Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I think what you really have a problem with here, Eric, is my suggestion that nonliving things such as photons may also have free will, removing that fundamental distinction between the living and the nonliving.

They have free will. They don't have agency (at all). Their agency is at 0, making them nonliving.

By "agency" I mean purpose. Even bacteria have purpose, however that purpose is extremely constrained and, in a sense, "programmed in".

Animals are basically prisoners of their own neurology.

Whereas people are at the maximum level of freedom for creatures.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

Not if you use my coin-flip decision making approach. Since all decisions would be made on a purely random basis, operant conditioning wouldn't work because there would be no operant to condition. You can't condition randomness.

True, but the fact is that people don't do that for important decisions most of the time. You are presenting an if-then based on a false if.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

True, but the fact is that people don't do that for important decisions most of the time. You are presenting an if-then based on a false if.

You could condition all the operants to do so.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

What about if I decided to make my decision based on the flip of a coin?

If you did not want to go to jail you would not do the coin-flipping anyway.

Originally Posted by Odin

If you did not want to go to jail you would not do the coin-flipping anyway.

How about if someone implanted me with a neural chip and made me flip the coin?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

You can have an argument in favor of legal sanctions against crime without resorting to the concept of free will, based on operant conditioning theory. However, the statement "there is no such thing as free will" could still benefit from a definition of the term. By my own definition above, free will certainly does exist. Odin must therefore be using a different one and I remain curious as to what that is.

What I mean by "Free Will" is the belief that an individual's mind is a kind of "un-moved mover" that causes things without having a cause itself. But there are no things with out a cause, a mental state has a cause, and that cause itself had a cause, ad infinitum.

Originally Posted by Odin

What I mean by "Free Will" is the belief that an individual's mind is a kind of "un-moved mover" that causes things without having a cause itself. But there are no things with out a cause, a mental state has a cause, and that cause itself had a cause, ad infinitum.

Which is why God is really No-thing.

Originally Posted by Odin

What I mean by "Free Will" is the belief that an individual's mind is a kind of "un-moved mover" that causes things without having a cause itself. But there are no things with out a cause, a mental state has a cause, and that cause itself had a cause, ad infinitum.

Ah, I see. In that sense, I agree that there is no such thing as "free will." However, I should point out that this is not what people usually mean. Causes of decisions are acknowledged, e.g. when someone says, "I decided to buy that brand of soap because it was cheaper." Implied in this is not that there was no causal factor, but that the causal factors did not determine the choice; that the choice could have gone another way.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

A choice cannot be something experienced passively; it must be something that is experienced as oneself doing the choosing. But something can be a choice as experienced from within, and a random event as viewed objectively from without.

Yes, but only as viewed by means of the scientific method.

Incorrect, in this case. From a scientific perspective the concept of "free will" is meaningless. It is something that has meaning only subjectively. However, if my choice cannot be predicted ahead of time from causal factors with perfect certainty, and I experience it subjectively as a choice, then it is a manifestation of free will.

I think what you really have a problem with here, Eric, is my suggestion that nonliving things such as photons may also have free will, removing that fundamental distinction between the living and the nonliving.

I don't have a problem with such photons. As long as they see the light

It is a difference in degree.

Originally Posted by Odin

What I mean by "Free Will" is the belief that an individual's mind is a kind of "un-moved mover" that causes things without having a cause itself. But there are no things with out a cause, a mental state has a cause, and that cause itself had a cause, ad infinitum.

The ad infinitum is why the concept that anything has a cause, is absurd.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Yes, but only as viewed by means of the scientific method.

I'm speaking outside the scientific method here, wearing my philosopher hat. Neither of my sentences that you quoted had any meaning in terms of science at all.

It is a difference in degree.

Perhaps, but you often seem to react with great hostility to the ideas both of understanding a living organism in terms of its mechanisms, and of treating intelligent machines as living things. I suspect that the old Newtonian dead matter idea clings still to the back of your mind.

The ad infinitum is why the concept that anything has a cause, is absurd.

No, it only means that the idea that everything must have a cause is absurd, not that anything does.

This thread has been a personal metaphysics discussion for quite some time. Whether it has anything to do with Turnings or not has gone by the boards.

Just an observation.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I'm speaking outside the scientific method here, wearing my philosopher hat. Neither of my sentences that you quoted had any meaning in terms of science at all.

That's funny; it would appear to me they ONLY have meaning within science, as you were describing things.
Viewed from "without" otherwise, we certainly do not perceive the world in the way you claim.

