Back in my believing days, before 2005, as that is when I stopped being an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas — an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru considered to be God in Human form — for quite a few years I was the secretary of our local sangat, as RSSB groups are called.
I had the keys to a a school room that we were able to use for our satsang meetings every Sunday. So if I was late opening up, it was a problem, as chairs and tables had to be set up.
Some Sunday mornings I’d be rushing off from my house, behind schedule. If every intersection I had to cross had a green light when I approached it, I’d pull into the school parking lot with a “thank you, Master” in my mind, because I figured that it was the guru’s grace that enabled me to leave late and get to the satsang meeting place on time.
Magical thinking? Absolutely.
But it was appealing to believe that a divine person, or power, was looking out for me, arranging for traffic lights to be green rather than red. Now I feel differently. I took the same route today, because it’s how I get to downtown Salem, and I cruised through all the green lights. Except I didn’t think this was a sign from God. It simply was what happened.
For 35 years I believed in God’s will. That comforted me when things went wrong in my life, or in the world as a whole. There was a supernatural power orchestrating things, even if that Divine Conductor was hidden from view.
Now I express that general sentiment in this atheistic fashion: It had to be.
This is a truism, of course. Whatever happens had to be, because if it didn’t have to be, it wouldn’t have happened.
Driving along, at a certain time, at a certain speed, with traffic lights programmed to turn red, yellow, and green at certain intervals under certain conditions (underground sensors determine some traffic light behavior, something I learned when I drove a large scooter that wasn’t massive enough to trigger a left turn signal), whether I encounter a green or red light is fully determined by these complex natural causes. As is everything else.
This also is how I’ve come to look upon my own actions, and the actions of other people: It had to be. I don’t believe in free will. I do believe in causes and effects. Everything that happens inside and outside of me is as fully determined as traffic lights are. Those causes and effects typically are just considerably more complex and difficult to grasp.
When I say to myself, It had to be, this doesn’t make pain or sadness less intense. Nor does it make pleasure or happiness less intense. Those words just bring me a certain measure of comfort — a reassurance that life operates according to certain rules that are akin to a sporting event where it is impossible to break the rules, because they govern everything, including how the players and referees behave.
That impossibility means that when I say to myself, It had to be, the saying of those four words also had to be. Likewise, when I’m upset by something bad happening in my life, both the bad happening and my upset’ness had to be.
In this way, It had to be is firmly in the camp of mindfulness, where everything that happens is accepted as what it is, rather than as what we would like it to be. Again, though, we don’t have a choice of denying any happening. If it happened, that’s an undeniable reality. As are our efforts to deny undeniable reality, should this happen.
Pleasingly, it turns out that God’s will and It had to be have a lot in common, even though one saying is religious and one saying is atheistic. At least, from the standpoint of my favorite medieval Christian philosopher, Meister Eckhart. I went through a phase where I read every English translation of Eckhart’s writings, most or all of which were in the form of sermons that eventually got him in trouble with the Catholic Church.
In a 2012 blog post, “If rape and life is God’s will, why isn’t everything?,” I quoted Eckhart:
Now I hear you ask, “How do I know that it is God’s will?” My answer is that if it were not God’s will even for a moment, then it would not exist. Whatever is must be his will. If God’s will is pleasing to you, then whatever happens to you, or does not happen to you, will be heaven.
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Hmm that’s the very thing that goes through a child’s mind when they open up a coloring book. The onset is speeding up.
I think I would ditch “It had to be” and “God’s will” in favour of (my usual go-to) “Just this”, or the “Present moment”. Mainly because “It had to be” doesn’t describe the infinite number of variables that contributed to what arises in the present moment.
For example, if you jumped off a wall and broke your ankle, it doesn’t mean ‘it had to be’. You could have landed safely, fallen backwards, squashed a snail, or your trousers fell down – anything could have occurred: one particular scenario doesn’t mean it ‘had to be’ whereas whatever happened is exactly ‘what is’ at each moment, each happening is simply ‘what is’ at that moment.
