Freedom and Process
If we conceptualize the universe as a single process, as opposed to a set of discrete objects, does this dissolve some key questions over free will at determinism?
This seems to be the case to me if we also allow that the "laws of nature" are not external forces that cause the universe to evolve in such and such a way, but are rather merely descriptions of the intrinsic properties of the universe.
It seems clear that, from a process view, the universe is "self-determining." And while self-determination is not identical with the complex idea of "freedom," it is often what we are talking about when it comes to the metaphysical side of "freedom" as a concept. The universe is self-determining because nothing outside of the universe determines how the universe evolves (we will ignore the question of a "prime mover" for now).
Thus, if we take the view that the universe is a single, unified process, then the ways in which the universe evolves, "what happens in the universe," is entirely internally determined.
But we can also use our capabilities for abstraction to "break the universe up" into systems, although these will always have fuzzy, subjective boundaries.
So, imagine two systems. There is the entire universe sans one 12x12x12 cubic volume of interstellar space, and there is this cubic volume itself. It is clear here that, even with the removal of this small volume, the universe is still largely self-determining. That said, it will, in very small ways, be determined by our cubic volume. Self-determination is on a sliding scale. Our cube, by contrast, will very much be determined by what goes on outside its borders.
In the same way, we can think of a person asa system occupying a small volume of spacetime, albeit a system that is much harder to define. To some degree, what goes on inside the person is determined internally. Yet the person's "actions," what we tend to care about when it comes to freedom, will also be determined by processes external to the "person."
What becomes apparent in this sort of process analysis is that it is very hard to define the boundaries of a "person" as a system.If I write a reminder to myself on a post-it note and this later causes me to remember an errand I have to run, is this my being determined by the environment or a form of self-determination? Such questions get even more complex when we consider that people are generally situated in families, friend groups, organizations, and states. To what degree to these higher level organizations have freedom? Could we say that we gain freedom through them?
In some cases, it seems like we can gain freedom through membership in an organization. Think of an absolute monarch. They can wield the state to accomplish things that would not be possible for them on their own. Yet they are clearly not synonymous with the state and are to some degree determined by and constrained by their role in it.
In the view of being as process, perhaps some sort of computation, it becomes clear that any arbitrarily defined subsystem of the universe will be both self-determining and externally determined. However, complex living systems seem to have an added ability to shape their environment in a goal directed way, such that their being determined by the "environment" becomes its own sort of self-determination.
This makes determining what actions are "self-determined" a bit of a mess. Likewise, when we talk about freedom, we generally tend to think of it in terms of "conscious actions." And yet we also do things to shape parts of ourself that we are not directly conscious of, as when we work out because we read that it tends to make people happier and more alert.
To sum up, these issues seem to suggest a compatibilist viewpoint to me. It suggests that any arbitrarily defined entity can be more or less self-determining, and that certain self-determined actions can serve to make an entity either more or less self-determining in the future. Freedom then, is "possible" in the right context, and it is possible to "expand" it.
But now we seem to have a different problem of being unable to determine "what is free?" Where do we draw the line on the boundaries of any single entity's being? It cannot be at the edges of our bodies. If this were the case, we wouldn't be able to account for why a queen, with a physical body very much like ours, could be able to determine so much more external to her body that us. Nor could we explain how technology allows us to do so many things that our ancestors, with very similar bodies, could not.
Who defines our boundaries? Perhaps we can define our own boundaries? But if that's true, then it seems like we become more free as our boundaries expand. When we come to identify strongly with larger organizations, which will tend to have larger causal powers, the causal reach of the self we have defined broadens. It's in this sense that I can see how the mystical insight that one is free when one is "at one with the universe," makes sense.
This seems to be the case to me if we also allow that the "laws of nature" are not external forces that cause the universe to evolve in such and such a way, but are rather merely descriptions of the intrinsic properties of the universe.
It seems clear that, from a process view, the universe is "self-determining." And while self-determination is not identical with the complex idea of "freedom," it is often what we are talking about when it comes to the metaphysical side of "freedom" as a concept. The universe is self-determining because nothing outside of the universe determines how the universe evolves (we will ignore the question of a "prime mover" for now).
