Tuesday, 13 July 2004 - 11:05 AM PDT
Name:
db
Home Page:
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
David, my friend. Here is a selection of personal writings over the years -- going back to the late eighties in fact -- harvested from my files, jourals and letters. I hope you find these helpful.
In peaceful attention:
Random free-will/determinism snippets from one of my favourite five-pound notebooks:
**
Jan 1st, 2001
Q: Assume that the universe runs on a system on divine predestiny.
A: No.
Q: Under such a system, do human beings have free will? Of course to the ruling divine being our actions are all laid out and we function like cogs in a machine, but lacking divine knowledge do we have free will from our own perspective?
A: Statements based in assertion require foundation. There is no precept to the conclusions required to consider the hypothesis, thus it is muted by its own wilderness.
You might as well be asking if the Emperor Palpatine caused a shift in galactic political ideology due more to his ideas or his power in the dark side of the Force. First you would have to accept a universe suggested by the dictates of George Lucas and then embark on a pseudoscientific mixture of basing existing logical process into an entirely fictional setting.
**
October 22, 1987
The point is not that you don't make choices, it's wondering where the choices come from. Are you actually acting "freely", in the sense that even an omniscient observer (God, for lack of a better word) could not predict your actions, or are all your choices the result of dizzyingly complex conjunction of forces beyond your control, meaning that our god-guy could tell you exactly when you'll stop stitching and why?
Regardless of your apparent certainty in this matter, the fact is you don't know. If a ball could think, it would no doubt believe that it is choosing how to bounce, yet we maintain that its behaviour is rigidly determined by physical laws that no one can alter. The only difference with us is that our behaviour is so ridiculously complex that nobody has ever created a model to explain it (or ever will, in my opinion).
One thing I feel sure of (though, once again, I can't prove it): If there is real volition, it applies to all creation, not just to human beings. If we can choose, then on some unfathomable level, so can the ball.
**
April 15 2002
... Of course, if we stipulate to predestination, we exclude choice. Whether we invoke Ahura Mazda or Brahma or Chaos or Odin or some less creatively-named god, or we contemplate the universe in only terms of the best rational observations so far, there is a popular notion that freewill is an illusion. Granting the assumption in the original post precludes any contradictory possibility. We may appear to have freewill, but truth is not a function of perspective (unless we are talking about technological approaches to examining subatomic particles or opinion distortion inherent in polling and interview processes.) Assuming all is preordained, the truth is that we do not have freewill. While this is an interesting philosophical subject, those who conclude that ultimately there is no choice have used fatalism to justify going with the flow of events in all manner of situations where an unpopular stand could have averted injustices or even attrocities. My personal opinion is that the notion of predestination is used by cowards to absolve themselves of not making difficult choices to do the right thing. Whether or not I can prove that I exist is not going to prevent me from being. Whether or not I can prove that I have freewill is not going to prevent me from making choices. When facing "assume that the universe runs on a system on divine predestiny. Under such a system, do human beings have free will?" there is one clear an correct answer -- a simple "no." Ignorance and lack of vision may create the illusion of freewill, but not a different reality. Then again, if we approach the question without stipulating the answer in advance, we would have room to discuss whether freewill is a trick unbelievers play on themselves or it is an opportunity we all have to determine how we actually behave.
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[Letter to a friend March, 1993 -- pre-internet!]
Let's quibble over philosophic categories, Mike Keenan!
Let F = freedom.
What I don't want to do is to fall into the trap of treating F as acting in accordance with a volition which is not determined by external causes. Why isolate my thinking brain from the rest of the world? Nor do I want to suppose that ONLY unrestricted and unconditional F can be the basis of human responsibility and, therefore, ethics. Just because legal systems require me to be responsible for my actions in order to convict me if I violate the laws...doesn't mean I have to absolutize F. NOR do I want to stumble into some 18th century mechanistic determinism that denies F, and maintains that all actions are determined by external circumstances over which I have no control.
So where the hell am I? Spinoza says F = recognized necessity. I can dig it. I can also dig that my consciousness is a secondary or derived quality; that, therefore, I should lean towards the "necessity" side of things for a starting point. [at the time I was talking about how freedom might be the same as the recognition of necessity. db 2004]
If I don't absolutize the two sides...then I don't have the big philosophical problems. Free Will or, more generally, Freedom and Necessity should be seen as RELATIVE terms,...
