Re: Free-will

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

Hi James,

Welcome to the list!

> -----Original Message-----
---snip---
>
> Is it reasonable, reliable, or even valid, to go the Liar's
> Paradox one-better, and enunciate:
>
> Can a fixed deterministic rule (presumed to preface and
> frame the existence of this or any possible universe)
> specify the existence of perfect open indeterminancy?


This is indeed the fundamental problem of free-will, as viewed from a
perspective of Newtonian physics. If all material particles follow some laws
of physics, then how can the sum of those particles (constituting a person)
possibly do otherwise than necessarily follow those same physical laws?

This dilemma is based on a premise of reductionism, whereby the law-like
motions of the constituent particles must necessarily dictate accordingly
law-like motions of any sum of such particles. This leaves no "leeway" for
free will to operate in. Some people have looked toward the indeterministic
nature of quantum mechanics formulations as way to equivocate on this
necessity, but substituting law-like probabilistic (0 < P < 1) motion for
deterministic law-like motion (P=1) still leaves one with entirely law-like
operation and still no "leeway" for free will.

In the Rosennean view, the underlying premise of reductionism simply does
not hold. Therefore, the notion that the operation or motion of a system
(e.g., human being) can be reduced to the motion of the constituent
particles does not hold.

The other Newtonian premise underlying the seeming paradox of free-will is
that there can be no closed loops of causality. However, this is just an
artificial restriction of the Newtonian formalism.

Combining the removal of these two premises, we are free (pun intended!) to
envision systems which - as whole systems - contain closed causal loops, and
the operation of which is thereby not reducible to the operation of the
constituent particles.

The problem of free will, in my view, is not solved by finding some way to
escape causal determinacy. The problem of free will is solved by an opposite
method of maximally utilizing causal determinacy: by creating causal loops
such that the system has pulled all the requisite organizational causal
entailments inside itself. In this way, a human, or more generally, an
organism, is not susceptible to impressed external forces as the causal
basis for its actions. In other words, it can have free-will.

And Rosen's anticipatory systems demonstrate how there can be systems which
not only contain these closed causal loops, but also utilize such loops to
incorporate internal predictive models so that "free-will" can have some
internal causal basis for decision-making. By this view, free will may -
perhaps - be limited to the degrees of freedom of the internal predictive
model.


> Substitute the word 'specify' with the word 'model'
> and Rosen's Rule rises to the fore.


What is this "Rosen's Rule" of which you speak?



>
> Or, is determinism a limitform afterfact of indeterminism?
>
> Again, a Rosen Rule situation.
>
> Or,
>
> Does it even make sense to talk about partial v. complete?
> Why fret over perfect 1 to 1 mapping?
>
> Whether partial or complete, model or nature, there is
> indisputable relation between them, and its those aspects
> which are of priority.  In truth, there are no perfectly
> closed systems, only virtually closed or sufficiently closed
> ones.
>
> Rose Reasoning insists that its the 'translations of
> information between classes and sets' that's important.
> The performance rules of information and communication
> engagements and transformations, rather than 'does one
> content account for some other content?'.


I don't quite follow. In the material world, there are no "sets" and
"classes". What are the material occurrences of these to which you are
referring? Maybe an example case would help.


> If the performance rules are applicable in alternatively
> renderable domains, that trumps mapping.
>
> Closure v. non-closure  and model v. nature becomes
> secondary.  Not unimportant, just 'secondary'.
>
> If the performance lifetime of a system never feels its
> limitations, then whether there -are- limitations or not
> is moot.
>
> If a system is functionally self coherent and consistent
> and never experiences or enacts a conflict of fundamental
> performance (sudden cube of the distance rather than
> square of the distance behaving in some partial sector
> of its whole, for example), then no forced impositioned
> actions are interpretable as 'free will'.


The idea of performance rules as the basis of (at least the appearance of)
free will is an interesting one. I am disinclined to agree since on my view
above regarding free-will, such performance rules would probably be
superfluous. However, in discussing the notion of optimality principles,
telos and accepted physics, Rosen notes: "Thus, the Principle of Least
Action, say, which is at the very heart of theoretical mechanics, looks more
telic than mechanics itself allows....But these facts point to a perhaps
deep relationship between the nature of optimality principles in general and
the things we do not understand about organic phenomena." [EL 216] Rosen
never elaborates elsewhere on this comment; perhaps this was yet another
"sideroad".


> At least that's the view from this orbit.  :-)
>
> Jamie Rose
> Ceptual Institute
> <http://www.ceptualinstitute.com>

Regards,
Tim