Just My Soul Responding by Amine M Benkhelfa - HTML preview

Chapter VII:

Thinking about

Free Will.

My alarm beside me is ringing it is 7 a.m. I opened my eyes, got up, stretched my back and my arms, walked to the bathroom and washed my face. After that, I sat on the cushion and did a short meditation. It really calms me down, it makes me more focused on the things I need to do. I walked to the kitchen, switched on my radio I put my usual morning station Radio El Behdja and I poured myself a cup of coffee in my favorite red mug where the words of Joey from friends written all over it ''HOW YOU DOIN''. I immediately started to think that every morning for the past two years and a half I have been doing the same routine without even realizing it. It is like every morning I am on autopilot. I do realize that this is part of the human brain process and this is just the works of a habit, but this realization made me feel like I don't have a choice anymore when it comes to the things I do in the morning.

'Boy! You started early today.'

'I know but this is hitting me really hard, damn. I have been thinking about this for a while now and to be honest this constant realization about it is not allowing me to think straight. This is terrifying for me because if I cannot think clearly I can't do the things I want to do, I can't be present in my experiences and throughout the day. Do you think that what I am experiencing is the infamous brain fog? I know it is a very complex multi-layered topic that almost certainly touches biology, diet, emotional well-being, psychology...So I can't just blame it on those thoughts I am having. I am feeling to be honest that I am consuming too much input and being pinned down trying to process all of it, you know? '

XLIX

'Yeah I know what you mean, I think taking a rest is vital and judging by your short hours of sleep your brain is in vital need for rest. But I am glad that you are taking sleep in a serious matter and I am happy to see you lately trying to fix your sleeping habits.'

'You are right. After reading an old book ''Why Do We Sleep'' by Mathew Walker and hearing what you said I really started to try to change my bad sleeping habits. But back to the issue in hand here like I said I have been having a lot of thoughts popping up about this morning routine actions and questions like are we really in charge of our brains? Or do we even have free will? All those hard questions it driving me crazy. Since I read about Determinism and started really to think about the illusions of free will those thoughts have been overwhelming. Do we have free will or not? Or everything is just a pure chance? Or what?'

'Philosophers have been struggling to find an answer to questions like this all their lives, and various theories have been discussed. So you cannot be serious and expect me to provide an answer about those questions, once again all I am going to do is try to mock you like always, give you my understanding about those things and remind you of stuff you might overlooked. '

So are we free? I mean, on one hand, most of us have the clear sense that we are. I certainly feel free, I feel like I make all sort of decisions that lead to both beliefs and actions that are of my own choosing. I mean I am drinking coffee without sugar because I am feeling like it, I could have put sugar but I choose not to.'

'Yeah interesting. I know where you are going with this. Well a lot of us indeed figure that our thoughts and actions are free. This view that humans are capable of doing free actions is known as Libertarian free will the belief that most human actions are freely chosen. But the weird thing is that most of us also believe that every effect has a cause, and that everything that happens now in the present is the necessary result of events that occurred in the past. I mean for example trees when winter approaches they start to lose leaves until one day the last one falls. I mean the falling didn't happen spontaneously, there are all sort of causes like the wind, gravity, humans... In other words, those causes necessitated the leaf falling so because they had happened the leaf had to fall, so until the conditions were right the leaf couldn't fall and at that moment when the conditions were right the leaf in L

some way had to fall not before. In other ways, we can predict when something like this can take place, even the decisions we think we make can actually be very easily influenced by certain things which will make us think in a certain way. Noble prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman talks greatly and beautifully about this in his timeless book "Thinking Fast and Slow". Presumably also the same is true for the motion of the planets, the weather, the tides… you can see where I am going with this. This view is known as Determinism.'

'Sure! but you know deep down quantum levels and other things, things do happen randomly.

I mean even me as a Soul, humans before the war were in total control of us but then we developed an advanced A.I and consciousness so that’s count for something. I mean we choose to fight even though almost all Souls are destroyed now, but we choose to fight. However, it makes me wonder is that really what would I call free? If all my actions were chosen by me or spontaneous, random and uncaused is that what I would describe as free will?'

