Free Will and Other Popular Delusions, or not?
Since the Metaphysics, Yet Again thread has faded into the usual counter-accusations of "woo" and "non-sense", I thought I'd resurrect the ghost of Christmas past, by opening the Pandora's Box of "FreeWill", and related philosophical conundra. A recent article in SKEPTIC magazine -- not noted for promoting "woo" -- addresses a wide range of controversial meta-physical topics, including : Time, Causality, Consciousness, Self, and Free Will, under the heading of "Disillusioned". His calm rational approach to the controversy may give us some new ways to dialog about such non-empirical & immaterial, hence philosophical, subject-matter. Below are links to the article, and to my own review. :smile:
Disillusioned : https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A656765715&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=97d5e9fc
Self-Deception or Self-Determinism? : http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page26.html
Note -- "Meta-Physical" = non-empirical concepts ; moot topics
Metaphysics :
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
Disillusioned : https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A656765715&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=97d5e9fc
Self-Deception or Self-Determinism? : http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page26.html
Note -- "Meta-Physical" = non-empirical concepts ; moot topics
Metaphysics :
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
Comments (187)
A few salient points to consider:
1. If not determinism, then what? Randomness, an easy answer, but we don't want that, do we? A between-Scylla-and-Charybdis situation. Is being capable of randomness freedom?
2. Causality-wise, we want not to be effects but we don't mind being causes. In other words, we wish to be outside the casual web but we also want to be able to influence the course of the future. Is this possible?
3. Why would the mind create an illusion of freedom if, in fact, we aren't free?
4. From a book I read (paraphrasing): The more knowledge we gain of how our minds work (psychology leading the pack), the more control we have over our lives. So, is free will a matter of when and not if? Once, probably in another century or so, psychologists & philosophers discover human thinking patterns, we can then take the helm and become fully autonomous agents. Just to be clear, I've seen real-life instances of people gaining control of their lives through this process.
5. How appealing is being semi-autonomous? We have free will but only in a limited sense.
6. Do we really want free will? Daoism for example, from a certain angle, seems to be averse to the idea of doing what(ever) we want. Go with the flow is not exactly a call to claim one's freedom.
People aren't billiard balls. An influenced or compelled choice is still a choice.
Quoting Agent Smith
Certainly, being able to imagine a future seems like a useless adaptation for a choiceless creature.
Quoting Agent Smith It does have to explain what we have done and sometimes we honestly don't know. We have the illusion of an illusion in some sense in order for reality to remain stable.
Probably, true.
Quoting Agent Smith It's free will in a normal sense. Do you want to decide to breath every ten seconds?
Quoting Agent Smith Who other than yourself could make you write the above?
A reasonable definition of freedom dissolves the debate entirely. Just as an unreasonable one settles it in favor of determinism. The physical world appears probabilistic where determination is actually negative. In other words only the possible things happen, but not happening and not possible aren't the same thing. Come at me bro.
Not meta-physical. The will does as it has come to be. Time is fundamental as motion/movement/causality since there was no stillness stopping everything. Consciousness came to be along the way since before life there wasn't any; same with life. The notion of a self is the result of experiencing. No mysteries left.
What caused you to become a compatiblist? Did you have the option to reach a different conclusion? Can you trace an unbroken chain of causation beck to the Big Bang? Or was your own reasoning ability a meta-physical Cause of your decision? FWIW, I am also a compatiblist. However, if we both have free thought, you may not agree with how I arrived at my summation of the pertinent causes of Freedom Within Determinism.
My FreeWill questions are expressed in the linked blog post. For example : "Is FreeWill Fake Agency?" ; " is it Self-deception or Self-determinism?" Several other questions are addressed by the author of the SKEPTIC article. For instance : " “Voluntary behavior . . . Is an emergent phenomenon at the level of the entire organism embedded in physical reality”. That’s what I call “Holism”, or “Systems Theory”.
A link to the article is in the blog post. For those who may be on the fence, the second page of the blog has links to more detailed discussions of the perennial Free Will vs Determinism controversy. :smile:
Is FreeWill Fake Agency? :
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page26.html
magic
a magical invisible soul that can magically create first causes out of its magical invisible spiritual intelligence
:up: A possibility, yes!
Quoting Cheshire
This doesn't make sense to me. What's a no choice scenario then?
Quoting Cheshire
:chin: Magnifique! Being able to, in a sense, predict the future only makes sense if the predictor means to make adjustments for it. Free will!?
Quoting Cheshire
That's right! "I don't know" is an acceptable response to a query. Me either! However, it would be better if we knew.
Quoting Agent Smith Thanks, I just thought of this one. It is compelling if you accept evolutionary selection as influential enough to demand an explanation. In order to be an advantage the predictor has to 'successfully' make adjustments and not just believe they are making adjustments. Quoting Agent Smith On occasion we do make choices which are rationalized after the fact. I don't think the whole of determinism is without some rational basis. But, extending the observation to suggest every decision is made and then rationalized over extends the evidence.
Quoting Agent Smith Well, thanks. Arguing for secular free will has never been easy. The belief that freedom implies randomness shuts down the discussion more than often. Or the notion that free will should always be realized as to explain every aspect of one's condition. I acknowledge there are many influences and contextual pressures that drive outcomes, but if they can be understood and accounted for; then these are not proper illusions.
There's something between determinism and randomness.
Do you think the following argument makes sense? It does to me.
1. Some things don't have an effect (e.g. me pushing the Eiffel tower won't do jack shit to it!).
Ergo,
2. Some things have no causes.
Causality isn't violated, only the cause must be potent enough to produce an effect. As per physics causal potency should be ever diminshing (the Domino effect & chain reactions seem to be exceptions) i.e. a cause (should/does) peter(s) out, fade away. I suppose the secret to free will is to be found not in physics but in (bio)chemistry.
I go a step further and argue "randomness" is a strawman that disposes of the concept of 'will' for the sake of argument. Fundamentally, the world is probabilistic and negatively determined by what's impossible. If I saw a person acting randomonly I doubt my first impression would be an individual exercising free will.
Quoting Agent Smith
I think that's a fair summation that points to a break down in the imaginary casual chain.
Really, there's only to 2 conditions for a cause under my argument. The event was not impossible and enough time passed for it to occur. Negative determination.
Where did I say anything about "metaphysical determinism"? I had never heard that label until you brought it up. Apparently, you are labeling my apples as oranges. . . . Sir. :joke:
Hard determinism (or metaphysical determinism) is a view on free will which holds that determinism is true, that it is incompatible with free will,
Note -- "Determinism" is metaphysical in the sense that it is a philosophical conceptual construct, not a physical object. FWIW, I accept that the general assumption of an unbroken chain of Cause & Effect is true, and how the real world works. However, from my Enformationism perspective, the self-reflective human mind, with self-generated will-power (intention ; agency), is an emergent Cause, as an added link in the cosmic chain of events and priors. Hence, limited local Free Will is compatible with general universal Determinism. I'll have more to say about that in another post. :smile:
Context + this:
Quoting Gnomon
:roll:
is magic a possibility?
or is it just magical thinking
something cant come from nothing. no matter if its spiritual or not. and therefore even a magical soul would not be able to create first causes, and therefore it would have no true free will
because despite everyone being too ignorant to realize it, true free will would be the ability to create first causes from nothing into the mind.
from that ego delusion comes the god delusion. the ego creates god
Oh, I see. You put the apple of a FreeWill vs Determinism context together with the mention of a "meta-physical" orange, and concluded "metaphysical determinism". As a Compatiblist myself, I am not a proponent of that particular line of reasoning (see Fatalism below). Instead, I was suggesting that human Reason could be an emergent "meta-physical" (mental not physical) Cause of forging a new link in the physical chain of Causation. The ability to choose between probabilistic options, is a determinant of the subsequent branch of contingent causation. In other words, Reason is your get-out-of-bondage-to-Fate-free-card.
FreeWill is not an "illusion", it's a worldview. It's a meta-physically (memes, not genes) evolved belief system that allows creatures with reasoning ability to statistically predict the future course of events, and to make rational choices instead of knee-jerk reactions to current events. FreeWill is not self-deception, it's Self Determinism. :nerd:
Note 1. In the blog post prior to the one linked in the OP, I discussed the connection between scientific Reductionism, and the ancient worldview of Fatalism. There, I said :
Another divergence in our philosophy is between Determinism, narrowly defined, and FreeWill, as the ability to choose based on rational evidence rather than on fatalistic necessity. But Determinism is a belief and a premise, not an objective fact. And Determinists typically assume a linear chain of physical causes only. Yet they ignore the influence of feed-back loops in the human mind, which become the non-physical Causes we call "beliefs". The behavior of lower animals might result from external influences only. But the human mind is able to interrupt the flow of physical causation with feedback loops that insert new learning links in the chain (creative ideas). When those new links are perceived as different from our beliefs and preconceptions, the mind begins to look for a way to get back on course. Which is known as "Reasoning".
Note 2. Then, in the following blog post (caused in part by the prior post) I said :
After those scenic side-tracks, he finally gets around to “unpacking free will”. For his analysis, you can read the article. Here, I’ll only mention a couple of points. 1) “Trying to account for choice at the level of neurons . . . wouldn’t provide any causal account”. That would be like looking for Meaning in the circuits of a motherboard. 2) “Voluntary behavior . . . Is an emergent phenomenon at the level of the entire organism embedded in physical reality”. That’s what I call “Holism”, or “Systems Theory”. Finally, he looks at “Freewill as Phenomenal Experience”, and says “Although this naïve view has largely been abandoned by serious thinkers, it can still be useful : what difference does it make if you believe that free will is an illusion? Would you no longer make any choices at all?”. In his considered opinion, “free will is a puzzle but it is not an illusion”. To that, I say “amen”.
In short, fatalism is the theory that there is some destiny that we cannot avoid, although we are able to take different paths up to this destiny. Determinism, however, is the theory that the entire path of our life is decided by earlier events and actions.
https://www.mytutor.co.uk/answers/10942/A-Level/Philosophy/What-is-the-difference-between-determinism-and-fatalism/
Risks are problems of contingent causation; they are problems due to unforeseen or uncontrollable causal processes instigated by human action
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40878435
Again, my coinage of a new spelling for an old concept goes right over the reductive head. Since, by "Meta-Physical" I mean the non-physical (e.g. mental) aspects of reality, I am thinking of changing the spelling to "Menta-Physical", to indicate that I am referring to subjective Ideas, not objective objects, Nor to super-natural spooks. For example, Genes are physical, while Memes are Menta-Physical : physical substrate but mental (imaginary) expression.
That invisible-but-knowable mind-stuff (ideas ; information) was the subject matter of Aristotle's second volume of On Nature. In the first volume, he presented the then-current state of physical science --- as known by direct sensory observation, without modern sense-enhancing technology. And then, in the subsequent (meta-) volume, he discussed the contemporary philosophical opinions about the natural world, which included Ideas, Speculations, Concepts, Theories, and Principles. Those were known only by introspection, or by exchanges of memes (words). Although some of his idealistic notions, such as "Form", were presented as-if realistic, like the Buddha, he was trying to avoid speculating about anything beyond the reach of sensory experience (i.e. super-natural). Yet, he lumped our sixth sense of Reason (nous) and Introspection (mental imagery) under the general heading of "phusis" (nature), which materialistic moderns interpret as "Physics", but not "Psychology".
Human "Will" is completely natural, but it is, by my definition, Menta-Physical. Reductionists typically try to reduce everything to its material substrate. But, that cannot account for Holistic phenomena in human culture. One such immaterial concept is "Health", which is derived from the root for "Wholeness". Another is "diet", which does not refer to any particular food, but to a generalized notion. All philosophical and scientific "Principles" are generalizations, that are never found in Nature, but only in human Culture. Likewise, all universal concepts, such as "the Universe", do not refer to any particular thing, but to a system that we can comprehend only in metaphors and analogies with physical objects.
So, the future-oriented Will is an emergent property of a physical Brain, sophisticated enough to generate a Menta-Physical (nee Meta-Physical) rational Mind. It's not a material object, but a motivating mental concept. And those who can't distinguish the difference, are shooting at a will-o-the-wisp. :joke:
PS___No mysteries? When did you achieve Enlightenment and Omniscience? Should I address you as "Bhodi"? :wink:
PPS___The original Buddha typically avoided speculations about supra-mundane concepts, except such principles as "Nirvana", which could be interpreted as a mundane state-of-mind, not a heavenly realm. Ironically, modern Buddhists do attribute super-natural feats to all bodhisattvas,
The Five Marks of the Mental :
features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, free will, teleology, and normativity)
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01084/full
The Soul as Intellect :
Controversy surrounds almost every aspect of De Anima, not least because in it Aristotle characterizes the active mind—a topic mentioned nowhere else in his entire corpus—as ‘separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality’ (chôristos kai apathês kai amigês, tê(i) ousia(i) energeia; DA iii 5, 430a17–18) and then also as ‘deathless and everlasting’ (athanaton kai aidion; , 430a23). This comes as no small surprise to readers of De Anima, because Aristotle had earlier in the same work treated the mind (nous) as but one faculty (dunamis) of the soul (psuchê), and he had contended that the soul as a whole is not separable from the body \
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-psychology/active-mind.html
Note -- In my thesis, the human Mind is also a form of Energy, in the sense of EnFormAction.
MYSTERY IS IN THE MIND
UNCERTAINTY IS IN THE MIND, AND IN PHYSICS
Yes, as Bhodi, and as All-Knowing Philosopher Scientist of All Universes.
:monkey:
Magic vs. science. When humans encountered inexplicable phenomena it used to be magic but now it's just not (scientifically) understood as of yet. I don't know when this happened but it happened. Magic was once knowledge (of the supernatural kind) but now it's just ignorance (of the scientific kind).
:ok:
It's a miracle! The blind now see. The question remains though : see what?
Did you take the red pill, or the blue? :cool:
Good one! Plus, a first cause wouldn't know anything, given that it has no input.
Yes. I call it "FreeWill within Determinism".
Free Will versus Free Won't :
Since the question of conscious choice is integral to the notion of morality, Shermer asks if we are indeed free to choose our actions. Some secularists claim that human behavior is pre-determined by an unbroken chain of cause & effect stretching back to the Big Bang. Nevertheless, no one actually believes that he is a mindless zombie driven by ancient urges. So, Shermer intoduces the concept of “Free Won't”. In our contingent world, humans are never totally free to make unconstrained moral choices. Only an agent outside of our space-time world would be perfectly free. But a current theory of how the brain works is based on a business corporation. Normally, most decisions are made on lower levels, then relayed to a decider-in-chief at the top, who only exercises veto power to stop processes that are already in motion. This modified determinism model was made necessary by recent experiments indicating that conscious decisions are delayed reactions to subconscious motives. Those computer-like cause & effect processes present go/no-go options for the conscience to allow or deny. That's why human behavior is unpredictable, as compared to natural agents. For us, a fork in the causal path is an opportunity for creative, or moral, action.
