Free Will

 

A Misapplied Question

I recently watched Ben Emlyn-Jones' videos on the free will and determinism debate recently and thought I should make a comment on it.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/vPKZENgpYk19/

https://www.bitchute.com/video/bDoUJBvaYGuP/

In this one he reads through my uncompleted draft of this article before I got round to completing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H-pM6xMfIo

He covered the conventional arguments but these are subject to certain logical fallacies which I will detail.

The first one is that the debate is almost always approached from a materialist causality level and so leads to a foregone conclusion.  This is a version of the 'Have you stopped beating your wife yet?' fallacy.

Laplace's Demon is effectively a statement of that foregone conclusion by couching everything in terms of the determinist universe from a point of view of classical mechanics and so forth.  I do not contend the mechanistic argument because the solution to this is outside of that and it is a lost battle before it even starts.

The next step is that the very term 'Free Will' needs to be unpacked before we can go any further.  We all know or at least think we know what is meant by 'Determinism' but there is very little consideration of what we mean when we talk about 'Free Will'.

There are at least three directions of consideration from this.

Absolute randomness and chance

Ethical imperative

Soul 'causality' as outside of physical mechanics.

The first one to deal with is the question of 'What would a free choice be?'

You rightly drew attention to the perpetual regress of the homunculus 'all the way down' which is used to justify determinism.  This is alright as far as it goes, but it is posed as the only alternative to a 'Free Will' which is completely 'Undetermined'.  But how can something be completely 'Undetermined'?  If our actions don't come from some reason then they must be entirely random like how we understand quantum physics.  Entirely without meaning.  This is why I introduce the term reason as distinct from cause.  Causes are mechanical processes, reasons are psychological.  I think this probably has some bearing on Molyneux's willingness to argue for Free Will even though he is an atheist materialist.  Actual 'Free Will', if it does exist or if there is any meaning that can be extracted from the term must involve some kind of meaning being present in the actions that people consider 'Freely chosen'.  The alternatives are complete material determinism which reduce consciousness and the Hard Problem to mere epiphenomena or else completely random and meaningless choices like The Dice Man.  I don't accept any argument which refuses to acknowledge the really Hard nature of the Hard Problem.  In fact, I think the answer lies in accepting the Hard Problem as part of the solution, as I shall explain.

The next stage of my case that I want to lay out is the Ethical Imperative.  It is rightly observed by many that Determinism voids ethical responsibility.  This is a very serious matter.  The social consequences of the two competing belief systems are quite obvious and dramatic.  I would like at this stage to pose an alternate label for what has been up to now called 'Free Will' ~ 'Ethical Responsibility'.

Absolute determinism voids responsibility while 'Free Will' accepts and engages with it.  If one can claim that all your behaviours are the result of external forces and that you can do nothing about them yourself through choice, agency or taking any kind of responsibility, then you can get away without taking any blame for the most atrocious actions, as you described with some of the serial killers you mentioned.

So there is clearly a very different set of outcomes between the two types of belief systems, which is an interesting fact since the determinists claim that everything is determined, but those who accept that at some level they have the choice to take responsibility produce a more satisfactory outcome.  One that is probabilistically more functional.  That's a concept you're going to come across a lot in the book by the way!

 

Now that is interesting.  Something of a paradox that a false belief would produce a more functional outcome would it not be if hard materialist determinism is actually the case.  Which I would suggest it is not!  But also bear in mind that the Determinist is nonetheless making a choice when he claims that his actions are ‘determined’ and that he can do no other.  Yet the one believing in Ethical Responsibility is also making a choice, which is more congruent with their belief.

So now we reach what I have referred to as 'Soul Causality'.  You go into this and say that it is Woo, which is a tacit submission to the materialist paradigm.  Nearly every culture and civilisation in recorded history has held beliefs about the soul, the afterlife, animism and so forth, so I contend that calling this Woo is a serious and unnecessary concession at a conceptual level which isn't justified.

Addressing the eternal regress, homunculi all the way down, we get to the real nitty gritty, the Soul and Consciousness, the Hard Problem.

The fallacy here is to treat the Soul as simply another mechanism which is caused to act according to influences upon it.

But this is not the case.

Firstly it is non material.  The materialist claim that Consciousness (they won't acknowledge Soul, so we have to go with Consciousness) is simply an epiphenomenon or by product of the electrochemical fields created by neurones is merely an assumption.  It's never been proved, and the reason why is because of the Hard Problem.  There is no proven mechanical causal link between brain processes and consciousness because they are different ontological categories.  There literally cannot be a simple causal link.  There may be associated patterns, but correlation doesn't equal causality, this is not merely an assumption but a known fact of psychology and the basis for superstition and gambling addictions amongst other thing.  The brain draws patterns from experience, and they can be wrong!

We need to have recourse to Sheldrake's morphic fields at this stage.  He proposes that the world is made up of countless interacting fields.  Our consciousness is a field and when it is functioning optimally it recognises structure and meaning in its perceptual field.  Meaning simply cannot be reduced to 'nothing more than' a set of material causal events.  What would that even mean?

