That was getting too long, so I distilled it down.
Suppose I intend to order chocolate, but then I overhear someone say they pissed in the chocolate, so some outside force has compelled me to change my mind.
I think what you’re getting at is the will cannot will want it doesn’t want to will. The will can be changed, but at the end of the day, the will still wills what it wants to will.
If I give someone a gift, do a favor, or even sacrifice myself for someone else, it can only be for a selfish reason because there is nothing I can do that I don’t want to do.
Selfishness in the cold sense is really just dimwitted in my opinion. That person doesn’t see that doing things for others is better for him. It’s not any more or less selfish, just dumber.
There are no laws, but only observed regularities.
The links were to help you accept probabilism. If you already accept it, then don’t worry about the links.
If you posit that you exist, then where is the line that separates you from not-you? This is not only problematic in space, but also time: when did you begin?
When I look at an animal, I see a bunch of luggage pushing a brain around, but then I realize the brain is just luggage too. Where is the animal? Alright, ok, so if the animal is the luggage, then what isn’t luggage? The animal needs food and water and a planet, so where does the luggage end? Obviously if the animal is the luggage, then there is nothing that is not the animal. So either there is no animal or there is nothing that is not the animal, but I cannot for the life of me see the animal as different from everything else.
So if there is no animal, from where is the will coming from? And if there is only the animal, on what is the supposed will exerted? The whole thing is just an illusion. There is nothing being determined because there is nothing there but abstractions.
I don’t have any problem with that since I believe nothing has a cause. There are no things or events, and the abstracted things that we call things are caused by random (causeless) chance.
And I could go further and claim that if there were causes and deterministic mechanisms, then there would be no point to the universe. But that requires a lot of unpacking. Essentially, purposelessness can be the only purpose.
Educating others helps me to live in a better world, so it’s not noble, but selfish.
I have literally tons and tons of books (and a Reader’s Digest collection going back to the early 1900s when staples were used in the spine to hold pages together), but I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve only ever read one book (that I can remember) from cover to cover. My father devours books just for fun, but for me it’s painful and I take a more utilitarian perspective that reading is a tool to learn. Dad reads for kicks, but I toil to achieve a goal. Anyway, I have oodles of books on queue awaiting whatever it is I’m missing so I can eventually attend to them, but it’ll probably never happen. My eyes are also getting worse which makes it that much harder.
If I were born in a time absent tv, radio, and youtube, perhaps I’d have developed an affinity for reading, but I find it an antiquated method of learning and far too inefficient in light of alternative mediums. I’m spoiled by progress. I don’t want to offend you or anything, but it would be a miracle if I ever found myself in a position where I didn’t have 10,000 things more pressing or exciting to do in order to snuggle up to a book. Most of my reading is done in waiting rooms where nothing else is possible. Likewise, I have the same problem in writing a book. Why write a book when the purpose of writing, as David Hare said, “writing is the act of discovering what you believe”? If I’ve already discovered what I believe, why rehash it when I could move on to more interesting things. Maybe someone will compile my work one day since I’m too poorly equipped to do it. I can’t even get around to compiling Alan Watts’ work, which is on my bucket list.
Usually a book is written surrounding a few key ideas. One starts with the ideas and adds fluff to make a book from it. Isn’t there a way to convey to me the nuggets without requiring me to wade through all the accessory fluff to find them?