Free Will

[Terrapin Station]

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?

How can Joe have a belief that he's the "same Joe," that is, that he's literally identical, to himself 30 years ago?

First off, I'd be seriously skeptical that anyone would believe this. My first thought would be that they don't understand what it is to say that something is literally identical at two different points. If Joe feels at all differently at point A than he did at point B, yet Joe claims that he's literally identical at point A and point B, then Joe doesn't really understand what literal identity refers to.

But for the sake of charity, let's say that he does understand the notion of literal identity. Then he must be referring to something other than things like the thoughts and feelings he has. At that point, I'd try to figure out what, exactly, especially in terms of his experiences, he's referring to. Just what does Joe think he is aside from his thoughts, feelings, and so on?

[Terrapin Station]

If we're not talking about a belief that A is literally identical to B, by the way, then we're talking about the abstractions that we make, where that's based on causal connections and so on, and where we gloss over details (like specific thoughts at one time compared to another), and consider two instances of something the same "type" or category (in this case, the abstraction being one's self). This is different than something being literally identical at two points in time.

[henry quirk]

So, what you're sayin': the TS readin' these words is not the TS of five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days, etc., previous?

If so, then why is there any continuity between all these TSs?

[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.

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."

I really wanted to avoid this epistemological discussion, because your epistemology is a variety that is commonly accepted, and it is wrong, which is why almost all that goes by the name philosophy is wrong.

This is from an unpublished article:

Most of the supposed problems of epistemology are due to the absurd philosophers have explained concepts concepts including Plato's mystic "real" essences, Hume's view of concepts as fuzzy little images in one's head, Kant's abomination of concepts meaning their definitions and Wittgenstein's asserting concepts mean whatever way words are used.

Rid of all their mystical, metaphysical, and skeptical mumbo jumbo, concepts are quite easy to understand.

A concept consist of a word and a definition just as a sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. Together, a word (the physically perceivable part of a concept) and a definition (an identification of an existent or category of existents by means of a cogent description or explanation, i.e. definition) is a concept. A word is not a concept. A concept is not an abstraction. It is the actual existents identified by the definition a concept refers to and means. It means those actual existents with all that can be known about them whether anything is known about them or not.

A word is a symbol, and is totally arbitrary. It can be almost anything that can be drawn, signed, or articulated. The word only represents the concept in a way that can be physically seen, heard, or felt (Braille), remembered and recorded.

The definition is anything, a description, explanation, selection from a list (taxonomy) or simply pointing at something, that indicates what existent or kind (category or class) of exitents is meant by the concept.

A particular concept identifies a single existent and is frequently a proper noun. Most concepts identify categories of existent and are called universals. Most of the confusion about concepts are related to misunderstanding what a universal concept is.

An existent is whatever its attributes (qualities, characteristics, and properties) are. Every existent has some attribute or attributes that are different from all other existents, else they would not be different existents. All existent have some attribute that are the same as the attributes other existents have. When existents share many attributes or more significant ones, like the attibute, "mass," or the attribute, "life," it is epistemologically useful to identify all such existents collectively as, "physical entities," if they have mass for example, or, "organisms," if they have the life attribute, for example. The shared attributes or combination of attributes of existents of the same category is sometimes referred to as those existence's, "essence." One of the biggest mistakes in epistemology is mistaking, "essence," which is purely epistemological, with some mystical ontological or metaphysical, "essence," ala Plato.

All books are books because they all have the attributes that differentiate books from all other kinds of existents, but every actual book will have some attributes that are different from those of all other books. All existents of the same kind will all have all the attributes that identify that kind of existent, but every one of those existents will have one or more attributes that are different from those of all other entities of the same kind, class, or category.

The word, "book," stands for the concept, "book." A book is any actual existent with all the attributes that identify it as a book, and all other attributes that differentiate it from all other books. "Book," means an actual book with all its actual attributes as it actually exists. It does not mean the definition of a book, or an abstraction of a book and does not, "stand in for," a book, it identifies to an actual book and that is what it means.

What a concept means is called the concept's referrents. The concept means the actual existents referred to with all their actual attributes exactly as they are whether those attribute are known or not. That is why a child using the word tomato, who knows little more about a tomato than what it looks and tastes like and a botanist specializing in tomatoes mean exactly the same thing by the concept tomatoe—an actual tomatoe with all of a tomatoe's attributes, (qualities, properties, and characteristics).

Concepts are totally man-made, created as the means of identifying and holding in consciousness the ability to think about what is not directly perceived, like what one had for breakfast yesterday and what one plans to do tomorrow. There is nothing mysterious or magical about concepts except for the almost magical power they give human beings to discover, know, and use the world that exists.

