To what degree we have free-choice?

[Baruch]

Chemistry and physics--I like that.  Most people don't just understand how much chemistry controls what we do and how we do it and what we think about it all.  We are really just a bag of chemicals and the mixture of those chemicals determine to a large extend how we feel and think.  Doctors have only scratched the surface of all of that.  Change one chemical or the amount of a chemical and you change the way we think and feel.

Is this why many recreational drugs are illegal?  We don't want you blaming your deterministic choice to modify your brain chemistry for why you robbed a bank?

In psychology, you usually get to blame your bad behavior on your parents, particularly your mother.

In sociology, you usually get to blame your bad behavior on the fact that society isn't a utopia.

But the bottom line is ... either none of my behavior is bad, or if it is bad, it isn't my fault.  This isn't civilization, it is the creed of sociopathy.

[Hydra009]

Chemistry and physics--I like that.  Most people don't just understand how much chemistry controls what we do and how we do it and what we think about it all.

Ikr?  One day I was super angry the whole day.  Turns out I was very dehydrated and wasn't aware of it.  A liter of water later, I'm back to my normal half-rage.  What gets me is how my anger seemed genuine and deliberate at the time, but it wasn't - I didn't choose to be angry, it just happened to me because I was physically unwell.  Matter over mind.

[GSOgymrat]

But the bottom line is ... either none of my behavior is bad, or if it is bad, it isn't my fault.  This isn't civilization, it is the creed of sociopathy.

The physical objects I interact with daily are mostly space but it doesn't help me navigate a room to think that way. On a neurologic level, not only is the ability to makes free choices an illusion, the idea there is even as a consistent "self" that makes choices is an illusion, but that knowledge doesn't help navigate society. Our brains have evolved to create an illusion that I'm commander of my thoughts riding around in a body that I control and so is everyone else. Based on that illusion we build societies. This illusion doesn't hold up on a neurological or psychological level but it's a useful fiction. There are all kinds of things that aren't actually true but everything works better when people believe it to be so, e.g. money has intrinsic value.

[Baruch]

The physical objects I interact with daily are mostly space but it doesn't help me navigate a room to think that way. On a neurologic level, not only is the ability to makes free choices an illusion, the idea there is even as a consistent "self" that makes choices is an illusion, but that knowledge doesn't help navigate society. Our brains have evolved to create an illusion that I'm commander of my thoughts riding around in a body that I control and so is everyone else. Based on that illusion we build societies. This illusion doesn't hold up on a neurological or psychological level but it's a useful fiction. There are all kinds of things that aren't actually true but everything works better when people believe it to be so, e.g. money has intrinsic value.

YES!  Now go shave your head and join a monastery, Grasshopper ;-)  The Buddha awaits (or Advaita Vedanta Hinduism).