Free Will

[Terrapin Station]

The brain is certainly not an abstraction.

What happened to the "as something that's identical through time" part?

An entity's mass does not change and is not an, "event." Do you regard mass as an abstraction or an actual attribute of entities?

That tells me what happened to the "as something that's identical through time" part?

[RCSaunders]

What happened to the "as something that's identical through time" part?

An entity's mass does not change and is not an, "event." Do you regard mass as an abstraction or an actual attribute of entities?

That tells me what happened to the "as something that's identical through time" part?

Sorry! I was not attempting to answer your question with a question. I need to know what you regard as an event. If your regard such things as mass, events, I have no answer for your question. If you regard mass as an unchanging attribute of an entity, that attribute will be an example of what is identical through time.

It may not satisfy your view of things, but that is what I mean. It's the best I can do without getting into the epistemological question of what a concept is, which unfortunately are usually confused with words, which are only symbols for concepts.

[Terrapin Station]

An entity's mass does not change and is not an, "event." Do you regard mass as an abstraction or an actual attribute of entities?

That tells me what happened to the "as something that's identical through time" part?

Sorry! I was not attempting to answer your question with a question. I need to know what you regard as an event. If your regard such things as mass, events, I have no answer for your question. If you regard mass as an unchanging attribute of an entity, that attribute will be an example of what is identical through time.

It may not satisfy your view of things, but that is what I mean. It's the best I can do without getting into the epistemological question of what a concept is, which unfortunately are usually confused with words, which are only symbols for concepts.

You're not following this.

I wrote, "On my view, 'the entity called the brain' [phrased that way because I was quoting you], as something that's identical through time, is an abstraction."

You responded with, "The brain is certainly not an abstraction."

But I didn't write "The brain is an abstraction." I wrote, "The brain, as something that's identical through time, is an abstraction." Hence me asking you what happened to the "as something identical through time" part. Why did you drop that phrase in your response? It was a crucial part of the claim I made.

[Belinda]

Henry Quirk wrote:

Order is natural.

That is my faith and hope and that of many other optimists. That is also the ultimate basis (although it doesn't have to be) for belief and trust in God. But we cannot know for certain that order is natural.

The alternative may be that order is imposed on chaos by ourselves.

I have been thinking about your conifer twig illustration. The picture of uncompleted parts of the twig , although it's a good analysis, may be better replaced with one of all those parts put through the kitchen food processor.

[RogerSH]

I am not good at physics and I would appreciate everyday examples as well as billiard balls examples, or even biological examples. I would also appreciate diagrams of converging and diverging processes
of billiard balls.
Your comment is interesting, and I am trying to understand.

I wonder why you specify atomism, which seems to me to be contrary to relativity. If there is an infinity divisible fluid don't we have statistical probability regarding predicted effects?

Man's known past shows that the human brain-mind has exceptional ability to influence outcomes in the world. One of those outcomes in the world is human evolution where the genetic channel is outstripped by the cultural channel.

"What makes processes convergent?". Some say God does it. I prefer the theory that natura naturans is what makes processes convergent.

I have a diagram, but haven't worked out for to incorporate it in a post yet….Thanks Henry, here it is!

ConvDiv.jpg

Hope that helps.

An infinitely divisible fluid subject to some energy input (like a waterfall) gives rise to eddies. Statistically averaging out an eddy would miss the point! To predict the eddies numerically you would have know the state on a grid of points - "discretising the equations". This would enable predictions with limited life. To increase the durability of the prediction you could refine the grid, but it turned out that as the number of grid points was increased indefinitely, the life of the prediction converged to a finite number. Beyond that life, prediction would be impossible, just from the nature of the equations. In other words, however closely-spaced the grid is, the unknown variations between one grid point and the next would progressively introduce uncertainty on larger & larger scales as time went on, and reach the largest scale in a finite time.

In practice, fluids are made of molecules, so once you have exact data on every molecule, there would be nothing unknown. That's all I meant by "atomism". But molecules are governed by quantum theory, so exact knowledge of the state is ruled out by Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle instead. (Most physicists believe that it's not just that the experimenter lacking knowledge, in effect Nature doesn't know either).

A water molecule landing anywhere in the basin of a river will (if it doesn't evaporate etc.!) finish up flowing through the mouth of the river. That's one example of how structure leads to convergence. It's the quasi-static data (the geography of the basin) not the dynamic data (initial position and velocity of all the water molecules) that determines the broad-brush outcome.

