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Post by crossbow on Mar 8, 2014 11:30:33 GMT
Discrimination - the ability to discern and evaluate the difference between one thing and another - is the first ability of awareness, which is the first attribute of consciousness, which puts it right at the start and base of every thing we can possibly consciously do. Next comes the ability to choose between the differences discerned - intelligence; Lat. inter legere, to choose between.
And to exercise intelligence freely, that is, in spite of conscience, in the absence of programing, under illusion, and without limit to its range, is freewill.
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Post by sammy on Mar 8, 2014 16:27:57 GMT
Discrimination - the ability to discern and evaluate the difference between one thing and another - is the first ability of awareness, which is the first attribute of consciousness, which puts it right at the start and base of every thing we can possibly consciously do. Next comes the ability to choose between the differences discerned - intelligence; Lat. inter legere, to choose between.
And to exercise intelligence freely, that is, in spite of conscience, in the absence of programing, under illusion, and without limit to its range, is freewill.
Well put!
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Post by peter2 on Mar 8, 2014 20:56:04 GMT
And to exercise intelligence freely, that is, in spite of conscience, in the absence of programing, under illusion, and without limit to its range, is freewill.
This takes us into some very interesting areas. Certainly freedom to choose is close to free will, but I rather think that choosing is an outer expression that flows after the will is used. I am not sure if you are intending that intelligence be limited to mental faculties. I would tend to recognise intelligence very broadly - across the spectrum from matter to spirit. And I am not sure where you think conscience is anchored, or whether there is an "anti-conscience" also. Imagine the process of will in a human whose brain is not functioning properly so that thoughts cannot be properly formulated in the brain. How can we detect will in such a person? Would we see will primarily through emotional impulses? Would we classify that as choosing? I recall my eldest son, a few minutes after birth. He was pushing his head up, resisting the midwife. Will was clearly present, but what was he choosing?
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Post by crossbow on Mar 9, 2014 3:59:50 GMT
And to exercise intelligence freely, that is, in spite of conscience, in the absence of programing, under illusion, and without limit to its range, is freewill.
This takes us into some very interesting areas. Certainly freedom to choose is close to free will, but I rather think that choosing is an outer expression that flows after the will is used. I am not sure if you are intending that intelligence be limited to mental faculties. I would tend to recognise intelligence very broadly - across the spectrum from matter to spirit. And I am not sure where you think conscience is anchored, or whether there is an "anti-conscience" also. Imagine the process of will in a human whose brain is not functioning properly so that thoughts cannot be properly formulated in the brain. How can we detect will in such a person? Would we see will primarily through emotional impulses? Would we classify that as choosing? I recall my eldest son, a few minutes after birth. He was pushing his head up, resisting the midwife. Will was clearly present, but what was he choosing?
As discrimination (defined above as the ability to discern and evaluate the difference between one thing and another) is the first and fundamental ability of consciousness, so too, definitions being distinctions between one thing and another, are the blocks which comprise clear and structured thought.
And healthy thought, as we know, should replicate reality.
Definitions are to discrimination, what freemasonry is to reality.
Freewill is free choice. Freewill is consciousness without programming. Freewill is the ability to function independently of conscience. Freewill is consciousness which is ignorant of truth, immersed into illusion and given will of its own. Freewill is the ability to learn; to discover and take up knowledge, and make reality its own. Freewill is active intelligence.
Of free choice and freewill, the difference is only of aspect. One is a point, and one is a line comprised of successive points. Choice, like decision, is on the point, on the moment, and is also on the next point/moment and the next... Freewill is seen in the resulting line which is the succession of points ________ Free choice is momentary; freewill is continuous. Freewill is what we have; free choice is what we do. Like we have the ability to walk, and with that ability to walk, we can take steps - in any direction we choose. Free choice does not make freewill; rather, freewill includes and enables free choice. For will, by definition, is the point of commencement. Will is also the line of successive points, each point a successive commencement. More precisely though, freewill is that which is behind the point and the line; that which is able to make the point and the line. As the walker is to the ability to walk and step. At the point of each advancing decision, a ring of consequence results, which limits the options for the next decision, so that each decision is limited by the consequences of previous decisions. This is the thread of freewill and the chain of consequence. The thread runs through the links of the chain, and the links of the chain manifest around the advancing thread.