Oh, by the way, I did quit smoking. But the experience left me much more comfortable with notions that the "necessity" side of my actions and decisions are a lot more important than my "free" actions and decisions.
As Einstein said...it's all relative. Best wishes from Isabel...still under snow...but bike-riding well under way...
[from a letter from M. Keenan dated April 01, 1993]
M.Keenan: Okay, but what do we mean by responsibility? We sometimes say things like "this nail was responsible for the flat tire", but presumably when we're talking about legal or moral responsibility we mean something more than this. After all, we don't prosecute or condemn nails.
>>>
[My reply from a letter dated April 7th 1993]
You see Mike, classifying consciousness as "secondary" is my way of asserting that the foundation of my thinking is found in my being...and not the other way around. Of course if I decide to jump off the Pierre Laport Bridge in Quebec City then my physical being, will, in all likelihood, come to an end. But this would in no way prove anything about the relationship between my consciousness and my being, other than that they are RELATIVE terms that, to repeat, shouldn't be absolutized.
I like the old orthodox Marxist view that makes use of notions of forms of motion of matter and asserts that new qualities come into being by virtue of higher forms of motion. Example: chemical activity and motion leading to a new biological form of motion...the new quality of life on earth. So, in our discussion, consciousness as a higher form of motion leads to this new relative quality...freedom. I hope I haven't muddied the waters.
I don't know how much more I can assert other than that necessity seems so much stronger than freedom. The arrow points MAINLY in one direction. My experience of quitting smoking led me to the absurd, but comfortable conclusion that I had no "free will." It only seemed so at the time. (An interesting sidebar is that a Lutheran Pastor friend of mine saw nothing wrong with my conclusion. Did he think that the only really free will was God's? I shall never know...the Pastor passed away playing hockey...)But this one is a tough nut to crack.
A final example. Health Canada has recently, with a pilot project and a mayor with some balls...oops I mean backbone...taken the approach of seriously a needle exchange program in Quebec City. Never mind that the injection drugs that are used are illegal. The point is harm reduction and the ethics or morality of providing the users with safe, i.e., non-infected needles overrides the considerations of allowing illegal activity to go on. The government can easily rationalize its policy, e.g. by reducing the harm (and cost, one should add) of treating injection drug users for Hepatitis, HIV, etc. etc. I can't help but think that too many debates on ethics feel like the resistance of people who would not allow such a pilot project to take place.
Now where's that Owl of Minerva quote when I need it?
Keep the aces coming, your friend,
Daniel
ps Isabel sends her love to you and Caroline
**
[written in my hardcopy paper journal after one of your more in my mind wrong-viewed IMC entries on predestiny]
2004
All worries about whether the existence of God is consistent with free will basically are the same as worries whether predestination deprives us of free will, which brings us back to that old philosophical bear about whether that's actually a problem. It's certainly a problem if free will equates to randomness.
[As a Buddhist and an atheist, but, for your sake, and for the sake of discussion...presupposing there is a God...]
Although it feels to me like it matters that not only does God *know* what I'm going to decide, but presumably when he made me knew that if he made me one way, I'd decide one thing, and if he made me another way, I'd decide another thing. So if he made me a particular way, he made me with all the consequences of that creation in mind, and designed me to do exactly whatever I ended up doing. That really seems like it ought to kill the notion of free will, but I'm not sure; if predestination by itself doesn't necessarily kill free will, does design plus predestination really change anything?
Possession of free will might be considered more a matter of what kind of being I am, what kind of decisions I'm capable of making. It isn't even necessarily about unpredictability, even at mortal levels of predictive power. I'm a fairly predictable person on many matters, because I have chosen to follow certain ethical principles and stick to them rather rigorously. But surely if free will relates to anything, it relates to that sort of choice, even if having made that choice makes me more predictable rather than less.
Does free will involve the ability to transcend purely Skinner-like stimuli? The ability to acquire motivations to action beyond the consumption-machine level assumed by operant conditioning? To add to our repertoire, not just new patterns of behaviour, but new bases for action that make us more than we were before? If that's all it is, we've got it in spades. Well, I've met people who don't seem to, but most do.
I wish you your peaceful slumber.
db