What is "natura naturans"? Nature being Nature?

Natura naturans is the workings of nature as compared with all the differentiated things of nature i.e. natura naturata.Reference Spinoza.

Thanks, that makes sense.

Your example (of how the geography of the river basin affects the outcome for any given molecule) is a good example of what 'causal circumstances' means. The dynamic data would then be an example of causal chain effect; and that is why causal chain effect is incomplete as a description of determinism, because the reality of nature is there are always causal circumstances.

Yes, but this misses the vital distinction between divergent and convergent cases. Laplace failed to notice this – Poincaré was the first to do so, then it was forgotten until the development of mathematical chaos theory, which as I say is strictly a special case of divergence. In a convergent case it is the causal circumstances that dominate. In a divergent case it is the dynamic data that dominate, and lead to indeterminacy.

Among the complexities of causal chains and causal circumstances there is no way that Free Will can sneak into effects. LaPlace's comment applies to the molecule affected by the complex river basin as well as to the initial data about its projected inertia.

It wasn’t Laplace’s fault that he didn’t know about quantum uncertainty, which significantly affects the molecule in due course, while the effect on the river basin remains insignificant. On the question of free will, if Laplace was assuming quasi-Cartesian dualism, his argument was sound: a mind that is not part of a deterministic system cannot affect it. By contrast, if someone genuinely accepts that referring to the conscious mind is a way of describing part of the material world, so that the system whose freedom is in question is a part of the system whose determinacy is in question, the incompatibilist argument simply doesn’t work! If freedom is defined as including the ability to choose the state of the brain, then that is impossible irrespective of determinism, because under monism the brain is just the mind described differently, and what is choosing cannot also be what is chosen. If freedom is defined taking the state of the brain as given, then what it must mean is that different states of the brain/mind would lead to different actions, which is unproblematically available irrespective of determinism.

[RogerSH]

Save it as a jpeg to your machine (gifs work too).

Click the attachments tab connected to the posting field (mine shows up at the bottom of the field).

add files will appear: click it.

I can't advise further becuz the menus you'll open after you click add files will differ from *mine.

DEDEDE83-E303-4DEF-8A16-49D1D1B79702.jpeg

voila!

-----

*I put together a screenshot walk-thru but won't it post cuz each shot is 'too big'.

I'm usin' an old Ipad for posting that limits photo post size (sumthin' I've learned to work within).

If you're usin' a pc you ought not labor with those restrictions.

And you probably won't get sumthin' like this...

DEDEDE83-E303-4DEF-8A16-49D1D1B79702.jpeg (59.19 KiB) Viewed 10 times

...attached to the bottom of your diagram.

Thanks a lot, though of course the picture (in the original) isn't chaos in the mathematical sense (an exponentially divergent process)! I would say they both illustrate order, but the upper picture illustrates greater complexity - a hierarchy of order.

[RCSaunders]

You responded with, "The brain is certainly not an abstraction."

But I didn't write "The brain is an abstraction." I wrote, "The brain, as something that's identical through time, is an abstraction."

Well, perhaps I'm still confused about what you mean. I know what you said, but unless you mean by, "the brain as something that's identical through time is an abstraction, the concept of a brain, i.e. the idea of the brain as something that persists in time, I have no idea what you mean by, "abstraction."

But a concept is not an abstraction. A word is an abstraction, because it is a symbol for a concept, but a concept only identifies some existent and means an actual existent with all its attributes, known or unknown. It doesn't, "represent," an existent, "stand in for," an existent, it only refers to an actual existent as it actually is.

So, I have no idea what it is you are referring to as an, "abstraction." Actually, I don't know what you mean by abstraction.

[henry quirk]

Thanks a lot, though of course the picture (in the original) isn't chaos in the mathematical sense (an exponentially divergent process)! I would say they both illustrate order, but the upper picture illustrates greater complexity - a hierarchy of order.

You're welcome...

Order vs Chaos: the labels might be replaced with natural order and man's order.

[henry quirk]

Henry Quirk wrote:

Order is natural.

That is my faith and hope and that of many other optimists. That is also the ultimate basis (although it doesn't have to be) for belief and trust in God. *But we cannot know for certain that order is natural.

