Q&A: Thoughts and Free Will
Thoughts and Free Will
Question
Hello Rabbi,
If thoughts are simply created in consciousness, and there is a voice in our head that just says things,
for example, if we are studying something, suddenly thoughts pop up that are unrelated to the learning, and we are not the ones creating those thoughts,
then if we are not able to control our thinking, and we do not know what it will be before it arises, where is the freedom in our will?
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. The fact that thoughts sometimes arise on their own does not mean that this is always the case. Beyond that, what does the arising of thoughts have to do with decisions about what to do?!
Discussion on Answer
I already answered. You’re repeating the same question.
Why does it happen? Ask the Holy One, blessed be He, or brain researchers. I didn’t understand what the question is.
Thoughts that pop up on their own are influences, of course.
To Levi,
apparently there is no direct connection between thoughts and actions… and therefore the connection between thoughts and actions is tied to some factor external to both of them, which one might call, for example, a decision or a desire, and so on. So if I’m right, then your question does not arise to begin with.
In any case, even according to what you say, we are capable to some degree of controlling thoughts, and according to the Rabbi’s view, also of producing them. (And perhaps the first part follows from the second, that we control them by producing new ones, as the Ran says regarding one thought.)
Rabbi, really, since we can plainly see that there is no direct identity between thought and action, how does deliberation manage to apply “without words” (= thoughts), given that names contain some defining factor?
What does it mean that there is no identity between thought and action? That one does not always do what one thinks? So what? That is connected to weakness of will. See columns 172-173.
On nonverbal thought, see column 379 and onward.
You are describing a free state in which thoughts arise freely…
The will is free. A person is not free to choose what that free will will be.
He is compelled to want that very desire that arose freely.
That, at least, is how it appears in the eyes of a short-sighted person who does not understand that things have causes, and the fact that he is not aware of the causes does not make the thing causeless.
I’m wondering where our freedom is if we do not produce our thoughts ourselves, and also cannot predict them.
Why does it happen this way at all?
Are thoughts that pop up out of nowhere defined as influences?
I’d be happy to get an explanation.