Peter, I am not a determinist or a 'choicer'. I am a scientist (50yearsinthetrenches). I have been able to reverse-engineer evolution by applying developmental embryologic principles of cell-cell communication/signaling to phylogeny, using the precept that evolution is 'serial pre-adaptations', or what SJ Gould called exaptations. Using that approach, I have been able to trace vertebrate evolution back to the unicellular state. Once there, the question was what was the pre-adaptation for the cell? Based on the work of David Deamer and others who have documented the origin of water on Earth as the product of snowball-like asteroids that pelted the atmosphere-less planet, containing polycyclic hydrocarbons (lipids) produced by Pulsars, when you immerse lipids in water they will spontaneously form primitive 'cells' or micelles, i.e. semi-permeable spheres. As important as the formation of a protected space within them, the fact that lipids have 'memory' or hysteresis is literally vital for life because without it evolution is impossible- having that memory allows the organism to adapt based on its 'history' instead of having to 'reinvent the wheel' which is too time/energy consuming to be competitive.....picture those micelles floating in the ocean, warmed and deformed by day, and reformed at night due to cooling....that's the memory that gave rise to what I have called the First Principles of Physiology, at a minimum being the product of negative entropy/Free Energy (Schrodinger, What is Life?), chemiosmosis as the first source of bioenergy, and homeostasis. The point I am leading up to is that the differential between the internal and external entropy of the cell is an ambiguity (see attached). Life resolves this ambiguity by endogenizing factors in the external environment that pose an existential threat- oxygen, heavy metals, ions, bacteria. That iterative process has formed our physiology, and suffice it to say that the process is both deterministic (negentropy/chemiosmosis) and probabilistic (homeostasis).....and mind you, homeostasis is the homolgue of the recoil of the Big Bang, Newton's Third Law of Motion (every action.....) dictating that there had to have been an equal and opposite reaction....that is the homeostatic principle behind both a balanced chemical reaction and physiologic traits generated by cell-cell interactions alike. In either case, these mechanisms ascribe to E=mc2, and by virtue of the fact that energy and matter are balanced in the Cosmos, the chemistry and biology reconcile the dialectical imbalances caused by the Big Bang....in other words, they, like the Redshift, are the echoes of the Big Bang. Hope that made sense.....your thoughts? John

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 9:31 AM Peter Lloyd Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Alexander, John, et.al.,

I was wrong to infer that the determinism debate is between only those from the field of philosophy, though I am pursuing it as a philosophical question. Some today are using interpretations of scientific evidence as their argument.
Maybe John is one who (partially) is a proponent of determinism, as per his last note?
Sam Harris, famously, though painfully unscholarly he is.
Galen Strawson says he isn’t a determinist but argues that we cannot escape the causes that have made us who we are, which is basically a type of determinism since for him it means that human autonomy is an impossibility because we can never step out from under past causes to be autonomous.
John Searle, though he seems in the last decade to be hedging on determinism and starting to embrace quantum indeterminism as justification for free will
Jerry Coyne,
BF Skinner, who in his philosophy of behaviorism was a determinist.
Dan Barker doesn’t see free will as a scientific truth or philosophical truth, but as a social truth. But I think he is still dealing with ghosts of his preacher past.
It could be that I’m am wasting time on popular opponents of free will that would be best to leave behind.

Please know that I am addressing this issue from the context of a 70-year-old tome of existential philosophy, comparing Sartre’s metaphysics to what some claim today about proofs of physics concerning the concept of human autonomy. And I have to do it in 3,000 words.

Also, I use the word consciousness as does Sartre, who did not acknowledge subconscious states. He refers to behavior as being reflective or non-reflective, asserting that most of our behavior is non-reflective. Much of his writing about non-reflective behavior lines up with is being compatibly the subconscious. Sartre has plenty to say about motives and passions and desires, and it would be revealing to suss that out against the background of today’s advances in neuroscience.

Thank you for your thoughtful questions that bolster my self-doubt. I do not say that in sarcasm but truly thrive on self-doubt. It makes me work harder.

Best to all,
Peter

Peter Lloyd Jones
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562-209-4080

Sent by determined causes that no amount of will is able to thwart.

On May 21, 2019, at 6:45 AM, JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Peter, In the name of shameless self promotion, I have proposed that life is both deterministic and probabilistic based on experimental evidence for both cell physiology and its relationship to Quantum Mechanics (see attached). Perhaps you could comment? Best, John

On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 9:51 PM Peter Lloyd Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
John, Alexander, Gregg, and TOK,
It seems that we agree also that choice is better than free will because the freedom we are taking about when using the rems “free will" is a doing, not something to have. It is a verb, as John just said, and as Sartre has said. Sartre of course worked this out deeply on the ontological level, saying that freedom, choice, consciousness are all one and the same. His thought is that the only practical way to look at consciousness is how we are discussing looking at choice, that it is an action, not a container of things, that we are temporal beings evolving minute by minute. Consciousness is the life-long pursuit of being that is a doing and never an inert thing to label.

A few years ago I read an article by a doctor of medicine who proposed that consciousness is change, a physical change within our brains, and that using AI or computing metaphors only drives us away from understanding consciousness. I wrote him asking if his paper was based on research he might be able to share and he responded that it was just a hypothesis he was pondering. Dang it. But another start.

I am, so far, in agreement with Sartre, that we act within “a network of determinants.” That though does not mean that our acts are determined and unfree. So evolution, like conscious choice, is free to go in novel directions in evolving novel environments, within the context of its history.

I am pondering whether determinism might not be a problem for determinism. What I mean is, there are countless determinants competing to influence our every choices, or our evolution, and how can it be comprehensibly possible that it is already decided for all time which determinant is going to be the alfa determinant in all events? Further, this has to be taken on faith as it is unrepeatable and untestable. That alone should put it outside the boundaries of science and philosophy.

Alexander, I do think it is a waste of time to be arguing against determinism, but, in philosophy, there is a whole movement right now promoting determinism. My hope is to shoot it dead.

I do like syndeterminism...

Thank you all for your contributions here,
Peter

Peter Lloyd Jones
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562-209-4080

Sent by determined causes that no amount of will is able to thwart.

On May 20, 2019, at 4:55 PM, Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Peter

I agree. Strongly. But why even pretend that determinism has a case any longer? Why not go straight to the point and cut the chase and ask in what way determinism predicted the big bang itself?
Now, if the big bang is an emergence proper, as the birth of physics itself, we can then rethink history as emergences that create their own vectors. This means there is fundamentally no difference between parallel universes and the development of physics and later chemistry and later biology and later mind and later culture. They are all vectors of emergences in a fundamentally indeterminist metaverse.
Actually a human life can then be seen as vector of an emergence called birth itself. Now that's what I call an emergence theory worthy of proper complexity science.
The question is rather whether indeterminism is the appropriate term? Perhaps syndeterminism is even better? Especially since we do not even need chance or dices then either.

Best intentions
Alexander

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