Peter - I am not sure if you are intending that intelligence be limited to mental faculties. I would tend to recognise intelligence very broadly - across the spectrum from matter to spirit.
Crossbow - Intelligence - universal, human, non-human, of matter or spirit, pure or restricted, passive, active, creative - intelligence is all of these and any one of them. Which one do you want to talk about? Above I have been referring to human freewilled intelligence because that is the subject of the thread.
Freewill can be temporarily confined (in the seeming short or long term, but still temporary) to a tight restriction; even seized and held stationary, bound into physical, emotional or mental confinements, while consequences of previous decisions runs their course.
In such cases there may be little or no active choice at that time, just experience. The choice was made beforehand. When the experience is over, the ability to choose will be free again. We are born physically, then emotionally, then mentally, over a period of time - as we grow towards adulthood we are emerging. Through those emerging stages, will is limited to what it can perceive and discern through its bodies according to their stage of emergence. Intelligence is also limited by what it can resist, regarding the impulses of those bodies. For everything has a degree of strength. As the physical, emotional and mental natures emerge and settle, then the indwelling consciousness/intelligence/freewill sets about its task of controlling, directing and utilising those surrounding natures.
An "anti-conscience" as you put it, is simply that part of our self that would have us disobey our conscience. The other matter queried about conscience location (you used the word anchored) is addressed in the post copied from previously in the thread and pasted below.
Post by crossbow on Feb 14, 2014 at 11:23pm
"It seems this matter of freewill is harder for most of us westerners to comprehend today than it was one hundred years ago when we had more consciously Christian or "God fearing" societies.
The freewill debate today is about whether we have freewill from circumstance, be that circumstance environmental or biological. One hundred years ago and before, we understood that freewill was our freedom from God, freedom to do wrong, to sin, and freewill carried with it responsibility (before and during its exercising) and accountability (after its exercising).
Then came Darwinism, the world wars with their social upheaval, post-modernism, Freud with his catchy idea that conscience was familial-social construction, and within a generation or two freewill became a vague and barely comprehensible notion.
If however, we accept that conscience is not a personal construction of adopted family and social values, but a real and actual organ within our soul, something like a skylight at the inner upper pinnacle of our being, which if we heed it, can tell us what is most good and right to do within our circumstances, but of which we are free to ignore it if we will and do whatever we like, then we see that freewill is not only freedom to choose from one option or another, but more significantly and prior to that choice of options, freewill is freedom to obey or disobey our own conscience.
Conscience being the highest sense within our self of what is good and right to do (by others and those around us), and freewill being the ability to either follow our conscience or not.
If however, we do not accept the presence of a conscience in this sense, then freewill at best is just a little horizontal flexibility within our circumstances, with no perceived vertical dimension to it. "
The conscience is within, at the centre, and upward. All masons know that from our ritual. Don't we?
You sure do ask a lot of questions Peter. But why ask me? I am just one of those mainstream male craft masons, you know, the ones who have little esoteric knowledge.
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Post by peter2 on Mar 9, 2014 4:43:29 GMT
Hardly any brethren bother with such subjects. You are one of the few to discuss free will - and you make lots of propositions.
I have a great interest in the origins and the mechanisms of free will. If I can observe those, I may be able to analyse the situations of myself and others.
So who or what gives consciousness a will of its own?
So does this free will manifest on non-mental levels too? For example, can a reaction of the physical body express free will?
Do you have any sense of where in the consciousness such a part would be anchored? What is the process for the spiritual scientist to observe it in the human structure?
Free will as a characteristic of the human race arrives fairly late in the mainstream western religious tradition. Certainly the god of the Old Testament did not encourage free will. So it interests me how the concept came to be more acceptable for some adults and how the action of free will may increase in the human race.
Cheers
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Post by crossbow on Mar 10, 2014 2:07:29 GMT
It is not that few bother with such subjects; it is more a matter of discretion and priorities.