‘What is’ also of course includes the comments we express here. What information we have accrued throughout our lifetimes determines the various comments and opinions we expound – and the way we convey them. What we think and say is exactly ‘what is’ for us and also ‘what is’ for the thoughts, and feelings generated through the reader.
Kind of agree with Ron there, Brian. And again, kind-of sort-of ties in with my long-standing objection to the Sapolskyesque POV.
Pardon me, this is going to town over-analyzing a throwaway general feel-good post, maybe. And in any case, why rain down on what gives someone solace. That’s one way of looking at it. On the other hand, clearly sussing out things of this nature is kind of our thing, right? And it’s our thing, following your inspiration, and your lead, Brian. So, then purely from that perspective, allow me to gently point out that you’re right, this “It had to be” is very similar to “It’s God’s Will” — including in how neither really adds up, if you think about it. Here’s why (and I’ll try to keep it as brief as I can!):
When the theist comforts themselves for what has happened, saying “It’s God’s Will”: then that sentiment makes sense only if it is the case that only _some_ things are God’s Will, including that thing that has happened. Because if _everything_ is God’s Will, then I don’t see how that can coherently be the cause of comfort. I could clearly spell out why it’s incoherent, but I won’t, for the sake of brevity. It’ll probably be obvious: but in case it isn’t, and you’d like me to, then very happy to elaborate further.
Likewise with this No Free Will, and Everything Follows Causes thing. In as much _everything_ answers to that description, then I don’t see how that can coherently be the cause of comfort. You do say, quite reasonably, that you believe in cause and effect. Well then, one might well ask, when something has gone majorly wrong, why the myriad causes that went into causing that something, like traffic lights maybe, or that went into our doing something, or that went into someone else doing something, hadn’t been different, and therefore resulted in a different outcome. …Again, I guess it is obvious, and so for the sake of brevity I’ll leave this be now: but in case it isn’t, and you’d like me to, then happy to spell out my reasoning further.
Reminds me the very first time I’d heard about all of this. That was in a correspondence I’d had with you, a letter/email you’d written to me, long back. That was the first time I came across this whole concept. While agreeable to the No Free Will idea, but this aspect of it, of which Sapolsky is but a variation, had seemed incomprehensible to me then, I remember. But I was very diffident then, and rightly so since I was so entirely ignorant about all of this — I imagined I didn’t get it, and needed to find out more in order to properly understand. Now, all these years later, and better versed in all of this — thanks largely to you, Brian, the many discussions on this here! — I have to say, less diffidently now, that it’s still incomprehensible, and this time I think it’s incomprehensible because it doesn’t actually add up.
Much better to go, instead, with “It is what it is.” (And that applies equally to the theist, that believes that everything is God’s Will. And for us, who recognize there’s no free will. For both, everything being God’s Will, or everything following past causes, cannot reasonably, logically, be a source of comfort, in as much it applies to everything. It simply doesn’t add up. But a shrug, in clear recognition that “It is what it is”, and that what already is cannot now be different because it already is, well, that works.
…Again, apologies if we are / I am over-analyzing a throwaway feel-good post, and if our/my doing that is at all unwelcome. Absolutely don’t mean to take away what comfort you may (or for that matter the theist may) derive in the face of unpleasantness, God knows we all need what solace we can get in this world that is so full of tribulation: just, this is where we suss such things out, so, well, that’s where I was coming from.
Ron and Appreciative Reader, I agree that “it is what it is,” “Just this,” and “Present moment” are fine reminders of what reality is all about. I’d just add that “It had to be” points to the same thing as those other phrases: the 100% inevitability of what is, of just this, of present moment.
Yes, as Appreciative Reader said, this seems obvious. To us, who have given the matter considerable thought. But it isn’t how even we always view things — speaking for myself, mainly, since I don’t have access to your minds — and even less true of how most people view things.
Which is along the lines of “I can’t believe that happened,” “I regret not doing X because then Y wouldn’t have happened,” and similar thoughts reflecting the common belief that we humans have the ability to freely choose among alternatives in a way that doesn’t involve past experiences, genetics, culture, or any other sort of deterministic influence.
