Do I have control over what I think? If not, how can I do anything of my own free will? Is free will an illusion and where do thoughts come from, are questions we may ask but find difficult to answer. Is there such a thing as original thought and can we control our thoughts?
The best definition of the word original I have found is;
arising or proceeding independently of anything else.
Dictionary.com
We allow external factors to dominate our lives. There is nothing else to draw on. From birth to death, we learn from outside, starting with our mother. We create ourselves based on our ability to assimilate information from elsewhere and formulate our personality, character, and intelligence. As we grow older, we draw on our experiences, which have become internalised. But even those experiences came from external factors.
Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author, describes ‘Free Will’ as an illusion. He uses brilliant analogies to explain, acting of your own free-will implies that you could have done otherwise. So, is original thought possible if individual’s thoughts are beyond their control.
He poses the question,
‘What are you going to think next? ‘
Sam Harris
and goes on to observe;
- Your next thought comes out of nowhere.
- Whatever you are doing, you have a voice in your head which just says things.
- Thoughts just emerge in consciousness.
- We can’t choose them before we think them.
- if our next thought is beyond our control, where is our freedom of will?
- So, are we capable of original thought?
We are not sure where thoughts come from and we don’t choose them of our own free will. If you accept Free Will is an illusion, then nothing in the purest sense is original, just as this post is not. Because since I wrote it, I have changed it more than once. So, which version is original?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Free will is an Illusion: Or are we Morally Responsible?
If we accept that free will doesn’t exist and is an illusion, are we capable of original thought?
Are our thoughts, speech, writing, intuition, and other actions just a collection of information we have gathered, consciously and subliminally, over time? Have the sources of that information themselves not done the same?
As this process evolves, information develops and grows in value or proves to be of lesser or no value. Our ability to work with the information at our disposal allows us to blend it into a concoction that may re-invent it. Then we improve on it and make it appear unique.
But can we ever consider that it has arisen or proceeded independently of anything else, defying the laws of nature? I don’t think so. We are morally responsible for what we publish.
Where do Thoughts come from?
The author, Mark Twain had plenty to say on original thought theory. He did not believe anything was truly original, or that original ideas were anything but illusory.
Dr. Vijai S Shankar MD.PhD posted some revealing ideas on where do thoughts come from and can we control our thoughts.
I have reproduced his article in full, and highlighted the points that reveal much about the subject matter.
Deep understanding of life and mind is freedom. Superficial understanding of life and mind is bondage.
Mystery of life
‘Thoughts come and thoughts go, but man is not sure where thoughts come from or where they go to. Thoughts are present right through the waking state and rare are the moments when man is free from thoughts. Man is not sure what will be his next thought or what will be the last thought before sleep sets in.
Similarly, he is not sure what will be the first thought when he wakes up from sleep and what will be the thoughts that follow after the first thought. Man is not surprised by this, but he accepts thoughts as a matter of fact.
It is obvious that man does not make thoughts come, because if he were able to make thoughts come, he would only make thoughts, which he approves, come and not those which he does not approve. This implies that thoughts happen to man, but he merely believes that he is the one who thinks.
Every man’s thought is not another man’s thought, which implies that the same thoughts do not happen at the same time to two men. This means that thoughts certainly do not come from outside because, if thoughts did come from outside, the same thoughts would happen to two men, but this does not happen. This means that thoughts do come from within each man.
It is obvious that a word is sound that can be heard. This means that a thought is sound which cannot be heard, meaning subtle sound. It is fortunate that thought cannot be heard, because if thoughts that are not spoken could be heard, man would become insane by constant sound in his mind. This is obvious, because man wishes for quietness. Life indeed is compassionate by not making thoughts heard.
The question to be answered is how do thoughts come? Since a word and a thought is sound, it is imperative that how sound comes has to be understood. Wherever there is a movement, there is sound. The sound is superimposed on the movement and they cannot be separated. The sound may be heard or may not be heard, and similarly the movement may be seen or may not be seen.
Whenever man moves there is sound. The sound may be obvious or not obvious, but it does not mean sound is absent. Sound nevertheless is present, but it just cannot be heard. Similarly, growth, which is a movement, is accompanied by sound, which is not heard, and it implies that though man remains still he nevertheless moves, because he is growing. This movement of the body due to growth is accompanied by sound, which mysteriously transforms as thoughts and is stored in memory.
Therefore, thoughts come as a consequence of movement of the body. Similarly, what the thoughts will be or when they will come or go cannot be determined by the mind. This is because when or how the first man came to exist on earth or how he began to move can never be determined with any certainty.
Thoughts are a mystery of life.
© Copyright V.S. Shankar 2016
Why is Original Thought Theory important to Authors?
Authors spend a considerable amount of time thinking and processing their thoughts before putting pen to paper. So they should understand thought processes better than anyone.
How do Authors Create Characters?
Characters
Let us consider the most important element of novel writing. How do authors create characters? Characters drive the plot, and readers need to care about them. Plot and characters intertwine, and the author has to create them from something.
Life Experience
That something will come from the author’s life experience. Even though we say and like to think it came from nowhere, it sure as hell didn’t. It came from deep within our subconscious mind. We are lucky if we have the innate ability to conjure things up from the deep to add the richness to our writing.