Perhaps, but you often seem to react with great hostility to the ideas both of understanding a living organism in terms of its mechanisms, and of treating intelligent machines as living things. I suspect that the old Newtonian dead matter idea clings still to the back of your mind.

I try not to be "hostile" over this stuff; direct perhaps. But yes, a living organism cannot be understood in terms of mechanisms. I have made clear many times that life and death are a "matter" of degree.

No, it only means that the idea that everything must have a cause is absurd, not that anything does.

No, it means anything. Any cause attributed to anything, must also be explained by a cause, and on adfinitum. Things can be said to have causes, relatively speaking, but that is only so that we can manipulate the world. The "natural laws" of cause and effect are laws of technology only. Though then again, there is enough of the "mechanistic" aspect of nature that allows us humans to conceive of and use the world as a machine.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

This thread has been a personal metaphysics discussion for quite some time. Whether it has anything to do with Turnings or not has gone by the boards.

Just an observation.

Yes, but it seems for some of us, a discussion of the issues related to turnings, leads inevitably back to the basics of life, out of which we live and understand turnings.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Yes, but it seems for some of us, a discussion of the issues related to turnings, leads inevitably back to the basics of life, out of which we live and understand turnings.

Very well. Carry on.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

That's funny; it would appear to me they ONLY have meaning within science, as you were describing things.

No. Here are my two sentences again:

"A choice cannot be something experienced passively; it must be something that is experienced as oneself doing the choosing."

Science cannot verify that anyone is experiencing himself choosing; that's a meaningless concept in science and all questions related to it must be approached with something other than scientific method.

"But something can be a choice as experienced from within, and a random event as viewed objectively from without."

Again, science cannot deal with anything being "experienced from within." It can deal with random events, but the sentence as a whole is scientifically meaningless.

I believe you are confusing the concept of "within science" with something else. I'm not sure what else exactly, though.

But yes, a living organism cannot be understood in terms of mechanisms. I have made clear many times that life and death are a "matter" of degree.

These two sentences seem to contradict one another. Perhaps they might not, if by "understand" you mean "fully understand completely one hundred percent in every conceivable, possible way that might be imagined, encompassing all possible questions that could be asked, regardless of what the nature of the question is and what method is best used to answer it." In that case, yes -- but that's not what I mean by "understand."

No, it means anything. Any cause attributed to anything, must also be explained by a cause, and on adfinitum.

Incorrect. That's only true if one claims that everything must have a cause. Otherwise, if we say the cause of event A is event B, we do not intrinsically say that there is a cause of B. Maybe B is the cause of A but B itself has no cause. "Everything must have a cause" leads to ad infinitum; "this thing has a cause" does not.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

This thread has been a personal metaphysics discussion for quite some time. Whether it has anything to do with Turnings or not has gone by the boards.

Just an observation.

Does that mean you want to join in this discussion, too? It's fun!

Originally Posted by JonLaw

Does that mean you want to join in this discussion, too? It's fun!

I'm afraid not. I developed a serious allergy to abstract philosophy in my college course in metaphysics. To be perfectly fair, I think the professor developed a serious allergy to me, too. Or, at least she acted like it. I guess I'm just a bear of very little (or very concrete) brain.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I'm afraid not. I developed a serious allergy to abstract philosophy in my college course in metaphysics. To be perfectly fair, I think the professor developed a serious allergy to me, too. Or, at least she acted like it. I guess I'm just a bear of very little (or very concrete) brain.

But abstract philosophy is very concrete!

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

No. Here are my two sentences again:

"A choice cannot be something experienced passively; it must be something that is experienced as oneself doing the choosing."

I had no problem agreeing with that one.

Science cannot verify that anyone is experiencing himself choosing; that's a meaningless concept in science and all questions related to it must be approached with something other than scientific method....


Again, science cannot deal with anything being "experienced from within." It can deal with random events...
"But something can be a choice as experienced from within, and a random event as viewed objectively from without."

"Viewed objectively from without," is usually done by a scientist, and I think I agree in that case. But I don't think I see everything that happens in the world as "random." The world appears to have order, and people appear to me to make choices.

These two sentences seem to contradict one another. Perhaps they might not, if by "understand" you mean "fully understand completely one hundred percent in every conceivable, possible way that might be imagined, encompassing all possible questions that could be asked, regardless of what the nature of the question is and what method is best used to answer it." In that case, yes -- but that's not what I mean by "understand."

Quite the opposite. You cannot understand a living thing as a mechanism. But you can understand some things about living things as mechanisms, taken out of context from the whole. Science does that, generally.