This is why I’m fond of “It had to be.” That saying reminds me of the fact that at every moment, in every instance, without exception, what happens is the only thing that could happen, because it did happen. Yes, as Appreciative Reader noted, arguably if everything happens for a reason, there’s no place for the alternative view of free will, regrets, and such — since there’s no place in reality where “it could have happened otherwise” can take a stand.
I’m just saying that most people don’t look at life that way. Again, they see themselves as Free Will birds, able to soar about the ground of determinism and causes/effects. As Robert Sapolsky said about free will, 99% of the time he still feels that he has it, even though he wrote a lengthy book ably dismantling the arguments in favor of free will, I still often harbor a sense of “Damn, if I’d only done that other thing, that problem could have been avoided” even though I don’t believe in free will. Our minds are just hard-wired to believe in it, almost certainly for evolutionary reasons.
What I say to myself is true, theoretically, I guess. But not in practice, since only one thing can happen at a time, since we don’t live in a quantum multiverse where everything that could happen, does happen. Of course, even in that case a conscious observer is only aware of the universe they inhabit where only one thing happened, not the infinity of branching universes where other things happen than did happen in the observer’s universe.
Whew, that’s a lot of philosophizing before lunchtime.
Uhhhh, sorry, Brian, but no, that’s not what I was going for, at all. No, in this case, and in this specific context, “It had to be” is very different than simply “It is what it is”. Both in terms of what it signifies, and also in terms of whether and via what (implicit) chain of reasoning it might (or might not) offer comfort against regret and recrimination.
I’m afraid your comment now — which considered and detailed comment I do appreciate, absolutely! — sidesteps that specific issue, and goes off to address other (related, but different) matters.
Not to beat this to death, but as far as not so much the thrust of your original post itself, or my earlier comment, but focusing squarely on the meat of what you’re saying now, I wonder if I might not be able to bring home my point, as briefly as I can, by simply saying the following. (And I’m only be going to be repeating what I’ve argued at different times in other words, but maybe this way of putting it, and at this juncture, might help put across better what I’m trying to convey.)
———-
I think putting it in terms of “Why didn’t I do this differently?” kind of ends up offering a semantic sideway away from squarely facing the issue. That question might perhaps be better phrased as “If only I’d ended up having done this differently!”. That is: this is a question not so much of free will (once you start from the position of accepting that we have no free will, on which we are fully agreed), but of intentionality.
This is what I’ll try to break down further, if I may, into three short points (well, two short points, because they’re merely repetition), and one longer point (an example I’ve just now thought of, that might illustrate this starkly).
1. Rephrase your regret-question not in terms of “Why didn’t I do this differently?!” ; but in terms of “If only I’d ended up having done it differently!”
2. Let’s try to clearly separate out free will and intentionality. Our regret, and recrimination etc, arise not out of an assumption of free will, but out of appreciation of intentionality.
3 (i) Let’s say, fifteen years from now, there’s a very advanced AI program that’s been developed to pick stocks; and that has become conscious in the same way us humans are (as no reason why it shouldn’t, given sufficient complexity); and further that this AI has been tasked to independently pick and buy stocks for the corporation it represents. So then, this AI program ends up missing a then-tiny-but-eventually-gargantuan Mircrosoft-esque mutlibagger; and instead ends up taking a huge bet on a Lehman-Brother-esque blue chip: and thereby ends up hugely denting its financials.
3 (ii) This is not a separate point, I’m only breaking this off now to avoid an impenetrable wall of text. …So, given #3(i) above, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for this program to feel regret, and for the Board to apportion blame and censure. Despite both the AI itself knowing fully that it has no free will, and despite the Board also knowing that. If the AI finds itself asking, “Why didn’t I do this differently?!”, then that phrasing can help its forensic analysis, both for the Board as well as to properly inform its future investment decisions. But the regret that it feels, and the blame and censure that come it way, arise from phrasing that question in terms of the rhetorical, “If only I’d ended up doing it differently!”