A universal concept is not an abstraction. It does not, "leave out," anything. When used to identify an existent, as when someone says, "that is a nice looking apple," the concept (represented by the word apple) means, "one of those fruits with all the attributes common to all apples with the particular attributes that differentiate this apple from all others." Nothing is left out. One of the powers of concepts is the ability to represent that whole thought by the single word, "apple."

I did not discuss, "love," because, like, "light," the word is actually used to represent several different concepts. I'll be glad to discuss it if you like. It is enough to be aware that a word is not a concept.

[Terrapin Station]

A universal concept is not an abstraction.

So then how does it range over more than one instance (more than one occurrence of things)?

[Skepdick]

A universal concept is not an abstraction.

The concept of all concepts is not an abstraction? What is it then?

[RCSaunders]

A universal concept is not an abstraction.

So then how does it range over more than one instance (more than one occurrence of things)?

It doesn't do anything but identify existents as the actual existents they are. I have no idea what, "range over," means. Perhaps if you think of a universal concept as a kind of short-hand. If I'm cooking and ask my wife to hand me the yellow pot, since the concept pot means anything with all the attributes of a pot, saying, "pot," saves me the necessity of describing every detail of the pot except the one, (yellow) that differentiates the one I mean from all others. The universal concept, pot, means all actual pots with all their possible attributes, with nothing left out.

I do not know how to explain epistemology more simply. It is not really difficult, but it does require more than a brief explanation. If you are really interested, please see my article (here on Philosophy Now):
Epistemology, Concepts

This is a better easier-to-read version:
Epistemology, Concepts

[RCSaunders]

A universal concept is not an abstraction.

The concept of all concepts is not an abstraction? What is it then?

A mistake.

[Skepdick]

A mistake.

But mistakes are a type of concept?!?

Ergo they are part of the universal notion of "concepts".

[RCSaunders]

A mistake.

But mistakes are a type of concept?!?

Ergo they are part of the universal notion of "concepts".

Yes, and it's Thursday.

[Skepdick]

A mistake.

But mistakes are a type of concept?!?

Ergo they are part of the universal notion of "concepts".

Yes, and it's Thursday.

It is Thursday. Thanks for confirming.

So if "mistakes" are concepts too, then the concept of a "universal concept" accounts for the concept of "mistakes", no?

[Belinda]

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?

Good question. I think it is down to memory. For instance what is sad about people who have Alzheimer's disease is they lose their memories and then they no longer know who they are.
Memories hang together because people like to make sense of them , so they turn memories into a narrative. E.g. I remember my first day at school,so that is the reason why I remember the boy who sat next to me in the classroom. Because I remember that boy I was interested to learn he had gone to live in Queensferry. Because I remember he lived there I now remember why I wanted to look up his family when I visited the place.

[Belinda]

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.

Thanks for the useful diagrams which reminded me of a Bagatelle board where the ball is forced to diverge and converge by a few pegs on the slope.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/imag ... Q&usqp=CAU

I may have missed your point. As I see it divergence is also causation. Determinism does not imply predictability due to chaotic complexity of nature. Laboratory experiments have variables strictly controlled so experiments are artefacts that symbolise ideas.

Free Will if it existed would lead one to exceedingly unfree choice, as, if a choice were to be uncaused it would be a random choice. The only way we can increase our freedom of choice is via reasoning and knowledge . I do agree brain, i.e. matter ,and mind are two sides of the same coin which is nature.

[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?

Good question. I think it is down to memory. For instance what is sad about people who have Alzheimer's disease is they lose their memories and then they no longer know who they are.
Memories hang together because people like to make sense of them , so they turn memories into a narrative. E.g. I remember my first day at school,so that is the reason why I remember the boy who sat next to me in the classroom. Because I remember that boy I was interested to learn he had gone to live in Queensferry. Because I remember he lived there I now remember why I wanted to look up his family when I visited the place.

At first blush, yeah, memory, remembering, seems to be the key to a person's continuity of self.

Three problems though...

First: if man is just his substance, then his memory is rooted in that substance. If, over the years, literally all of that substance is replaced, why is, how is, memory preserved?

Second: memory is notoriously unreliable. We lose, or didn't have a handle on to begin with, details. What we retain is the gist of things. Remembering is as much imagination as memory.

Third, folks with severely interrupted memories still are themselves. There are few documented cases of true amnesia, but in each of these, while the person lacked memories of themselves and of their own history, they were, accordin' to those who knew them, still themselves. The absence of self-knowledge, the lack of memory, didn't seem to obliterate who they were.

Memory alone, as I reckon it, doesn't seem to be a very good candidate for the kind of continuity I was askin' TS about.

[henry quirk]

"Memory alone, as I reckon it, doesn't seem to be a very good candidate for the kind of continuity I was askin' TS about."

Speakin' of...

So, TS, what you're sayin': the TS readin' these words is not the TS of five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days, etc., previous?

If so, then why, and how, is there any continuity between all these TSs?

Undefined causal connections is not an answer.