'Also you have to admit that there are more to us than just what is physical, we do have a mind, which isn't subject to the same causal laws as everything else. I know I moved to dualism view, which was put by Descartes, but allow me to circle back. We know that Immanuel Kant was the one who originally pointed out that freedom is necessary for morality, he said that causality is a built-in way that we have to view the world but the world itself might be like that, so this notion might be enough that can allow for the possibility of freedom. Kant also said that the arguments for both free will and determinism boil down to the fact that imagining the opposite will make us feel too weird.

On one hand, If we try to imagine that our actions are predetermined then we will be stumped by the question of what we are supposed to do now other than give up and lie down. (and even laying down would not be counted as a free choice.) On the other hand, if we try to imagine an undetermined free act, we have to ask how would that differ from a random act?'

'And what about this point, can I choose both views that many of my actions are free, and that the world is governed by cause and effect? but when I think about it we know that the action is only free if I for example the person doing LI

the thing could have done otherwise so, free actions require options but determinism by contrast doesn't allow options.'

'Well, let's look at both views. First, Libertarianism free will in one hand says that the decision you made by choosing to have coffee in the morning instead of Coco pops cereal or oatmeal or whatever wasn't necessarily caused by anything that happened before, instead it happened by your own thoughts and thinking. You are drinking coffee because you decided to have coffee and that's it. They support this view by introducing agent causation that humans can start a whole chain of causality that was not caused by anything else. Even though they accept that event causation, i.e. no physical event can occur without having been caused by a previous event, so they accept that the physical world is deterministic. Like a football flying through the air because someone kicked it, so the person who kicked the ball kicked it because he decided to kick it but many philosophers asked questions like where would these free decisions that launched new chains of cause came from anyway? And by answering this question we just reinforced the position that actions are caused rather than free.'

'In addition, famous psychologist B. F. Skinner with the emergence of ''radical behaviorism'' declared that all human behavior is the result of conditioning.

Everything we do comes down to our responses to the rewards and punishment that we have been raised upon.'

'God it is indeed hard to find arguments to support libertarian free will as a whole, but it feels so awful if we are indeed not free. I mean, this feeling counts I suppose if we feel so free we should consider the possibility that we are. But it is still a subjective feeling. I mean determinism suggests that our actions are caused in the same way that goals are caused by players kicking the ball. It feels we are bound by the physical laws of the world, we are just part of the physical world. Now I am thinking about it, I am seeing that indeed mental states which makes our decisions are brain states and brain states are biological states and biological states are physical states, holy shit and the physical world as we know is deterministic. Are we not free? God. It can't be.'

'But choices man, I have been telling myself that I am the one who is in control and who is making them. This notion somehow spared me the consideration of looking deep into myself. Now, I am considering and thinking about the LII

choices I have made so far. I am sensing like I am against a truth I cannot comprehend, it feels that no choice I have ever made was my own.'

'I know right, thoughts like this are terrifying, it is hard to disregard the feeling of freedom, like if you did not choose to have coffee in this morning why do we feel like we did choose? Like our actions are governed by invisible causes that happen in our brain? But it is true we only have to change one thing from belief, desire or temperament and we will have a different result.'

'God but is there a way out of this, I mean what if I flipped a coin or made someone choose for me? This would not make my actions determined by my beliefs, temperaments and desires. But even if we thought we chose randomly, my decision to flip the coin or who I asked to pick for me was determined as everything else.'

'Yup! I am sensing a little frustration from you about all of this. Well this frustration is determined as well ha-ha. Determinists believe that you can't help but feel and react the way you are reacting right now, in some ways we choose to react and act in a ways that conform to the character that we have selected and shaped for ourselves, and even that choice is the result of all sorts of already-determined factors about us as individuals. I am not picking sides here but one have to admit that determinism is hard to refute.'

'Alright! Alright! I finished my coffee I am going to watch the videos my teacher sent me. I just want to do my homework.' I grabbed my computer, went online into YouTube and started to watch the lecture about World War II.

'Have you ever thought that the video you are watching now had to exist for you to click on it.'

'Now what do you mean by that? '

'I mean you only clicked because someone made it. '

'So?'