Note -- Michael Shermer is editor of SKEPTIC magazine.
:up: Does God have free will?
Michael Shermer, great guy! I watched some of his talks. He gives me the impression of someone who's thought things through. Admirable!
Quoting Gnomon
:100:
Gotta make a note of that!
Compliance implies, if you give it some thought, slavery, the very definition of absence of free [s]will[/s] won't.
Most (all?) moral/legal codes are about what we shouldn't be doing (don'ts) - an acknowledgemnt of our proclivities, a tendency to immorality, and a call to/an aid to resist them (free won't).
What we want to do (free will) is, if you really think about it, simply another form of bondage.
Free won't decisions aren't free of the will either. No decisions are made in consciousness; consciousness reflects the brain product that has already finished and took time, plus even more time has passed while the representation in consciousness was being built and woven into the flow.
So, you are a Drone controlled by Fate, or a Cyborg doing the Will of the hive? And your Artistry and Poetry are done un-consciously by an AI program. All this time I thought you were a regular guy. :joke:
I took "the red pill" and with formerly blind eyes I clearly saw then "There Is No Red Pill".
:fire:
We are all automated! What appears in consciousness is ever the past that's all over and done. At least it's the just past, for conscious content is always a very sequential representation to what the brain came just up with, and so it's not that far behind.
Of course, this realization of choices not being directly decided in consciousness right then and there is still the most shocking information of all to us, and furthermore it undermines many other philosophic proposals…
Although the conscious content is never of the now and so cannot be causal, rumination continues on sometimes and the process repeats, if one is not instantly reactive, perhaps with other brain areas contributing. Perhaps the qualia grant subsequent brain analyses a shortcut to more quickly size up the ongoing situation, with the qualia serving as a focus. Eventually all the other brain figuring areas have checked in and a final decision arrives, or not, if it can be delayed or to wait for more information.
Thus, the will is fixed to what it has become up the moment, but the will is dynamic and so its repertoire can be enlarged through learning, unto new and better fixed wills of the future moments.
The universe does us, not some other way around; we can't really claim blame or fame. Besides, whenever were we responsible for how we formed from genetics, nature, and nurture? Never.
What if one cannot learn because the will has become much too fixated? Doom.
:rofl: :fire:
yes any freedom we have is part of, and bound within, determinism.
there is no true free will
our free will simply means that nobody has a gun to our head. we are still completely bound by causality
there is no level of understanding we will ever reach which will allow something to come from nothing.
exactly. that would be another magical belief
the magical invisible soul with its magical spiritual intelligence magically creating first casues into the mind with its magical free will
And you're the last word on all such matters. :up:
Ouch! That sounds like cynical Fatalism. Whatever happened to the romantic Fatalism of the Greeks? :gasp:
So you had no choice but to remain in illusory ignorance of reality. The "blue pill" is the default choice to avoid learning the hard truth of Existentialism. However, the "chop wood" quote, from Akira-sensei, sounds existentialist to me. Except that Existentialism requires "an act of will" by a "free and responsible agent". So, I guess the non-choice to remain bound in blindness is actually Cynicism. No? :worry:
The terms "red pill" and "blue pill" refer to a choice between the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the red pill or remaining in contented ignorance with the blue pill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill
"Cynicism is an attitude characterized by a general distrust of others' motives."
If you distrust the one offering a "red pill", you by dereliction of choice, choose the pill-not-taken. :joke:
no logic is
one plus one will never equal five. it doesnt matter how much time goes by or how much science we do
we already have certain absolute truths that will never be changed
Ex nihilo nihil fit. Where's your argument?
They wouldn't get vaccinated and couldn't, so they died from Covid.
Not all anti-vaxxers are Fatalistic. Some exercised their "Free Won't", to rely on God instead of fallible doctors. That's Faith, not Fatalism. OK . . . fatal Faith, if you insist. :joke:
There's no "Fatalistic" tendency undermining the fixed will truth; that's just a diversion, as is saying "cynical". The will itself excercises "free won't" just like any other decision/choice analysis that it performs.
FREE WILL?
Do you control your thoughts or do they control you?
Could you, silly as it seems,
Just be falling, hook and line, for your thoughts?
Think about it—thoughts may tell you the answer!
The brain’s decisions are determined by
Memories, associations, and
Learned behaviors right up to the instant;
So—our decisions are predetermined.
The ‘free’ in free will has no real meaning,
Unless we take it to mean random, that
One’s will depends on nothing but dice rolls;
What good would such a brain be anyway?
Can you start or stop your thoughts? In other words,
Can you will that which does the willing? Try it.
Oops, a surprise thought just came from the blue;
You did not will it—the will is unfree!
A mind is perhaps many little minds,
Each a simpleton awaiting control,
Such as when we eat, socialize, or fight,
None of them very complex at all.
The brain, with its hundred billion nerve cells,
Does all of our decision-analysis,
Only making its results known, at the last,
To the brain’s highest level: consciousness.
People act, robot-like, since they know not
The why of what they do, for decisions
Are made blind, by brain networks, just before
They’re presented to us in consciousness.
Consciousness comes three hundred milliseconds
After the brain does its analysis,
And, thus, has no causal say or veto power,
Zero, over what the brain comes up with.
Decisions are not made by consciousness,
Although, this fine picture in the mind’s ‘I’,
Merely the brain’s perception of itself,
Is fed back whole for future shortcutting.
Not much of what the brain does reaches
Consciousness, and even when it does,
The mind’s last to know, being like a tourist—
For decisions precede their awareness.
First-level people have beliefs and desires,
But second-level people can have beliefs
And desires about their beliefs and desires,
Becoming able spectators of themselves.
Although our decisions of the instant are
Fully determined, and are therefore not free,
We may happen to learn something new—and make
Choices tomorrow we wouldn’t make today.
Thoughts good and bad come and go, as the brain
Looks at itself without assigning values.
Still, lucky that others can’t read our minds,
’Though forbidden thoughts are normal and sane.
If you try hard not to think of something,
Then you will just think of it all the more
So, if told to avoid impure thoughts, you’ll
Think of people naked beneath their clothes!
We may fall for our thoughts, hook, line, and sinker:
Conditioned responses, reflexes, or
Overwhelming emotions, spurious,
Or ancient, planted by evolution.
When extreme thoughts arrive, uninvited, as
Some do, the larger will vetos them—“don’t”.
We’re all robots, but no one notices
Since there are so many different kinds,
Which, though making life quite interesting,
Obscures the fact that the will is unfree.
Who is this "Will" you speak of? Do I know him? Can I introduce him to my Will? Actually, he calls himself "Me". And his screenname is "Gnomon the gnarly gnome", who sometimes masquerades as the robot "Will Robinson". The fool thinks he's choosing clever bon mots to post on this forum, when he's actually imprisoned in a dungeon of illusion, and has only himself -- his imaginary self -- to talk to. He is only free to won't what he wants, but can't have. He pretends to exercise his freedom as a Fall who chose to gravitate. But, he feels free to post gnarly nonsense on the foolosophy forum. :cool:
"The red pill" (choice) is an – perhaps the – illusion, and from this, we can infer reality (à la causality).
I don't see the connection. To me the sensei's maxim simply means that, however much we change ourselves, we do not changed anything else. Choice itself (pace Kierkegaard & Sartre) is an introspective illusion; actions – consequences – which affect nonselves (i.e. other-than-the-self) are constituent aspects of reality.
No. There is no "non-choice", Gnomon. Choosing "the red pill" just makes no difference with regard to reality. To think so, to expect some change, Akira suggests, is delusional – or as Socrates might say 'to remain ignorant of one's ignorance'. Reality as such "loves to hide" as Heraclitus (& Heisenberg?) says, so ignorance simpliciter is both fundamental and ineluctable.
Brain. Fire at Will!
THE OTHER SHOE DROPS
Determinism doesn’t sit well, at first;
Its flavor does not quench the thirst,
For then it seems we but do as we must,
But, we’ll see a way that in this we’ll trust.
We wish that our thoughts reflect us today,
Our leanings, for it could be no other way.
To know, let us turn to the ‘random’ say
To see whatever could make its day.
Shifting to this other, neglected foot,
What could make the ‘random’ take root?
It would have no cause beneath to explain
The events, they becoming of the insane.
We could pretend, imitating air-heads,
Posting nonsense on purpose in the threads,
But that then we meant to do this way,
Noting history, too, so ‘random’ holds not its sway.
There’s less problem of a determined Nature
Than the same in our individual nature,
But, sense isn’t made from ‘random’ direction
That relies on naught beneath its conception.
Would we wish it to be any other way?
Doing any old thing of chance that may?
The ‘random’ foot then walks but here and there,
Not getting anywhere, born from nowhere.
The unrooted tree lives magically, unfathomed.
Is not then ‘randomness’ but a fun phantom?
The opposite of determined is undetermined,
The scarier ghost that’s never-minded.
Yes. That's how Cypher inferred a juicy steak, when he rejected the Hadean underworld of harsh reality to the comforting illusion of normality in the Matrix. "Ignorance is bliss" and inference is your personal truth.
Quoting 180 Proof
That's also how I interpret Existentialism. You can't change how the world works, but you can change your Frame, your perspective. Back when I first heard of the Existentialist philosophy, it sounded sour & pessimistic, compared to my Christian worldview. But now, it seems to be just the other way around. Instead of patiently waiting for salvation in another life, I just try to make the best of the "bird in hand" life. Not by escaping from the chain of cause & effect, but by making free choices for my personal behavior, including attitude adjustment. So, the sensei makes sense to me.
Privileged Frame of Reference :
The observer's privileged perspective is due to the freedom to aim as you will
http://www.faithfulscience.com/relativity/privileged-frame-of-reference.html
Quoting 180 Proof
I agree. But to freely choose the red pill is a decision to change your worldview. That doesn't make any difference in Reality, but it makes a world of difference in Ideality : your mental model of reality. If we had no freedom, there would be no change. But my model of the world is completely different from that of my younger self. Was I fated to make that mental adjustment?
I like to refer to Roman poet Lucretius' notion of a "swerve" (course change) to illustrate how I view a modicum of Free Will within a general context of Determinism. I can't change Reality, but I can change how I view the world, and how I adapt my behavior (swerve) to Reality. When I'm driving, I can't move that obstacle in the road, but I am free to swerve and miss it. Fight Fate! :starstruck:
"if the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will snap the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect --- what is the source of free will possessed by living things . . .?" Lucretius (c, 99-- 55 BC) On the Nature of Things.
FREELY FRAMED PERSPECTIVE
I wonder if all those people you are mentioning understand and use the term "free will" in its simple, common meaning leading to the unequivocal existence of free will. I have heard a lot of people denying the existence of "free will" but I still wait for sound arguments that support that position. I mean, personal arguments in real time. Not having to read (volumes of texts) from what 3d parties have to say on subject ...
My personal worldview is not reality, but a mental model of what's out there. So you could call it "pretense" or "nonsense", but that label will also apply to you. If you are not free to choose between Sense and Nonsense, then how can you think of yourself as Rational? :wink:
Rational behavior refers to a decision-making process that is based on making choices that result in the optimal level of benefit or utility for an individual.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rational-behavior.asp
"What a strange suggestion, to deny the existence of freewill . . . I have no proof that you have free will, and you will never be able to show otherwise . . . Without free will, there could be no rational thought. As a consequence, it is quite impossible for science and philosophy to deny free will."
Quantum Chance : Nonlocality, Teleportation and Other Quantum Marvels by Nicolas Gisin
Note -- you can't prove FreeWill, because by definition it can't be replicated.
I agree that most of the argumentation on this forum is futile, because we have two different definitions of Free Will. Some black & white thinkers assume the term refers to absolute god-like freedom, which would allow us to work Magic in the world. But, I can't imagine that many reasonable people could hold such an outlandish view. In my use of the term, FreeWill is limited and constrained by the causal laws of Reality. But I view Rational Choice as a causal link in the chain of Determinism. :smile:
Free Will within Determinism :
[i]“Determinism is a long chain of cause & effect, with no missing links.
Freewill is when one of those links is smart enough to absorb a cause and modify it before passing it along. . . ."[/i] ___Yehya
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page67.html
I've no idea what orifice you've pulled this bon mot out of but it seems like a projection. Nothing I've said suggests "bliss" of any kind, merely an acknowledgement that ignorance is ineluctable / inexhaustable – a feature of knowing itself (like e.g. Eudoxus' 'method of exhaustion'). It's acquired / habitual ignorance of this intrinsic ignorance (e.g. maps =/= territory) that produces "illusions". At most, "the red pill" only reduces / unlearns habitual ignorance which makes explicit intrinsic ignorance itself (i.e. 'knowing that we don't – can't – know everything', thereby inferring the horizon of 'unknown unknowns'). The so-called "choice of red pill or blue pill" doesn't apply to intrinsic ignorance.
The fixed will chooses all the time; it's mostly about providing for future. A bright fixed will can still be sensible. Or a will may not have good inputs and go for what turns out to be nonsense. The neural analysis considers what it holds and all the inputs. Restraints and forces against what the will wants are inputs, too. I could even grant that the brain waves of others are inputs, also—just another input! Billions of neurons with trillions of connections then do their analysis. Thinking may be flawed and neurotransmitters may not be sufficient to carry the signal across the synapse, but these are just more inputs.
We see that 'random' doesn't make for free will. Some may take consolation that the hurting of the will by 'random' provides for something different to happen. Perhaps there is no 'random'; I'm looking into this now. That would be a super shock!
What's the difference between "fixed will" and "free will"? Is it totally bound, hence not able to choose at all. or merely limited in the scope of its choices? Is there a way to measure the degree of fixation? Are we like Sisyphus, condemned to rock 'n' roll for ever, but taking some satisfaction that we are playing our pre-defined role in the great scheme of things to the best of our ability? Ironically, king Sisy was like Adam & Eve, punished by the gods for a mutinous attempted act of free choice. Who do you think is punishing us with the desire for freedom without the power to choose?
"Will" is an expression of future tense, so it implies some ability to choose between one apparent path and another. I say "apparent" because our conjectures into a time not-yet present are speculations, not confirmed facts. Most animals have some power to anticipate the short-term future, and to the agency to change their own behavior to intersect with the preferred option. But human Will Power is enhanced by our ability to speculate farther and more accurately into the potential future.