Thus, if we take the view that the universe is a single, unified process, then the ways in which the universe evolves, "what happens in the universe," is entirely internally determined.
But we can also use our capabilities for abstraction to "break the universe up" into systems, although these will always have fuzzy, subjective boundaries.
So, imagine two systems. There is the entire universe sans one 12x12x12 cubic volume of interstellar space, and there is this cubic volume itself. It is clear here that, even with the removal of this small volume, the universe is still largely self-determining. That said, it will, in very small ways, be determined by our cubic volume. Self-determination is on a sliding scale. Our cube, by contrast, will very much be determined by what goes on outside its borders.
In the same way, we can think of a person asa system occupying a small volume of spacetime, albeit a system that is much harder to define. To some degree, what goes on inside the person is determined internally. Yet the person's "actions," what we tend to care about when it comes to freedom, will also be determined by processes external to the "person."
What becomes apparent in this sort of process analysis is that it is very hard to define the boundaries of a "person" as a system.If I write a reminder to myself on a post-it note and this later causes me to remember an errand I have to run, is this my being determined by the environment or a form of self-determination? Such questions get even more complex when we consider that people are generally situated in families, friend groups, organizations, and states. To what degree to these higher level organizations have freedom? Could we say that we gain freedom through them?
In some cases, it seems like we can gain freedom through membership in an organization. Think of an absolute monarch. They can wield the state to accomplish things that would not be possible for them on their own. Yet they are clearly not synonymous with the state and are to some degree determined by and constrained by their role in it.
In the view of being as process, perhaps some sort of computation, it becomes clear that any arbitrarily defined subsystem of the universe will be both self-determining and externally determined. However, complex living systems seem to have an added ability to shape their environment in a goal directed way, such that their being determined by the "environment" becomes its own sort of self-determination.
This makes determining what actions are "self-determined" a bit of a mess. Likewise, when we talk about freedom, we generally tend to think of it in terms of "conscious actions." And yet we also do things to shape parts of ourself that we are not directly conscious of, as when we work out because we read that it tends to make people happier and more alert.
To sum up, these issues seem to suggest a compatibilist viewpoint to me. It suggests that any arbitrarily defined entity can be more or less self-determining, and that certain self-determined actions can serve to make an entity either more or less self-determining in the future. Freedom then, is "possible" in the right context, and it is possible to "expand" it.
But now we seem to have a different problem of being unable to determine "what is free?" Where do we draw the line on the boundaries of any single entity's being? It cannot be at the edges of our bodies. If this were the case, we wouldn't be able to account for why a queen, with a physical body very much like ours, could be able to determine so much more external to her body that us. Nor could we explain how technology allows us to do so many things that our ancestors, with very similar bodies, could not.
Who defines our boundaries? Perhaps we can define our own boundaries? But if that's true, then it seems like we become more free as our boundaries expand. When we come to identify strongly with larger organizations, which will tend to have larger causal powers, the causal reach of the self we have defined broadens. It's in this sense that I can see how the mystical insight that one is free when one is "at one with the universe," makes sense.
Comments (56)
Think of me as one of those two ol Muppets in the balcony, nodding knowingly to the other, says, BRILLIANT!!!
But alas, theres an unstated determinant condition for both systems, that which gives ground for both of them to work, each within their own domain. Coming oh so close with the systemic Universe, but not so noticed for the human subsystem within the Universe, tends to unbalance the overall thesis.
Under the assumption youre not a fan of guessing games, I submit.. ..autonomy.
In other words, universal impersonalist determinism is fine as long as one isn't facing any actual problems in life. (Which are always just around the corner.)
In other words, you can tell yourself that you're stardust and you can be okay with it -- but only for some time.
Not sure exactly what you mean here. It seems to me that people are autonomous, just not completely so. Babies don't raise themselves, we can breath without oxygen, etc.
I don't see the ideas here as being necessarily "impersonalist." Conciousness arises from process. All process is ultimately interconnected, but we can still identify long term stabilities in process that account for different entities, and some entities are concious. When mystics talk about "oneness," they seem to be talking about something deeply personal. More "the universe in me," than the "me in the universe."