Will, in its purest sense, is initial force/effort/exertion; the point of commencement.
It is inherent and innate in all life, though it may be restricted in range and degree.
Consciousness is the friction between spirit and matter.
Will is innate in consciousness because spirit has exerted itself into matter. The exertion is the will.
Human freewill is in our consciousness because will is innate.
We are immortal. Birth and death, as convincing as they are, are illusionary, for we lived before birth and live after death. The survival drive is illusionary or applied, resulting from insertion into a physical body, and its many subsidiary drives and divisions of comfort/discomfort, likes/dislikes, wants/notwants, are all just as illusionary, are false, as are all the priorities and values associated with them.
Just as going through a convincing need to survive and dying, and then realising after death that we are not dead, causes the us the soul to realise our livingness and immortality, which the soul did not grasp before experiencing temporary life in a physical body; so too all the lesser subdivisions associated with survival and life within the physical body awaken further and finer dormant realisations within the soul after its exit from physical life.
This world of impending death and convincing need for survival is false/illusionary and therefore extends the range of reality beyond reality itself, unlimited reality, contrasted with unlimited falsity.
A soul who has only known reality cannot realise it.
Immersion into falsity followed by withdrawal back into reality causes realisation of reality.
Immersion into life and death causes realisation of itself, which it did not have before.
Contrast clarifies.
Freewill is consciousness with its innate will inserted into a world of illusion with reality and falsity deceptively mixed, and with a complete absence programing. So as to experience false laws of life, false survival and false death all seeming real, and in that situation it then has freewill, free intellect, free thought, free judgement, free to evaluate and to prioritise and explore, right across the infinite range of truth and falsity, which it could not possibly have had while in its true and real state. From such experience, upon its retrieval after deaths, realises more and more of truths according to the falsities experienced. First life and immortality are realised, intellect is developed through realisation of numerous opposing concepts between truth and falsity, and dormant virtues are awoken through realisation of the falsity of the numerous pairs of opposing emotions and their likes and dislikes, and awakens the dormant virtues that exist above those lower false pairs of extremes.
Life on earth is a realisation process.
Who puts us here and gives us freewill so that we can learn and grow and realise our self? We do.
Just like we may put our hand into a bucket of murky water and feel around to see what's in there; our hand's awareness and our awareness combine to understand. So too we put our selves here in this life.
We are extensions of our self. Within and above our self is that part of our self from which we extended. That gives us our freewill, and from that we have taken our freewill; it is our choice to have freewill.
Like Adam, we are warned in the beginning, even told not to, but free to do so, so that from the point of commencement we are exercising freewill. Then we go to experience it, so as to learn, gain knowledge, and realise reality and our self.
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Post by peter2 on Mar 10, 2014 3:05:37 GMT
Who could dispute such a statement? Not I! Thus we have that will is a quality and not an intelligence. Lucky we all chose the same planet
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Post by sammy on Mar 10, 2014 14:11:21 GMT
If free will is what brought us out of the cosmic soup. Wouldn't that suggest it did have consciousness, and intelligence enough to know so?
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Post by nventr on Mar 15, 2014 15:25:20 GMT
Discrimination - the ability to discern and evaluate the difference between one thing and another - is the first ability of awareness, which is the first attribute of consciousness, which puts it right at the start and base of every thing we can possibly consciously do. Next comes the ability to choose between the differences discerned - intelligence; Lat. inter legere, to choose between.
And to exercise intelligence freely, that is, in spite of conscience, in the absence of programing, under illusion, and without limit to its range, is freewill.
Within your definition of Discrimination is the “new” politically correct term: Discernment BTW - This is a very exciting thread! I’m sorry that I am just now catching the tail end. I too have trouble getting anyone to articulate on the deepest parts of the consciousness.
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Post by nventr on Mar 15, 2014 15:36:14 GMT
Well put. I wonder how much practice is required to be sensitive to conscience. Totally concur! Practice must be continuous and continual. When you skip practice, the ability fades. However once established, the practice can be easily resumed and does come back much quicker than it took to gain the original level. It’s like riding a bike. It will take only a small amount of time to regain balance and get from one point to the next, which was the hardest part when we first learned to ride. However, it will take much more practice to get back in shape and ride all day long like we did when we were kids.