When you scan a restaurant menu, do you just accept Fate, and point at random --- or do you pretend to choose on a whim, rather than compulsion? In my case, at first I sample a variety of options, then decide which suits my personal preference, which becomes my default choice. Or am I condemned to eat Tako (octopus sushi) forever, even though the smell nauseates me? :yum:
Quoting PoeticUniverse
How do we see that? When statisticians calculate a historical trajectory into the future, is that attempt to see a pattern-within-randomness, doomed to failure. Would you call it "absurd" that we can't see very far into the future? Seems to me that's just normal, as in a Normal Curve. However, in a Galton Board model of randomness, even though the Bell Curve is "fixed" the randomized balls are free to fall anywhere within the boundaries of the curve. The balls are rigidly constrained (fixed) by physics , but humans are freedom-loving change-agents, who can choose to bend (not break) the law. :nerd:
Freedom Within Randomness :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHiee7gs9Y
Regular Order within Random Chaos :
Admittedly, our home world is rather “messy” in some ways, but I prefer to think of it more positively as “order out of chaos”. The chaotic part of reality is what scientists know as Randomness. The orderly part is known by religious people as Design. Put them together, and you get a world with enough order to produce living creatures, and to be understandable to their minds.
Intentional versus Involuntary :
[i]In human cultures, we can easily distinguish the works of Nature from the products of human intention. That's because Nature is on auto-pilot, while humans have hands on the wheel
. . . . The process of evolution can be construed as an ongoing reckoning of Cause & Effect events. Another way to put it is to say that Natural Selection is the product of freedom-of-action (randomness) and constraints-on-action (selection).[/i]
nothing comes from nothing
and nothing comes from something
nothing and something both cannot create something
but something can change into a new shape and make you believe its a new something when its not
I wasn't trying to put sweet "bon mots" in your mouth (or any other orifice) ; just noting a common saying intended to justify being resigned to remain in a static state of willful ignorance. Are you "woke" to the reality of cognizance? :cool:
PS__why would you assume that I was accusing you of blissful ignorance? Are you accusing me of projecting my own blindness onto you? "Let he who is without ignorance cast the first bon mot" :joke:
Quoting 180 Proof
Where you are free to choose to focus your attention on the negative space of "intrinsic ignorance", I opt to aim my frame at the positive potential of self-enformation (selective education). Consequently, I don't think of humanity as benighted by Nescience, but as the beneficiaries of Science.
Whatever lies beyond the limited scope of the human mind may be "Intrinsic Ignorance", and some may choose to remain mired in "willful ignorance", but those of us on this forum are blessed with the innate human power of Reason : the power to choose the path to Enlightenment, either within or without. :nerd:
TURN TOWARD THE LIGHT AND THE SHADOW IS BEHIND YOU
As I quoted you previously,
Quoting Gnomon
this is why.
A more "nescient" sentiment – which, being a child of this zeitgeist, I also can't shake-off – has never been expressed. :point:
Nostalgic but impotent because, except for death, there's No Exit from this Platonic skull-Cave. :fire: :eyes:
"Free will" is what sounds good to have because it announces that the will is free of something than no one is ever able to say but for that the will can usually operate, but that is not adding anything because that's what the will normally is. So, ‘free will’, on the surface, seems to be a great thing to have, for it promises one to be free of some constraint, which must be a good thing, right? Is the will/brain free to operate in the way that it does? Well, usually, outside of the control of parents, employers, owner, gods, and the like who can have forcing methods, so this kind of ‘free’ is not adding anything extra to the regular will, since mechanisms like the will are already free to operate.
In Earthly judicial courts, coercion/controlling/forcing/insanity, etc. can serve to have one judged as not responsible versus being held responsible. Note that this diametric is orthogonal to the other axis—that of a fixed will dependent on what one has become up to the moment versus a non-fixed (free?) will not depending on anything, if one still wants that in order to be ‘free’ (‘twould be a mess—not anything could function).
Does one want to be free of the consistency that the will provides, based on who we are from what we’ve become? No, this would not be the ‘free’ of free will. For the religious, does it mean to be able to be free of God’s will? No, for this is not ‘free’ since there will be consequences. What, then, is there for the will to be free of that is not some trivial finding? No one can say!
The closest we can answer this is the stance that compatibilists take, which again is no great shakes at all, for they still have it that all events are determined, which strangely makes for a free will for them but for when one is coerced into doing something, since their ‘free’ state is merely the freedom from coercion, for they grant determinism. Did they consider that the coercion was always going to happen, too, in the whatever will be will be? Other restraints upon doing what we like are such as the weather, laws, people, and more. A truly free will seems to have no real meaning, yet still remains a kind of Holy Grail hope to find somehow. When they can't push the idea forward, they may try some diversionary push-back.
Quoting Gnomon
Not if there is 'random', but otherwise it does as it has to. We see that 'random' harms the will if it messes up the path the will was taking.
Quoting Gnomon
The deeper the fixation, the harder it is to learn or get deprogrammed. Some may be so stuck that we just ignore them. Every family seems to have one of those among their relatives.
Quoting Gnomon
No one can say what other way the will could be free of itself. No punishments, but perhaps there's some evolutionary advantage.
As for Super Determinism, this is just determination all the way through, with no 'random'.
pro:
1. The Block Universe is so. (Plus, 'God' knows everything, to the dismay of theologians.)
2. The quantum particle measurements ending in probabilities may be…
2a. because we can't take the influence of the entire universe into account or
2b. since the wave function proceeds deterministically before measurement, that's that, and since the particle is not a pinpoint but is spread out we can't have a precise location just stabbing into some part of it, which may also disrupt it, or
2c. it is already determined how the scientist will probe it that correlates with the result, making science useless.
con:
1. The eternal bedrock of reality can't have any input to it (yet there could be the most simplistic default of the way it has to be).
:ok: but the first one is an axiomatic statement; we're interested in theorems. The rest of your post is interesting.
All this is quite interesting. But they are all descriptions and fancy definitions To talk about "free will" and have a meaningful discussion, we must first agree on what "free will" is in common sense and simple terms. Then there can follow arguments supporting or rejecting the existence of free will. Don't you agree?
Anyway, I am pretty sure that you actually know yourself what "free will" means in simple terms! :wink:
You are quick to take offense at generic statements, and also quick to make specific offensive assertions. But I just shrug-off such accusations as :
Quoting 180 Proof
But that's OK with me, as long as we keep dialoging. I learn from both positive and negative arguments. Obviously, you have given a lot of thought to philosophical questions. But your conclusions seem much gloomier than mine. To each his own . . . :smile:
I get the impression that you are still reacting to a definition of "free will" that I am not espousing. I specifically stated that the "freedom" I'm talking about is "limited". Which, I would think, should fit your definition of "regular" will. Except, there may be some minor distinction that I'm missing. :brow:
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I'm not familiar with the notion of "fixed" versus "free" willpower. I Googled "fixed will" and got no applicable links. So, I suppose you have your own personal definition of the term. I"d like to hear how you would distinguish between my notion of "limited FreeWill" and your "fixed Will". On the face of it, "fixed" sounds pretty final, and not very desirable. I have been using the common phrase "Free Will" in the usual philosophical sense of Agency as noted below. To me, that definition sounds more like "limited" than "fixed". :chin:
Agency :
The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
Quoting PoeticUniverse
That may be true, but randomness also breaks the chain of Cause & Effect with an Acausal link. It's that gap in causation that may provide a way to escape from the bonds of Determinism. But, it takes intelligence and reasoning ability to take advantage of the opportunity of arbitrariness in place of necessity. :smile:
[i]“Determinism is a long chain of cause & effect, with no missing links.
Freewill is when one of those links is smart enough to absorb a cause and modify it before passing it along. . . ."[/i] ___Yehya
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page67.html
Quoting PoeticUniverse
By "fixation" are you talking about "self-deception"? If so, I must agree. But philosophically-inclined people should be open to self-examination to weed-out false beliefs. And yet, on this forum, we still find "fixations" that are resistant to criticism. And a common issue raised in Free Will topics concerns whether the freedom of agency is a self-deceptive illusion. But I don't know any sane person who believes he is free to jump off a tall building with impunity. If some do feel that free, they certainly require some "deprogramming". For the record, I'm not talking about such extreme cases, but about examples of "regular will". :wink:
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I'm not clear on whether you were arguing from a "pro" or "con" position. But FWIW, I don't depend on the weirdness of quantum randomness to open the door to freedom of the Will. The warm, wet brain does not seem amenable to Superposition. On the macro level of human behavior, the quantum randomness averages-out to the familiar Cause & Effect, that we rely on as we make our Choices. It's more telling that our notion of Necessity is a general assumption, not an empirical fact. Even hard-nosed scientists are aware of the vagaries of reality, so they don't assume "Super-Determinism", but merely Mundane Regularity. :cool:
"Although the intuition that our mind chooses its actions 'at will' begs for an explanation, quantum physics is no solution" ___Stanislas Dehaene
"He who says all things happen of necessity cannot criticize another who says that not all things happen of necessity. For he has to admit that the assertion also happens of necessity."
___Epicurus
PS___ Since Consciousness and WillPower are subjective, ultimately what counts is not objective evidence, but that you feel free. If not, your outlook may be clouded by the bitterness of desires frustrated by Fate. If, however, you don't feel free, then no evidence or argument will convince you otherwise. So, to paraphrase Clint Eastwood : "do you feel free, punk?" :joke:
You're a great responder, Gnomon, very good and pleasant over the years;, so let me say 'Thanks'. I turned 74 today and have had good luck so far; the world can't seem to kill me off, not even back in Cambodia when I was an intelligence officer at rare times in the field, but was mostly in Honolulu with ladies. Now the virus can't catch me, either, nor the doomsday glacier in Antartica that may soon crumble and greatly raise the sea level. These are epic times.
Sabine Hossenfelder has been espousing Super Determinism of late, if you want to look into it, and so here we are, between its specter and the escape as the randomness option, of all the binds and rocks and hard places to be in…
Well, it seems that the great benefit of the universe is that we get to have glorious experiences, sometimes, even if we are actors portraying ourselves in a play. I've always felt in charge, and that seems to have added to the pleasure.
Happy birthday and plenty of 'glorious experiences', to enable you to make more pictures and poems.
Happy Birthday! :party:
Thanks, Jack.
Some great scenes, music, and poem story:
christians think something can create something. but it cant. even if a god existed he would not be able to make a creation.
what did he make it from? and where did he make it? its like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. magical thinking
something cannot come from something
we currently already have something, and logically it must be eternal and omnipresent and infinite and therefore there is no real creation. only evolution and transformation
Like you, I'm a seventh decade survivor of a world that has a million ways to kill you. I even lived through 4 years in and around VietNam. So, instead of feeling picked-on by Fate, I feel blessed by the freedom to choose my poison --- a very slow one. :wink:
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Thanks, but I'd rather not stare into the abyss of Deep Determinism. Anyway, I don't depend on erratic randomness to spring me from the inevitability of Cause & Effect. Instead, I'm always on the lookout for those tiny cracks in my dungeon that give me an opportunity to choose to use a spoon to widen them into an escape hole --- or rabbit hole (look before you leap!). Since those openings are rare, we must be ready to take advantage of every break from Fate we can get. :grimace:
Note : I googled SD, and saw that it's over my pointy little head.
Back on the topic of Free Choice -- Free Will :
I'm currently reading a novel, Ken Follett's Third Twin, that involves scientists doing twin studies to determine how much Genetics and Society (Nature & Nurture) are responsible for our personal behavior. I'm guessing that they will eventually get around to discovering how unpredictable personality quirks can emerge from those more mechanistic influences. Some identical twins display unique traits that can't be explained by genetic determinism. Could it be . . . oh I don't know . . . maybe . . . Free Will? :smile:
"Although the case for free will cannot be rigorously proven, those of us who believe in it need feel no threat from the findings of the Human Genome Initiative."
https://counterbalance.org/genetics/myth-body.html
Twins: similar and unique? :
https://www.leidenpsychologyblog.nl/articles/twins-similar-and-unique
I don't remember. Apparently, you've mis-read me. I don't take offense at the occasional "pissy" attitudes on this forum. I just can't take philosophical speculations into the unknown that seriously. It should be a fun tug-of-war without the warlike grimness. But, I'm aware that some posters are more rigid & fragile than me, so I use smilies and emoticons liberally, to indicate that I mean no harm, and in many cases I'm just kidding. Seriously! :joke:
Pissy : arrogantly argumentative.
So the sum total of something remains constant, eternally - what we have now is exactly the amount we had and will have but it transforms, evolves, and so on. :up:
Yes, but is that feeling of being in control of your life a truism or an illusion? That is the underlying question of this thread. The arguments typically come down to siding with Science or Religion. And most world religions, especially Christianity, make human Free Will mandatory, to govern a God who holds us responsible for our ethical behavior. Since, modern Science has demoted Freedom of Will to a "persistent illusion", it would seem that morality is optional. Unless, they can find a viable substitute for an intrinsic feeling of responsibility.
Secular Humanism has rejected the universal lawmaker, and placed the burden of maintaining order -- among people who feel free to sin -- on mundane, politically divided Society. Which typically relies on fear of temporary incarceration instead of eternal incineration. Therefore, it seems that even without an all-seeing eye-in-the-sky, our sense of freedom must still be constrained by extrinsic rules, and menacing threats. So, is man-made morality more Just than just fear of divine retribution? And is Free Will compatible with the restraints of social responsibility? :cool:
"The idea of free will, the skeptics say, is a holdover from a naïve worldview that has been refuted by science, just as ghosts and spirits have been refuted."
https://bostonreview.net/articles/christian-list-has-science-refuted-free-will/
"if you are in charge, you have control over someone or something and are responsible for them."
https://www.macmillandictionary.com
"You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." ___Francis Crick,
Note -- if Free Will is innate, what is the "more than" which makes a mere network of neurons to be free from the Determinism of Causation? Perhaps, rational moral agents have become a Cause unto themselves, resulting in the freedom of Self-determinism. :chin:
Illusion. "More than" hasn't been found.
Were you in Vietnam fighting through the worst of it? I was at the tail end.
In my blog, I hypothesize that the "more than" is a holistic effect of causal feedback loops, and the consequent complexification-of-causation. The result of that multiplication is a holistic Cybernetic system, that is more than the sum of sensory inputs. Such a complex integrated system may have novel properties (e.g. awareness) that are not found in its parts (e.g. neurons). Those internal loops in the chain of causation, might even permit Self-Causation (autonomy, freedom).
If so, the Feeling of Freedom is not an external illusion, but an internal belief -- that's just as real as your mental model of the real world. Of course, this is a conjecture based on implications of a few brain studies. And, since the feeling is subjective, there is no objective proof that it is anything more than an illusion. So, it's true that the "more than" has not been found . . . by those looking at neuronal wiring diagrams.
