And you may find yourself...

"…you will encounter words like 'encairned', 'decensive', 'quotha', 'perforce', 'wroth', 'guerdon', and 'aye '(used like pepper throughout the text), all of which may be summed up in Haines' funniest quote, 'Man, what art thou at?'"
-- from a review of Aurelius' Meditations at Amazom.com

It reminded me of this song, though I don't know why:



Which song reminded me of these fellows, though I have a slightly clearer reason why:

In other news, tonight as I ate my dinner I realized arguments/writings for free will before the advent of quantum indeterminacy and stochastic processes would be much more entertaining. The recent deluge of evidence for indeterminism has made things almost too easy, don't you think? Granted, elite indeterminists like Peter Van Inwagen and Robert Kane, et al.,––did Van Inwagen really coin "indeterminism"?––avoid relying on quantum indeterminacy for their accounts of freewill, which is why I respect them so much. Someone like Stanley Jaki, by contrast, entirely rejects the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and yet still defends freewill in a deterministic universe. That's my mentor, them's balls! (For the record, Jaki and I both did crew in high school.)

Determinism is held, despite the evidence, based only on the cognitive limits of our current understanding of science. "Even though a coin toss is spoken of as proabiistic, in fact, each specific coin toss has a deterministic outcome. If only we could know enough about its initial conditions, we could know its outcome exactly. We're just waiting for science to catch up with man's deepest, deterministic intuitions." The problem is that, even aside from the quantum indeterminacy we would face at the (…admittedly only currently…) lowest level of analysis, this Laplacian insight would still be subject to human finitude, since a skeptic could just as reasonably argue, "Even though a coin toss is spoken of as deterministic, in fact, each specific coin toss has a stochastic outcome. If only we could know enough about its initial conditions, we could know its outcome is probabilistic, like all of physical nature. We're just waiting for science to catch up with man's deepest, indeterministic intuitions."

Show…

Show that (1) human nature is not reducible to its natural components, then show (2) how human agency flows from human nature. (3) Call the view "natural freedom" or "substance compatibilism". This would be slightly different from mere agent-causation, since a great deal of natural freedom occurs subconsciously, but does not, from (1), thereby reduce to irrational mechanism. Free will is not about doing, or being able to do, whatever is imaginable, but about the grounds for action which accords with a nature that is suffused with rational entelechies.

The fourth step, which could be mounted before (1), actually, or anywhere after it, is to show that (4) determinism is false as such. It's simply not true. Where we go from there depends on whether we have a viable theory of nature and causation, which is where (1)–(3) come in. What an agent is, is not reducible to its material genesis, even if such materiality were deterministic and, in turn, what an agent does can only be explained by what it is. So, if an appropriate agent is substantially rational––i.e. his rational teleology informs his material existence even apart from concrete acts of conscious reason––, then his action is substantially free.

For the record…

This post is a promissory placeholder.

For some time, I have harbored the intuition that semiotics contains great potential both for defeating physicalism, and, with some work, for clarifying the potency of truly rational agency (i.e. "free will").

Here is my intuition:

Because semiotic fecundity is in principle not reducible to its material base, and since humans are endlessly semiotic agents, therefore human agency is not reducible to the material web of signs, including every discernible sign in the human organism. In other words, since the significatum is never purely identical to the signans [LINK], and since humans constantly trade in significata by essentially indeterminate signans, therefore humans' rational discourse is in principle not reducible to its material instantiation(s). The energy extractable from the intrinsically possible significance of any signum is intrinsically irreducible to the extractable physical energy of the signum, and a fortiori of the entire web of signs. As such, physicalism is false and humans are semiotically free. This freedom is not utterly separable from the science of semiotics, though it is in principle irreducible to it, which means human freedom is reducible to matter in way that satisfies the possible extremes of exact physical science (EPS) but does not collapse into materialism, much less physicalism.

I think a similar point is made in chapter X of this recent book.

Anyone want to buy me that book so I can know more? heheh

When the Codgitator dares address current events…

"The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.

"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. …

"Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

–– President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, letter to Luther C. Steward, President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, of August 16, 1937. [LINK]

In other news, the Good Guys are on the lam from the Bad Guys somewhere in North America.

Only one possible…

…necessary contingency?

Read the words again: "only one possible [X]" means necessarily one X.

Let us define determinism (D) as the doctrine that

at time t there is only one possible configuration of the world (C:W) after t (C:W_t+). Everything at time t_C:W is a direct and necessary result of the C:W at t.

Tonight I smelled a difficulty in this notion, which I want to address briefly. I need more time to ponder it in depth.

If we accept D, as defined above, we deny it is possible for C:W at t to result in anything other than C:W_t+. The problem I detect is twofold, however.

First, if D is true, then necessitarianism is true, and necessity exhausts modality, which makes possibility a vacuous notion (and an unreality). As such, D should be restated as D*, namely,

at time t there is only one configuration of the world (C:W) at any time other than t (C:W_t*).

Notice the absence of both the word "possible" and the removal of any sense of futurity.

Second, what is the ontological status of the future in D? If C:W_t+ is not yet actual, then D* entails that C:W necessarily results in a non-actual (i.e. merely potential) state of affairs (SOA). As such, C:W necessarily entails complete potentiality, in which case D is false. The future does not yet exist, and therefore does not really exist, which means D can only posit a world that engenders nonexistent SOAs, if it engenders anything at all.