3 (iii) Do read further, this further example will clarify what I mean about differentiating free will from intentionality. …Now let’s say there’s calculator sitting there on the table, assuming they still have those. No matter how disappointed the Board, no one would dream of flinging blame and censure at it. Because the poor calculator, even should it have somehow become conscious, lacks the requisite intentionality.
3 (iv) Which maps exactly to how we might rightly apportion blame and censure for wrongdoing to someone possessed of mens rea; but withhold flinging blame and censure at someone that we know is lacking the requisite mental equipment, lacking mens rea.
———-
Like I said: it seems to me Sapolsky is conflating free will and intentionality. From which conflation flows his incoherent worldview. (Sorry, that sounds rude, but I don’t know how to put it differently.)
And again, that intentionality does not have to be predicated on consciousness preceding action. When you buy something for $20, and hand over a $100 bill, and the cashier returns to you change to the tune of $80: then it doesn’t matter if experiments show his actions precede his becoming conscious of such. That action is so specific and so precise that is inconceivable without intentionality. There is intentionality there: and yet there is no free will.
———-
Haha, sorry, yet another involved bit of philosophizing!
But yeah, circling back: “It is what it is” is more direct. It works if we’re theists. It also works when we recognize there’s no free will. And, importantly, it works also when we clearly recognize intentionality.
Like Sapolsky, we might still be unable to always live up to it, and not always draw comfort from it. But it does serve as a workable ideal, a reasonable attitude to aspire for. …But Sapolsky’s ideal, that he reports being unable to live up to, is flawed right at the foundation, it doesn’t make sense even as an ideal to aim for, because it is simply incoherent. (Again, sorry if that sounds rude, that “incoherent”: but don’t know how else to say that.)
That’s why “It is what it is” works, while “It had to be” doesn’t quite map.
So apparently your vision of God is still some man with a beard up in the sky. You people need to get off of the computer, smash them and burn them and never read another word printed anywhere.
From my perspective, there is a world of difference between declaring ‘It had to be’ and ‘What is’. ‘It had to be’ is more in the nature of a thought-generated assumption (or statement) that things could not have panned out differently, whereas, taking account of all the variables leading up to that moment, any could have altered the outcome. ‘What is’ is not an assumption; rather, it is recognising or seeing the undeniable reality of what is being experienced each moment as it arises.
‘It had to be’ is fundamental to the concept of free will or the lack of, whereas ‘What is’ is all about what is perceived in the moment, regardless of the mechanics that continually produce all the phenomena that arise in awareness. ‘It had to be’ could generate a myriad of emotions from guilt and remorse to pride and pleasure – again, all of which also only ever arise in the moment.
I’d just add, regarding free will, that to me it’s not a reality, though having no free will doesn’t change the fact that we have and make limited choices. Choices are made, but not from a separate free agent. And yes, our choices have consequences, and we need to take responsibility for them, being an integral aspect of functioning in societies that have evolved intelligent rules and laws.
Ron, I see what you mean. “It is what it is” points to the impossibility of the present moment being anything other than what it is. “It had to be” points to the impossibility of the present moment arising from any causes and effects other than what actually occurred.
For me, the feeling of both phrases is virtually identical. But I can see why you, or someone else, prefers “It is what it is,” as it roots us more in the present moment rather than looking back to how the present moment came to be.
They have subtle different effects in me. I like “It had to be” when I find myself ruminating about some mistake I’ve made that I regret now, yet had no way of knowing it was a mistake at the time. That’s why for me the two phrases are quite similar in meaning. Fairly frequently, after a heartbreaking loss, a player on the losing team will say in an interview, “It is what it is.” I take that to mean, “We lost. There are reasons why we lost. That’s just the way it is.” Looking back, while also recognizing the present moment fact of the loss.