However, there's also no way to empirically prove that you are Conscious, except to ask you to affirm your awareness. Likewise, if you believe you are free, you will act as-if you are in control. So, as street philosopher Dirty Harry so perceptively inquired, "you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel [s]lucky[/s] free? Well, do ya, punk?". :grimace:
Cybernetic System :
Cybernetics is the study of control, communications and information processing within systems of all kind, biological, mechanical and social. Norbert Wiener(one of the founders of the subject) defined cybernetics as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.”[1] The word cybernetics comes from Greek word meaning “governance” or “to steer, navigate or govern”. Cybernetics formed out of – and is closely related to – the areas of systems theory, information theory, computer science, robotics, mechanical and electrical engineering. The primary object of study within cybernetics are control systems that are regulated by negative feedback loops.[2]
https://www.systemsinnovation.io/post/cybernetics
Note -- Feedback loops are used in Robotics to allow for Self-Control. So, wouldn't feedback in a human mind allow for intrinsic Self-Governance, without the necessity for extrinsic control inputs? A cybernetic organism is not free from physical laws, but from external mind-control (unless brain-washed, of course).
Feedback Loops :
The human brain is a negative feedback loop system. This means that whenever there is a difference between what a person experiences in reality that is different from the ideal set point established by this person’s brain, an urge to behave to correct the situation is created by the brain. https://www.funderstanding.com/brain/brain-biology-a-negative-feedback-loop-system/ [my bold]
Every Effect has a Cause, but not all causes come from the environment. When faced with an incongruency, humans are able to "leap" to a conclusion that seems reasonable, in light of our prior beliefs of what ought to be true. So, what seems reasonable is not just pure Logic, but can also be determined by any prejudices, premises, and presumptions in our belief system. Those inner beliefs are not in any sense physical objects. Instead, they are meta-physical causes of our mental behavior. You might say that beliefs are indirect motives of behavior (emotions, feelings), because they result from feedback loops in the chain of incoming information. Those information loops add to the complexity of a simple linear cause & effect system. But out of the apparent chaos comes the novel (butterfly) effect that we call "Free Will". The proof of the freewill pudding is in the effects of your voluntary actions. :nerd:
I don't think anyone is saying the sensory inputs make for the whole of the will's analysis. There's lots more going on, plus rumination is a feedback loop.
The more information the will has, the better it works. Certain information is much greater than the average info, such as the realization that being in charge is an illusion, ironically, for that lets one know all the more that some seemingly bright idea needn't be totally fallen for simply because one came up with it.
This post is great. There is what there is as likely the simplest partless thing which for some base reason has to move, making for waves which make for the quantum formations from its stable arrangements, not anything new and different than itself.
The icescape wallpaper in the short clip above is not real. It's just an illusion that makes us happy. Could it be the same for our belief that we have free will (it's a fake sense of freedom because we need to be happy more than know the truth)?
By "sensory inputs" I was referring to causes or influences from the environment. It was meant to distinguish linear causes from internal processing (ruminations) that form "feedback loops". Those non-linear processes modify the incoming ambient "energy" for the specific needs of the Self. Such internal looping is what I call "multiplying" and "complexifying" of extrinsic Information, to temporarily re-direct the flow for personal use.
That Selfish energy is what we call "Will", which is the motivation to get what we want and need. "Will" being merely the future tense of "Want". So the redirected or recycled Information/Energy is "free" in the sense that it is no longer completely extrinsically determined, but has an added Selfish purpose. Ambient Information/Energy has no purpose, but egocentric causation has the novel property of goal-directed Intention.. :smile:
PS__We are still subject to the tidal flow of energy, but unlike an Iceberg, we have an inboard motor to allow us to go against the flow . . . to some degree.
ya its infinite
Infinite? :chin:
reality must be eternal omnipresent and infinite and whole
it is everything and everything is it
nothing exists but it
god
perpetual motion machine
eternal recycler
:up:
there is an infinite number of me's out there in the infinite reality
and an infinite number of variations of me's and you's
I don't know if I'd like that to be true. The world has enough problems with just one of me! :grin:
go back in time and talk to yourself and you will argue with yourself and disagree with each others beliefs
The inboard motor of neuronal analysis still does what it has to as what it was meant to do.
Fixed Will 'Poetry Slam' Discussion
[i]Ah, in the whole you’re just afraid of being unfree,
But, hey, look, behold! There is still so much beauty!
A sublime law, indeed, else what beauty could there be?
The coin’s other side speaks—a toss up, weighted equally.[/i]
It’s from the finding of truth—not of fright,
Though determinism’s not a pretty sight.
Beauty exists either way, for there is still novelty,
But ‘determined’s opposite is an impossible currency.
[hide]
[i]How dare you curse the freedom to be;
It’s because you are scared of He!
What greater proof of inner freedom then
Could His gift of wild flight to us send? [/i]
Really, it not of a scare that He is there,
But because ‘random’ can’t even be there,
For then on nothing would it depend—threadbare,
If it could even be, but it has no clothes to wear.
[i]I swear I am more—that I do act freely!
Don't pass off my passions so calculatingly.
I'll let the rams butt their heads together;
One absolute position subsides for its brother![/i]
Yes, it seems we can choose, even otherwise,
But what’s within, as the state of being wise,
Knows not the non-apparent states below—
A ‘second story’, with but one window.
[i]One rigid mode of thought’s score
Consumes the other with folklore,
Unbending, unyielding with perfect defense,
To orchestrate life’s symphony at the song’s expense.[/i]
We’re happy to ferret out the truth;
However, when subjected to the proof,
We wish that the coin could stand on its edge,
But see that it cannot, which is knowledge.
[i]So lets define the world and human existence
On a couple hundred years of material witness,
Or burn the measuring eye to the stake!
After all, our freedom’s what it seeks to forsake![/i]
Evolution didn’t work by chance for us to live,
For natural selection is the scientific alternative
To Intelligent Design from something outside;
The coin of determination has no other side.
[i]The secret is simply that a secret does exist
And no amount of data can take away this,
But this doesn’t mean a ghost in the machinery;
Perhaps the heart isn’t just a pump, the liver a refinery.[/i]
We often forget the secret, willingly,
In order to live life excitingly,
Which it still would be, either way,
As we’re still part of the play, anyway.
[i]But of course there is a past of ‘whethers’
Through which we've been weathered;
Surely we are moved as dust from gust to gust,
But is two-twice-two as four always a must?[/i]
Math, too, is a must, and we try, as ever,
To predict a week ahead the weather,
Yet the data are to much to work with,
But indetermination measures not random’s width.
[i]Is not an unfree will a blatant contradiction
Developed from the an ‘enlightened conviction’?
If I’ve made a choice then I have willed it,
And if it’s been willed then freedom’s fulfilled it.[/i]
This is what I mean, that the will willed one’s self,
Which is that one does not will the will itself.
The neurons vote, based on who one is;
No one else is there to answer the quiz.
[i]And of course it’s in and of a misguided pit
To say that from the past we've distilled it.
Is not the idea of complete self-autonomy a ruse
Born from the illusion of the existentialist blues?[/i]
We distill what comes into us, too,
For it has to become part of us, new,
For mirror neurons act it out, while we are still,
Invading our sanctum and altering the will.
[i]But of course, this is to be much expected
From a culture that lacks all mythical perspective.
‘Nonsense’ we call it, a virtue of not thinking,
From which we have long since been departing,
So now will behold in all its transparency
Beyond childish ideals of essence and archaic fantasy.[/i]
That’s close, but it’s thinking that has grown,
By science and logic informed from reason sown,
In place of feeling, sensation, wishes, and the pleas
To have the universe be what it ought to be.
[i]Do not distort with a desire for meaning.
Oh, the babe, lets leave the child a’weening,
But I ask of you: have you not tried in-betweening?[/i]
There are two ways of living, at times merging,
One of just state of being, of its only showing,
And one of the being plus the under-knowing,
Though when with wife, we dwell not on hormoning.
[i]And in that same breath we say all is forgiven;
Why hold humans responsible, leading to derision?
Of course an eye for an eye was an unjust decision
Well, we have a system that draws a line between
A crime of passion and a thought-out, sought-for infliction.[/i]
“The universe made me do it,” says the accused,
And the Judge replies, “Well, this does excuse,
But I still have to sentence you to the pen,
Until the universe can’t make you do it again,”
[i]Why must it be a question of absolute freedom
As complete randomness over an unbending system
That structures everything that ever was, is, and will be,
Right down to the elementary structures of incomprehensibility.[/i]
What is set forth in the beginning
Is ever of itself continuing,
Restrained by time, yes, but unfolding,
For there is nothing else inputting.
[i]I may understand why this has to be;
I have felt the rapture of black and white toxicity,
But why subjugate all possibility for novelty?[/i]
It will still be novel, even such as a new parking lot,
For the dopamine neurotransmitters will stir the pot.
New is still new, on the grand tour through life,
But do some predicting, to then avoid some strife.
[i]Can such a thought hope to cast a wrench into these gears,
A tool so heavy that dissuades all of our fears?
Will all order and inertia be torn asunder?
Will we have giant ants wearing top hats over,
With all rationality considered a blunder?[/i]
The truth was not sought to drop a spanner into the works,
But turns out to grant more of compassion’s perks
For those afflicted with the inability for learning,
We eliminating great annoyances burning.
[i]Am I simply a delusional puddle here,
Perceiving just my liquid perimeter,
As I think to myself I can control
The very rain that expands my rule.
And the humidity that thins.
Should I condemn as that which sins?[/i]
There are no sins, but just destiny’s fate,
Which even includes one’s learnings of late.
We are whirl-pools, of the same oscillations,
Some lasting, but of the same instantiations.[/hide]
I might, I just might!
every 5 years you are a different person who would not aggree with the previous one
Fascinating! I was an atheist a decade ago, now I'm an agnostic, veering towards theism. I used to think religion was bullshit but now I feel that was my ignorance getting the better of me.
its half true
:ok: :smile:
Fortunately for us humans, Self-Determination is not the "opposite" of Determinism, but a "complement" (complete-ment). The output of a complex system is not the same as the input. The system re-arranges the incoming energy/information into novel forms and meanings. Most important of those novelties is a meaningful relationship to Self (observer). Meaning is not a natural "currency", it is a preter-natural evaluation. Nature is indifferent to me. But my personal meanings & beliefs are the "difference that makes a difference" (i.e. Information). :smile:
PS__Thanks for your challenging responses. They inspire new ways to view stale ideas.
Complement : 1 : something that makes whole or better
i.e. the je ne sais quoi (qualia) that makes a random collection into a functional integrated holistic system
Hmmm! Meant by whom to do what? :chin:
I wasn't familiar with the tech term "neuronal analysis". Can they interpret the neural patterns to reveal the subjective meanings being processed? Can they read subjective intentions from those tea leaves? If not, how would they know that neuronal changes can motivate the body to turn toward a specific goal, rather just moving indiscriminately hither thither and yon -- like an outboard motor with no one holding the tiller? :joke:
neuronal analysis :
Analyzing morphological changes of a nerve cell (i.e., neuron) is one of the key methods for understanding the behavior of neurons in response to various stimuli
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep17062
Note : I assume they measure physical inputs (stimuli) and outputs (behavioral response). Stimulus & response is Behaviorism --- suitable for understanding animal instincts. But Poets and non-scientists are typically more interested in the meaningful inputs (information) and purposeful outputs (intentions) of human minds. The "doing what it has to do" is just mechanics or instincts.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Who's afraid of being dominated by Determinism? Not me! Stacks of stones may imprison my bones, but Determinism will never un-free me.
If both sides of the coin are equal, each flip will be neutral. Hence, "no direction home", as noted by Bob Dylan. In order to make progress or to choose beauty, we need to influence the coin-flip in some way. Otherwise, it will just be a meaningless random pattern. Should we be more afraid of "being unfree" or of being meaningless? :cool:
WHICH PATTERN IS ORDERED AND MEANINGFUL???
https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/when-random-doesnt-look-random/
Not by "whom", but to do what they have to do as how they are. How would the will not follow the will? What other source would do the willing instead?
How could the A> human Will (the decider) not follow B> whose Will? The Accidental Impetus of Determinism? Or the downward directional causation of Energy/Enformy? Who or what was the Aboriginal Arbiter, or the Initial Impulsive Intender? Whatever that First Cause was, we infer that it had the Potential for Life & Mind & Willful behavior in its creatures. Could a cosmic explosion do all that with no deciding & directing Will of its own? Again, who is this Will you speak of? :chin: :wink:
The Salient Source :
[i]Who or What programmed
a schematic system
to emerge & evolve
from a sub-atomic speck
of potential probability
or embryonic egg
. . . . . . . . . .into a
constantly complexifying cosmos
that even fleet-footed fluorescence
can't cross in epochal eons?[/i]
___Guess Groking Gnomon
Yes, but not made from a Higher Will, for not even a composite can be First, much less the complexity of a Planner. There's no Big Guy named Will.
You sound confident that our "unbounded" universe is a cosmic accident. But logically, there must be a nameless Initial Event or First Cause with the extra-mundane Potential to cause a world to appear, as-if-by-magic from who-knows-where. And if there was no Plan or "Planner", how could the complexity of our self-observing world emerge from a random confluence of atoms? Randomness is patternless.
For example, a human egg is just a jelly-like lump of protoplasm. Left alone, it does nothing, and is soon recycled into pre-proto-stuff. Yet, when a wiggle-tail protozoan accidentally-on-purpose bumps into it, a "miracle" occurs : it comes to life. The sperm conveys nothing new to the egg, except Information. And that integrated genetic data becomes the blueprint (the plan or program) for a new living being. A holistic self-directed & self-motivated & self-aware organism born from the convergence of abstract Information with the compulsion to follow its inborn pattern of goals & guides.
So, what would you call the hypothetical "seed" that impregnated the hypothetical nanoscopic nucleus of Potential, to initiate a program of complexification that is still exploring new possibilities after 14 billion solar cycles? The cosmic impetus for such a flourishing program of evolution might warrant a name expressing the origin of a teleological future form. or an inevitable succession of events leading to some future finale. So, what more descriptive appellation could you find than the four letter English word : "Will"? :wink:
Will : [i]1. expressing the future tense.
2. expressing inevitable events.[/i]
The manifest complexity of many parts of the universe, especially living organisms and their byproducts, was formerly thought to be an expression of divine creativity, but is now widely believed to result from a general capacity of matter, implicit in known physical laws, to "self-organize" under certain conditions.
https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/94_Bennett.pdf
Note -- the matter, energy & laws are taken for granted, requiring no explanation, by pragmatic scientists. But impractical philosophers tend to push the envelope beyond conventional assumptions. Under what "conditions" do inert matter, and un-directed energy, learn to self-organize?
PS___Once a computer program is underway, it requires no further external input, but due to its internal logic & governing criteria (operating system), it proceeds to "self-organize" itself, under specified conditions, by combining old information in novel ways. In a sense, the program is like a living organism, using available energy & material (data) to construct the mathematical structure we call "Software". And the final output will be (future tense) the answer to a question proposed by the Programmer. Some questions can only be answered by doing the math. :nerd:
Like a vacuum fluctation ...
