surmise, is also about direction; mathematically speaking, it's a vector minus the magnitude i.e. pure bearing.
This is very good...a very elegant model for "will"! And of course, since both a vector and a bearing are directional in nature, this model proscribes "will" as being the aimless, fickle thing posited by Schopenhauer, would you not say?
A model, aimless and fickle-like evolutionary development? The evolution of the organism would be quite impossible if it had any fixed determinism or any goal. The organism is forever linked by adaptation to the larger physical reality. The process of this adaptation is mostly trial and error, for mutation means in ninety-nine percent of cases, death to the organism. There is only the blind will to survive.
A good point, to be sure.
Free will is best described as a paradigm of emotions and logical thinking.
To describe free will you would have to define each subset of the human consciousness and how each area overlaps.
Is not just logical thinking, is not just emotion, is not just experience or physical senses. Is a combination of everything.
Is like asking a math teacher what is Math? And the subject has arithmetic, algebra, calculus, geometry and physics. And how these subject sums the entire topic of Math.
You would have to explore areas of subjects like.
Emotions and the anatomy of emotions. Define each emotion function and purpose. How it contributes to logical thinking
Logic and explore the motive of reasoning something. Good example is “Ambition and Goal thinking”
Experience and how your physical senses create your reality. And ask are all sense created equal (your sense created as equally as mind or is it unique per each person)? and if not how does perspective change cause of it?
That is why I say, to answer the question about “free will” you need to provide a paradigm answer.
But let me add something to your question
Does “Free Will” have the potential to evolve?
Will the evolution of “Free Will” change how we see and interact with reality?
Nietzsche throws down several stumbling blocks to Mill's kind of utilitarianism and Frankl's 'search for meaning' Book One of The Gay Science puts the differences between instincts and reasoning in a different context than how an individual operates. Section 11 questions the agency of the actors themselves, at least as something treated as self explanatory causes for outcomes:
Quoting Fredrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman
As I noted in my O.P., I don't think this accurate or synonymous. As evidence of this, I would note that the sense of "will" as being equal to the meaning of "desire", while once common, is now generally considered obsolete. As I say, I feel that "will" is dependent upon a defined purpose or intention .
Defined purpose or intention, but this intention is evoked, the lock presumes its key. One must be moved within before one can move without, something in the physical world according to the subject, needs affected in some way, then the will is inacted to fulfill itself, which makes it a reaction of the will. In reality I don't know what it is, unless it is consciousness itself as reaction. Perhaps that is the essence of consciousness, reaction, perhaps they are the same.
[math]Will \rightarrow[/math]
In the context of understanding reality we don't necessarily need language or definitions to do so. Just an understanding of the relationship between things, like the an observation of the way thing currently are, the will (intent or the idea to change how things currently are) and what is intended (or what new conditions you would like to see).
Quoting Michael Zwingli
Occam's Razor comes to mind here.
I don't see much of a difference between these two descriptions other than the number of words in the description. If we accept the idea that computers make decisions based on their programming, and finite information stored in them to use to make decisions with, then it follows that computers make these decisions instinctively, as in that is how they were designed and programmed to respond to some input which isn't much different from organisms. Organisms are programmed by Natural Selection and possess limited information in their heads for which to make decisions with - instinctively.
That's the same image as God creating us in his image. Organisms are programmed? Natural Selection being the programmer? What language is used? Are we following a written program?
A legal document containing instructions as to what should be done with one's money and property after one's death.
Hercule Poirot.