cowleyad

"Dichotomy" was the wrong word to use. Love the sarcasm though, keep it up! Interesting to see what kind of folk are on here... If you don't agree, you're naive! It's so refreshing to finally find an authority on such a hotly debated issue as this! Thanks for enlightening us all! On a serious note, "Free Will" cannot be separated from arbitrariness. How else could you "prove" free will if you didn't have some arbitrary standard to measure it against? Ayn Rand draws this line by saying "Free will is your mind’s freedom to think or not." How can one choose NOT to think? If you weren't thinking, you wouldn't be conscious. If you aren't conscious, you're dead (or severely mentally incapacitated). What would a "non-thinking" man look like? How could we identify such a person?

Cause and effect? Interesting idea, I think. That we somehow truly understand a cause merely from observing the effect. This tie is only a probabilistic event, nothing more. What cause and effect behavior gives rise to volition? I am asserting that volition would never be possible without a will to "create", or carry out, that choice in the first place. The will is only an impulse you have to carry out a certain "decision" you've made. If A is A, volition outside of human understanding is not possible. In other words, a person can never NOT act like a person. A person's volition will never go beyond who they are. A person can never make a choice based purely on a decision outside of the concepts in their mind. These concepts that we've built are purely individualistic, there is no "universal" concept, only interpretations of that concept (unless, of course, we get into mathematics), which have been learned through the society we live in and who, and what, we've come into contact with. Our experiences. "All of these people have the naive understanding of determinism and refuse to acknowledge the existence or sensibility of anything else." I completely disagree. In order to have sensibility in the first place, you must learn it. Once you've learned to be sensible, you've given up the ability to "choose" to be sensible or not. You are sensible, or you are not. Sometimes, your feelings take over, creating a situation where you're completely insensible. Other times, you will look at things "sensibly" out of habit or when a certain stimuli "pushes" you in that direction. I have a hard time believing you spend your entire day saying, "Alright, how should I act at this given moment? What is the 'most' sensible thing to do right now?" Just like a pro athlete couldn't really tell you how they're good at the sport they participate in, they just are. As we learn more and more about our genes and DNA, we begin to paint a picture that shows we are creatures of a semi-deterministic nature. We have "Free Will" only to the extent of what we know and what we have experienced. If I ONLY had three choices, would I say I had the "Free Will" to ONLY choose between those three choices?

"Free Will" and "A is A" don't seem compatible at all. If man has certain attributes and cannot be anything other than a man (A is A), how can he say to have "Free Will"? Man can only act in accordance with what a man is. However you define what "man" is makes no difference to this. If man can only act as man, at all times, man has no "Free Will" to act as something other than man. Once we take into account everything that is forced onto a man's psyche, we can see that man makes involuntary decisions, wholly based on determinism. "Free Will" is an illusion. An illusion that stems from the idea that we actually have control over our Will. For example: a child is bit by a dog at a very young age, this causes the child to fear dogs through the rest of his/her life. This is involuntary, deterministic behavior. The child did not exercise "Free Will" as to be scared of that dog, or any other dog for that matter. The only "solution" to the child's fear of dogs is from an outside source. This outside source "forces" the child to stop being scared of dogs, by any means that seem fit for that occasion (be it education, therapy, or whatever). This outside force has molded the child in a certain way as to control their behavior, in a very specific, involuntary way. They turn the behavior of "not being scared of dogs" into a habit, something involuntary. Again, this shows the child never really had "Free Will". After all, "Free Will" implies that we can "choose" to do whatever we please. We can't, we are bound by the "A is A" dichotomy.

A three-way relationship may "work" in the short run, but not in the long run. It is impossible to completely "shut-out" outsider's opinions on this issue or how they make you three feel. After all, you're asking some "outsiders" for advice on what to do. The mere fact that you're here asking questions seems to strike me as odd. For one, you are not completely sure of this thing. If you aren't completely sure of this, you, yourself, know this might not work or isn't working. Bottom line: you're trying to rationalize hedonistic behavior through Objectivism. I may add, that each and every person rationalizes their behavior from their philosophies. Just because you can rationalize it this way, does not mean it will work or what you are doing is "right". Don't get me wrong, threesomes are fun as all hell and bring a lot of pleasure into your life. However, as time goes on, that "special" feeling wears off and you'll be faced with a problem. The problem of who you're going to be with. This will happen, make no mistake about it. You should be concerned about your mental health as well as your physical health. I know this three-way feels damn good, but think about what it's doing to your conscious and mental health. This is obviously affecting your mental stability.