Now, if the reply is to grant the existence of the future as an eternal dimension of the 4D spacetime manifold (á la Minkowski space), then we raise enormous questions about how valid it is to say geometric models literally embody the world. "The map is not the territory," as Korzybski would have it. Geometry may be useful for making sense of broad swaths of data, but that does not mean the geometry is really "the way the world is." After all, Euclidean geometry and Newtonian mechanics are still valid in most contexts, but that does not mean we (should) believe they truly, literally, indexically manifest "the way the world is." So it is with Minkowskian geometry: useful in practice, provisional in reality.

Thus, once again we are thrown back to the radical freedom of the explorer, even in his acts of "scientifically demonstrating" the truth of D. It is up to him (!) which 'dialect' of geometry he will use, what standards of rational warrant to which he will hold himself, which data he will favor or ignore, and so on. If such exploration is not really up to him, but is instead a blind clutching at the only paths he can cognitively tread, then either his (scientific) rationality is a sham (cf. e.g. this abstract) or it is but a tiny rivulet of the cosmos' total active consciousness, both conclusions which seriously undermine materialist scientism.

+ + +

On a different front, I realized today I want to make it a habit to use the following expression, "Ours is a world which is currently described by most scientists as x, y, and z." A mouthful I know, but the more compact, more 'obvious' locution is just a bumper sticker for scientism: "Science proves the world is x, y, and z."

+ + +

Another thought I had, modus tollens: if humans are determined by what they perceive, but if perception is indeterminate, then humans are not psychologically determined.

I ask you to give me the value of √-2. You say…?

I ask you to describe the angles and dimensions of a Necker cube.

You tell me…?

I ask you to identify the highest staircase in an Escher house.

You tell me…?

In each case, what you sense does not, in principle, determine how you perceive it. Indeed, all perception is transcendentally rational. Therefore, perception––stimuli––cannot simply determine your behavior. You are a generative locus of perceptual uniqueness. You are free.

+ + +

Have been brainstorming about my lecture this Sunday. I have been asked to answer the question, "Do humans have freewill?"

There are two ways to answer this question (in the affirmative).

First, assuming that freewill is incompatible with determinism, show that determinism is false and therefore freewill abides by default. In other words, if determinism were true, our experience could not be what it is, but our experience is manifestly what it is, therefore determinism is false. This is, I gather, Van Inwagen's approach in An Essay on Free Will, a copy of which I hope to have by next week.

Second, take stock of broad, consistent features of human behavior and then see if they are coherent without freewill. If not, then freewill follows as manifestly as the features of human consciousness by which it functions. Determinism would be a function of freewill, as the proof for determinism would be among the other dimensions, or fruits, of free human consciousness.

Well, if they gots it...

...I know I gots it!

Old news for the doggedly intellectual but still interesting.

Defending free will: A fruit fly makes choices (Reuters, By Julie Steenhuysen, CHICAGO | Wed May 16, 2007)

Lacking external input, Brembs said he had expected a pattern of entirely random movement or noise -- akin to static on a radio that is tuned between stations. Instead, the flies showed a pattern of flight that was generated spontaneously by the brain and could not have been random.

"The decision for the fly to turn left or turn right, which it changes all the time, has to come from the design of the brain," Brembs said. ...

George Sugihara, a mathematical biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego..., said the pattern of variability shown by the fly's choices revealed a non-linear signature -- something typical of many biological processes.

"We show free will 'can' exist, but we do not 'prove' it does," Sugihara said.

"Our results eliminate two alternative explanations of this spontaneous turning behavior that would run counter to free will, namely randomness and pure determinism," he said in an e-mail.

He said the results address the middle ground between simple determinism -- the brain as an input-output machine -- and utterly random behavior.

"We speculate that if free will exists, it is in this middle ground," he said.

On the other hand, if I think I don't gots it, you better watch your wallet, or I'll gets it!

Scientists say free will probably doesn't exist, but urge: "Don't stop believing!" (Scientific American, Jesse Bering | Apr 6, 2010)

One of the most striking findings to emerge recently in the science of free will is that when people believe—or are led to believe—that free will is just an illusion, they tend to become more antisocial. ...

Vohs and Schooler’s findings reveal a rather strange dilemma facing social scientists: if a deterministic understanding of human behavior encourages antisocial behavior, how can we scientists justify communicating our deterministic research findings? In fact, there’s a rather shocking line in this Psychological Science article, one that I nearly overlooked on my first pass. Vohs and Schooler write that:

If exposure to deterministic messages increases the likelihood of unethical actions, then identifying approaches for insulating the public against this danger becomes imperative.

Perhaps you missed it on your first reading too, but the authors are making an extraordinary suggestion. They seem to be claiming that the public “can’t handle the truth,” and that we should somehow be protecting them (lying to them?) about the true causes of human social behaviors. ...

If [a] deterministic understanding of [a licentious] man’s behaviors leads you to feel even a smidgeon more sympathy for him than you otherwise might have had, that reaction is precisely what Vohs and Schooler are warning us about. How can we fault this “pack of neurons”—let alone punish him—for acting as his nature dictates, even if our own nature would have steered us otherwise? What’s more, shouldn’t we be more sympathetic of our own moral shortcomings? After all, we can’t help who we are either. Right?

In fact, a study published last year in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Roy Baumeister and his colleagues found that simply by exposing people to deterministic statements such as, “Like everything else in the universe, all human actions follow from prior events and ultimately can be understood in terms of the movement of molecules” made them act more aggressively and selfishly compared to those who read statements endorsing the idea of free will....