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Post by crossbow on Mar 16, 2014 0:13:20 GMT
Discrimination - the ability to discern and evaluate the difference between one thing and another - is the first ability of awareness, which is the first attribute of consciousness, which puts it right at the start and base of every thing we can possibly consciously do. Next comes the ability to choose between the differences discerned - intelligence; Lat. inter legere, to choose between.
And to exercise intelligence freely, that is, in spite of conscience, in the absence of programing, under illusion, and without limit to its range, is freewill.
Within your definition of Discrimination is the “new” politically correct term: Discernment
The ability to discern is included within the ability to discriminate, but the ability to discriminate is more than the ability to discern differences. It includes the ability to further divide and to evaluate the divisions. Thus it abuts with and underpins intelligence.
It is one thing to discern the difference between one thing and another; it is another thing to be able to judge and evaluate the differences discerned.
Discrimination is to passive intelligence what analysis is to active intelligence.
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Post by crossbow on Mar 16, 2014 0:46:15 GMT
If free will is what brought us out of the cosmic soup. Wouldn't that suggest it did have consciousness, and intelligence enough to know so? I would say yes, certainly.
The great idea of freewill and its potential to learn was preceded by intelligence.
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Post by nventr on Mar 19, 2014 15:35:32 GMT
Within your definition of Discrimination is the “new” politically correct term: Discernment
The ability to discern is included within the ability to discriminate, but the ability to discriminate is more than the ability to discern differences. It includes the ability to further divide and to evaluate the divisions. Thus it abuts with and underpins intelligence.
It is one thing to discern the difference between one thing and another; it is another thing to be able to judge and evaluate the differences discerned.
Discrimination is to passive intelligence what analysis is to active intelligence.
Ok. So, if I am understanding this correctly. I can discern that an apple is red and and orange is orange. However, deciding which one is better than the other is considered discrimination?
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Post by sammy on Mar 20, 2014 4:47:24 GMT
Perhaps discern would be a better word to use?
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Post by sammy on Mar 20, 2014 4:50:26 GMT
Discern still doesn't seem to fit.
Maybe... a individually based judgment to discern a value.
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Post by crossbow on Mar 20, 2014 7:22:31 GMT
The ability to discern is included within the ability to discriminate, but the ability to discriminate is more than the ability to discern differences. It includes the ability to further divide and to evaluate the divisions. Thus it abuts with and underpins intelligence.
It is one thing to discern the difference between one thing and another; it is another thing to be able to judge and evaluate the differences discerned.
Discrimination is to passive intelligence what analysis is to active intelligence.
Ok. So, if I am understanding this correctly. I can discern that an apple is red and and orange is orange. However, deciding which one is better than the other is considered discrimination? Yes nventr, the apple and the orange is an excellent example; the apple is better for making apple pie, and the orange is better for making orange juice.
And if we were to further divide the articles and discriminate between their divisions, we could then assess their skin, juice, fibre, seeds, and so on downward, division after division, through their molecular-chemical structure and so on. For instance there are differences in nutrient value which have different beneficial uses, and chemicals that are better for some uses in apple seeds, and oils that are better for some uses in orange peel.
So working progressively, so far we can see that there is: Awareness of self and surroundings. Discernment or the ability to differentiate between one thing and another. Discrimination, the ability to discern and evaluate. Passive intelligence, which is the ability to make a programmed choice between discriminated articles. For example, computers, and birds when they select nest material. Active intelligence, which is the ability to freely choose between discriminated articles. (What human's have, and what we might term horizontal freewill, compared to the vertical freewill discussed in posts above, of which the horizontal freewill is a result. Creative intelligence, which is the ability to freely choose from aspects of discriminated articles and blend them together to create a previously imagined result.
It goes on of course, layer by layer, function by function, throughout psyche, mind and personality layers; and inward too, from awareness backward through the internal stations of consciousness. The whole lot working as a perfect conscious humane mechanism.