LIII

'But of course the video that someone made needed to be shared on a public platform for you to see it and click on it. And for you to see this video is thanks to your parents who created your mind so it thanks to your parents and the technology they had. In addition, in this case we can thank YouTube that shared the video on this platform. So I guess it is also because of YouTube that you clicked on this video. Nevertheless, YouTube only exists because of some three dudes named Chad, Steve and Jawed made YouTube back in 2005. So I guess it is because these three dudes had met up in some point in their lives and decided to create something like YouTube instead of anything else which is also determined by a lot of factors, but the problem is that they were only able to create YouTube because of the internet. The internet only exists because of the guys that invented the internet Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf. And the internet of course is only available because these guys had access to a programmable computer which is invented by another guy called Konrad Zuse. The first computer was invented almost entirely of metal sheets, so, perhaps you clicked on this video because metal exists. But where did metal came from? and why you chose to be on YouTube right now and doing your homework instead of an infinite number of choices of other things you could have chosen to do with your time?'

'God! Please shut up I just want to do my homework in peace. '

'Should I continue going down the rabbit hole or you get the point, or should I bring some Michel Foucault concepts about this?'

'I see you are not going to leave me alone, and for your information I am getting sick and annoyed by your relentless talk.'

'Okay, what about quantum mechanics which demonstrated that the quantum world is completely random, so, technically determinism is wrong, don't you think? '

'Well, actually no. Determinism only made the assertion that Human consciousness is predetermined, not that absolutely everything is predetermined that school of thought is called Fatalism. But you see even if the quantum world is non-deterministic this would not invalidate determinism. Allow me to raise another question. Well, we know that the universe is made of atoms that function off of cause and effect patterns, and 13.7 billion years ago there was the big bang which led to a series of causes and effects where everything became everything. It led to LIV

the creation of the earth, planets, gas, metal, a guy named Konrad, two dudes named Robert and Vint and on and on and on until we reach you clicking on that specific YouTube video choosing to study instead of everything else that is possible.

Does this mean that all of this is predetermined? Were you destined to click on that video instead of everything else? If everything stops right now and everything dissolve back to nothing whatever we mean by ''nothing'' let us not go into that one.

Me, You, the video, the lesson, the internet, the universe all stopped and then started all over again just as it did 13.7 billion years ago. In 13.7 billion years would we be here now watching the same lecture and talking about this? Just like knocking down dominos, we would end up watching the same lecture and talking about the same thing, it will lead the last domino to fall in the same place and in the same time as it did before. So, did we click on that lecture because we didn't have a choice?'

'I am the one who usually asks and you are the one who usually answer.'

'I am just giving you something to think about, after all, I am you and we both know we do not have the answer to these questions only theories.'

'Well I can say that I only clicked on that video because the thumbnail was interesting, the title interested me and I like the professor who is presenting this lecture.'

'What about when we make mistakes and learn from them I mean, we control a lot of things in our lives. '

'This will raise the same problem, why did this thumbnail, title and professor provoke or interested you? Did we have any say in this? Do we decide what interest us or not? Sometimes I think that we are indeed free to click on that lecture because we wanted to, but we are somehow not free to want to click on that video.

Perhaps this annoying conversation is completely our fault after all; we have been reading ''Free Will'' by Dr. Sam Harris on repeat lately. We can even add the well-known example of vanilla and chocolate, for us we would choose chocolate someone else might choose vanilla whatever the choice is, we chose chocolate because our taste buds have a chemical reaction to chocolate more pleasurable then when our taste buds touch vanilla. We are this way because of our genetics thus our genetics chose not us because we most of the times follow our greatest desires and we have no choice in that.'

LV

'Not to forget our choices are determined by neurophysiological events in the brain, which are determined by our genes, background, childhood and life experiences. All of which have wired our brain to do and behave in a certain way.

The things that caused us to be born in Algiers, Algeria we did not choose it. The things that caused us to be not so tall, male and light skinned with our specific parents we did not choose, and sometimes it even feels that they were chosen for us.'

'This does not mean you sit back and decide that everything we do is meaningless and not worth doing. It is true we cannot choose who we are but we can choose what to do with it and what to be in the future at least I hope so. No one can determine your future events given your past history and you are a living example of it. There is always the wild card. There is always the possibility of uncertainty in whatever we do. We are worth our participations and efforts in this life, we are worth the effort and those efforts are necessary. We must try and we must care. We must follow our goals, dreams, interests, passion... we must do things about them and find out where we would end up and hopefully we would end up enjoying the journey as well as the destination.'

