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ANNOTATION:
Non-volition: a test
Volition (free will) is "The act or instance of making a conscious choice or decision". I wish to postulate that in order for someone to claim that they can indeed control their thoughts, they must be able to demonstrate or at least explain how they goes about the process. What is the process by which someone creates a thought? This appears to me to be the crux of the issue. Thoughts apparently appear spontaneously. I certainly do not decide to think a thought. It just appears. And one spawns another, just as spontaneously. I have two tests for people who claim to have 'free will'.
1. Explain or demonstrate how you create a thought.
2. Stop thinking for one full hour.
Author: E. Wieringa (esther_j_w[ at ]hotmail.com)
Date: Jul 28, 2000REPLY: Not necessarily so
It seems to me you are confusing the thought itself and its contents. It is not necessary for me to be able to control whether I think or not to have free will, what is necessary is that I can, to some extent, control what it is I am thinking.
If I want to think about free will for the next hour, I will probably spend the best part of the next hour doing just that. If I want to think about something else, I will probably think about that. I don't even have to have complete control, I need some control of the content of my thoughts. That is all that is needed to have free will.
By the way, it seems to be possible to stop thinking as well, but it needs a lot of practice. You'll have to ask a Zen monk about that.
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