Meaning is an interpretive field in consciousness.  A gestalt.  Our rational minds are always trying to reduce everything to simple causality which is why we find the ‘Free Will’ paradox so confounding, but if there are larger consciousness fields involved in this then it is a lateral and holistic phenomenon rather than the linear causal sequence that determinism holds to be the case.

This is the point that I have to try and explain very carefully because the reductionist Laplace demon in our own minds wants to try and reduce it to linear causality.

Consciousness is a field which integrates and interprets meaning.  Leibniz's Monads did this.  Each is a unique point of view which is reflected back to the rest of the Universe.  That is why every soul is unique.  There is something to be learnt from every point of view.  Consciousness could be described as orthogonal to material reality.  It intersects it but is somehow perpendicular to it.  But there is that point of intersection.  How do the two interact?  They are ontologically different but they intersect.  They have some things in common but are not identical.

Consciousness or the Soul are not linear causally created things in the way that a brain is.  And reasons, while they have features in common with material causes are not the same and cannot be reduced to them.  Meaning is not something that is materially caused, it is something that only exists in consciousness, which as we have established, is not reducible.

These may seem like fine points, but this is the business of philosophy, to winkle out the distinctions in order to have a better understanding.

So consciousness is at least to some degree outside simple material causality as generally understood.  And yet it has ways of working which make it function so as to be able to respond to meaning which is an interpretive field in consciousness.

What we need to do now is consider and examine how consciousness, or perhaps the Soul behave outside of strict conditions of material causality, while doing our best to avoid slipping back into a materialist causal paradigm.

Consciousness is indivisible and irreducible.  It cannot be deconstructed into constituent parts. 

Now this is where some will interpret me as conceding to determinism, but it is more subtle than that.

Returning to the argument from ethical responsibility, the higher level ethical decisions, which are what we are really concerned about here rather than simple behaviours which may be reduced, are arrived at through a gestalting of meaning derived from holistic reflection, rather like Leibniz's monads.  A ‘monad’ is an ‘entelechy’ as Leibniz calls it something which brings form to potential. the actualization of form-giving cause as contrasted with potential existence.  In other words a point of consciousness that brings meaning into existence.  Thus the argument is that there are inherent qualities within the nature of the consciousness, soul or monad which are uncaused, at least in the material sense, since they are present in that thing which is itself uncaused, at least in a physical sense.  This is the Hard Problem.  Consciousness is uncaused in terms of material causality since it is not a material thing.  This is the ontological paradox we basically face.

The term ‘entelechy’ that Leibniz used derives from the Greek telos, purpose, fulfilment or meaning.  From which we get teleology the study of explanation by meaning.  Not Newtonian causes.

The etymological implications of telos include perfection, completion, unity.  Psychologically speaking consciousness or the soul is seeking that state for itself, one of completion or unity with the divine.  So ontologically we are looking at the universe in terms of consciousness as the primary substrate.

Now beings may move into greater or lesser degrees of harmony with that sought unity or perfection.  Material causes being on a different level may either help or hinder moving into that harmony.  The ethical nihilist sees no greater meaning or telos and so is subject to the vagaries and rigid limitations of an entropic Newtonian universe.  Whereas the person who takes ethical responsibility is choosing to navigate the landscape of meaning that is human existence.  I haven’t read Peterson’s Maps of Meaning but I like the phrase which I imagine he is using in some vaguely related way.

So we are looking at how we as humans fit into a larger context of meaning.  ‘Free Will’ is as I have said a problematic term.  It is as I see it more like navigating across an ocean in a sailing ship.  You can tack or run before the wind in many different ways, some more successful than others, some dangerous and some which might get you wrecked on a rocky shore.  Your destination is your destiny.  I will come back to this.

Robert Pirsig makes a compelling argument for the existence of quality as an objective feature of the Universe in his Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as does CS Lewis in The Abolition of Man for the existence of objective value (not values as such which is a slightly different argument that we don't need to go into here).

Both of these rely on consciousness as the means whereby these things are understood.  So the next stage in the argument becomes simpler.  There is objective value and quality in the Universe which pre-exist our perception of them.  When we experience quality or value we do so in relation to something that already exists.  It is thus the consciousness or soul seed which already has the passive recognition template within itself that recognises the value or quality.

Of course this is a subtle process which is easily overlaid or modified, but as Lewis points out most persuasively in his Abolition the concept of the good has to come from somewhere even for the most ardent social relativist, who is perhaps just inventing some twisted notion of what they think is good, but they still think it good, desirable.

So to return to the earlier point of soul causality and the implied infinite regress of homunculi all the way down there is an alternative, but one which some might find unpalatable.

That alternative is that there is objective value in the Universe.  'What works' is perhaps the simplest way of putting, it although of course that is subject to critique and needs to be defended as 'for the whole' or somesuch; but again, we have a solid foundation in that it must 'work for somebody' or we fall into the abyss of postmodernist power models in which there is no good, and contradictorily all power is bad etc etc.  We can see how these relativist type models are unable to support themselves with internal consistency.

