If You Were to Say

“Another similar analogy which hasn’t been around as long is the hologram. A hologram is really only an illusion created by projecting a beam of coherent light. Yet a very sophisticated hologram would have the potential to look and sound and otherwise seem very ‘real,’ as real as physical reality, so that you could interact with a hologram if a person as if there were a ‘real’ person there, which of course there wouldn’t be.

Yes, but a hologram wouldn’t really seem real, because it isn’t substantial; you could put your hand through it or walk through it, for example. But that’s why I say I don’t see how it applies; I don’t think you or that wall are dreams or holograms, because they are very substantial’ I can’t walk through you.

Exactly. So I ask you, under what circumstances would a hologram seem very substantial? Or put it another way, to whom would a hologram appear solid?

Another hologram...”

“So, being a unique phenomenon, the universe is intrinsically irreproducible. Thus the universe as a whole lies outside the framework of science. Order, law, predictability, and explanation are irrelevant and inapplicable to it, and we justifiably call it orderless, lawless, unpredictable, and unexplainable. Or, using livelier language, as far as science is concerned the universe does as it damn well pleases.”

'We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision, and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if decision itself were voluntary, every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide--an infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide. We are free to decide because decision 'happens'. We just decide without having the faintest understanding of how we do it. In fact, it is neither voluntary nor involuntary. To 'get the feel' of this relativity is to find another extraordinary transformation of our experience as a whole, which may be described in either of two ways. I feel that I am deciding everything that happens, including my decisions, or, I feel that everything, including my decisions, is just happening spontaneously. For a decision--the freest of actions--just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.'

'You will do whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise.'

“For do not let us forget: to say, as we did, that the becoming of the world is reflected in a conscious mind is but a cliche, a phrase, a metaphor that has become familiar to us. The world is given but once. Nothing is reflected. The original and the mirror-image are identical. The world extended in space and time is but our representation. Experience does not give us the slightest clue of its being anything besides that - as Berkeley was well aware.”

“When you examine a choice that you’re making, you can say to yourself: this choice was completely determined by the state of the world at the time that I made it, and that state of the world includes my emotions, my preferences, my beliefs, my history, my habits, and so on. All of those were already determined by that point in time, and so I have no choice but to take the action that they collectively entail. So how can it be that I’m freely making this choice?

The key here is that you are nothing more than the sum total of those emotions, preferences, beliefs, habits, and so on. So to say that those things together determine your choice, and to say that you make the choice are actually the same thing. The seeming paradox comes from the fact that we have this inclination to think that we have this ineffable self that’s separate from our traits, and we talk about these traits belonging to ourself, when really they are ourself.”