Free will and determinism

I don't know that this logically follows Brian.  You are asserting physical rules/attributes here.  That may not apply.

It's definitely complicated....I wouldn't necessarily say a soul has to be made of something in the sense that it is reducible, but if we think of information more as measuring mind and not making a conclusive judgement of what it consists of...

I guess it is strange to speak of a Cartesian, extensionless soul that has no spatial dimension yet exerts influence over, say, our limbs. OTOH to speak of the mind as something material also raises issues, given the ways in which it defies our usual categorization of material things.

No answers in this life probably...maybe not even in the next...

[Ninshub]

Yes, otherwise it couldn't exist.

I was listening to Eckhart Tolle saying consciousness doesn't "exist" because existence presupposes something being birthed out of something, but it just "is", it's basic to everything else. Something to ponder.

We could also question the word "it", which assumes something thing-like. Maybe consciousness (or "a soul") is not "a thing".

I was listening to Eckhart Tolle saying consciousness doesn't "exist" because existence presupposes something being birthed out of something, but it just "is", it's basic to everything else. Something to ponder.

We could also question the word "it", which assumes something thing-like. Maybe consciousness (or "a soul") is not "a thing".

It's an odd one.  I was pondering @Silence  's question to me about it being reducible because he made me uncertain of my position with that one, but we don't have to think of "made of something" as meaning lots of tiny stuff.  Some kind of infinite something (if "thing" is an appropriate expression here) might work.  Language can be something of a hindrance when exploring these things I think.  I have a concept, but putting it into words is a sod of a task!

[Ninshub]

I'm wondering if any of you has heard of philosopher Helen Steward and her book A Metaphysics for Freedom (2012). I saw her listed in a rank of 50 pre-eminent philosophers so far in the 21st century.

She's not coming from a position of consciousness as fundamental (as far as I know) as we discuss it in this forum. But according to this list she combines "philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of action and ontology".

Steward adopts what she describes as an “animalistic” approach to the study of free will, hypothesizing that if we understand humans as animals, ontologically, with needs based in our animal nature, then we can better understand and answer problems of free will. In her major book A Metaphysics for Freedom (2012), Steward develops this approach, arguing against a determinist theory of free will as both a problem for human and animal action. Through her ideas, Steward has been influential to the development of the post-humanist approach in philosophy and critical theory.

This is the synopsis on Amazon.

A Metaphysics for Freedom argues that agency itself-and not merely the special, distinctively human variety of it-is incompatible with determinism. For determinism is threatened just as surely by the existence of powers which can be unproblematically accorded to many sorts of animals, as by the distinctively human powers on which the free will debate has tended to focus. Helen Steward suggests that a tendency to approach the question of free will solely through the issue of moral responsibility has obscured the fact that there is a quite different route to incompatibilism, based on the idea that animal agents above a certain level of complexity possess a range of distinctive 'two-way' powers, not found in simpler substances. Determinism is not a doctrine of physics, but of metaphysics; and the idea that it is physics which will tell us whether our world is deterministic or not presupposes what must not be taken for granted-that is, that physics settles everything else, and that we are already in a position to say that there could be no irreducibly top-down forms of causal influence.

Steward considers questions concerning supervenience, laws, and levels of explanation, and explores an outline of a variety of top-down causation which might sustain the idea that an animal itself, rather than merely events and states going on in its parts, might be able to bring something about. The resulting position permits certain important concessions to compatibilism to be made; and a convincing response is also offered to the charge that even if it is agreed that determinism is incompatible with agency, indeterminism can be of no possible help. The whole is an argument for a distinctive and resolutely non-dualistic, naturalistically respectable version of libertarianism, rooted in a conception of what biological forms of organisation might make possible in the way of freedom.

Here's one interview she's given:


(Listening to it, she's against Dennett on determinism. However she is an atheist and with Dennett on consciousness.)

(Listening to it, she's against Dennett on determinism. However she is an atheist and with Dennett on consciousness.)

Inherently, she must dismiss all of the evidence for an afterlife, the evidence of NDEs, and of reincarnation memories, and it goes on. Miss by mile or by 100 feet or by 10 feet, it's still a miss. Wrong, wrong, wrong and not of much interest, at least to me.

[Ninshub]

Yeah I agree, it's a non-starter for those reasons. I stopped listening to it when I reached that point. (At least interesting to see a position where free will is based on agency.)

[Ninshub]

btw, that interview takes place on a youtube podcast channel that is exclusively devoted to the mind-body problem. Which is potentially interesting. However the host says he's a convinced atheist. Which seems to close the doors automatically on a lot of perspectives!

(I do see he at least has Donald Hoffman as an interviewee.)

Yeah I agree, it's a non-starter for those reasons. I stopped listening to it when I reached that point. (At least interesting to see a position where free will is based on agency.)

I actually disagree with this...maybe it's just naive optimism on my part but IMO just by chipping away at the standard takes on Nature/Mind/etc we get closer to a world where the paranormal is possible/plausible.

The ideal might be that one starts with the parapsychological data and only then attempts to philosophize - but we for better or worse don't live in that world. The acceptance of the paranormal will have to be attained piecemeal, after the standards by which academia bases its denials are softened up.

p.s. As an aside I think her position on causal "two-way" powers intrinsic to the agent is something that has come up before in discussions about free will on this board...I also think this is part of the first step in accepting the possibility of Psi...

[Ninshub]

That's a very valid point, Sci. I just stopped listening because at that point it became of less interest to me as a comprehensive model.

That's a very valid point, Sci. I just stopped listening because at that point it became of less interest to me as a comprehensive model.

Oh yeah I haven't listened to it at all so I may not even get as far as you.  

I just think we do ourselves a disservice, especially with regards to a certain pessimism that can grab hold of the proponent, if we don't recognize that there are important shifts happening that may not directly connect to parapsychology but can in the long run be supportive.

edit: regarding powers & agency, here was the list of papers mentioned in one of the prior free will threads:

The Theory of Causal Significance

Real Dispositions in the Physical World

A Powerful Theory of Causation

Causation is Not Your Enemy

Free Will and Mental Powers