I suppose a core idea I wanted to get at was that this explains how our freedom as individuals can be so interconnected; how our fellow humans can empower or frustrate our efforts to be free.
That and the simple idea that process metaphysics seems to allow for strong emergence and relative self-determination.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Maybe Ive been enclosed in my particular philosophical bubble for too long, but when I see a fundamental inquiry into the nature of things begin from the universe as its starting point, I cant help but associate it with notions like flying spaghetti monster. Shouldnt concepts like universe be left as later constructions rather than as starting suppositions for basic philosophical questions?
However the fundamental constraints and ratios, per Martin Rees Just Six Numbers, seem very like prior conditions required for anything to evolve. In the book, Rees discusses six dimensionless constants (often referred to as the six numbers) that are fundamental to the structure and behavior of our universe. These constants determine the properties of the universe and its destiny, and slight alterations in their values would lead to a radically different universe.Rees argues that small alterations in any of these numbers would result in a universe where life as we know it would be impossible. His book is closely related to the naturalness problem in cosmology and physics. Meaning that the Universe, at least as far as can be discerned, is dependent on these specific ratios and values which appear to be causal rather than consequential, throwing into question the extent to which the universe can really be said to be self-determining.
I would base this supposition on the way the natural sciences, particularly physics, have increasingly done away with any concept of fundemental substances and the fact that everything in the natural world seems to interact with everything else. So it's not so much "fundemental inquiry," as "informed speculation."
Starting with parts and building up towards a whole assumes that the whole can be defined by its parts rather than vice versa. But arguably "fundemental particles," can only be defined in terms of the whole, the field, etc. It's unclear if the smallest is the simplist re the natural world. The hopes of a unified physics sort of assume that this is not the case, that the grand rules of the whole can be "written on a T shirt," as Tegmark puts it, while the intricacies of parts like bacteria and trees could take centuries longer to understand.
Well yes, it's a big supposition to say that the universe's properties are solely due to "what it is," and that it "has no external cause." But since this seems like a different can of worms, I figured I'd assume that universal laws aren't actually extra-universal (supernatural?) causal entities. That conception has fallen out of style at least, although I know it's still quite defendable. But if we accept that physical regularities occur because of "what the universe is," then it would seem like it is self-determining. Even if it is created by a prime mover, it would still seem to remain self-determining in some key respects.
Great thread topic!
for arguments sake.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I would say self-determination is not identical with the simple idea of freedom; the idea of pure or absolute freedom is not complex, whereas self-determination is, because it consists in the absence of external constraints on an entity's capacity to act according to its own nature, but its own nature is complex. We can act according to our natures (absent external constraint and within the bounds of nature itself) but we do create ourselves, our natures, so libertarian free will seems to be a non-starter.
Yes. Although, if we defined "universe," as "everything that is," this would have to seem true in some sort of trivial sense. Maybe? I suppose maybe not, we could flip it around and say that the "universe is solely determined by what it is not," but this still sort of gets at a sort of self-determination.
Correct, but I think any "pure freedom," collapses into contradiction. Freedom must expand from "being able to do all things," to "being able to do what is in accordance with internal nature," or "everything one wants to do." From this sort of self-help philosophy combo boom I'm working on:
Self-determination occurs at a second level, after pure freedom as negated the lack of freedom it collapses into. Natures might be complex or simple, acting according to them requires a freedom with some positive elements.
I see it as a two part distinction. We have "positive freedom," the freedom to do what we want, and not other things, and then "authenticity," the freedom for our nature to be self-determining. I don't know if the move to authenticity is coherent for "the universe" though, and certainly the move to "social freedom," freedom between free individuals, doesn't seem to fit.
The Universe is a self-contained system without external influence, which serves as the criteria for a conception, in this case, autonomy. Upon stipulation that the Universe is the totality of all possibilities for the intelligence that performed such stipulation, it becomes superfluous to grant autonomy to the Universe, but only validates the conception relative to certain subsystems within it.