**The alternative may be that order is imposed on chaos by ourselves.

I have been thinking about your conifer twig illustration. ***The picture of uncompleted parts of the twig , although it's a good analysis, may be better replaced with one of all those parts put through the kitchen food processor.

*Seems quite evident, to me, anyway.

**A form of order, yeah.

***That, to me, equates with nihilism, homogenized and impotent, good for nuthin' but food.

[Terrapin Station]

You responded with, "The brain is certainly not an abstraction."

But I didn't write "The brain is an abstraction." I wrote, "The brain, as something that's identical through time, is an abstraction."

Well, perhaps I'm still confused about what you mean. I know what you said, but unless you mean by, "the brain as something that's identical through time is an abstraction, the concept of a brain, i.e. the idea of the brain as something that persists in time, I have no idea what you mean by, "abstraction."

But a concept is not an abstraction. A word is an abstraction, because it is a symbol for a concept, but a concept only identifies some existent and means an actual existent with all its attributes, known or unknown. It doesn't, "represent," an existent, "stand in for," an existent, it only refers to an actual existent as it actually is.

So, I have no idea what it is you are referring to as an, "abstraction." Actually, I don't know what you mean by abstraction.

Concepts are abstractions because the "same" concept ranges over multiple individuals, but the individuals aren't identical.

For example, take a concept like "love." It ranges over many different instances of interactions, emotions, etc., but no two of those instances are actually identical, even though we apply the "same" concept to them. Hence the concept is an abstraction--it abstracts properties, ignoring details of difference, into a "type" or "kind."

[henry quirk]

TS wrote: I don't buy identity through time

And even so, we persist, have continuity, consistency from moment to moment.

The TS reading this post is the same TS who wrote the post preceding this one, a few minutes ago, and is the same TS who posted in this thread yesterday, yes?

How is it I, you, him, her, how is it we, as fluxing events, never the same from moment to moment, persist?

[Terrapin Station]

TS wrote: I don't buy identity through time

And even so, we persist, have continuity, consistency from moment to moment.

The TS reading this post is the same TS who wrote the post preceding this one, a few minutes ago, and is the same TS who posted in this thread yesterday, yes?

How is it I, you, him, her, how is it we, as fluxing events, never the same from moment to moment, persist?

I didn't see that comment, but no, I'm obviously not identical from moment to moment. (Much to my chagrin when it comes to things like developing more wrinkles.) Me at time T2 has connections (causal, etc.) to me at time T1, but that's different than being identical from moment to moment.

[henry quirk]

TS wrote: I don't buy identity through time

And even so, we persist, have continuity, consistency from moment to moment.

The TS reading this post is the same TS who wrote the post preceding this one, a few minutes ago, and is the same TS who posted in this thread yesterday, yes?

How is it I, you, him, her, how is it we, as fluxing events, never the same from moment to moment, persist?

I didn't see that comment, but no, I'm obviously not identical from moment to moment. (Much to my chagrin when it comes to things like developing more wrinkles.) Me at time T2 has connections (causal, etc.) to me at time T1, but that's different than being identical from moment to moment.

Again, and I'll use myself as concrete example, how is it I, as I type these words, am consistent with myself as I typed words in this thread a few minutes back? Sure, my substance has fluxed, but I haven't. I note no discontinuity, no disparity, no end of one I and birth of another.

If my substance is all I am, and if my substance is in constant flux, then why I am I not in constant flux too?

[Terrapin Station]

Again, and I'll use myself as concrete example, how is it I, as I type these words, am consistent with myself as I typed words in this thread a few minutes back?

I'm not sure what "consistent with myself" would amount to. You'd need to explain the idea there somehow.

Sure, my substance has fluxed, but I haven't.

It would be a mystery what you think you are other than your "substance."

At any rate, surely your thoughts, feelings, etc. have changed in some way from moment to moment?

then why I am I not in constant flux too?

You are. I don't know what you'd be claiming, exactly (for example, in experiential terms) in saying that you're not.

[henry quirk]

It's said that after some period of years, most or all of the substance of a person has been replace thru cell division. If true, then Joe at age 50, is literally a different person from Joe at 20. But Joe persists. Joe at 50 is certain that he is/was Joe at 20.

How can this be if identity over time is a fiction or illusion or abstraction?