Reply 1 of 2.
Greylorn:
I’ve been following your recent comments on free will.
I’m delighted that someone has. Thanks!
(1) You wrote that “the soul might have free will; the brain cannot.”
First, as Mortimer Adler once remarked, we can’t think without our brains, but we don’t think with them. That’s a category mistake. Freedom is a property of persons, not brains.
I’ve read only one of Adler’s books, which did not include that insight, so thanks! I liked his mind back then. I could spend two days and write 2000 words trying to express the insight you’ve quoted in twelve words. Kindly PM me with the book title.
Do you want to be so quick to dismiss Adler’s excellent insight as a “category” mistake, a misfiling of a good idea in the wrong bin?
You declare that freedom is a property of persons, not brains— and you are right. But have you precisely defined what a “person” actually is? Is it a body/brain system evolved via natural processes and fortuitous random events? Is there a “soul” involved as part of the “person” package, and, if so, what are its properties? What is its relationship to brain and body, and to the universe?
Until you get clear on what you mean by a person, the claim that freedom is a property they have does not strike me as a useful claim. I’m not trying to be picky, but if Descartes was even close, then a person is a composite entity. If so, might not the biological component have no more free will than a hamster, while the “soul” has complete freedom to think and act?
Of course the soul would only have free will if it was not created.
Descartes, a good Catholic, regarded the soul as created by God, so even his version of the composite human person did not have free will.
Second, it’s simply not true to assume that the brain’s behavior is predictable, or that free will would entail a violation of the law of conservation of energy (a common canard). To see why, have a look at this site:
angelfire.com/linux/vjtorley/whybelieve2.html#soul-answers
(lots of thought-provoking articles) and scroll down to the heading, “Physicists’ arguments against the possibility of free will.” There you can read my online essay on libertarian freedom and how it works at the neural level. In a nutshell: downward causation.
I checked out the site, found it a lot of intellectual nonsense. The first clue, for anyone, is that the articles are all by perfessor this, perfessor that, and frankly, I regard the vast lot of philosophy professors as a gang of narrowly educated and overpaid nitwits.
These people don’t do anything except bandy words and definitions about. I’ve never encountered one who was capable of passing a Physics 301 course, much less a serious physics curriculum. Yet, here these nits are, talking about how the universe might have been created or not— nevermind that the only insights they have about how it works is going to be documentary channel distillation.
How arrogant! I’ll bet that these turkeys would be happy to explain to me exactly how to swap out a transmission, after freshly looking up “wrench” on the internet.
IMO the world would be a better place if all modern philosophers were gathered up with attorneys and politicians and sent for a nice cruise on the Titanic II.
I did not get to your argument, because, from your description, it is not an argument that I find relevant. I don’t care if collections of neurons can express free will, although I do not believe that they can. The same argument applies to collections of transistors or neuristors, or their AI equivalents.
There’s a difference between small and large scale predictabiity. If large scale predictability was not for real, all the politicians and advertising companies would be out of business, and sociology would not have even its limited claims as a science. Likewise, psychology.
Small scale predictability, such as exactly which neurons trigger to get you to buy Jack’s beans instead of Jose’s, is not possible, nor is it important, IMO.
Issues of free will in the context of thermodynamics are more interesting. Surely you did not mean to dismiss ideas at that level as “common canards.” Neither the noun nor the adjective applies, and if you insist upon that viewpoint, I will send someone to TP a tree outside your house.
My guess is that you’ve been paying attention to nitwit perfessers who do not understand thermodynamics. They would indeed want to dismiss it, because they are not competent enough to deal with it or its relevancy.
The relationship of thermodynamics to creation is a potential discussion outside the scope of this thread, and outside of CAF’s mission as well, But it does not deserve a sloppy dismissal.