The human is a self-contained system in itself, but at the same time, contained within a greater system and is thereby subject to influence by it. If it is the case that the only influence the Universe as a system can have as causality, is the effects of the objects in it relative to each other, which is always and only a physical manifestation, it is contradictory to then assert the Universe influences through its cause/effect, that which the lesser self-contained system exerts on itself, insofar as such exertion is NOT relative to any other object contained in the greater system.
So sets the conditions by which a lesser self-contained system can at the same time be free of influence from the greater system, which justifies the validity of the preconceived conception of autonomy. Nevertheless, while autonomy is a necessary condition for self-determination intrinsic to any self-contained subsystem capable of it, it is not itself sufficient causality. But a self-contained subsystem must have its own causal ground, else the authority for such system to be self-determining becomes internally inconsistent.
Thats what I mean ..
But this leads to a closely connected question, which I sometimes find puzzling, why do we assume that whatever happens with the micro-physical properties of the universe are relevant to the macroscopic aspects of the world?
To put it in a trivial manner, we see red and yellow objects, this is as evident as things can be, but we do not find red or yellow in the fundamental constituents of the universe. Too bad. We have to accept both.
When it comes to something like freedom, there is an evident distinction between me raising my arm vs my arm being raised because a doctor is tapping my shoulder with a device.
Maybe free will is like color. We have it but cannot see how it could possibly fit in to our description of the universe. Sucks for our understanding (or lack thereof), but nonetheless is a brute fact.
This aspects of our visual system is pretty well understood. There is a somewhat complicated relationship between the wavelengths arriving at a spot on our retina and the color we see. Understanding of this relationship is what allows you to see yellow on your computer display even though your computer display doesn't emit any light with the wavelength corresponding to yellow.
We certainly can be scientifically informed about the details of how it works. We don't treat it as a brute fact because an explanation is available to anyone willing to put in the effort.
Sure, we do have a good understanding of how vision works in terms of the processes involved. But I am talking about the experience of yellow or blue, such as seeing the sky on sunny day, that phenomenon of blueness is not encountered in the theory of how photons hit the retina and then goes to the brain and so on.
Unless you think that by saying that photons hitting the retina then proceeding to the brain is what yellow or blue experience is, then I think we may be speaking about different things.
But back to the OP, with free will it's worse. We don't even have a theory of how willed action works at all.
Ah ok. As far as the way light spectrums are symbolized in our minds with the qualia we experience, that is certainly less well understood, and I suspect we are a long way from having the technology needed to figure that out in detail, but I certainly don't think that is a good reason to think it a matter of brute fact.
Regarding free will, Peter Tse has done some serious neuroscientific thinking on that. However I'd guess most people would need to adjust their idea of what is meant by "free will" to agree that free will is what Peter Tse is talking about.
To take that a little farther, suppose you ask your spouse to remind you of something which you subsequently forget. It is only due to your spouse's timely reminder that you manage to do what you had wanted to do.
Did your spouse play a causal role in you doing what you did?
More generally, don't we play a causal role in each other's thinking, and subsequent behavior?
I shall expand.
Think about it like this. Does a "person" still exist in their body after they are dead? If not, what has changed? Their body is still largely the same. All the matter that makes up their body shortly after death might be a good deal closer to their recently living body than to the same person's body months prior. But if that's the case, then it seems its processes that are important in defining a person.
Place a body in vacuum and it will not produce any conciousness. It will be quite dead. So if corpses aren't persons, and I would argue they are not in an important sense, it seems a little hard to argue that persons are just bodies. Actually, placing a body into most of the conditions that prevail in most of the universe most of the time will not result in conscious, it will result in a corpse, or not even a corpse in many situations (e.g. a body close to any stars). Conciousness requires a continuous stream of interactions with the enviornment to exist and the contents of concious experience are also heavily determined by the environment.
If corpses are persons, when do they cease to be so? While deceased people might "live in on some way," presumably this can't be attributed to their bodies. But if persons are objects how can they vanish at death? And if they don't vanish, are all dead people floating around in bits and pieces everywhere?
Also, if I would be a "different person," if I was raised by different parents, in a different country, with a different culture, then it seems that part of what defines individual instances of personhood is deeply dependent on the enviornment. And how could it be otherwise? We don't develop the higher level cognitive functions that make humans unique if we are left locked alone in a room. Doing this will kill a child or at the least lead to profound cognitive impairment and brain damage.
