Free Will And Determinism - Are Our Thoughts Ours?

It was Newton that liked a clockwork universe. The idea that everything could be calculated and put down to simple mechanics was a nice one, but today, with the advent of quantum mechanics, we know that the universe is much more complicated.

Newton's ideas were loosely based on determinism. This is the basic assumption that all events can be determined or predicted with absolute accuracy, which effectively means that 'free will' is therefore not possible, as your will is already determined for you.

Let's look at this first on a simple scale. If you had a box full of gas or liquid and you knew the exact positions and movement of all the atoms in the box, you could put all this data into a computer and easily run a program to predict what will happen to the contents at any time in the future (or the past).

This is very similar to what goes on when we look at a weather forecast. Some of the most powerful computers in the world are required to run accurate predictions of the weather. The problem is with the accuracy. It can never be perfect. Weather forecasts are always 'not quite right'. It's all to do with accumulating lots of small errors in the positions and speeds of particles over time.

Bus alas! we now know that you can never know the exact position and momentum of any particle. We can get pretty close, but Heisenberg had a theory or 'Uncertainty Principle' that stated that you could not know both with any accuracy, the more accurately you tried to find one, the less accurate the other became. A simple way to visualise this is if you were trying to find the exact position of a particle, you would have to hit it with a proton to 'see' it and this by definition would upset its speed and direction or momentum.

So these guesses and errors build up many times over and this is why we get inaccurate weather forecasts. So we can not predict what happens in the box. If we substitute the box of stuff with another arrangement of matter, say a human brain, we still have the same problem in that we cannot predict exactly what it will do at any future moment.

Due to this ambiguity, we can breathe a sigh of relief and now say that determinism is too simplistic and perhaps there is room for randomness and chaos, so our free will is therefore saved!

The Importance of Carl Jung's Discoveries

Carl Jung discovered that:

* Our dreams are produced by the unconscious mind, and not by our own, ignorant minds.

* The unconscious mind possesses undoubtable wisdom and works like a natural doctor.

* The meaning of the symbolic dream language is specific and can be understood when we discover the meaning given by the unconscious mind to the dream images it uses to produce our dreams.

* We have four psychological functions:

1. Thoughts 

2. Feelings 

3. Sensations 

4. Intuition

* We tend to have an extroverted or introverted attitude in life.

a. Introverted psychological types give more importance to their own opinion and are anti-social.

b. Extroverted psychological types give more importance to the opinion of the world and depend on their social life.

* Every person belongs to a specific psychological type based on an introverted or extroverted attitude. Each psychological type is also based on one main psychological function well-developed and another one half-developed, which cannot be totally opposite to the main psychological function.

This means that from the four psychological functions we have at our disposal, we are using only one psychological function, with some help from another psychological function, which is only somehow developed in our conscience.

* Our brain and psyche work based on the psychological functions that predetermine our behavior

* Each psychological type tends to become neurotic because it is one-sided and under-developed. An individual must develop his/her four psychological functions and have an introverted and extroverted attitude at the same time in order to be balanced.

* The unconscious mind produces our dreams in order to help us transform our personality. We learn how to be balanced by developing our four psychological functions and by having a wise attitude in all circumstances

Jung considered the unconscious mind a good counselor for our conscience, besides discovering that the unconscious mind had a divine origin. He didn't have a religious attitude.

After continuing Carl Jung's research, I discovered that:

* The unconscious sanctity is visible when we follow dream therapy for a certain period of time. At a certain point the unconscious mind starts showing us aspects that belong to our religious education. This happens because the unconscious mind is God's mind. God is wise and saintly, as described by all religions of the world.

* We are basically demons because we have inherited a wild conscience, the anti-conscience, which is absurd and evil and occupies the biggest part of our brain.

* Our tiny human conscience is one-sided and under-developed, what means that we are unable to understand what is good or bad.

* We must obey the divine guidance in dreams because only God can help us eliminate our satanic anti-conscience through consciousness. When we translate the meaning of our own dreams we understand our mistakes. The divine unconscious mind corrects our behavior, teaching us how to become more intelligent and do only what is good for us and for our community.