Whats done cannot be undone!
A simple but profoundly true dictum. The essence of time is movement. As Iqbal put it aptly;
Jo tha woh nehi hei, jo hei na hu ga
Yehi hei ik harf-e-mafermana
(Translation: What ever that was, is not. What ever that is, will not be. This is the mysterious word.)
Our past is a matter of fact. Certain events take place in our life and become an inseparable part of our character. This has made certain people argue that our past somehow determines our future therefore free will or human choice is an impossibility. Since we cannot alter out past, we cannot alter our future too. I take exception to this assertion. Despite being someone who is not a free will enthusiast; I believe there is room for human choice. I will elaborate my argument below.
Imagine someone who had committed murder at the age of 17 or 18. This incident of the past becomes a fact for that individual. A hard determinist will argue that since the young guy cannot alter this fact; his whole future will be determined by this very act. He wont be able to escape it. It will haunt him.
Similarly imagine someone who gets into an illicit secret relationship. Someone who explores all the carnal instinctive desires.Or someone who has been cheated or jilted by their partners. For a determinist such a person won't be able to escape this fact in future even when the relationship will be over. As they say, whatever is done cannot be undone.
The determinist argument seems to make sense intuitively. Only a fool or a liar can deny his past. Facticity is part of human condition. However, there is another aspect to the whole debate. We humans have been endowed with an ability to give meaning to our actions. This is the aspect that determinists ignore. For instance who will decide that the murder I committed at the age of 18 was a crime or was it a life changing event making me a complete pacifist by the age of 25? Me. I will be the one who will give it a meaning. I have the choice to give it a meaning. Who will decide whether the carnal illicit experience I had as a young lad was something ugly or was it the basis of later spiritual conversion at the age of 40? Me. Only I will be in a position to give it a meaning. True, I cannot change my past actions. But I can surely change the meaning I attach to them in future. That is where lies the true potential for human choice.
A simple but profoundly true dictum. The essence of time is movement. As Iqbal put it aptly;
Jo tha woh nehi hei, jo hei na hu ga
Yehi hei ik harf-e-mafermana
(Translation: What ever that was, is not. What ever that is, will not be. This is the mysterious word.)
Our past is a matter of fact. Certain events take place in our life and become an inseparable part of our character. This has made certain people argue that our past somehow determines our future therefore free will or human choice is an impossibility. Since we cannot alter out past, we cannot alter our future too. I take exception to this assertion. Despite being someone who is not a free will enthusiast; I believe there is room for human choice. I will elaborate my argument below.
Imagine someone who had committed murder at the age of 17 or 18. This incident of the past becomes a fact for that individual. A hard determinist will argue that since the young guy cannot alter this fact; his whole future will be determined by this very act. He wont be able to escape it. It will haunt him.
Similarly imagine someone who gets into an illicit secret relationship. Someone who explores all the carnal instinctive desires.Or someone who has been cheated or jilted by their partners. For a determinist such a person won't be able to escape this fact in future even when the relationship will be over. As they say, whatever is done cannot be undone.
The determinist argument seems to make sense intuitively. Only a fool or a liar can deny his past. Facticity is part of human condition. However, there is another aspect to the whole debate. We humans have been endowed with an ability to give meaning to our actions. This is the aspect that determinists ignore. For instance who will decide that the murder I committed at the age of 18 was a crime or was it a life changing event making me a complete pacifist by the age of 25? Me. I will be the one who will give it a meaning. I have the choice to give it a meaning. Who will decide whether the carnal illicit experience I had as a young lad was something ugly or was it the basis of later spiritual conversion at the age of 40? Me. Only I will be in a position to give it a meaning. True, I cannot change my past actions. But I can surely change the meaning I attach to them in future. That is where lies the true potential for human choice.
3 comments:
A thought provoking and insightful post. Loved the thought process.
I'd like to mention two reservations though:
1) You wrote "A hard determinist will argue that since the young guy cannot alter this fact; his whole future will be determined by this very act." I believe this is erroneous as such, because a hard determinist will argue that his whole future will be determined by his collective past events as a whole, in which a particular individual past event may or may not play a role.
2) You wrote "I will be the one who will give it a meaning. I have the choice to give it a meaning." A hard determinist will say that even the process of ascribing meaning to a past event will be determined by the past and by factors external to you. Whatever meaning you decide to give to the past event would also be determined.
I’d just like to add that one of the reasons we are inclined to believe that free will exists is because as Awais says, each act is an outcome of 'collective past experience' therefore there are so many variables which have a cumulative impact in determining the course of our actions, we cannot identify which specific factors contributed towards the final decision or act. Therefore making it impossible to predict the final outcome and creating the illusion that the final outcome could have been ‘anything’ and we held the authority to alter it.
The debate ofcourse is endless, heres something interesting n relevant i just read today:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/is-neuroscience-the-death-of-free-will/?ref=opinion
Thanks for your feedback Awais and SF. I have tried to answer to the best of my abilities.
Adios
Post a Comment