We replace almost all the atoms in our body every few years. Do we become new people then? Maybe in some ways, but it also seems like people are in many ways "the same person," throughout their life time. In any event, this seems to make any sort of simple superveniance relation difficult.
It can't come down to simple structure, because our synapses are regularly "rewired," to a surprising degree.
Take other examples where boundaries seem hard to come by in defining a phenomena. What particles does a flame supervene on? It would appear that it's a different set every moment. Where is "the edge of the forest?" When it comes to some organisms, the line between species gets similarly blurry.
Take the microbiome. Is this part of the person?
Then we can get into all the sci-fi questions on this topic too.
For all these reasons, it doesn't seem to work to equate people directly with their bodies. The point is not that people "are" the things they interact with, but that the boundaries are necessarily blurry. Life seems to be best defined in terms of process, but it's a process with interaction points with the enviornment everywhere. So there is no clear separation.
Moreover, consider the way in which corpses don't appear to be persons and yet historical persons and dead friends and relatives do seem to be persons. We can easily talk of "dead philosophers," or "dead communists." Some aspects of personhood do seem to exist and persist apart from the body. It's easy to talk about "discovering more about x dead person's personality," or we can say "Robin Williams made me laugh yesterday," despite his being dead for many years. And in this way, the process associated with personhood, if not qualia, seems to spread fairly far.
It's prehaps less intuitive than the simple object view, but the object view seems to run into insurmountable problems IMHO. Bodies alone are necessary but not sufficient to cause conciousness. But how can a thing "be" that which is not sufficient to cause it to exist?
Reading your OP, I immediately recognized notions of impersonalism.
But free from what, and free to do what?
Not at all, unless we wish to suggest that we come from some other place than the universe.
Answering where we came from we can answer what and who we are and where we're going.
Thanks for taking the time to explain.
Myself, I do not think there are any insurmountable problems regarding the body, the self, and personhood. I say this because thought experiments such as the Ship of Theseus paradox and philosophical zombies are seemingly inapplicable to human beings given the evidence revealed by biology.
Take death, for instance. When someone dies, the only thing that can be said to change from one moment to the next is the bodys movements, its processes as you call them. It ceases working in the way it usually does, and the almost immediate consequence is its self-destruction. So though the person is deceased, whats left of him after death is still him, until, like all living things, he decays into baser elements.
It does come down to simple structure because the structure is what moves, maintaining life. The structures change and regenerate, but their movements are for the better part maintained throughout. However, it cannot be said the person is this movement, the processes, for the simple reason that movement is not a thing. The person is the structure, that which moves and changes in magnificent ways: the body.
Where did the concept of universe come from?What is the history of its etymology? When was the word first used and in what context? In what ways did our use of it change over time? These are questions that must precede the naive assumption of universe as a purely given reality.
Im saying that self and environment reciprocally produce each other.
In this case, I meant "universe," in the sense the term is generally used in the philosophy of physics and physics itself. I should have made that clear.
But would it be possible to conceptualise the universe as a single process? Can the universe even be conceived or defined? If yes, how and what would it be?
Generally in philosophy of physics the universe is "everything that exists that causally impacts our world." The idea of "multiple universes" is that other universes might exist (we have some reason to think they might), but they are causally isolated from our own.
The idea of multiple universes is sometimes attacked for being "unfalsifiable," for this reason.
In my Companion Book to Philosophy, there is neither entry for the Universe, nor the World. So I went to Wiki, and read about the Universe. It seems too monstrously vast in size and scale. I was wondering if human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe. If we cannot conceive the true reality of the universe, how could we conceptualise it?
Yet there it is, the article that shows how we conceive of and conceptualise the universe.
You want to express awe in the face of the vastness of existence, and so on; fair enough, except that what you actually say here isn't quite right. Human minds do grasp the universe. That's shown by this very thread.
Perhaps it's the expectation of a "true essence" that is problematic.
...we mix physical explanations with intentional ones. It's not unlike getting an ought from an is. It's like mistaking the physical body for the mind.
What is the ground for your claim that it is problematic?