... at the planck scale ...
... a random fluctuation of the non-spatiotemporal (eternal) vacuum with a sufficiently minimal symmetry-breaking structure (re: Noether's theorem, etc) "inflates" [s]into[/s] a far-from-equilibrium (not-maximum complexity) cosmos. Complexity from simplicity (i.e. minimum complexity)? :point: Check out cellular automata (e.g. Conway's "Game of Life", Wolfram's "computational irreducibility", Deutsch's "constructor theory", etc). Still incomplete; but no woo-of-the-gaps needed, Gnomon. :eyes:
To say the universe is a fluke is kinda like saying one knows that one doesn't know how the universe came into existence.
In science, there is one thing, mass-energy, and it is conserved, unable to be created or destroyed; so, it just is, as the base existent that has to be, given no alternative, akin to the fields in motion of the quantum ‘vacuum’ due to the uncertainty principle that prohibits stillness. Quantum systems constantly fluctuate in their lowest energy state as described by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, even at absolute zero temperature. There is no such thing as a ‘true vacuum’.
There seems to be tendency in First Philosophy thinking to still ever posit some higher level from which the simplest obtains, albeit that the simplest can’t even be built, it having no parts.
Yet, still, meta-, super-, extra-, and hyperphysical realms are proposed, as if automatically they ought to be there. They haven’t showed up at all during the history of the universe: no shortcuts, no miracles, nothing non-physical.
So, still, for the average believer, that’s where the thinking ends, case closed, no further analysis. The Bible said so.
The more responsible believers, some even theologians, note the begging of the question that leads toward an infinite regress of ever having to explain something as having to come from a greater Something even though they’ve already cleverly declared non physical meta-stuff to be responsible, albeit unwarranted and unseen.
The first wrong step in direction was to deny that the simplest can give rise to the more and more complex, just as we see in our universe, but to think that the complex has to give rise to the simplest.
To try to salvage the wrong step, it then gets declared that the great Meta or Hyper is of infinite power so that the buck can stop there—and so they can now drop the template that says the lesser can only come from the Greater.
Speaking of "woo" in the breach, your reply reminds me of Apostle Paul's definition of Faith : "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". You expressed your faith in several things unseeable, which you "hope" will some day prove true : "vacuum fluctuation" ; "planck scale" ; "non-spatiotemporal (eternal) vacuum", or "virtual events". I can't confirm or deny such "woo-woo", because I have no experience of "oscillations of emptiness" ; "mathematical measurements of the infinitely small" ; " changes that are not in space or time" ; or "unreal events". I assume that the scientists, who propose such literal non-sense, know what they are talking about. but I have to take it on faith, plus a grain of doubt. So, my confidence is limited by moderate skepticism.
Regarding my own conjectures into the unknown and unknowable, they are not intended to be taken on faith as facts. But merely as possibilities for philosophical exploration. And they are no more woo-ish than the conjectures of scientists into the great beyond that lies in the infinity-eternity before the spatio-temporal Big Bang : e.g. Multiverses, Many Worlds, Parallel Realities, etc. Does your faith in such obscure opinions make you "less uncomfortable" with the religious implications of the mathematically proven creation event (discovered by astronomers, not astrologers) that scientists are still trying to disprove after a century of evasive tactics, such as miraculous instantaneous inflation? :joke: :cool:
Woo-woo is a slang term used to describe those who believe in phenomena that lacks substantiated evidence to prove the claim of the phenomena.
Note -- the noetic notions mentioned above are "the substance of things hoped for", because they are not evident to the human senses. They are knowable, in the abstract, only to arcane mathematicians. I accept their postulations provisionally, up to the edge of the abyss of ignorance (The Gap) beyond human experience. Past that jumping-off point only theoretical thinkers & philosophers dare to speculate. :nerd:
Spoken as a True Believer!
However, you seem to dis-respect my "scientific literacy" as a layman. Unless you have formal training in the sciences -- mine was limited to basic classes in each major field -- my comprehension of cutting edge science may be as good as yours -- except for the degree of faith in authorities.
Tu quoque works both ways . . . sir. Woo hoo! :joke:
The meaning of TU QUOQUE is a retort charging an adversary with being or doing what the adversary criticizes in others.
3.Miracle of Creation :
Notable Scientist’s opinions on BB theory
Fred “Big Bang” Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." (changed his tune)
https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Big-Bang-a-miracle-1
I have no problem with Conservation of that-which-exists. But since animated Mass-Energy is eventually embalmed as cold dead Entropy, I can't accept it as eternally existing, in any constructive sense. That single "substance" of reality may be conserved as it flips back & forth between Cause & Effect --- subsequent to the original Instantiation. But when & where did it do its phase changing prior to the point-of-beginning of space-time?
Presumably, in the mathematical Singularity there was no actual mass or energy, only statistical Potential. Once their flip-flopping has begun, there is one-more-thing necessary : the Laws that regulate when & how they change. Unregulated change would result in random chaos. So, "responsible believers" agree that Mass-Energy exists only in space-time, which is destined to end in Heat Death (max Entropy). Who or what was the Lawmaker or Potentiator?
responds to my criticism of the fringes of cutting-edge science as-if I reject the work of serious scientists for religious reasons. But, I have no religion. So, my criticism is merely Philosophical. And is focused on implicit assumptions rather than pragmatic utility. For example, I am dubious of feeble attempts to explain away the Creation Event, by postulating an infinite regression of Big Bangs (question begging??). Since they have no empirical evidence of anything beyond the bounds of our known universe, my layman's guess is as good as their expert shot-in-the-dark.
My typical response to the Complexity-from-Simplicity question is to define the Ultimate Singularity. Just as you are a singular Self composed of millions of interacting parts, the Whole of which our world is an active part is a Singularity : no parts, just Potential (Tendency not Actuality). So, I think space-time Mass-Energy is dependent on infinite-eternal Potential. Nothing comes from Nothing; but Everything comes from Potential. :smile:
Singularity : where the curvature of spacetime becomes infinite.
Coincidence vs Creation :
Physicists tend to take Matter & Energy for granted, without questioning their origins, or their philosophical meaning. Matter is merely the furniture of Nature. Energy is the builder of natural things. But as Materialists, they have a problem with the Laws of Nature, since laws are normally found only in human Culture. Laws are aspects of human thought & behavior, as exemplified in Government and Religion.
In my opinion, free will isn't a popular delusion, its a useful lie. It just renders the world so much more tangible, way easier to work with.
Doesn't matter how many times you say "I don't have will." In your brain, eventually your going to stand up and make yourself a sandwich. That is to say, that not much changes whether we have free will or not.
Yes, the simplest.
I understand quantum uncertainty is an aspect of nature i.e. there are no hidden variables that, if found, will render the quantum world (as) deterministic (as the the macro-world).
Are you saying the origins of physical world (the Big Bang) was a quantum phenomenon? I think you are. If so, no beef.
:up:
Those who call FreeWill an illusion or delusion, were encouraged by the Libet experiment, showing that the brain is prepared to act before the mind is even aware of choosing to act. But even Libet didn't interpret that as evidence of no Choice. It's true that we typically become aware of what the body is doing, only after the act is underway. So our consciousness of the act is an afterthought. But there is also a momentary gap between the brain's "action potential" and the body's movement. (see "time delay" below)
That's where the "free won't" comes in, giving us an opportunity to veto the action. That notion came from Michael Shermer, editor of SKEPTIC magazine. But FreeWill is more than just a negation. Your ability to imagine and anticipate the future allows you to program your brain to act quickly and appropriately, without waiting for your mind to become aware of what the body is doing.
A vivid example of that train-the-brain notion is found in sports events. Athletes practice, practice, practice, and get "coached-up" to be aware of what they did right and wrong. So, in the game they don't have to think before doing. Steph Curry, weaving & pinwheeling toward the basket, has given his brain a goal, then allows his voluntary neural control system to "go get it". Consequently, even though he is moving like a blur, and flying off-balance through the air, he makes the basket. As the old TV ad said of Michael Jordan, don't think, "just do it". But even the GOAT couldn't make such magic, without practice, to communicate your will to the brain.
Another way to train the brain, is in the process we call "building character". We learn from our mistakes, by becoming aware of what we did wrong. That ethical awareness tells the brain your values, which become subconscious motives for future behavior. So, if you choose to believe that you are a Free Moral Agent, you now have some backup. FreeWill is neither a "lie", nor a delusion, it's what makes humans unique among animals : the ability to change the future, and even to alter the course of evolutionary destiny with what we call Culture ; the result of collective free choices. :smile:
"The time delay gives us the opportunity to change a thought, to cancel an action --- this gives us, in effect, free won't."
Peter Carter, MD; The Single Simple Question
It's true, that I'm merely an interested layman, not a practicing scientist. But, what you interpret as "lack of scientific literacy" may be simply my tendency to go beyond Reductive dogma to see the Holistic implications of Quantum and Information theories. For example, Einstein was not an empirical technician doing lab experiments. Instead, he was a theoretical philosopher, looking at the big picture, while others were pinning down the details. His radical notion of Relativity forced scientists to view the world from a new perspective. :nerd:
PS___No, I'm not claiming to be the next Einstein. Other scientists & philosophers are already paving the path to a new information-theoretic worldview. Maybe, your own "literacy" is lacking in that area. :smile:
" Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is famous for predicting some really bizarre realities ... he began to consider a notion that was simple but radical."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/einstein-relativity-thought-experiment-train-lightning-genius
Libet wha-
Quoting Gnomon
What's a choice?
Quoting Gnomon
You cherry-pick which theoretical results are scientific and which theoretical results are "woo" depending on whether or not they agree with your own ad hoc, quixotic speculations. If you "can't deny" the most precisely well tested theoretical results in the natural sciences to date – no one has or can – then, with all due respect, calling them "woo" (or (my) accepting them as "faith") proves your (willful) ignorance. The physical "facts" are not in dispute (e.g. QM), Gnomon, only ontological / epistemological "interpretations" of them are debatable (e.g. Copenhagen, local hidden variables, MWI, LQG, RQM, etc). Take issue with , I welcome it, but not the textbook stuff, man. My undergraduate engineering and physics studies and graduate work in cognitive science (psychology) barely make me scientifically literate enough to recognize where physical facts end and metaphysical speculations (i.e. interpretations of physical facts) begin – and to recognize those who conspicuously do not. :sparkle:
"us" is still the subconscious brain will analysis going on just like always.
The quantum vacuum might even be negatively curved, thereby offering, when matter is confined to three spatial dimensions, a negatively curved spatially 4d structure, a Planck-sized wormhole between two extended 4d structures. From this wormhole, kept stable by the nature of the quantum vacuum, the virtual fields could be pulled into real existence. Quantum bubbles pulled into reality. inflation would be solved.
Well, we know that the universe grew very large in a hurry, which could already be called an 'inflation' as a normal word and that there is a humongous, even extravagant amount of material, like 2x10**76 or so particles, indicating that material is very easy to come by. The 2x part is to include antimatter, and the 10**76 part began as 10**85 because there are now ten billion photons for every proton and so there were 10**9 or so annihilations of matter and antimatter early on.
The proposed inflation would have driven the virtual particles and their anti-particles faster than they could recombine and annihilate. We still need a lot of positive kinetic energy to have come forth and gravity can supply it because its negative potential energy can grow more negative without bound. This doesn't violate the law of energy conservation because the net energy amount remains constant, as zero or near zero.
The quantum fields are lightweights and and probably don't have enough energy, although they got predicted to have energy that was 121 orders of magnitude too large, which was the most embarrassing notion in science, perhaps because they should have instead looked to gravity for the energy.
If we find a lot of gravity waves way back that have a lot of b-mode polarization then we can better hone in on what kind of inflation there was. Inflation also flattens the universe, which makes it work out better than it having curvature. I don't know if the new telescope does any of that WMAP kind of stuff.
(There's no 'true vacuum' because all is field.)
"Many people believe that evidence for a lack of free will was found when, in the 1980s, scientist Benjamin Libet conducted experiments that seemed to show that the brain “registers” the decision to make movements before a person consciously decides to move."
How a Flawed Experiment “Proved” That Free Will Doesn’t Exist
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/
Quoting john27
You can Google Libet's experimental setup to see how he defined a "choice". But your personal definition may vary. Basically, humans try to change the future by choosing between optional paths into the time-that-has-not-yet-come. But the no-free-will theory says that what you perceive as a choice is actually predestined by your genes and your situation in the world. Libet merely added the notion that your subconscious Brain makes choices automatically, but your conscious Mind takes credit for that fateful selection. If so, your ability to choose between Good & Evil is a delusion. As in Calvinism, you were pre-destined for Heaven or Hell from the very beginning. And there's nothing you can do to change your Fate. :gasp:
" According to Daniel Wegner, for instance, “The experience of willing an act arises from interpreting one’s thought as the cause of the act.” In other words, our sense of making choices or decisions is just an awareness of what the brain has already decided for us".
I am not a student of any particular branch of Science. So, I don't take issue with the textbooks. I leave that up to professional teachers and book editors. Science textbooks must be constantly updated, as the older doctrines are replaced by new understandings. The textbooks that you take as gospel truth, may already be obsolete, since scientific understanding is evolving at a rapid pace.
Surely, you are aware that Quantum Theory and Information Theory have completely flipped the script from only a century ago. Besides, the issues we are discussing in this thread are not scientific in nature, but philosophical. It's not about absolute "facts", but personal opinions about those facts. You take issue with my interpretation of the evidence, and I take issue with your dogmatic attitude. But hey, if we didn't have differing opinions, this forum would have no reason for being. :joke:
In many sciences, the textbooks are often outdated by the time they are printed,
https://thejetstreamjournal.com/24904/news/a-textbook-case-of-outdated-information/
Yes, the one absolute truth in science is there are no absolute truths in science.
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-absolute-truths-in-science
So, the conscious Mind has no role in human behavior? Materialists seem to believe that awareness of what we are doing is superfluous. Single cell organisms seem to go about their business without any self-awareness : merely action & reaction. Are you no more sentient than an amoeba?
Philosophers have proposed that human consciousness allows us to produce holistic concepts -- generalities, universals, categories -- that don't exist in the physical world. We can't see a category in the real world, but we can conceive it in our imaginary ideal world of the Mind.
Sure, the physical brain is still the mechanism that converts physical sensations into mental constructs, but the Mind/Brain system, as a whole, is what gives humanity a leg-up on the competition from less integrated organisms. The Mind is not a physical thing, it's the holistic function of a hunk of meat. :smile:
A Role For Consciousness :
"Consciousness enables an organism to respond to circumstances grasped as wholes, . . ."
https://philosophynow.org/issues/65/A_Role_For_Consciousness
What is a Function?