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Post by sammy on Mar 20, 2014 13:20:41 GMT
Ok. So, if I am understanding this correctly. I can discern that an apple is red and and orange is orange. However, deciding which one is better than the other is considered discrimination? Yes nventr, the apple and the orange is an excellent example; the apple is better for making apple pie, and the orange is better for making orange juice.
And if we were to further divide the articles and discriminate between their divisions, we could then assess their skin, juice, fibre, seeds, and so on downward, division after division, through their molecular-chemical structure and so on. For instance there are differences in nutrient value which have different beneficial uses, and chemicals that are better for some uses in apple seeds, and oils that are better for some uses in orange peel.
So working progressively, so far we can see that there is: Awareness of self and surroundings. Discernment or the ability to differentiate between one thing and another. Discrimination, the ability to discern and evaluate. Passive intelligence, which is the ability to make a programmed choice between discriminated articles. For example, computers, and birds when they select nest material. Active intelligence, which is the ability to freely choose between discriminated articles. (What human's have, and what we might term horizontal freewill, compared to the vertical freewill discussed in posts above, of which the horizontal freewill is a result. Creative intelligence, which is the ability to freely choose from aspects of discriminated articles and blend them together to create a previously imagined result.
It goes on of course, layer by layer, function by function, throughout psyche, mind and personality layers; and inward too, from awareness backward through the internal stations of consciousness. The whole lot working as a perfect conscious humane mechanism. I was just going over on a different forum how I think systems or functions of systems can always be broken down to 7 basic points to work or exist. In your description you have broken this down into 7 different categories, someone might say this is coincidence but there is a abundance of 7 points systems. A few examples: Head: 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 nostrils, 1 mouth = 7 Hands/feet: 5 fingers/toes, 1 forearm/shin, 1 bicep/thigh = 7 for either Body: 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, 1 torso, 1 abdomen = 7 7 total upper ribs connect to either side of the chest plate and collar bone. 7 total continents on earth ( 7 seas is debatable) Earth: earth, fire, wind, water, life, atmosphere (limit), core (center), is 7 Honestly I can keep going HAHA
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Post by crossbow on Mar 22, 2014 3:58:37 GMT
Interesting, Sammy. And I think you could keep going too.
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Post by sammy on Mar 28, 2014 13:26:36 GMT
Is it free will if we are forced to apply said free will? Or do we all deep down in some cosmic beginning type of way, know we chose it to be that way?
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Post by sammy on Mar 28, 2014 14:15:40 GMT
Ok. So, if I am understanding this correctly. I can discern that an apple is red and and orange is orange. However, deciding which one is better than the other is considered discrimination? Yes nventr, the apple and the orange is an excellent example; the apple is better for making apple pie, and the orange is better for making orange juice.
And if we were to further divide the articles and discriminate between their divisions, we could then assess their skin, juice, fibre, seeds, and so on downward, division after division, through their molecular-chemical structure and so on. For instance there are differences in nutrient value which have different beneficial uses, and chemicals that are better for some uses in apple seeds, and oils that are better for some uses in orange peel.
So working progressively, so far we can see that there is: Awareness of self and surroundings. Discernment or the ability to differentiate between one thing and another. Discrimination, the ability to discern and evaluate. Passive intelligence, which is the ability to make a programmed choice between discriminated articles. For example, computers, and birds when they select nest material. Active intelligence, which is the ability to freely choose between discriminated articles. (What human's have, and what we might term horizontal freewill, compared to the vertical freewill discussed in posts above, of which the horizontal freewill is a result. Creative intelligence, which is the ability to freely choose from aspects of discriminated articles and blend them together to create a previously imagined result.
It goes on of course, layer by layer, function by function, throughout psyche, mind and personality layers; and inward too, from awareness backward through the internal stations of consciousness. The whole lot working as a perfect conscious humane mechanism. I was thinking some more about your categories crossbow. I had come to the realization it also would describe the evolution of consciousness within a body. If the body adapts to the conscious control then it would imply consciousness is governing the bodies growth. In other words projecting the conscious will in the form of a body to suit it. So we can deduce that the only thing that is actually evolving is the consciousness behind the bodies. As we can still see the life from beginning to end (microbial to mammal).
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