IMO, "determination" is only meaningful when used in the sense of the verb "to determine" as a practical relational concept referring to the control of one process by another process when they are treated as autonomous entities, as embodied by the concept of multiplayer games.
By that norm, J R Tolkien can be said to have "determined" the universe of Middle Earth, a fact that can only be understood by those of us who exist outside of the universe of Middle Earth. But from the perspective of the characters within Middle Earth mythologized as a closed system, their lives can neither be said to be determined nor undetermined.
I'm not sure I follow. What about making change (process), as opposed to stability (substance), essential makes explanations intentional? It seems to help with moving from an "is to an ought," because of the possibility of strong emergence, but it doesn't seem to necessitate it.
And is this a problem? Ought explanations do seem essential to a subset of phenomena, so how the ought is to be accounted for seems essential.
If the mind isn't made of some sort of unique "mental substance," it seems to me like it has to be a process. This, as opposed to a discrete object, because of how dead bodies don't produce conciousness and most environments produce dead bodies instead of live ones .
There's a philosophical conceit that knowing about something involves a capacity to articulate its essence - the thing that makes it what it is. But on reflection we commonly work with words and things despite not being able to explicate their essence. Various analytic philosophers - Quine, Wittgenstein, Kripke, to name three - have levelled criticisms at the hegemony of essentialism.
You wonder if "the human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe"; but it seems we might not need to do so in order to get on with some pretty damn amazing cosmology.
Nor is physics deterministic; We can see this not only from quantum unpredictability, but from consideration of complex and chaotic systems.
No, I'm suggesting the broader point that attempting to treat of human freedom in physical terms at all is problematic. Physics simply doesn't provide the resources to decide if you will put sugar in your coffee, or not. For that sort of thing we need a different conversation, one about what what you want and want you believe.
Sure. But isn't one of the methods of Philosophy to ask and analyse meanings and definitions of terms in the sentence trying to find out if the concepts are meaningful and understandable?
Philosophers wouldn't be interested in how the gravity works, how to calculate the sunspot numbers in the Sun, observe the locational changes happening in one of the galaxies, attempting to find the stars with possible life on them, or trying to count how many blackholes are existing in the Milky Way etc. Those would be the friggin 'physicists or astronomers' concerns.
I am not sure if Quine, Wittgenstein and Kripke had been ever involved in discussions on the universe and cosmology. They were logicians and linguists who were interested in the simple meanings, namings, objects, references and semantics in language and logic.
If they were to discuss cosmology topics with the universe being the main theme, I am sure they would have wanted to clarify the concepts to begin with. Maybe they would have had refused in discussing such topics first place, because it is not their forte or interest I am not sure :)
The problem is that you could go with the definition of the universe in Wiki, and I could go with my definition of the universe which is my town and the surrounding areas I reside and walk about on sunny weekends, because that is the only area I accept as the real world for me. If we engage in a debate on the universe and its free will, where would we end up? :D
Well, yes - that's what these posts are about. I'm pointing out that we do not do so by specifying an essence; that the way we use language will often suffice. So it will quickly become obvious that your use of "universe" differed in scale from that of other folk.
You will end up asking, "What do you mean by that term?," at which point a definition will emerge from below the surface, where it was always waiting. We use words when we know what they mean, when we know their definitions. When we come across a strange word or usage, we inquire into the definition. If we have a new concept or reality for which no word exists, we coin one.
Quoting Corvus
I would say in a partial, patchwork manner. We stitch together the various different things we know about it.
I have not given out my definition of the universe, or mentioned anything about in which sense I am using the word yet. I think your comment was based on your rich imagination. :)
I just pointed out that the term universe is one of the abstract concepts, which we might benefit from clarification. That's all. But obviously you somehow seem to think I am using the word universe in a different sense to the other people.
Not necessarily. It is not all about the terms and breaking it down in semantics. My main interest was actually, whether the universe should include God, or should God be regarded as the creator of the universe. Or because we are not the physicists or astronomers, whether the universe should be just the concept of world, in which we live in ... etc.
I was suggesting to have / agree on boundaries of the concept of the universe, which might include coming up with the agreed definitions of the universe of course, but not necessarily if the boundary of the concept of the universe could be set.