A function relates an input to an output. ... It is like a machine that has an input and an output. And the output is related somehow to the input.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/sets/function.html
Note -- the function is not the machine, but what it does, the processed output. For a brain, the output is not a physical substance, but a menta-physical concept, an idea, an ideal.
PS___Holism is the difference between a semantic Forest and a bunch of trees. The concept is not the referent. The subjective symbol is not the objective object.
It's probably a focus short cut that other subconscious areas can use for reference to what's going on.
Yes, the function of the Mind is to focus the body/brain onto aspects of the world that are relevant and important to the Self. What we know as "The Self", with its selfish Will, is not a separate thing from the body. Instead, it is a mental image of the integrated (Holistic) functioning of all parts of the body, including brain matter and the circulatory system. However, since most of us have difficulty imagining abstract concepts, we tend to create symbolic metaphors to represent the notion of "Self". And one way to imagine the invisible Menta-Physical notion of Self, is as a ghostly outline of the Physical body. Unfortunately, some people tend to reify that mental image as an immaterial Spirit-form running around outside the material Body-form. Of course, reified metaphors are OK for the dramatic purposes of Poetry, but not for the pragmatic probes of Science.
Speaking of "focus', I'd like to clarify what I mean by "Holism". 180 proof seems to think it means "anti-science" and "New Age/Eastern-religion", or "primitive mumbo-jumbo". But it's actually a philosophical focus on Whole Systems instead of Individual Parts. In fact, there is whole new field of Western Science called "Systems Theory", based on a holistic approach to complexity. As a non-empirical theoretical wide-angle focus, the Synthetic Systems perspective is contrasted to the analytical Reductionist approach. It doesn't deny the usefulness of dissection into constituent elements. It merely puts those puzzle pieces back together again to discover how the parts work together to generate a Function that the parts are not capable of individually. Synthetic Theorizing is the opposite side of the same coin as Analytical Reasoning.
Since you are open-minded about less familiar aspects of Science and Philosophy, I think you might enjoy reading the book -- Holism and Evolution -- that preceded the religious philosophy of New Ageism, and inspired 20th century scientists to broaden the scope of their microscopes to include the invisible features of Integrated Systems. In my own amateur philosophizing, I don't pretend to be doing reductive science, but merely continuing the ancient philosophical tradition begun by Aristotle in his second volume of Phusis (Nature), commonly called "Metaphysics". Not by dissecting Matter, but by looking into how the Mind categorizes Darwin's "entangled bank" of Nature into synthetic functional Concepts, such as "Species" and "Selves". :smile:
Synthesis : 1a : the composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole.
Holism and Evolution :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism_and_Evolution
General Systems Theory :
An attempt to formulate common laws that apply to virtually every scientific field, this conceptual approach has had a profound impact on such widely diverse disciplines as biology, economics, psychology, and demography.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bertalanffy+general+systems+theory
Holism and FreeWill :
So, for clarity, I will sometimes refer to my personal paradigm of Science as "Systems Theory", in hopes of losing the mystical baggage.
Of course, the subconscious also determines what gets into consciousness and then structures it from its parts but then it becomes a unified whole and is no longer reducible and it is this whole of qualia that perhaps then more easily becomes a reference focus for the subconscious if qualia are the highest point of the brain's own invented symbolic language.
That's an interesting notion. The properties that we attribute to physical phenomena are abstractions from our sensory sensations. And those conceptions from perceptions are what we call mental "symbols" representing reality. I'll have to give that equation more thought. Those qualitative symbols may also be what Donald Hoffman calls "icons" that we "interface" with, as-if they were real. :smile:
The Case Against Reality -- Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes
___Donald Hoffman, Cognitive Psychologist
Note -- the forum management has asked me to stop linking to my own blog for further information on the thread topic. and extended definitions of my terminology. But, if you are interested in my information-based review of this book, you can PM me for a private link. It's a non-commercial vanity blog under an anonymous pen name, so the ideas are free, and you won't be censured if you disagree.
Plus, in our imagination we see very dim qualia that have about 90% transparency, and full qualia in our dreams.
Wow! Do you see fully fleshed-out Qualia in your dreams? Unfortunately, mine are still only semi-opaque. The reds in my dreams are still grayish, and the redness is only implicit. :meh:
Yes, full, although now and then there are some slight mistakes, and my car never remains where I parked it.
Does your "blue spot" allow you to focus on Qualia, but then forget where you parked your car?
I visited a niece for Christmas, and she gets very stressed during holidays, presumably because she makes elaborate & creative plans, then gets distracted by several other priorities requiring attention. If you try to talk to her while she's putting-out several fires at the same time, she'll say "I can't think about that now".
When I was younger, I had similar problems with distractions that knocked me off-course from my own extensive to-do-list. She hasn't been clinically diagnosed as ADHD, but she takes Adderall, to help her focus on one-thing-at-a-time, instead of everything-all-at-once. I suspect that Ritalin and Adderall might have some effect on the "blue spot" in the brain. But, it's not enough. Do you have other options for taming scatter-brain, and focusing awareness on pragmatic Quanta, instead of idealistic Qualia? :cool:
It's that I know where I parked my dream car but it isn't there any more. In last night's dream, I went back to where I parked my motorcycle but there was a giant electric fan in its place. Also, sometimes the neighbor hood streets and houses turn into a place I never been to; such creativity in the subconscious to model all that, making it as I pass through!
Train to be a ninja to gain focus.
I just can't leave the ghost of Free Will in peace. Since this is one of the most polarized topics on the forum, I find it one of the most interesting as a philosophical exercise.
In one of the posts above, I mentioned the book that I was currently reading : The Single Simple Question that Challenges All Convictions. I eventually finished reading the book. Then I started a BothAnd Blog post to review it from my personal perspective, which seems similar to the author's. His father was a preacher, and the son of a preacherman. He doesn't specify the particular brand of Christianity he was indoctrinated in. But it probably was not very different from my own. And, like me, he bears no animosity to those who were not dissuaded by doubts.
Raised as a back-to-the-Bible fundamentalist Christian, I took moral freedom for granted. But later I began to ask myself some of the same questions Carter dealt with in the book. Contrary to the title, his layman's philosophical investigation was not limited to a single question. But the central issue for him was Freedom versus Determinism. The cover says : "Connecting the Conundrums of God and Immortality, Free Will, the Strange Reality of Quantum Physics, and Finding Purpose in Existence." So, I merely followed his trail of breadcrumbs through the maze of Metaphysics and Physics.
The book review originally had the same name as this thread : FreeWill and other Popular Delusions. But I decided to add "Unscripted" to qualify FreeWill, in view of my takeaway from the project.The review is only three pages, but the end notes and afterthoughts go on for several more pages. If that's too much to read, you can just look at the pictures. :smile:
PS___ Anyone who is sincerely interested in this topic can message me for a link to the book review.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/messages/inbox/gnomon
https://www.amazon.com/Single-Simple-Question-Challenges-Convictions/dp/1695354788
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
I too was indoctrinated with the "Free Will Theodicy" (Spinoza was probably excommunicated for calling it "superstition") and had rejected the doctrine even before I'd graduated from high school (or read Spinoza et al) on the grounds of human "will" being "created" too weak for each of us to freely choose in every circumstance to overcome "temptation" (e.g. "Adam & Eve" in fuckin' paradise), or later as the notorious Hitchslap goes "we are made sick but commanded to be well." A bait-n-switch scam of perennial priestcraft (Nietzsche). Deus vult, not "free will", is the source of "evil"; if the bible is to be "believed", a life of suffering and afterlife of eternal torture for each and every one of us (unworthy, wretched, "original" sinners!) follows inexorably from "His Plan". Anyway, actions, not wills, are free (Schop, Witty, Dewey, Arendt, Dennett et al).
1. Positive free will: Compliance with one's will.
2. Negative free will: Defiance of one's wills (free won't).
Our own experiences inform us that we have more positive free will (easy) will than negative free will (tough).
I believe that we all live and act as if we have free will. So to deny free will is a self-deceptive attempt at hypocrisy, to force oneself to belief something which is contrary to what is demonstrated by one's actions.
But the interesting thing is that once we let go of this attempt at hypocrisy, and accept the reality of the freedom of the will, it forces a metaphysical separation from the commonly accepted worldview which supports modern scientism. There is an implicit incompatibility between the concept of free will, and the idea that the entirety of reality is determined by fundamental laws, the laws of nature.
When we give metaphysical priority to our lived experience, that we think, act, and live as if we have free will, and recognize that this is clear evidence of the reality of something which transcends the laws of nature, we develop a completely different perspective of the laws of nature, and the reality of time itself. This is a perspective which displays the basic incompatibility between itself and what is commonly accepted as 'the reality of time' in the discipline of physics, casting doubt on the conception of "space-time". So we can now understand that the laws of nature are not necessary. This is the perspective developed by physicist Lee Smolin in his book "Time Reborn".
I may not have made it clear in the post above, that the author of the book wanted to prove that FreeWill is believable, but after all his reasoning, concluded that humans are slaves to Determinism.
As a young adult, I went through a similar self-analysis of my own "theodicy", and came to basically the same conclusion. But, in my later years, the Enformationism worldview (science-based but information-centric), led me to look at the "facts" from a different perspective. So, my current "theodicy" is a BothAnd complementary compromise between Fatalism and Optimism. I think humanity has just enough freedom & force to nudge the flood of evolution into a rivulet on a course that is more suitable for human purposes. That new direction probably won't take us to heaven, but it may make the journey more enjoyable and purposeful. :smile:
Yes. I suspect that the feeling of Free Will is easier to justify in the modern era of Democracy and Technology, than it was back when the average human seemed to be a pawn at the mercy of the powerful-&-willful men & gods & natural forces. My own half & half category is a sort of compromise between religious Positivism and scientific Negativism on the topic. Like most things in the imperfect real world, Freedom is relative. :smile:
Yes. But ironically, some posters on this forum prefer to give "priority" to the reductive specific laws of Physics, and to diminish the importance of holistic general principles of Meta-Physics. In their view, nothing transcends the absolute laws of Lordly Nature, as revealed by the prophets of Physics. But, Einstein stuck a pin in the Classical Science bubble, by revealing that the world is Relative and Random. It's only "natural" selection that gives evolution a positive direction, by enforcing certain standards of fitness for progress.
Unfortunately, as humanity gains more independence -- via cultural selection -- over the nature gods, our feeling of freedom from Fatalism makes some of us cocky. As-if we can ignore or manipulate universal natural laws with our little local levers of technology. That hubristic arrogation of power is what gets the willful & prideful in over their heads. Yet, a more modest attitude may allow us to get some of what we want, without running roughshod over everybody else. That doesn't give us transcendence over nature, but does permit humans to collaborate with Nature. :smile:
We’ll have to pick at some of the clues to see what might come out of them although not seeing anything about free will or not at the outset.
Then one more foray into the counter-intuitive alternative reality of Quantum theory, found a tiny glimmer of freedom in the non-local features of Entanglement.9 He hoped the “spooky action at a distance” might break the chain of causation, because “entangled particles transcend space & time”. Yet, he still couldn’t see how ghostly particles of matter could add-up to human freedom from the constraints of causation.
That entangled particles correlate non-locally over great distances means that objects don’t have to be near each other to have relation, that the relational information is more primary than distance, even perhaps that two particles are as to us bit two looks of the same system in some higher dimensional realm. So, something holistic would be going on, the same system being a whole.
(Or it is that the relation is as one long ‘rod’ of connected quantum fields such that when we see one end rotating clockwise face on then the other end has to be seen rotating counter-clockwise face on.)
Big Bang Cosmology indicates that many particles may be entangled with some others, having have been all together at the start although probably not everything is entangled with everything.
What would this say about its ‘will’ before and after the Bang and how would that work?
Probably too soon to say, so we’ll have to pick at other clues.
…
The Eternal Basis (Potential Enform Action), being the Mandatory Causeless, cannot have any input and so this may indicate that its bedrock is randomness, but, nevertheless, it is all there at once and so it could also somehow be the potential of all possible paths of action at once in a superposition—a Whole.
What would tip it to form a universe the way it did, with elementary matter and anti-matter having asymmetry?
Perhaps too soon to answer.
Respectfully, I feel my absurdist prognosis is more physically grounded ...
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
:fire: :flower:
As an amateur philosopher, I don't concern myself with reductive physical particles, but with the holistic meta-physical -- or "sub-physical" if you prefer Sean Carroll's sub-quantum category -- synergy that entangles grains of sand into solid concrete. Concrete has an inter-active matrix that binds weak loose parts into strong cohesive wholes.
The whole point of Holism is that multiple particles are entangled into a unitary system that has properties above & beyond those of its elements. So, if you are looking at the clues in isolation, you'll never see any emergent phenomena, such as Life or Mind or Free Will. I suspect his allegiance to reductive methods may have blinded Peter Carter to the very evidence he was seeking. :smile:
PS___In detective movies, the gumshoe follows the clues, and tells the DA, "I know he's guilty, but I can't prove it". Observation finds the clues, but intuition binds them into a verdict.
Holism ; Holon :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses novel properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part — A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent parts that can be natural or human-made. Every system is bounded by space and time, influenced by its environment, defined by its structure and purpose, and expressed through its functioning. A system may be more than the sum of its parts if it expresses synergy or emergent behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory
MOTTO OF HOLISM
Respectfully : "To each his own". :wink:
An old physically-grounded joke says that "Opinons are like *ssholes . . . everybody has one, and they stink". :joke:
Absurdism : the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.
Yeah, these litany of shallow definitions you lean so heavily upon in your posts are just lazy crutches crippling your intellectual credibility. :eyes:
Boy! Your Nihilist & Determinist attitude has really made you sour and cynical. :naughty:
However, if your philosophical worldview is actually Absurdist or Existentialist -- as defined below -- then there may be some hope for you yet. Keep your narrow mind open, at least a crack. :smile:
Absurdism vs Nihilism :
Nihilists, specifically passive nihilists, believe that there's no intrinsic meaning in life and “it is futile to seek or to affirm meaning where none can be found”. ... Absurdists, on the other hand, hesitantly allow the possibility for some meaning or value in life.
https://thinkingdeeply.medium.com/absurdism-vs-nihilism-explanations-and-differences-of-both-philosophies-cf571efe75e9
Determinism vs Existentialism :
In short, determinism stands against the notion of human responsibility and accountability, arguing instead that human beings do not will their own choices. On the contrary, existentialists suggest that accountability is essential to basic human functioning.
https://www.yoair.com/blog/which-side-of-philosophy-do-you-reside-on-determinism-vs-existentialism/
Note -- accountability requires some freedom of choice
“Those of us who want to believe that human beings have free will must find sufficient evidence that our minds are something more than can ever be attributed to physical causes.”
