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  2. Somehow we still seem so very, very far from understanding what it is all about. I just don’t buy the strong physicalist point of view but perhaps that is just a personal desire for meaning. I have just been looking at Robert Sapolsky’s wonderful lectures on human behaviour but find it very difficult to accept his insistence that we have no free will.

    As always I find myself right back to the point of saying “I don’t know” but feeling that goodness and rightness are somehow out there.

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    1. Sorry for butting in here, but his is interesting!

      The question of determinism and Free will can never be answered in absolute terms. If there is Free will, it is only in degrees, relatively limited, eventually caused/influenced by (practically) unlimited number of possibilities. So whether or not we can accept this as such, depends entirely on where we draw the lines. It is only a matter of ‘until where’ we can exercise free will. And on top of that, how reliable is our definition of ‘Free will’ itself. Biologically, every urge that ends up into any perceivable action comes itself, from a million little processes leading up to it, which have absolutely unconscious mechanism (cannot be controlled by the doer).

      But the possibility of not having as much ‘Free will’ as generally assumed, does make our personality, ego and the personal self feel insecure, in lack of control. Perhaps that is where we need to focus to understand, exactly why we are bothered with this possibility. We naturally want to control things, but how much can we really control?

      To me, the absence of Free will (or its limited, apparent, relative only expression) seems more obvious, than assuming we can actually decide, control or do anything major, without any influence from outside, from our own ‘determination’ or will. It does not appear very unlikely to suppose, that whatever is seemingly ‘done’ by us, is not entirely ‘our’ decision but simply happens to align with the larger/wider flow of all various other random influences.

      Also, in the end, I think it does not change very much either way, how we ‘choose’ or ‘appear to choose’ to live our lives 🙂

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      1. Except of course that such “choices” as we make are then illusory. And not “made” by anything other than cause and effect from what has gone before. Right back ultimately to the big bang.

        I do wonder whether there are actually any lines which can be drawn.

        If we accept free will we would seem to accept that non matter (mind) can act on matter.

        If there is no mind (many believe consciousness is an illusion and there is no “me”) then of course it doesn’t really matter. Free will becomes irrelevant since there is no one to have it.

        I can’t really get to grips with “partial” free will either. Or the compatibilists.

        But that of course is my problem, not theirs.

        As you say however, this may be a question to which we will never find an answer, complete or otherwise.

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      2. But of course, I believe you are a scientist? In which case I can quite understand that when you see the behaviour of neurons, for instance, you see no extraneous cause for synaptic behaviour and so forth. The argument some would make them becomes that of emergence – complex and separate behaviour as a result of all that underlying complexity in the brain and body.

        I have always stuck by the emergence argument, much to the amusement of my physicist friends.

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        1. As a biologist, I do see emergence as a very good explanation of whatever phenomenon we observe at physical/ material/ biological level. I do not think Nature ever breaks Her laws. So, there are no miracles within the ‘observable, measurable, quantifiable’ universe. In the physically manifested world, everything can be sooner or later convincingly covered by scientific explanations. Everything here is determined by a complex network of causes and effects in a complicated system of numerous interacting feedback loops.

          But, but , BUT, there remains something beyond, that will always remain beyond the ‘observable, measurable, quantifiable’.…This is where we step into the unknown/ unknowable aspect of reality. The basic substance, the fundamental fabric which composes all which is seen or observed, forever remains beyond the reach of the experimental objective approach of science. This is that Reality, the Absolute, fundamental truth which we seek through all our inner explorations and intuition, which we are repeatedly pulled towards with a sense we cannot quite capture through all known mechanisms of biology.

          We are intuitively drawn towards this ultimate Reality that is not confined to the physical or material, but still permeates everything as the fundamental substance of all that is, from within, and beyond anything that Is. Without a physical attribute, it cannot be measured, seen, touched or quantified, this is a quality, conceptually close to the Hindu’s (Self) and Buddhist’s (Non-self), ‘pure Consciousness’, The universal One ‘Mind’ of Zen, in the sense of an all permeating space like emptiness (void) which is ‘Conscious’ (not in the biological sense), the creative source of all that is. All mysteries, synchronicities, intuitive experiences ever experienced by humans, are a fragrance of this reality, which are not and cannot ever be captured or measured by any techniques or instruments of science. Accessible only through a direct experience of ‘being and knowing’.

          Now, this Reality operates within a set of Nature’s rules as far as the physical universe is concerned, and there is no compromise on this rules, within which Nature takes its own course, regulating all the way from Big bang, all through the human evolution and further on (AI and all the rest will follow this sequence). Science studies and understands this, then predicts our observed world based on these rules, and science is pretty accurate about whatever is within confines of these rules.

          But, this fundamental reality, the source, is beyond the reach of science, it is not a manifested phenomenon (although it includes every manifested phenomenon). The laws of nature are left in place, and things within these laws, function and evolve under their constrains (hence, I do not see a free will operating at this level ). Also, there is no possibility of any ‘real’ magic and miracle, within the realm observable by science, everything is determined and operates in accordance with laws of nature. The Reality does not interfere here!

          But beyond the limits of all that is measurable and observable, there is a ‘being knowing’, which itself is the magic and miracle! The source of free will, any ‘doing’ and all creativity emanates from here. But this is far beyond the reach of human intellect or reasoning, and perhaps irrelevant for the ‘Free will’ in the limited human context after all.

          I hope the way I have tried to express my views, is not too convoluted, confusing, or worse- apparently contradictory! I know only vaguely about the prevalent theories of consciousness, so I may be completely wrong, This is my personal understanding, not based on any scholarly studies but rooted more in my intuition, so please take it in that sense 🙂

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          1. Ramble, while reading your penultimate paragraph I was suddenly taken with such a powerful, humbling surge of the presence of the Reality I know so well, that now I am recovered somewhat I thought I should tell you – make of it what you will.

            Best wishes,

            Keith.

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            1. 🙏🏼 Thank you for sharing this!
              If there wasn’t any Reality ‘beyond’ what can be objectively known by human senses and its extensions (science), I doubt there would be so many, so deeply touched, spending their whole lives in search following the calling of this subtle mysterious fragrance, without even knowing exactly what calls them and where they are headed…. I am convinced and yet, I am only a seeker. Perhaps someday, I will be ‘ready’ enough to be ‘taken and shown’ what many across time and ages have claimed to see 🙂

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    2. In my observation, within the limits of our current state of the evolutionary process, we have some free will. So do all species, within the present limits of their evolutionary process. Outside those current evolutionary stages nothing has free will, not so far as my experiences are concerned. Outside the evolutionary process is the Reality that created the evolutionary process in the first place. There, Reality’s will rules without hindrance from its creation.

      In my view, everything known and unknown is in this cosmic process.

      I think we have so much free will within our human experience we have enough to be going on with! We don’t have to worry if we have free will or not.

      In the meantime humans should just stop impeding, interfering, with each other’s human experience, individually and most particularly collectively, to perhaps consider the far more sobering fact that 99% of sentient beings have been extinguished from worldy existence, if our scientists are to be believed.

      Will that process eventually include humans as we evolve back into Reality from whence we came? If so will human free will have mattered much?

      Reality rules. All Is Well.

      Best wishes,

      Keith.

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