It is possible to make physics do that, though.
Everytime a cognitive scientist says things to the effect "there is no love, there are only chemicals in the brain" they are using physics that way.
I still remember how a learner's driving manual talked about "when the neocortex receives an impulse". It was really careful to avoid saying that it is people hitting the accelerator pedal and often doing so recklessly.
Quoting Banno
But doing so does away with so many problems!
It's a kind of fatalism without being blatantly fatalistic.
Robert Rosen wrote about causally open and closed systems in Life Itself. The theme ends up being Kantian.
Schopenhauer is the ultimate dude for cause and effect, but I think he might drive you nuts because he's a hard determinist. You're pinging his view when you say the universe is self-determining, though.
Quoting Corvus
Hmm. A lost joke, it seems.
Is it? Or is that an act of faith on your part? You put your trust in it being possible without the case being demonstrated.
Elsewhere, I just wrote this:
Quoting Banno
The same happens when a Chemist claims that Quoting baker
As if love vanished after such explanations.
But surely physics has something to say about freedom, no? It clearly defines many things we aren't able to do. At the same time, a better understanding of physics has greatly expanded our ability to do things. One was not free to cross continents in a day until airliners were invented, etc.
Deterministic vs stochastic maybe doesn't make a huge difference. The point is that behaviors produce outcomes that are "predictable enough," that our desires can be reliably met through taking or avoiding specific actions.
But I agree with what I think you're saying. That's why I say "self-determination," isn't identical with freedom. Freedom is a quite complex idea, and I think human freedom lends itself to a fairly complex typology (negative freedom, reflexive/positive freedom, authenticity, social freedom, and moral freedom).
So, what I should have specified better in the OP is that I was thinking about plausible ways of understanding freedom "within the context of major paradigms in the philosophy of physics," as opposed to freedom overall.
One point I was thinking of was that, because the boundaries of systems are hazy and arbitrary, individuals' identification with larger entities of which they are a part can, in some ways, empower individuals.
Complexity studies is an interesting tie in because it shows how relatively small "sub-systems," can sit astride "leverage points," in larger systems and do a lot to dictate their behavior. The absolute monarch with strong authority and loyalty from their court is a good personal example of this, but we could also consider the freedom members of central bank board members have to shape their economies.
But, and still, physics does not provide the resources to determine if you will put sugar in your coffee.
That is, there is a difference here not so much of magnitude as of kind. What physics does is not the sort of thing one does in deciding on one's sugar.
I felt my joke was lost somewhere in the desert of Australia when I gave the example "one's acceptance of his town and the surrounding area as the only universe" :D, but din't get a response, but you seem to confirming it. Fair enough.
But it wasn't a 100% joke. I am surprised why you think it is. In real seriousness, when I am in sceptic mood, I only accept things I can sense. They are only the real. All things which I am not sensing are in my imagination. memory or intuition, and they might not be real, or real. I have no certainty on their existence.
For example, I have never been to Australia in my life. All I know about the place is from the books and Youtube. Why should I believe that it exists? For the same ground why should I believe the galaxies exist? I have never been in there, neither have you I know for sure.
But I think you'll run into trouble with your conception of space. If the room you're in is the limit of the universe, are you saying there is no space on the other side of the wall? Brian Greene uses this thought experiment, so don't poo poo it. :razz:
I am in my study room now. I cannot see anything outside of the room. In my visual sense, all I see is the walls, a lamp, a desk, a bookshelf with the books in it, and there is a computer on the desk. This is my true reality for my perception. I can open a book, and it opens. I can read what is printed in the book no problem, therefore it must be a true existence. I can move my hands and wave in the air, and it moves fine, which proves there is space in the room too. Motion is only possible in space.
But outside of my room. I am not sure. There was space along the corridor from my memory, but it is not visible to me now. I can only believe that it would still be there. Yes, my belief is very strong, there is space outside the door of my room stretching along the corridor, because I can remember it with strong vivacity. But I cannot remember or intuit or perceive anything about Australia where Banno lives.