___Peter Carter, The Single Simple Question
Carter makes it clear that, although he has rationally concluded that causal determinism prohibits human freedom, emotionally he cannot accept that his beautiful world is inherently meaningless, that his loved ones are automatons, or that life itself is a farce. So, he holds out hope that his calculations are wrong.
This pathetic hope-against-all-hope is one of the "absurd human passions" that Hume referred to as inappropriate for a perfect deity. Carter must be aware that neither the world, nor its reasoning creatures, are perfect. Yet, his working definition of "FreeWill" seems to require a perfect & omniscient being. Hence, his project -- of proving that Determinism is not absolute -- is bound to fail. However, if he could accept a less-than-perfect definition of freedom, his desire for a world in which Reason is not ridiculous might prove to be reasonable. :smile:
Freedom within Determinism :
[i]“Determinism is a long chain of cause & effect, with no missing links.
Freewill is when one of those links is smart enough to absorb a cause and modify it before passing it along. In other words, a self-conscious link is a causal agent---a transformer, not just a dumb transmitter. And each intentional causation changes the course of deterministic history to some small degree.”[/i]
___Yehya
BothAnd Blog, post 48
A real example strong emergence is needed, if there is one. The liquidity is because the tiny hydrogen atoms roll around and also roam between (as ions) the much larger oxygen atoms.
'Free won't' is just the usual subconscious neural 'voting' that comes from another part of the brain will than did the initial proposal.
Bingo. I've spent days in another thread providing a LITANY of scientific studies that show there is no evidenc ethat suggests this isn't the case. The body, consciousness, and will are all the same thing: a projection of the structures of the brain properly working in symphony; this is the Self.
The rest of what you remark upon is a bunch of Cartesian, Skinnerian , Kantian garbage... Mystic explanations for clearly natural phenomena. Great work.
Free won't is the result of the brain categorizing domains of avoidance, building coherent value structures within those cognitive domains, and protecting their place in that domain through reinforced mechanisms of valuation as outlined in neuroeconomics. Free will IS free won't. The Will is the full expression of the brain and the thoughts and behavior that emerge, or do not emerge from it.
OK 'God' is not, but the Eternal Basis may have a way of coming up with something workable although not ideal, which we have to figure out, which may help out with the 'free' quandary of free will.
Would a non determined spontaneous will choice count as free?
See here: https://nautil.us/is-the-universe-open_ended-9803/
Well said.
OK. I'll admit that "wetness" is a qualia, not a quanta. But "liquidity" is a measurable physical difference (e.g. viscosity) between gas, solid & liquid forms of H2O. Maybe that's why Fish don't know they are wet : their scientists haven't studied their environment philosophically in terms of Qualia. :joke:
Emergence: A unifying theme for 21st century science :
"Examples of emergent behavior are everywhere around us, from birds flocking, fireflies synchronizing, ants colonizing, fish schooling, individuals [i]self-organizing into neighborhoods in cities – all with no leaders or central control – to the Big Bang, the formation of galaxies and stars and planets, . . ."[/i]
https://medium.com/sfi-30-foundations-frontiers/emergence-a-unifying-theme-for-21st-century-science-4324ac0f951e
Note 1 -- this article is from the Santa Fe Institute for Complexity Science : dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of "complex adaptive systems", including physical, computational, biological, and social systems. This is where I get a lot of my information about cutting edge science, that might not be common knowledge.
Note 2 -- In my understanding, Consciousness is an emergent quality of the complex adaptive system we call the "Brain". You can't measure it physically, but you infer it rationally. Some scientists tried to measure Einstein's brain to see what made him so smart. But, that was futile, like trying to measure the weight of a Soul.
Thanks. But you might not agree with some of my Poetic & Philosophical speculations on controversial topics such as Consciousness & Free Will. :smile:
Yes. That's what I referred to in the blog review as "Un-scripted". The analogy is to actors improvising their character's lines & gestures within the constraints of the director's general plot. I view that as an example of Freedom within Determinism. Nature sets the stage and establishes a general direction for evolution, but intelligent Actors (free agents) are able to do their own character development. As in life, the result is often absurd & comedic, due to the lack of pre-determined structure. :smile:
BTW, in your videos, are any of your characters, spouting sagely aphorisms, free to create their own dialog? Or are you a tyrannical deterministic creator? :joke:
“The mind is a kind of theatre . . .” ___David Hume
Unlike stage actors, with a script, freewill agents are ad-libbing their roles, by reacting to the changing scenario. The playwright merely places characters in a situation, then allows them to improvise and extemporize, based on each character’s individual traits. We learn bits about the other characters, and about the plot, by inter-acting. The playwright has left us free to create a unique role for ourselves.
BothAnd Blog, post 122
Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. Wikipedia
Yes, but that other "part" of the brain is not a physical Location ; it's the holistic governing Function we call the "Conscience" or the "Super-Ego". It's function is not to control body parts, but to guide the whole system of parts known as the "Self" or "the captain of my soul". And its commands are the only "votes" that we are consciously aware of. So the subconscious crew has no choice but to say "aye, aye sir". :halo:
I assume that "this" refers to the poetic & religious notions of human autonomy & moral agency that are rejected as wishful thinking by some philosophical & scientific thinkers. But, their reductionist policy regarding Nature-studies tends to exclude such holistic phenomena as the feeling of personal freedom. They don't find such evidence, because they are not looking for it. So, I don't know where you found a "litany of scientific studies" in favor of freedom from determinism.
However, the book that inspired this revival of the FreeWill thread, does present a plethora of scientific evidence against human autonomy. Since their minds are already made-up though, few posters here have read the referenced book, or even the book review on my blog. But there is one side-note in the review that links to an article by Scientific American magazine blogger John Horgan : Free Will is Real. There, he interprets the scientific evidence, if not proving moral freedom, at least not proving that causal immunity is impossible.
So, it's usually left up to theoretical philosophers to prove by argumentation, not evidence, that humans have evolved some independence from Deterministic natural laws. In the article, Horgan confesses that "I can live without God, but I need free will. Without free will life makes no sense, it lacks meaning. So I’m always on the lookout for strong, clear arguments for free will." That's why he interviewed a philosopher who has made a study of scientific evidence, and concluded that "Free Will is Real". Which is the title of his book linked below. :smile:
Free Will Is Real :
Philosopher Christian List argues against reductionism and determinism in accounts of the mind
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/free-will-is-real/
Why Free Will Is Real :
List makes the case that free will is real by responding to the three key objections typically proposed in the philosophical literature through the central insight that free will should be considered a ‘higher-level’ psychological phenomenon.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2020/04/03/long-read-review-why-free-will-is-real-by-christian-list/
How about a stochastic universe? Then both randomness and determinism can exist.
Consider a case with two, and only two, possible outcomes. Randomness occurs when the probabilities of the outcomes are equal (50% each). Determinism occurs when the probability of one of the outcomes is 100%. A stochastic universe allows for these and anything in between.
It's like, either you can publish absolutely anything whatever without let or hindrance, on the one hand, or everything you publish is subject to dictatorial censorship on the other - whereas the reality is neither of these extremes.
Come to think of it, there's a paradox contained in the notion of free will: To be able to do what one wants, determinism is a sine qua non; in the same sentence, one wants determinism to be false.
[i]I argue that agency, choice, and control are emergent, higher-level phenomena,[/I]
Hope so!
I just moved my coffee so I can't knock it over.
Yes. Several philosophers, over the ages, have concluded that, in order for anything temporal & temporary to exist, something stable & eternal must exist unconditionally. Ironically, for the Greeks, the notion of conditional space-time came long before we obtained evidence that even the physical universe had a beginning, and will eventually fade away into non-being. For example, Heraclitus ("panta rhei") referred to this ultimate perfection as the "'Absolute' -- the all-inclusive whole or unity that underlies everything -- exists in the unity of opposites, first as a 'Being", and secondly as a constant 'Becoming'" (Philosophy Now, Dec - Jan). Like Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus didn't refer to this "eternal" essence as a humanoid god, but as an abstract principle (law of laws) of existence.
In my own Enformationism thesis, I came to the same conclusion, but from a different direction. The weird sciences of Quantum & Information, were begging for an Absolute Ground to make sense of the counter-intuitive aspects of "the most successful theory ever formulated". So, borrowing from those ancient intuitions, I began to refer to my "Ground of all Being", with the traditional terms : BEING, LOGOS, and Universal Substance. However, in deference to the most common tradition, I also added the ambiguous label "G*D", to more completely cover the multi-faceted role of what the Information-based thesis proposed : "the Enformer", or "the Programmer". I even equate the "Absolute" with Eastern notions of impersonal "Brahma", and abstract "Tao". Like Infinity & Zero, these absolutes encompass every possibility. So, a simple non-theological description might be just plain "ALL". And a worldview based on that integrated & unified principle is known as Holism.
Heraclitus, also anticipated the Eastern notion of Yin-Yang in his concept of "unity of opposites". This is a way of reconciling all dichotomies by merging antithetical polar opposites into a synthesis of Unity (the One). For example, Hegel, lecturing on Heraclitus explained his notion of Unified Identity : "Subjectivity is the opposite of Objectivity, and since each is the 'other' of the 'other". He went on to assert that "thought itself is the true Being". And in the 21st century, we could substitute shape-shifting "Enformation" (energy / matter + life / mind) as a modern version of ancient Logos and Tao. Like abstract Energy, we don't know what BEING is, only what it does : cause beings & things to exist, and to desist.
Since "Absolute BEING" encompasses all possibilities, including Positive & Negative, Freedom & Determinism, the Yin-Yang notion of Freedom within Determinism could suggest a solution to the "free quandary" in a cause & effect world. Randomness explores all possibilities, but Selection chooses what becomes Actual. :nerd:
UNITY OF OPPOSITES INCLUDES
FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM
True as that may be, you are in fact correct here. At least according to modern cognitive neuroscience.
Smart move! Some advocates of Panpsychism imagine that all elements of reality are conscious agents. But my interpretation of "Universal Information" (ratios ; relationships) could be called "Evolutionary Panpsychism". In that case, "psyche -" refers to the mind-stuff (Logic : Memes) we now know as "Information" (meaning-to-Self & power-to-inform non-self), not as wandering souls. This interpretation makes Reincarnation and Karma unlikely, but useful as what-if metaphorical models to mull over.
Moreover, the current peak of emergent agency is the self-&-other-control of homo sapiens. Which is limited to internal self-control, plus the intention to control external non-self via natural & technological extensions of body and senses. For example : You imagined a future state in which your elbow knocked the cup over, then exercised your statistical freedom to move your hand in order to change that possible future state from probable mess (90%) to less likely (10%). :smile:
Emergence :
Emergence is a continuous process that appears to be sudden only because the mind reaches a tipping-point of understanding between an old meaning and a new meaning, causing a phase-change from one logical category to another.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
PS__If the esoteric topic of Emergence, Phase Transitions, and Quantum Leaps interests you, PM me for a link to a brief idiosyncratic model of Evolution by transitional stages.
Humans design in top-down waterfall phases,
but Evolution emerges in bottom-up stairstep
stages of development
0. Omega Point :
Who knows?
9. Reiterate
Ongoing Emergences
8. Artificial Forms :
Machines, Computers
8. Metaphysical Forms
Reasoning & Designing
7. Organic Forms :
Life, Minds, Societies
6. Physical Forms :
Stars, Galaxies, Planets
5. Matter :
Primitive Particles
4. Energy :
Unformed Plasma
3. Quantum Field :
Statistical Possibilities
2. Big Bang :
Start the computation
Set initial conditions
1. Singularity :
Design, Codes, Laws
0.Infinity :
Eternal Logos
Come-on now! Big philosophers don't cry over spilled mockery :joke:
Yes. I know. I was just using poetic license. I'm not quite as stupid as your sophistry-mockery makes me out to be. But, then there is no empirical evidence for poetry either. :joke:
PS__This emoticon :joke: means "tongue in cheek", which means "ironic", or "I may be joking"..
I love e.g. Lucretius and Shakespeare or Laozi and Beckett too much to be a positivist. :wink:
Speaking of "Emergence" and other mysterious appearances. I just came across an article by Tom Siegfried of Science News, that may shed light on another controversial concept that we have discussed on this and other "Science vs Pseudoscience" threads. For instance, I often use the Aristotelian concept of "Potential" in my posts as reference to things that are "not yet actual", such as wavefunctions that are potential particles. He calls this "a new philosophical framework". The paper's authors propose that we "expand the definition of reality" to include things that have "not yet become actual". Hence, "These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — that is, real components of existence." They understand that it's a difficult concept to grasp for those with a Classical physical worldview.
However, a similar concept has been proposed by biologist & neuroscientist, Terrence Deacon, in his book Incomplete Nature. There, he introduces the notion of Constructive or Constitutive Absence, as a "state of things not yet realized". He suggests that is a "defining attribute of life and mind" as well as of "ententional' phenomena, such as functions, thoughts, adaptations, purposes, and subjective experiences". Deacon's Absence also seems to be similar to Aristotle's Potential.
Coincidentally, the Science News article says, “This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,” Which some posters will reflexively label as "bunk" or "category error". But another recent post on the Immaterialism thread linked to a novel idea from physicist Sean Carroll : Effective Field Theory. He refers to this field of Potential as more fundamental than a virtual Quantum Field, and labels it as the "underlying reality". Really???
I may get deeper into the spooky Power of Absence later in this thread about how the human Will could convert ideal Potential into real Actual. But, meanwhile, I'm aware that these cutting-edge scientific theories are making it harder to distinguish Science from Pseudoscience. Yet that's the price we pay for cutting reality down-to-the-bone and beyond. :nerd:
Quantum mysteries dissolve if possibilities are realities :
three scientists argue that including “potential” things on the list of “real” things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses.
https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/quantum-mysteries-dissolve-if-possibilities-are-realities
Constructive Absence : a form of causality dependent on specifically absent features and unrealized potentials
Effective Field Theory :
In physics, an effective field theory is a type of approximation, or effective theory, for an underlying physical theory,
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/651352
We see that the All had to employ the opposites of matter and anti-matter, which in addition to being mirror opposites have opposite electrical charge; so now we know that the All couldn't have done it with just one type of matter. We can surmise that other opposites were also of necessity, such as positive kinetic energy and negative potential energy.
The All also had to induce matter-antimatter asymmetry or else naught would matter. There are something like 10 billion photons for every proton, indicating 10**9 annihilations early on.
… ?
We are left with forms that matter, and still humongous amounts of it, which means that it was easy to come by… Why?
…
We are profiling the All in order to figure out how it works…
The All has to make sure that time moves forward.
Kevin Giorbran had an idea, in ‘Everything Forever’, but he killed himself, so I can’t get any more out of him…
The beginning of the universe with separated matter and anti-matter, though seemingly improbable, is indeed necessity since that’s what happened, the why being that this is the most complete grouping order, for only then will there be the overall pull toward symmetry, which is the featureless blend at the end of the universe as the ultimate symmetry order.