Imagination
Before you say, what about science-fiction, remember that we are humans and our only experiences have come from our human existence. We can imagine a life form from another planet, but it will be based on a mutation of human life because that is all we know.
Observation
So, in a nutshell, authors take traits from people they know by observation and create something different using their imagination. Perhaps that is why I wrote – George RR Martin health and why Artists never retire.
Imagination never sleeps.
But where do those characters come from?
Characters come from everyday life. We are surrounded by them and authors and actors use them as material in their work.
Charles Dickens was a master at creating compelling characters with amazing names. Unforgettable names like Scrooge, Pecksniff, Chuzzlewit, Magwitch and so on. A keen observer of character and society, his stories were based on life in and around the streets of London. They are as gripping, and widely read today, as they were when he became famous in nineteenth century Victorian England.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of authors have been inspired by Dickens’ characters and drawn on them to create their own. As countless musicians work has evolved from the study of the musicians before them.
So, the cycle goes on, and nothing is original, just regurgitated, reinvented and redesigned.
What is Plagiarism in Reality?
‘The kernel, the soul, let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances is plagiarism.’
Mark Twain
There is often confusion regarding what constitutes plagiarism and what constitutes research. It is a grey area, open to interpretation.
I believe the key is intent, and that many writers are fearful of dealing with subject matter they would like to tackle. So, they don’t tackle it for fear of being accused of plagiarism.
Take, for example, a writer who is passionate about environmental issues as they relate to the Amazon rain forest. He has carried out extensive research over many years and would like to write on the subject. But he has never visited South America and never will.
The question is could he write authoritatively on the subject. Would his work be accepted, or would he be accused of plagiarising the work of others, from where the information must come?
Collecting Knowledge – not Original Thought
Curating knowledgeable information is not original thought, but it is valuable and helps to provide authoritative resources on a subject.
We can gain more meaningful collective knowledge from a mixture of writings than we can from any one individual writer. That alone could make the curator a leading authority on the subject.
What about the writings he has drawn on?
What is Original?
Back to original thought, the benchmark for determining plagiarism. Ostensibly the theft of another’s work or thoughts being passed off as your own.
Unless you are convinced that we are capable of original thought, then all writing must be questioned as to originality. And if not original, then it surely must be plagiarism.
What is Plagiarism?
I am not suggesting plagiarism is acceptable. However, I do believe that there are grey areas where writers may be accused of plagiarism. Even though there may be no intent, attempt to disguise where the information came from and failure to give accreditation is not acceptable.
However, mistakes can happen, and we should be thoughtful before heaping criticism on another well-intentioned individual. Beware glass houses.
plagiarism.org
Final Thoughts
We must make up our own minds, and I hope I have given you some food for thought.
Here are my final thoughts on the question Is Free Will an illusion, and where do thoughts come from?
- Thoughts come from deep in my subconscious, and
- I have mixed feelings about free will being an illusion.
- When I am not focused on solving a problem, my thoughts are random.
- I cannot determine what I think or when I think.
- So, I am not free to choose.
- Free will is, therefore, an illusion when applied to my thoughts.
- On other matters, I have an open mind.
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Updated April 2024
Thanks Marvin for your very detailed and insightful comment.
So I’m in the shower, thinking about the analogy of computer software (logic) running on the hardware (brain), and how we go through levels of translation to get to machine language, where binary arithmetic is performed on transistors instead of decimal arithmetic performed on…our fingers…and then I wonder why it is just 10. After all one hand can be used to count to five and the other hand can keep track of up to 5 fives. But when I try it out on my hands I realize that it should be base 6 instead of base 5. The 5 was probably a prejudice from the decimal system where multiplying by fives is so easy. And I wonder what the base of the abacus was.
Anyways, the neuronal links are strengthened by use, leading to clusters of ideas, which may have been originally stored for totally unrelated problems. So we get kind of an Apple “shuffle” randomization of related ideas that help produce unique, creative viewpoints.
HOWEVER, these searches usually begin with some problem or issue that is important to the mind performing the search. Harris is wrong to suggest that ideas merely pop into our heads. They appear in response to a specific request, usually one that the conscious mind is aware of. For example, if I’m consciously planning a vacation, then thoughts about locations, hotels, transportation, and other related issues will be given access to conscious awareness, ahead of unrelated memories.
We call this “concentration on a problem”. And the problem happens to be something that we have some interest in. And we have some interest in it because we expect it to satisfy some desire or need we have.
The universe, the Big Bang, any prior point in eternity, have no interest in anything we do. They do not “cause” us to plan a vacation. They were certainly prerequisites, but we cannot say that they “caused” us to go to Florida rather than Hawaii. We are the only meaningful causes of that choice.
And we really do make that choice. There is no illusion here. It happens as an actual event taking place in our brains, and you can watch the areas involved light up on a functional MRI. So it is really happening and we’re really doing it.
As to plagiarism, I think there is an exception for commonly known facts, where it is repeated in many different sources. For example, if I say that global warming is real, I shouldn’t need to list all of the climate scientists who have repeated that fact. On the other hand, if I want to lend weight to my claim, to make it more convincing, I should provide some research sources.
Research needn’t be original when there is a benefit from repeating a study to confirm whether the study can be repeated or if there was a flaw in the method. Usually such a follow-up study will mention the original study.