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You understand what you see, you see it, you experience it, give it a label, but what is the mechanism that allows this perception? There is a process that exists between the world and your body, and this process manifests itself as your awareness here and now. If we stop and examine it, we realize that we cannot at once experience our lived experience, and at the same time experience the mechanisms that give this lived experience both it's primacy, and immediacy.

You can do a task like cooking, in the flow state, where everything just comes together. However while you're cooking you're not aware of all the mechanisms that are running hidden from you. All the calculations your brain is making to put water in a pot, heat the water, cook the meat, steam the vegetables etc, are essentially hidden from your conscious awareness. You can only focus on doing, you have to live in a form of ignorance to those machinations because they ultimately do exist, and always run in the background if you but stop and pay attention. However, if you do pay attention, you find you no longer are doing what you were previously doing, rather focusing on the mechanisms involved in what you were doing.

Therefore, when one does something, there is an implicit faith behind the action. Since we cannot both do, and understand what is causing us to do, we must choose one over the other, and thus accept ignorance in faith that those mechanisms we partially perceive, and partially label, are in fact real phenomena.

You understand what you see, you see it, you experience it, give it a label, but what is the mechanism that allows this perception? There is a process that exists between the world and your body, and this process manifests itself as your awareness here and now. If we stop and examine it, we realize that we cannot at once experience our lived experience, and at the same time experience the mechanisms that give this lived experience both it's primacy, and immediacy. You can do a task like cooking, in the flow state, where everything just comes together. However while you're cooking you're not aware of all the mechanisms that are running hidden from you. All the calculations your brain is making to put water in a pot, heat the water, cook the meat, steam the vegetables etc, are essentially hidden from your conscious awareness. You can only focus on doing, you have to live in a form of ignorance to those machinations because they ultimately do exist, and always run in the background if you but stop and pay attention. However, if you do pay attention, you find you no longer are doing what you were previously doing, rather focusing on the mechanisms involved in what you were doing. Therefore, when one does something, there is an implicit faith behind the action. Since we cannot both do, and understand what is causing us to do, we must choose one over the other, and thus accept ignorance in faith that those mechanisms we partially perceive, and partially label, are in fact real phenomena.

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[–] [deleted] • 1 pt (edited )

IMO, you've described the real meaning of free will. Animals do exactly as their programming, and sometimes a bit of experience, makes them do based on sensory input. Most animals are nothing but biological robots.

And I'd argue, a lot of the time that's even how we are. We like foods we like because our bodies tell us we like them, often based on energy density (life loves sugar and fat) and other nutrient needs. Free will is ignoring what our biology tells us to do because we have a different goal in mind.

Personally I think that's the whole lesson behind the concept of free will, and why it's important to live a moral life. Free will gives us the power to make better decisions than our biology would make on its own, like making the choice to work out, to improve a skill, to choose foods that meet your goals, rather than satisfy a momentary desire.

But at the same time, free will allows us to make bad choices, often choosing pleasure, sating some desire, even at the expense of the individual. We can ignore those important, ingrained defenses, ignore biological imperatives, and get too far away from the sort of life our biology evolved to thrive in. Morality, virtue, avoiding sin, are time tested guidelines to best harness the power of ignoring our nature, while living in harmony with it.

We make those choices in faith that they're the best choices, but based on our biological nature that we can't fully know or understand, making the values you choose to have faith in all the more important.