Appreciative Reader and Ron, your comments made me realize more strongly something I already knew. That this subject of free will, determinism, intentionality, and such is very personal. People see the subject in different ways. That itself is an indication of what I believe to be a neuroscientific truth: we don’t choose our actions, beliefs, and so on. They arise from hidden recesses of the brain, then our mind says after the fact, “I’m going to do ______” or “I intend to do ______”
What’s difficult to grasp in all this is how utterly complete and inescapable determinism and the lack of free will is. AI is a good example of this. An AI doesn’t have a mind like we do, yet it seems like it does. So we imbue the AI with human-like qualities. What we should be doing is what Robert Saltzman recommends. Seriously consider that the human mind is like an AI — fully determined, yet with the illusion of free will/choice.
I’m not able to grasp what bringing intentionality into the discussion adds, or means. As the famous Einstein (I think it was) quote goes, roughly, “I will to light my pipe. But what willed that will?” Meaning, intentions are as determined as actions. An AI, or a human mind, can regret doing X rather than Y. So what? That regret is as determined as X was. It’s just another level in an escapable structure of determinism.
People adamantly argue in favor of free will. That’s another manifestation of determinism. For me, this is something that makes so much sense, which I’ve pondered for so long, that at least the intellectual understanding of it is very clear in my mind. As noted before, this doesn’t mean that I lack a sense of having free will or intentionality. It’s simply that I can see how this almost certainly is the way things are. It’s so simple, it’s hard to discern, because we’re so used to believing that there is something extra — soul, a free will genie, whatever — in the human mind that is lacking in animals and other living beings.
https://momath.org/mathmonday/math-monday-12-card-star-puzzle/math-monday-make-a-marble-run/
Cause and effect
Free will
Free choice
And
Somebody did drop the marbles
And
THAT … that something extra … is not causal
THAT … is the secret
Without THAT there is nou causality but it is itself not causal
My goodness what has happened to me
Thanks Brian and Appreciative Reader for your thoughtful (and mindful) inputs to this, always pertinent, topic of free will and no free will.
Incidentally I have read Robert Saltzman’s ‘The 21st Century Self’ and look forward to reading his other two books. I find his explorations and consequent insights very clear and very much akin to my surjoins into Zen Buddhism.
You keep talking about the ultimate path that you were on for 35 years and it’s all downhill after that. Vegetarians don’t have to worry about what came first the chicken or the egg. Soy came first.
It would be better to believe all this is a dream, an illusion, a product of delusion for then at least one acknowledges this is a weak interpretation, a twisted and conditioned tableau of mind. This is the illusion. Now go find reality.
Yep, loved the discussion! 👍 …My thanks too, Ron, and above all Brian (but for whom I wouldn’t even have heard of the no-free-will idea, far less burrowed this deep down this rabbit hole!).
———-
I’m not able to grasp what bringing intentionality into the discussion adds, or means.”
It is crucial, because that is what responsibility is predicated on. Not on free will, but on intentionality. Not on the cashier being able to act independently of any and every preceding cause, but on the organism of the cashier possessing the capacity, and therefore the reasonable expectation, of giving you back the correct change for your hundred dollar bill. Responsibility, and therefore mens rea, is predicated on intentionality.
To absolve ourselves/others of responsibility because we/they don’t have free will, is exactly as coherent as absolving ourselves/others of responsibility because we/they don’t have a tail!
Those who believe in soul and free will may well lump intentionality together with free will, and indeed with soul, and get by well enough despite that conflation. But such of us as recognize there is neither soul nor free will, must needs clearly deal with that nuance, and clearly suss out that difference, if we are to coherently address the role of such in correctly apportioning responsibility, and so devise our own morality, and our secular customs and laws, without slipping into incoherence.
Does this clarify, Brian?
Gentlemen,….if I may? ( CAUTION: Materialists may be allowed to leave the Room, as a short Bible Thump follows).
I mentioned this issue here, long ago, which might still be hidden in the Archives, if not buried with rotten tomatoes and eggs as I was being pelted while delivering Bible References.
But, perhaps the Audience may have changed, or matured .
I have found that the English term in the Bible “Word” has different meanings, depending on where it is used, and the context, as well as the translation.