Incorrect. That's only true if one claims that everything must have a cause. Otherwise, if we say the cause of event A is event B, we do not intrinsically say that there is a cause of B. Maybe B is the cause of A but B itself has no cause. "Everything must have a cause" leads to ad infinitum; "this thing has a cause" does not.

Something is either self-caused, or caused by something else (mechanical). If something has a cause outside itself, that cause itself must have a cause outside itself; unless and until at some point you admit that something can be self-caused, or free and spontaneous. That something is a soul.

Originally Posted by JonLaw

But abstract philosophy is very concrete!

Yes. One can bang one's head on it forever and never make a dent in anything except your battered and bleeding head.

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

I'm afraid not. I developed a serious allergy to abstract philosophy in my college course in metaphysics. To be perfectly fair, I think the professor developed a serious allergy to me, too. Or, at least she acted like it. I guess I'm just a bear of very little (or very concrete) brain.

I empathize with the "of very concrete brain" thing, LOL. Epistemology is my thing, most Metaphysics is just a lot of pulling things out of one's rear end. I'm in heart and soul an Empiricist and a Physicalist. The kind of "materialistic" thought that Eric despises is the kind that comes most naturally to me, even from a a very early age

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

Yes. One can bang one's head on it forever and never make a dent in anything except your battered and bleeding head.

That only applies to telling others the inspiration one has received!

No Odin it comes down from the crown, not up from the rear end! (well, some of both actually I'm sure, and well, physicalism comes mostly up from the rear end-- base chakra that is!)

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I had no problem agreeing with that one.

All right.

"Viewed objectively from without," is usually done by a scientist, and I think I agree in that case.

All right, but I'm going to say something about the first part of your sentence. Everyone views events from without, "objectively" in the sense I mean here (even if in some other senses most people aren't terribly objective). We have an instinctive tendency, or perhaps something built into the way we perceive, to view events against a background of "I am here, and what I am seeing is over there, and the two are distinct." That is much older than scientific method; science did not invent it.

The innovation of scientific method is an ongoing interaction between observation and hypothesis. Its basic tool (and this is also older than science) is, you see something, you make a plausible guess about what's going on. The innovation of science is: at this point, you make a logical prediction based on your plausible guess, and you go look at something else to check your prediction. If it turns out your prediction is right, your plausible guess becomes more likely correct; if not, well, you go back and make another plausible guess and try again.

There's more to it, of course, but that's the gist. It turns out to be the best method ever discovered for answering questions of fact about the world we can observe. It's completely useless for answering other sorts of questions, though.

But I don't think I see everything that happens in the world as "random." The world appears to have order, and people appear to me to make choices.

The world does have order, but that order emerges from randomness through the laws of probability.

Say you roll an ordinary die one time. The outcome is completely unpredictable -- completely random. You are as likely to have any of the faces come up as any of the others.

But say you roll the same die six million times. The outcome of that looks orderly. You will have something quite close to a million results for each face. It won't necessarily be an exact million, but it won't be far from it.

The order we observe in nature is a product of many indeterminate events, huge numbers of them whose aggregate outcomes are no longer random.

As for people making choices, as I said above it's a question of perspective. I make choices (I know this from subjective experience). You are like me; therefore I assume that you make choices also. I'm comfortable with that assumption and it makes no sense to me to assume the contrary. But what I actually observe, as distinct from what I assume, is that your behavior is unpredictable except as a set of parameters. There is no observed difference between that and a random event.

Which leads me to my final and weird conclusion: there are no random events distinct from choices. Every choice is, from another perspective, a random event, and every random event is also a choice, made by the actor of the event. A photon chooses to be detected at point A rather than point B. Our own choices are the same process as that, except on a macroscopic level and informed by information-processing tools.

Quite the opposite. You cannot understand a living thing as a mechanism. But you can understand some things about living things as mechanisms, taken out of context from the whole. Science does that, generally.

That's not the opposite of what I said, that IS what I said. Take your first sentence, strike out the last three words, and I agree with it. Actually I agree with it as written, but it seems to imply that you CAN understand a living thing in some other way than as a mechanism, and there I don't agree. Any way to understand a living thing (or anything else), whether as a mechanism or otherwise, is "taken out of context from the whole," and ALL ways of viewing the world do that. No exceptions. Science has the key to understand the processes of life and its structure, insofar as that can be observed. Other questions can be asked about life (or anything else) besides those involving its processes and structure and what can be observed. But using methods appropriate to answering those questions will not give a complete understanding of "what life is" any more than a scientific approach will.

My sense, though, is that what you want to do, and the source of your real objection here, is that you want to introduce a process and a structure to life that science does not recognize -- not something outside its proper sphere, but something in it that is denied. That, to me, is not appropriate.

