Intellect- Will- Action!

More like lights, camera, and action. I get, right? 

Have you ever wondered how spontaneous your actions are? 

I have an explanation, follow me. (Insights from Nature of Human Beings Class)

The Human Intellect

One of the things that make us unique or different from other species is our abilities to reason things out.

You can think and this makes all the sense in the world. Besides having emotions, man also has the capacity to be appealed or repelled by things known to his intelligence. 

These things could be what he/she has learnt, past experiences, emotions etc. 

The intellect is the seat of reasoning

Anonymous

The intellect is the seat of reasoning power; we use the intellect to compare alternatives, draw consequences from them, and proceed from alternatives to truth. Truth is that thing that our brains just processed as the best alternative. It is truth to the brain. 

Our brains work like a filter; it filters information, processes information and presents truth as what it has reasoned out. 

Let me explain this. Our intellect houses past experiences, emotions, judgment etc. so when I want to make a decision, my brain goes through a process (in the split seconds) of recalling past events, putting 1 and 2 together and starts telling me, “no, this is a wrong choice because…” 

Whatever the brain processes at this point becomes truth to the brain.

The Human will

It gets more interesting. Once your intellect accepts something as truth, it presents it to your will and your will accepts it as good. It accepts it as the most reasonable course to take.

The object of the will is good- what is good to it.

This is a completely relative thing because, what is good for you, may not be good for me. That’s why we say- “I will do this or that.”

You think, you will, you act!

You can see that you made a choice to do “this” from a broad range of alternatives because; your intellect reasoned “this” as the best choice and your will agreed to it- so I will do this. 

Once our intellect and will agree on a matter, can you guess the next thing? We act! Human agents act as they do because, they have rationally apprehended (perhaps mistakenly) a certain action as something good (fulfilling to them) in some respect. 

What this implies is, except you claim to be an animal acting on instincts, humans do not just act without seeing his/her actions as the best route to take in that moment.

The action may not seem pleasant, but it just shows you want is going on in their minds. Their intellects must be filled with those unpleasant thoughts and their will see the things as the reasonable course of action.

Okay, you understand to this point, but you are wondering, how do I cope with people, what can I do about this?

1. It is important for us to recognize that before anybody will do anything to or for you, they must rationalize it first. This implies that, you must make people see the point in what you are saying. Man acts when he “sees the point” of doing so. We should learn to give people reasons. 
2. Also, we should also be aware that human beings have their intellect and free choice to use in every decision, so whether they chose what you would have wanted or not should not bother you so much.

Hope you were able to see that life choices are- intellect- will- action?