Since RS and Eckankar are based on “SOUND CURRENT”, well a Bible Clue might be:
“Faith comes by HEARING, and HEARING, by the WORD ( Rhema) of God.” Romans 10:17
So, in this Verse, the Apostle Paul, the Jewish Convert of the Christ Myth, who had never seen the historical man, Jesus, in person, shared that HIS Faith, at least, came to Him by HEARING!!! Now, where did he HEAR it from? He Heard it on the road to Damascus, when his Christian persecuting butt was knocked off his horse, and he SAW the Light, and HEARD what he “thought” was an inner Sound, he believed to be Jesus, ( Acts 9:4,5,6) and he became converted to Christianity right there on the road!
“WORD” in that Verse translates from the Greek word, “Rhema” which means Sound, or Audable.
But, Paul had to continue to Damascus in his blinded condition, to complete his “physical” Initiation by Ananias by the Laying on of Hands, and he ( Saul who became Paul) was filled with the Holy Spirit, and the scales fell from his eyes, and he rose up and was immediately Baptized. ( Acts Chapter 9 gives the entire story. ) So, Paul received his Faith by HEARING the Rhema ( WORD) inside. ( as well as SEEING the Inside Light!! Powerful Sant Mat Teaching, taken from Christian Bible.
The Contrast of when the term “WORD” is used as Christ, is translated from the Greek “LOGOS” in John 1:1,2,3,4 “In the beginning was the LOGOS ( WORD), and the LOGOS ( WORD ) was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him, was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”
So, here, we are told that the LOGOS (WORD) did, indeed have a beginning. ( God, the Creator BREATHS the WORD! ) So, the LOGOS was the LIGHT of life delivered by the LOGOS, (WORD) by GOD, WHO Has no beginning,….OR end, for that matter.
Real Powerful Sant Mat, to those who have,…..EARS to HEAR, and EYES to SEE,….the LIGHT & SOUND.
Amen
Jim
Bump, one more time, …one last time?
I …don’t understand, Brian. You said you hadn’t grasped what I meant by intentionality, and what it adds to the discussion of free will and regret/blame/censure. I explained that concisely, and I think clearly. Do you still not grasp my meaning? …And, importantly, in case you don’t: then, given you are so very invested in this subject, don’t you want to examine as clearly as you can whether it does hold up? I know I do, and I cannot imagine why you wouldn’t! Which is why I don’t understand your abandoning the discussion when we’re close, this close, to clearly having this discussion progress to the point where either we’re both forced to admit I’m wrong about Sapolsky’s ethical argument, or else we’re both forced to admit I’m right about it.
With no disrespect intended, Brian, I have to say, I’m both surprised, and disappointed, at your repeatedly avoiding facing this issue face on. At your deflecting from the meat of our core disagreement on this with platitudes — kind platitudes, of which I’m sincerely appreciative, and for which I’m sincerely grateful, but platitudes nevertheless.
Again, and for the last time, I ask: Do you really not grasp, even now, what I mean by intentionality, and how that ties in to this discussion? …We’re this close to clearly resolving the issue. Given where we’ve arrived on this on this thread, I know I could bring home the issue squarely following these two specific lines of argument, both of which you’ve yourself raised here: the AI argument; as well as, amusingly, the meta argument about my now continuing to argue against Sapolsky’s moral argument and your continuing to hold on to it (and what that says about free will and intentionality).
Happy to launch into another involved comment or two discussing both of those angles, if you like. In fact, I’m actually eager to do that, and to thereby clearly examine whether what I’ve come to think of this makes sense, or doesn’t. …But only if you’d like to substantively engage with it, only then, not otherwise. Up to you, Brian.
(Again, apologies for forcing the issue! I do realize you’re trying to let this be, and I apologize for making it difficult for you to do that. But let’s not do that thing, please, of simply going through the motions of apparently talking deeply and wisely about deep and wise matters: as opposed to actually and clearly doing that. I expect different, I expect more, from you, Brian, and from Churchless.)