Free choice

First of all, thank you very much for the answer.
1+2) I didn't fully understand the answer, correct me if I'm wrong: either he is coerced, but then he couldn't know it because no thought could lead him to it, or he is not coerced (and then he will also assume that he is not coerced) and he can rely on this insight.
But I still didn't understand the answer. My question is what is meant by ”not coerced”. I understand that there must be something external to the system here in order for something to be asserted against it, true or false. But I didn't fully understand if it was “choice”, because again, what were the options? I would be happy to understand the mechanism that would describe the process of choice in this case, because even though intuitively the concept “not coerced” sounds appropriate to me, I don't fully understand where the ”choice” of one thing or another comes into play here.
3) “There are no reasons for desire, otherwise it would not be free.”. I think I agree with that, but on the other hand I fail to understand how desire works. Where does it come from? How do I decide to turn here or there if I have no “interest”? And I don't mean in the technical sense of causality, of what physically caused my desire, but how can I even have a tendency to do one thing or another at the expense of another consideration out of “nothing”. And if I say – I look at 2 options and one seems more moral to me and I decided to choose it – then I'm assuming here that I actually have a desire to choose the moral option out of the two. And if I don't have a tendency to choose something moral over something immoral – then how can I even reach any kind of decision? That is, on the one hand I understand that in order to have “freedom” one must be free from influences, but on the other hand I don't understand how I can even come to a decision if within me there is no inclination in any direction – because then what guides me?
Thank you very much

Further to my questions about 1+2), I found your answer on a website where you phrase it this way: “On the other hand, if determinism is not true, then none of this is forced upon you, but you make your own decisions. 2+2=4 is true because you understand that it is true. It is now dark outside because you decided that it is now dark. And so on. Everything is the result of your decision.”. So I didn't fully understand that. Because I don't think I am “deciding” or “choosing” that 2+2=4 or that it is dark outside. I am quite “forced” to think that way. I don't believe I can say to myself, ”Well, now there is actually light outside”. On the other hand, I feel “free” By believing my conclusions, because I "know" that I am indeed right. So I am trying to understand here what exactly is meant by "discretion" and "choice" because it seems that this is not really a choice between A and B.

1-2. I didn't understand the difficulty. What forces him is his brain. The determinists' claim is that circumstances and the brain structure dictate the values (and therefore also the factual judgment). This is external to his will but not external to himself.
3. The will acts out of nowhere (without reason but for the sake of an end). A person decides to do good because he is good. But the fact that he is good does not constitute a compelling reason for his decision but a consideration that he decides to follow. You look for reasons that force the will and assume that without reasons there is no understanding. But that is not true. The will acts without reasons and therefore there is no point in looking for reasons why I want (and again, we are not talking about considerations but about reasons in the compelling sense).

You may think that it is not true but it is clear to you that it is true. There is no contradiction. Forced on you means that you cannot think otherwise, but only when it is forced by your mind and not by knowing the truth. The fact that you recognize something as truth is not a measure of coercion for our purposes, since it does not contradict free will. Deterministic coercion is from my brain structure and not from reality itself. In this sense, I can certainly think that it is now light outside and my eyes are deceiving me. Or that 2+2=7 and my mind is deceiving me. But I do not think so because I have decided that it is not a matter of deception but of truth itself. This is a free decision. Reality is not a coercion for our purposes.
Nor does a moral decision decide what a good value is. What is good is given (like reality), and the decision is to act according to the good value.

Thanks for the reply. Forgive me for the trouble Rabbi, but it is important for me to clarify the issue.
1-2) So if I understand correctly – According to you, I can doubt any knowledge I have about reality, including my own thoughts, and therefore by not doing so I show that I “choose” to trust them instead of doubting them.
3) “But only when it is forced by your mind and not by knowing the truth” – I don't quite understand what the Rabbi meant by this sentence. If it is “forced” on me by knowing the truth, isn't it coercion?

“Even a moral decision does not decide what a good value is. What is good is a given (like reality), and the decision is to act according to the good value.” Sounds completely understandable to me. But I would be happy if the rabbi could point out the error in my analysis:
Thanks for the response. Forgive me for the trouble, rabbi, but it is important for me to clarify the issue.
1-2) So if I understand correctly, – according to you, I can doubt any knowledge I have about reality, including my own thoughts, and therefore by not doing so I show that I “choose” to trust them instead of doubting them.
3) “But only when it is forced by your mind and not by knowing the truth” – I don't quite understand what the rabbi meant by this sentence. If it is “forced” on me by knowing the truth, isn't it coercion?