I can only believe it is somewhere in the Southern hemisphere below Indonesia, and it will be getting very hot because by this time it would be, I read, the start of the summer in the place. I saw some wildlife videos made in Australia from youtube, and the massive wildness fields in the countryside too from my memory. That is all, so that is the ground of my belief on the existence of Australia. But it is not my perception or memory.
With no experience of my being in the place, my perception and memory is totally empty from the idea of Australia. But still I can make some imagination on the place with the images I have seen in the youtube videos. It is a very faint imagination, and not realistic. I feel that my imagination is futile and unreal straight away.
A concept of the universe is made partially from knowledge, but mostly from the beliefs. There is no absolute agreement that such and such is the universally accepted concept for the universe.
Do I have to accept the place or an entity that I have no direct experience of, as a part of the universe? Yes, I must, because it would be insane to deny the existence of Australia just because I have never been there. But at the same time, I have no epistemic, metaphysical or logical ground for accepting the place as a part of the universe, because I have no experience of being in the place.
When you say the universe, for me, it is the world that I have been, and am plus my belief in the rest of the place that I have never been, but heard, told, read and saw on the media. And I am sure some religious people who believe in God, and heaven and hell would include them in the concept too.
We have been talking about the universe all along, but it is very likely the universe we have been thinking and talking were all different types with different nature and meanings.
So the concept of the world, and universe are seems arbitrary. Therefore we must draw a boundary between the areas that divides the universe and non-universe, and agree on which objects the concept of the universe must include.
That all sounds reasonable to me. Science always starts from assumptions. There's a practical aspect to that. I was just saying there's a contradiction in questioning the existence of space beyond what you can see. You can't imagine that space just stops at a certain point, so you'll end up considering the truth of a proposition that can't be meaningful to you. Obscure point, I know.
When a scientist tells me that "it's all just chemicals/atoms" and apparently expects me to believe it, what are my options?
I dare you to tell that to a scientist! I double dare you!
Well, you can still either put sugar in your coffee, or not.
Understanding the physics does not remove this choice.
I would see physics coming in for defining the boundaries of an agent. We tend to think that agents are "embedded," in spacetime. That being the case, how do we delineate them?
Or we might ask: "from the perspective of physics, how do we describe how choices result in changes in the world?" Something like: "how does my choice to turn left occur within space-time and then affect local events such that my car actually turns left?"
A naive answer to this question where people are simply their bodies doesn't seem to explain the amazing context dependence of our causal powers, and our causal powers seem directly tied to choice and freedom.
If I am scared by turbulence on a flight, my freedom to land the flight early at a nearby airport is determined by whether or not I am in the pilot's seat for example, the interactions therein. If the plane is remote piloted, then I can't effect this change regardless of where I sit. But a plane being remote piloted or not is a physical difference in the system.
Self-determination seems to vary in physical systems over time and between systems. A rock is going to do very little to determine its internal states of external environment, no matter how we define them. Homeostasis, niche creation, animal behavior, all represent radically different ways in which a system determines its internal states.
So, physics can't answer many questions about freedom, but it does seem like it can help to define some aspects of how we think of it. And my general inclination is that it doesn't work to talk about "static objects" or "bodies" possessing freedom in this context. It would be better to think of leverage points and the degrees to which a sub-system determines what is within and without in response to discernible differences in inputs.
Physics can't be totally excluded from an explanation without assuming some sort of hard epistemic or ontological line between segments of reality IMHO.
BTW, I totally agree that an understanding of physics can't rob us of choice. If anything, it opens up more choices because knowledge and techne enhance our understanding and causal powers.
Physics might also be related to the metaphysics of freedom in terms of fundemental theories. Retrocausality seems to be having a moment now, as it increasingly seems like one needs to either abandon realism (there is one world and states of affairs don't depend on who is looking) and locality, abandon time symmetrical QM, or embrace retrocausality.
Retrocausality says some interesting things about freedom in a broad sense because it tell us we live in a world of "real" potentials that get crystalized into "actual histories," based on physical interactions. This doesn't directly connect to human behavior in any straightforward way, except in that we generally think of freedom in terms of our "actions" also selecting between potentials based on our internal states, so there is an intuitive overlap (which is maybe more dangerous than helpful, but interesting nonetheless).