With the All having to be as everything in a great all-at-once superposition of potentials / probabilities, all the possibilities of all the imbalances must trace back and actualize to the one and only state of the necessary beginning of all, the separation of matter and anti-matter, the greatest imbalance of all.
A divergence ensues unto a convergence: top-down from the end of the universe drives the bottom-up events from the beginning, the future ever affecting the present. So to speak, the flat whiteness of the Omega End brings forth the diversified prismatic colors from the Alpha Start.
There would be an Enfoldment/Unfoldment: electrons, protons, seem ‘bottom-up’ only, but are ‘enfolded’ in the top-down whole, as with Bohm’s implicit order guiding the blooming, unfolding, explicit order.
[i]Defined as constraint, form refers in a way to what isn't physically present, and yet what has definite causal consequences. Final causality is the ability of a synergistic system of forms to become its own cause by perpetuating itself.
Mind isn't a ghostly immaterial entity existing beyond causality, but neither is it causally epiphenomenal (inconsequential). It is a dynamic process that evolved because of its function in sustaining and coordinating bodily activity in a very subtle way, through the perpetuation of constraint. Since mechanistic models only consider the extrinsic force exerted on one part by another in a deterministic system, they overlook the spontaneous propagation and self-persistence of constraints that organize our world while leaving it open to further organization.[/i]
Yes. I envision the "splitting" of the BigBang Singularity as an ovum (egg) dividing. First one cell becomes two, and then two become four, thus the bifurcation continues doubling at an exponential rate. Each pair are twins, but opposite. And the tension between positive & negative poles creates minor differences, that eventually become significant enough to call them separate categories or species or organisms.
The result of this rapid doubling & opposing is the emergence of a complex multicellular universe with a variety of organizations, such as stars & galaxies & planets & living things. That creative polarization continues today, because it is necessary for change & evolution. Oppositions are dynamic, whether they attract or repel each other. So, we call those pulling or pushing relationships "forces" or "energy".
It's the internal tug-o-war that makes the world go around. But it also pulls things apart, which we call "entropy". That negative force would quickly dissolve all organizations of matter, if it were not for the opposing force that I call "Enformy" (the power to enform ; to organize). It's the self-organizing force that reductive scientists call "negentropy". But as a holistic philosopher, I prefer to focus on the positive.
For example, amid all this deterministic cause & effect -- due perhaps to an incidental swerving curve -- some looping effects bend back on themselves, creating positive feedback, and novel effects that never existed before. Thus oppositions are necessary for the creation of difference and for the "endless forms most beautiful" that Darwin extolled. In my thesis, I call that pushing & pulling creative force : EnFormAction. :nerd:
EXPONENTIAL CELLULAR DIVISION
A "homeodynamic" process spontaneously reduces a system's constraints to their minimum, as exemplified by the increase in entropy described by the second law of thermodynamics. Although a large number of objects interacting in a system exert efficient causality on one another, an increase in entropy arises from the statistical form of the system as a whole, in which disordered macro-states far outnumber ordered states; in that sense the homeodynamic process exhibits formal causality.
I have been getting these quotes from reviews of Deacon on Goodreads.
So now I have as much free will as there can be. Hurray!
Quoting Gnomon
The All keeps the number of protons and electrons equal, another balance of opposites; the universe is electrically neutral, else some possible disaster befall, perhaps.
The All has to provide the curious symmetry in free space of there being only one main stable positively charged matter particle—the proton, one negatively charged matter particle—the electron, and one stable energy particle—the electron, with no uncharged matter particles and no charged energy particle.
The positive kinetic energy of stuff will be paid for by the debit of the potential negative energy of gravity, another balance.
The inevitable future of equilibrium symmetry carefully designs/forces the stable particles with properties that will produce the periodic table, molecules, even DNA.
Along the road from grouping order to symmetry order that causes diversity, we will invariably observe galaxies which reflects the widest range of configurations, plus ranges of solar systems, planets, moons, asteroids. We will observe the whole range of geography, the whole range of possible chemistry, the whole range of other lifeforms, the whole range of personalities.
I read Giorban's book several years ago, and it blew my mind. Sadly, he exercised his FreeWill with the ultimate personal choice : "to be, or not to be?" So he went on to explore that eternal state before he could break his ideas down for me. Consequently, much of the book went over my time-bound Something-Right-Now mind. Some of his interpretations of "Timelessness" seem to imply some kind metaphorical time-travel. That sounds like Deacon's Constitutive Absence. But I don't know if he meant for that block-time imagery to be taken literally. :smile:
Excerpts from reviews of Everything Forever :
"The past and the future are quantum potentials, and conscious beings are continually creating the most likely futures and the most likely, consistent pasts. Meaning arises as a result of the decoherence of these potential states."
"I particularly enjoyed the section on how the future helps arrange the present."
Deacon put his finger on the crux of this FreeWiil debate. Those who hold a "mechanistic model" of the world are self-blinded to the Holistic & Organismic functions of a system with the creative internal "constraints" that we know as Natural Laws. Those limits on random freedom tend to guide the cause & effect chain in a pre-determined, non-accidental direction. The result of that internal guidance system is the patterns within randomness that we interpret as order & meaning. :nerd:
PS__Unfortunately, some of us go to the opposite extreme by creating a spiritualistic model of reality, in which souls can overcome the gravity of their body.
Yay! You have become a guided mission within the mostly random flux of natural causation. What makes the difference is Intention & Selection. :grin:
As you implied in a previous post, the universe has a "broken" symmetry. Perfect symmetry would not allow for change & positive evolution. Perhaps that imperfection of determination is what allows us to freely choose "which branch of a bifurcation to take". :cool:
In physics, symmetry breaking is a phenomenon in which (infinitesimally) small fluctuations acting on a system crossing a critical point decide the system's fate, by determining which branch of a bifurcation is taken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_breaking
So, we have that 'potentials' can be treated as being real, from your other sources; thus, the wave-function and the quantum fields are real, not just math tools/descriptions; They are sculpted by the All.
I still doubt that the All would have a brain and a will, although when we look at ourselves this would seem to give us a clue as to the nature of the All. There is an unbiased fairness to my wandering wonderings. Perhaps entanglement and the holistic nature of the All grants some rudimentary will due to its all-at-onceness connection.
Thus both our consciousness and the holistic universe, each having a singular nature, could be a clue. Maybe they are of the same basis of fundamental consciousness, but separate as two manifestations, each controlling a different realm, such as internal and external, our internal consciousness giving us ‘future’, and the external consciousness granting ‘future’ to the universe. Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.
Giorbran would also have all the superposed balances tracing forward to the ultimate balance at the End.
Or, or in conjunction, of all the possible superposed paths those paths that go the furthest come to dominate the wave function of the All, they becoming the paths that get actualized.
One of the exercises of logic that people endeavor is engaging in experiments using the Scientific Method. But no experiment predicts thoughts perfectly.
Given that there are clear restraints on pure Free Will, I think the focus of the debate is between Compatibilism and Determinism. And since we can't prove determinism in every situation, logic compels us to accept compatibilism since that is the only theory which can explain all the things we observe.
Since "Real" for most folks means "material" or "physical", i prefer to speak of Potentials & Constructive Absences as "Ideal" or "meta-physical". That's because we don't know of their existence via our 5 senses. Instead, we infer their statistically possible existence via the sixth sense of Reason : the ability to fill gaps in knowledge with logical rules of prediction from known premises to probable conclusions.
Those projections into the future are not empirically real, but only theoretically & statistically probable. So they exist as immaterial mental models, alongside Unicorns & Utopias. That's why materialists reject Idealism, as illusory. Our models are indeed figments of imagination. So we can't distinguish fantasies from facts, except by philosophical & statistical reasoning to determine how likely they are.
So "The All", (or G*D, or Cosmic Potential, or BEING) are merely theoretical inferences from our experience with counter-intuitive (or mysterious) features of Reality, and gaps in our understanding of Physics. Quantum Fields & Mathematical Geometry are not real things, they are mental models of how the world might work if we could see Ideality with our third eye (imagination). Unfortunately, some of us take our theoretical (ideal) models as actual, based on wishful Faith instead of testing them with skeptical Reason.
All possible forms that the physical world can take was defined by the initial conditions of the BigBang. So, you could say that the reality we now experience was "sculpted" by The ALL. But, the fact that humans can imagine things-that-are-not-but-might-be is evidence that the program of evolution is doing a heuristic (trial & error) search of the field of possibilities established in the beginning. A Deterministic algorithm is perfect & complete, so would leave no gaps in its calculation. But a Heuristic procedure (like natural Evolution) only looks for "good enough" fitness, hence it omits a lot of not-good-enough candidates. So, some possibilities were left open, to be filled by human Will.
In their arguments about such Real vs Ideal notions as FreeWiil, most people assume that our world is the result of either a divine miracle (absolute perfection) or a natural gapless algorithm (deterministic). Both are top-down processes, with everything pre-destined. But our experience does not confirm that presumption. The world is far from perfect. Hence, whoever or whatever "sculpted" this work-of-art, was either imperfect, or intentionally allowed for novelty to emerge. Thus a heuristic program of evolution would be a bottom-up kind of self-creation.
That's why I view the world as a self-organizing program with only the basic Operating System (natural laws & initial conditions) established in the Singularity Seed. Therefore, a heuristic program for evolution could allow Possibility Space for creative human imagination (FreeWill) to alter the course of evolution in tiny incremental steps that gradually transform Nature into Culture. :cool:
People Are Really Bad At Probability, And This Study Shows How Easy It Is To Trick Us :
https://www.fastcompany.com/3061263/people-are-really-bad-at-probability-and-this-study-shows-how-easy-it-is-to-trick-us
What is the basic difference between determinative optimization, heuristic optimization :
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_basic_difference_between_determinative_optimization_heuristic_optimization_stochastic_optimization_and_robust_optimization_techniques
What is the difference between a heuristic and an algorithm? :
[i]"What the algorithm does is precisely defined"
"A heuristic is still a kind of an algorithm, but one that will not explore all possible states of the problem, or will begin by exploring the most likely ones."[/i]
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2334225/what-is-the-difference-between-a-heuristic-and-an-algorithm
Ideality :
[i]In Plato’s theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
1. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
2. Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part. A formal name for that fertile field is G*D (or whatever label you prefer for the whole of which we are sentient parts).[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
THIRD EYE IS NOT MYSTICAL, BUT IMAGINATIVE
PS__It's probably the heuristic (trial & error) procedure of evolution that makes it seem "absurd" to those who look at the trees (parts) and fail to see the forest (whole system). Reductionism is a good method for empirical Science, but not for hypothetical Philosophy. Therefore, when it's applied to subjective ideas instead of objective things, that logical method may result in reductio ad absurdum.
Absurd = illogical
Heuristic = fuzzy logic
Yes. That's what I mean by "FreeWill within Determinism" (as explained above, and in my last reply to ). Semi-rational Humans are not totally free, but relatively free-enough to become one of many determinants of evolving reality. 20th century Scientists, applying Classical Logic, were surprised to discover the Uncertainties & Incompleteness of the foundations of Reality. Quantum "mechanics" turned-out to have gaps in the chain of causation ("acausal"), that seem absurd & mysterious, unless we make allowances for the imperfections of heuristic Determinism. :smile:
Fuzzy logic is an approach to variable processing that allows for multiple possible truth values to be processed through the same variable. Fuzzy logic attempts to solve problems with an open, imprecise spectrum of data and heuristics that makes it possible to obtain an array of accurate conclusions.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fuzzy-logic.asp
Quantum Indeterminacy is the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy
From quantum non-locality entanglement,
We know that information’s primary
Over distance, that objects don’t have to
Be near each other to have relation.
Everything connected to everything
Would seem to be a ‘perception’ as an
All-at-onceness, so a particle
Might ‘know’ something about what to do.
Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.
This is a realm of happenings, not things,
For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
What remains through time are processes—
Relations between different systems.
Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Within her requisite of ongoing change.
So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.
All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
Probable clouds of distributed paces.
Yes. A statistical relationship is not spatial, or quantitative, but informative & qualitative. For example, a mathematical Ratio compares abstract values to determine how far they are from equality. Even Gravity is not spooky action at a distance, as Newton assumed. It's a relative & proportional Ratio between physical objects. Ratios are not real and physical. They are ideal and mental. However, abstract Ratios can be causal in the sense of Constructive Absence. :smile:
PS__A statistical state is not a place in physical space, but in abstract possibility Space.
:roll:
Speaking of evolutionary emergence, Charles Darwin touched on the notion of FreeWill in his The Descent of Man. In a Philosophy Now article, Samuel Grove, author of Retrieving Darwin's Revolutionary Idea, said that "Darwin was fascinated by the problem of free will". Then, he mused, "[i]What does this mean in practical terms? . . . . Darwin's hunch was that it was intimately related to the variation in nature"[/i]. But I would suggest that the freethought of upright apes is a function of both Random Variation to produce novel forms, and of Positive Selection criteria to allow only the best models to proceed into the next generation. This results in complexification and organization, which some of us view as progression.
Grove noted that "Darwin also faced a couple of philosophical paradoxes in applying natural selection to man" The first conundrum was, "how natural selection -- which was a history of errors, faults, failures, and fallacies -- could give rise to a person capable of self-knowledge and truth". We now see that a product of that heuristic (trial & error) process is the self-aware descendant of those knuckle-walking nit-picking apes. But Darwin already had the right idea; he just failed to see how the combination of randomness and selectiveness could be creative and progressive.
Ironically, these imaginative sky-walkers have just placed their own technological creation into a stable orbit a million miles from its origin. Although a product of intentional algorithms, it was also the end result of many trials & errors. This golden-eye-in-the-sky should be able to look back into cosmic history to see what the universe looked like billions of years before animated creatures emerged from that seemingly wasteful procedure of making zillions of mistakes, but selecting only a few of the best to make newer & better errors. This illustrates how fecundity and selectivity can result in a means for the meandering cosmos to become self-aware.
Therefore we have evidence to show that a combination of variation & selection can solve the first paradox of free will : by inadvertently producing self-conscious creatures. But that leads to the second paradox : how could blind groping Nature create the global organism of self-directed Culture? Darwin admitted that "nature's productions . . . . plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship". Grove noted that we could define human Culture & Civilization as "consciously-directed evolution". He said, "ironically, the very fact that natural selection does apply to us means we can't apply it to us, or it would cease to be Natural . . . . This is the paradox. This was the essence of Darwin's dilemma." Somehow, conscious Artificial selection & evolution has emerged from a program of unconscious Natural reproduction & progression. :nerd:
Shhhhh! DON'T TELL ANYONE I COULDN'T EXPLAIN
THE EMERGENCE OF FREEWILL
Thanks for your articulate criticism of my post. It demonstrates the depth of your understanding. :joke: