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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