I have been thinking about the will to live a lot lately and am just wondering if you guys think it's driven more by our biology or something like hope for something more/better. — HannahPledger

Both. The Will is Schop's view of reality as it is in-itself (pace Kant). There is a flip aspect whereby the monistic will "seems" individuated in time/space/causality. This individuation is then a manifestation that we now observe in our time/space/causality "lens" of the phenomenal world of appearances, as if this is "real". It is not out there, but only a projection of the mind. The will-to-live is but the Will, manifested in the world of time/space. It causes immense suffering for the creatures that experience it, as it is frustrated by constant needs, absurdity, and dissatisfaction. The human is also affected by contingent suffferings of time/space such as physical and mental suffering.

Here is Schopenhauer's wider description of "will"
http://philosophycourse.info/lecsite/lec-schop-will.html
Schopenhauer requires that we not limit our understanding of the term "will" to only the notion of consciously willed choices that lead to human acts. We must instead have a much broader understanding of the concept of will.

But anyone who is incapable of carrying out the required extension of the concept will remain involved in a permanent misunderstanding. For by the word will, he will always understand only that species of it hitherto exclusively described by the term, that is to say, the will guided by knowledge, strictly according to motives, indeed only to abstract motives. This, as we have said, is only the most distinct phenomenon or appearance of the will. (p 111)

If a person is able to carry out the required extension of the concept of will,

He will recognize that same will not only in those phenomena that are quite similar to his own, in men and animals, as their innermost nature, but continued reflection will lead him to recognize the force that shoots and vegetates in the plant, indeed the force by which the crystal is formed, the force that turns the magnet to the North Pole, the force whose shock he encounters from the contact of metals of different kinds, the force that appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, separation and union, and finally even gravitation [and now the strong force and the weak force which both operate at subatomic levels], which acts so powerfully in all matter, pulling the stone to the earth and the earth to the sun; all these he will recognize as different only in the phenomenon, but the same according to their inner nature. He will recognize them all as that which is immediately known to him so intimately and better than everything else, and where it appears most distinctly is called will. It is the innermost essence, the kernel, of every particular thing and also of the whole. It appears in every blindly acting force of nature, and also in the deliberate condu8ct of man, and the great difference between the two concerns only the degree of the manifestation, not the inner nature of what is manifested. (pp 109-110)

Thus, the inner nature of every thing, the thing-in-itself of each individual thing as well as of the whole, is will. END

It has the ring of a certain form of panpsychism to it but then I have those inclinations

It has the ring of a certain form of panpsychism to it but then I have those inclinations — prothero

For some interesting debates on this already, that you may have participated in yourself (I don't remember) see here:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/318/is-mind-is-an-illusion-a-legitimate-position-in-philosophy-of-mind/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/329/page/p1

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/14738

I have been thinking about the will to live a lot lately and am just wondering if you guys think it's driven more by our biology or something like hope for something more/better. — HannahPledger

Conatus, I think, is the speculative source of Schop's 'Ding an sich'.

Well relying solely on the notion of biology it would be little more than glorified pleasure chasing robed in psuedo-intellectual grandeur. A glorified dopamine addiction. We feel good when we eat, best others, socialize and then some. Naturally I'd hope and do believe there is much more to it. In humans at least.

A glorified dopamine addiction. We feel good when we eat, best others, socialize and then some. — Outlander

:party: :up:

My interpretation: Schop was ahead of his time in this area of metaphysical Will (in nature). He covered a lot of territory starting with Spinoza's ideas about God in nature. And not only does it (the Will) metaphorically parallel with one's own stream of consciousness (a term coined by William James) where thoughts occur at random during everydayness, but also speaks to a 'participatory universe' as described more by modern day physicists John Wheeler (and Einstein) relative to QM.

The following short video is just a taste of Wheeler himself describing how QM is a dynamic (not static) participatory process (much like how actual observation of quantum particles change when we view them) which would argue for an element of Panpsychism in nature. Also, he used some practical experiments like the infamous game of 20-questions and the more scientific experiment of the 'double-slit', where he hints at a type of intrinsic consciousness in nature ( see video).

Consider one practical application (in laymen's terms-the human condition), where you could certainly make a case for the phenomenon relating to the law of attraction and how/why sentient human beings might be drawn to each other, through our volitional existence.

Well relying solely on the notion of biology it would be little more than glorified pleasure chasing robed in psuedo-intellectual grandeur. A glorified dopamine addiction. We feel good when we eat, best others, socialize and then some. Naturally I'd hope and do believe there is much more to it. In humans at least. — Outlander

I like to think of it as an addiction AND a forgetting. Our psychology tends towards Pollyanaism. When things are going well, when we are in "flow states", etc. we tend to forget the disappointments, the frustrations, the tedium. Life is to be endured and that includes the pleasure chasing and addiction to dopamine.

I like to think of it as an addiction AND a forgetting. Our psychology tends towards Pollyanaism. When things are going well, when we are in "flow states", etc. we tend to forget the disappointments, being judged, needing to achieve something for someone else, the need to create output for survival, expectations, conflict, the frustrations, the lows, the lack of dopamine/serotonin, the tedium, the needs of survival, comfort, and entertainment. Life is to be endured and that includes the pleasure chasing and addiction to dopamine. Life is work that we did not choose. Sometimes we can choose a piece of it, or something favorable happens, and then it seems as if that is all of life itself. It's like an incomplete picture that our minds keep filling in, forgetting that really, there are a lot of empty holes (of desperation, pain, and disappointment). We tell each other stories to reinforce this. "Well MY life is ok.." and then it isn't. What you say for consolation and what happens are two different things.