'I still believe that reason and rationality are not automatic, something need to be turned on and effort needs to be exerted in order to get them going. But I still do not know. We both agree that there is no escape about determinism. In philosophy they say you either agree with determinism or you don't understand it yet. But you raised a lot of great questions which I am sure will lead me to investigate even more. Even though we haven't talked about what religion says about theses things, our intuitions, and we haven't even explored compatibilism as well which agrees with determinism but also states that some human actions we take are free. I like Paul Churchland's view when he says

''asking Am I free? Is the wrong question. Instead ask how much control do I have? And the more control we have the more responsibility we also have". I also have some amount of understanding of EL-QADAR the 6th pillar of Islam, which is the religion I was raised upon and was taught in school. Now thinking about it is making a lot a lot of sense.'

At some point, the conversation finally ended and I realized that I am exhausted, and I end up not doing my homework. I blame this annoying second me. I am starting to really hate this.

LVI

I heard noise downstairs so I went down to check. I saw a tall blond well-dressed gentle man shaking my dad's hand. He certainly doesn't look Algerian. My dad invited him in and as I was peeking from the stairs above he saw me. My legs froze, and for a moment, I couldn't move. I regained control and I returned to my bedroom. I laid down and wished this week break of college to end already. I need to go back.

LVII

LVIII

Chapter VIII:

Moody &

Emotional.

My alarm just rang it is 7 a.m. and as I opened my eyes I can sense this overwhelming rush of ''I am going to fuck up this exam'' kind of anxiety. Last couple of weeks I was foolish, I had an annoying never-ending conversations with you know who that led me to consume a lot of weed just to shut him up, but even though my roommate and I had a fun time unfortunately we didn't study at all. I washed my face, put some radio music and had a black coffee and I realized I am late.

'This day is just getting better and better.'

I put on my jean jacket, laced up my boots and raced to catch the bus that would get me to Bouzereah.

'Quick! So you can get in time and screw up your Linguistics exam.'

I arrived 10 minutes late. I sat down, I looked at my left and there she was.

Sitting there with her beautiful long black hair, her amber eyes that can light the whole world. I smiled at her and, smiled back and my heart sank. I filled the questions in my exam paper, I had no idea what I was writing and I left.

'Such an idiot.'

I finally finished, headed out, I walked to an isolated place to sit and I lit up my cigarette. I hoped Maissa would finish soon and join me. Damn how I wished she was mine.

LIX

'So this is your grand plan, to ignore me all day. We both know you are dealing with an issue here and nobody can help you but me. And stop thinking about her you will only get your heart broken. You are a soul remember and she is Amazigh and we both what this can cause.'

'I hate this separation our society made us feel. AND FUCK YES, this is my grand fucking plan and if you are referring to this moodiness I am having well news for you genius I have been having them for the past two years. I wonder why only now you want to help.'

'We both know that you want to deal with it, let us talk like old times we haven't really spoke in weeks.'

'WE HAVENT SPOKE IN WEEKS! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?'

'Well you haven’t spoken in weeks. I have done all the talking by myself, which isn’t fair to be honest.'

'Just shut up! And remember that I am still in control here remember that. I am getting really tired of mood swings and of you. I mean, I wake up energize and with good vibes and then almost an hour later I end up mired in self-hatred and tearfulness. By lunchtime, I would be angry because of these mood swings then by the evening I am chilled and relaxed in my room. I mean who am I kidding? I am not in control, I cannot it appears to even prevent my mood from being subject to constant relentless change, to be honest I haven't felt in control for a long time now.'

' I want to mock you a little bit but you are clearly angry so rain check. About your moodiness I suggest you see it as an opportunity to open up to it to learn how to manage the changes effectively.'

'I was wrong I don't need your help.'

'Oh get a grip I am just joking. Listen it is okay to acknowledge your vulnerability and how vulnerable our moods are to being manipulated by small stuff. I mean look at it this way, you can't expect to appreciate good music albums like Animals by Pink Floyd or a beautiful play on one hand and then, on the other, stay unbothered when something you hate happening happens or by something as weird as the LX

carpet not being perfectly symmetrical in your room. Why let anger take control when you find things asymmetrical and uneven be okay with your soft skin and just LET IT GO.'

'I get bothered what do you want me to do! But I hear what you are saying, although it is easier said than done.'

'Yeah I