“Even a moral decision does not decide what a good value is. What is good is a given (like reality), and the decision is to act according to the good value.” Sounds completely understandable to me. But I would be happy if the Rabbi could point out the error in my analysis:
Humans want to act according to what they believe is ”suitable for them”. It is natural to them. If a person is characterized by the fact that his role is to do good in the world, then that is actually who I am. Therefore, by virtue of my desire to identify with my ”true self” I must act accordingly. In other words, every action is a derivative of what I see as most suitable for me as a person to do. After all, I would not want to behave in a way that contradicts my nature. My desire for actions is always “myself” me, and I will never behave in a way that I do not “want”, and even though I give in to eating, I simply wanted to eat and I saw the ”good” in it For me at that moment. And if I decided to avoid eating, it is because at that moment the ”good”, or this alignment with what I really want as a person, is expressed in abstaining from eating. And hence it seems that simply every decision is a weighing of the considerations, what I actually want (what actually suits me and supposedly “serves my interests” as a person who wants to act according to his nature, even if these are positive interests, but they are always the person's will and not something disconnected from him) and then acting according to that, is actually more of a “calculation” than a choice. If so, at what point here exactly did I “choose”? Did I choose which value to see as the value that ”suits me”? But isn't it just a matter of “calculation” and examining what suits me and then doing it? A simple matter of understanding my personality of what I actually want to achieve and then simply the action that follows from it? And that “what I want to achieve” in the end is derived from my personality nature, the desire to be good for example, I don't invent this desire, it is, let's say, who I am and I simply put it into practice. So where in this whole story does my choice come into play? And how is it free from interests and ”desires” that motivate it?
Thank you and sorry for the trouble

And an example from life to clarify:
I see the need to help by volunteering because I see myself as a person who is identified with doing good, it is “natural”, or at least I have come to believe that this is the case (and what makes a difference in terms of choice or lack of choice – who I think I am and not necessarily who I really am). As a result, I tell myself that not volunteering is actually not “right” for me, because then I am not really working according to my will. It's like eating chocolate when I'm trying to diet. Therefore, my basic premise is that I should volunteer and therefore I will go do it. But even in this example, everything is derived from how I see my purpose and from the desire not to act in a way that contradicts it. So where then did I “choose”?

You got mixed up here. I'll answer briefly.
Regarding your last message: You chose to see the situation this way and act according to what you see. You could have seen it differently or acted differently.

Indeed, I said that if it is forced by the truth, it is not coercion. It is the result of your judgment and not the reason for it. Imagine that you have a situation that is subject to two (factual) interpretations, A or B. For example, two scientific theories that can explain it. You weigh it in your mind and decide that interpretation A is the correct one. Now, as far as you are concerned, this is the truth, but it cannot be said that it is forced upon you. You decided that this is the truth.

If I understood correctly, in the last section you raise the problem of weakness of will. I will address this in a future post (it is difficult to extend here). The main points of the matter are detailed in the books on the science of freedom.

Thank you very much. I would be happy to give you another example and try to understand from you what is wrong with it.
For example, if A's close friend passed away and he has a hard time with it. That's why he denies it even though it is factually wrong. From this we learn that there is some psychological reason why A prefers (even if it is unconscious) to deny this factual truth. In fact, his denial simply shows us that this is his desire and that this is what benefits him at the moment. If it were clear to him that what is best for him is to accept this fact, then he would accept it, because he has no interest in simply suffering and living in an illusion, unless it benefits him. So in the end, it is a factual question of what really benefits him. So where does the ”choice” come in here? And I assume that in moral questions it is similar.

I will answer again what I already wrote: the choice is whether to deny or not. Some people find it good to deny but they decide to overcome and not deny.
I think we have exhausted.

That is, if I understand your claim correctly, a person can act against what is good for him. And according to what you say, acting according to my will is not defined as what I see as good for me. Do I understand you correctly?

How is it possible at all for a person to choose what he does not see as what is best for him? After all, a person cannot go out of his own way and make decisions without wanting the decision to suit him... so isn't it proven from this that he by definition thinks that what he decides is "good" for him?

Rabbi, I didn't understand you. What do you mean he was forced to believe and therefore it makes sense that he wouldn't believe? If he was forced to believe, he has no choice but to believe.

Of course he can act against what is good for him. But that is not the point. A person can act however he wants, and therefore he is the one who decides how to act. My will is not the same as what is good for me (see the column on altruistic actions).

T,
If I know that something has been forced on me then I will not believe him. If someone hypnotizes me to believe that you are Napoleon but tells me that he hypnotized me, then I will not believe that you are Napoleon. If he is a determinist he knows that his beliefs have been forced on him.

But again, why would someone “want” to choose good over evil, for example, unless it is inherent in them that good is better than evil, and in fact this already constitutes a reason for the choice. A person who loves life will not commit suicide – even if this option exists. But it exists only hypothetically, in practice a person will never do it if their life is good unless they have gone crazy. So where is the choice here? It is clear to a person that life serves what they want and therefore there is no chance that they will choose the opposite. And as in this case in any case, a person acts according to what at that moment seems to them to serve their beliefs and what is “natural” to them as a person (even if it is good and moral).

I explained it. There's no point in going over it again and again. If you don't agree then no.

That's fine. Thanks anyway.

Rabbi, if after you hypnotize me I can change my mind, that is not real hypnosis and is not equivalent to determinism. A determinist, even after he realizes that he has been forced to be a determinist, still has deterministic intuitions, and it still seems like the truth to him. There is no point in doing exactly that and suddenly believing the opposite, because that is not what his intuition tells him. And in general, why would he think that a person with a choice has a better chance of finding the truth than a person without a choice? After all, a person with a choice can also believe a lie. I don't see how that is relevant.

You don't change your mind, you just realize that what you think is wrong. Just like a determinist is supposed to do. As mentioned, I explained the whole process above and I see no point in repeating it again.