Something is either self-caused, or caused by something else (mechanical). If something has a cause outside itself, that cause itself must have a cause outside itself; unless and until at some point you admit that something can be self-caused, or free and spontaneous. That something is a soul.

I was with you until the last sentence. The Big Bang itself is seen as self-caused, or emerging without prior. Are you prepared to call that a soul? Also, indeterminate events, while they have influencing factors and parameters, don't have causes in the strict sense of prior events exactly defining the outcome. Is an electron a soul?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

All right, but I'm going to say something about the first part of your sentence. Everyone views events from without, "objectively" in the sense I mean here (even if in some other senses most people aren't terribly objective). We have an instinctive tendency, or perhaps something built into the way we perceive, to view events against a background of "I am here, and what I am seeing is over there, and the two are distinct." That is much older than scientific method; science did not invent it.

It arises out of the fact that the world tends to form or express as individuals, from atoms to Adam, from cells to selves. But at all levels, we can also see and know the unity and interrelationship and connection among these apparent individuals. Things and souls and so on are also parts of the whole, and we always know this too. Everything we perceive is also "in here" as well as "out there." Our language tends to obscure this; as Alan Watts observed, a "thing is a think" and this is also seen in other languages too.

The world does have order, but that order emerges from randomness through the laws of probability.

Say you roll an ordinary die one time. The outcome is completely unpredictable -- completely random. You are as likely to have any of the faces come up as any of the others.

But say you roll the same die six million times. The outcome of that looks orderly. You will have something quite close to a million results for each face. It won't necessarily be an exact million, but it won't be far from it.

The order we observe in nature is a product of many indeterminate events, huge numbers of them whose aggregate outcomes are no longer random.

As for people making choices, as I said above it's a question of perspective. I make choices (I know this from subjective experience). You are like me; therefore I assume that you make choices also. I'm comfortable with that assumption and it makes no sense to me to assume the contrary. But what I actually observe, as distinct from what I assume, is that your behavior is unpredictable except as a set of parameters. There is no observed difference between that and a random event.

Which leads me to my final and weird conclusion: there are no random events distinct from choices. Every choice is, from another perspective, a random event, and every random event is also a choice, made by the actor of the event. A photon chooses to be detected at point A rather than point B. Our own choices are the same process as that, except on a macroscopic level and informed by information-processing tools.

An interesting conclusion, but not one I agree with. Photons are not living Beings. There is a big difference between living and non-living things, though not an absolute one. Jon said it well in using the word agency, which living things have and non-living don't. It's not a matter of perspective, since we always can see the inherent connection between what is within and what is without, the knower and the known. But you know that's my position. It is also obvious to everyone that living and non-living things are different, and what the difference is, although some folks like yourself may create interesting ways of denying the obvious. Again, your use of the word "observe" refers to scientific observation, which is only one kind of such.

That's not the opposite of what I said, that IS what I said. Take your first sentence, strike out the last three words, and I agree with it. Actually I agree with it as written, but it seems to imply that you CAN understand a living thing in some other way than as a mechanism, and there I don't agree. Any way to understand a living thing (or anything else), whether as a mechanism or otherwise, is "taken out of context from the whole," and ALL ways of viewing the world do that. No exceptions. Science has the key to understand the processes of life and its structure, insofar as that can be observed. Other questions can be asked about life (or anything else) besides those involving its processes and structure and what can be observed. But using methods appropriate to answering those questions will not give a complete understanding of "what life is" any more than a scientific approach will.

I don't accept restricting the meaning of "observe" to what "science has the key" to, as I stated before. But yes, any method of knowing has its limitations; even if we "know God," we can only say so, or say how, in our language, which is always limited. But some methods have more interest in seeing wholes than science does, which concentrates more on the details and achieving precision. There are many other ways of understanding life than in the crudest and least-accurate way: as a mechanism. Even using probabilities is better, and I don't think it's the same as mechanist ideas.

My sense, though, is that what you want to do, and the source of your real objection here, is that you want to introduce a process and a structure to life that science does not recognize -- not something outside its proper sphere, but something in it that is denied. That, to me, is not appropriate.

Yes, I think that's right. Science does not recognize life as it is, and cannot so recognize. What I say is inappropriate, is precisely for science to claim that it can and does.

I was with you until the last sentence. The Big Bang itself is seen as self-caused, or emerging without prior. Are you prepared to call that a soul?

Some call it God acting, yes.
But I don't think anyone knows if it was self-caused or not. Despite claims some may make, I doubt that such a knowledge is possible.