Baruch Spinoza Quotes

There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion: some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

Is action merely the incidental product of thought, or is thought the consequential product of action?

Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.

Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I dunno.

Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes.

Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

In the mind there is no absolute or free will; but the mind is determined to wish this or that by a cause, which has also been determined by another cause, and this last by another cause, and so on to infinity.

Man is the product of two forces, action and reaction, which make him think.

Do yourself a favor. Don't ever say to me, 'Everything happens for a reason.'

We speculate as to what is in store for us. But we not only undergo events, we in part cause them or at least influence their course. We have not only to study them but to act.

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

I think that consciousness has always been the most important topic in the philosophy of mind, and one of the most important topics in cognitive science as a whole, but it had been surprisingly neglected in recent years.

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

Does our hand show in this?

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

All theory is against freedom of the will, all experience for it.

The fact that the underlying laws of physics are deterministic and impersonal does not mean that at the human level we can't talk about ideas about reasons and goals and purposes and free will.

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

Choice is destiny's soul mate.

From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.