So I return to the alternate model that there is value, it does exist as a quality, even a fundamental quality, in the Universe, beside simple material things and events.  Consciousness or the Soul has some relation to both and thus mediates reality, which is pretty much our intuitive sense of the world as it is.

Reaching the question of choice then, we are left with the question of how Consciousness or the Soul respond to quality or value.  A Soul that is in tune with value will recognise it and try to respond to it, whereas one that is not won't.  The value and meaning are the telos that the consciousness is seeking.

A Soul that is more in tune with the good and value will freely choose those things which accord with it, while those who aren't are more constrained in their actions because their actions will lead to less good, or even harm. 

This is where the random acts as being free falls down.  Freedom must be the freedom to choose good or bad but there must also be a reason or meaning behind it.  Determinists put up a Straw Man argument here because they don’t allow the existence of value, meaning and purpose which exist within the unique entelechy. One other thing Leibniz pointed out about monads or entelechies is that they are each unique since they are perceiving the universe from a unique perspective.  This amongst other possible reasons contributes to the unique characteristics of each soul.

This is why many religions believe in the pre-destination of the Soul, because its path is determined by its own nature.  This in many instances leads on to a reincarnation model in which the Soul evolves and becomes more in tune with the good so that it becomes more free.

There is an interesting turn of phrase in the Book of Common Prayer in which it refers to God 'whose service is perfect freedom'.  So a Soul or Consciousness which chooses the good because it is in tune with it does it freely, but is determined by its own nature to do so.  To choose the good surely must be akin to freedom, open, increasing.  To choose the bad, the opposite.  Constraint, emprisonment, closed, with diminishing options.

The soul potential is explored and expressed through material experience.  It is the seed within the soul that gives the meaning which is expressed in its choices.  This seed is a cause but not in a material Newtonian way.  It is what the mediaeval philosophers called the Final Cause, a term CS Lewis was keen on.  The Great Attractor some might call it.

Soul alignment with the good must inevitably lead to an ever greater and widening field of opportunity, all those things we know to be good.  Health, wealth, prosperity, fulfilment, love and so forth.  Soul alignment with the bad must lead to a diminishing spiral of lessening opportunity ultimately.  The good is ever higher integration with universal laws, while the bad is the opposite, separation and denial.

So 'Free Will' as posed by the materialist reductionists is a fallacy, whether set up intentionally or unknowingly.  Returning to the point that a belief in Free Will produces a more functional society than the one of apathy that would result in a determinist dominated one, we can begin to see why that would be the case.  Because behaving in such a way that is in accordance with actuality is bound to be more functional than behaving in such a way as to deny it.  Although the dark magician will perhaps seek to act against the good as an act of choice, in the end it leads to limitation.

So the Final Cause of our existence is the motivator.  We may navigate in various ways but in the end there is the end goal.  Union with the Divine or Unified Field of Consciousness.

'Soul Determinism' may not be the kind of 'Free Will' model that some would like to see, but it steps outside the two main problems with the conventional debate, the causal prison of the perpetual regress all-the-way-down model and on the other side the meaninglessness of completely random behaviour.

The single biggest problem that we seem to face as a feature of living in the material world is being ourselves in the face of external pressures.  Certainly we must accommodate material existence, maintain the body as Krishna has it in the Bhagavat Gita, but to achieve some kind of happiness and fulfilment we must also bring forth that which is within us and unique, else what is the purpose of human existence?

So we have through our gestalt field a means of synthesising meaning from the impression of the material senses on the monad which has an inherent sense of meaning.  This is most definitely not causal determinism in the conventional sense but the means of ingress into the material world of meaning and value through consciousness, which are factors entirely orthogonal to the linear sequential action of material causality.

Determinists will not like this argument because they are unwilling to address the Hard Problem.  But it is central.  It is a paradox because we live in a material world and they want material causes. 

The only way that meaning and causality can be reconciled is if they are part of the same thing. What I mean by this is that consciousness, the Hard Problem is a property of matter. Materialism denies meaning to consciousness but if consciousness is actually an inherent property of self-organising systems as Sheldrake postulates the entire problem collapses.

 

I posit Sheldrake fields mediated by cymatic resonance, stepped down in frequency by such organs as the pineal gland, thus creating organisation at the quantum level of neuronal firing.  Penrose and Hammerhof have done extensive work on quantum tubules which are involved in neuronal firing.

But I must emphasise that these material responses originate in the realm of meaning and relation to the telos of the soul.

Consciousness is often conceived of as an eye, or more specifically, as a lens.  It is the lens between the material world which it perceives and the world of mind in which representations and interpretations of it are elaborated.

Thus if there is a continuous integral spectrum of being that is matter, but spirit is a characteristic of it inherent to what it is, then in its very existence a living being has some degree of autonomy. Indeed, looking at primitive life, isn’t that one of the most important distinctions between animal and plant or inorganic matter? Life interprets as a monad or entelechy from its unique position and trajectory in time and space and responds. The more developed the life, the greater the freedom. Matter simply reacts.

As with so many philosophical problems the question of ‘Free Will vs Determinism’ is a false dichotomy created by the assumption of division between mind (will) and matter (determinism).