Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

  Post 122.  January 29, 2022 continued . . .

  Unscripted Free Will

  Afterthoughts and End Notes 1

 These are some marginal notes to Self while reading the book by Peter Carter. They are my own thoughts regarding topics he mentions in his text.

• Purpose :
Purpose is the consciously selected Function of a system that is far-from-equilibrium (Life), and has a Self-image (Mind). Basic purpose is mere survival. Next is reproduction. And finally, Self-actualization (to match real Self to Self-image). Purpose plus Intention is causation. And Intention assumes Will-power.

• Causation :
Sometimes incoming lines of causation overlap and conflict like particles colliding and exchanging energy (information) to change each others trajectory. The resultant vector is usually the sum of both lines. But, if they cancel each other out, that leaves a gap in causation1, for an internal cause to fill (choice ; options)

• Creation :
“. . . Big Bang, then it’s either : in the beginning was energy and matter, or, in the beginning was God . . . There always had to be something, something eternal.”
Maybe it was not either/or, but BothAnd. The act of Creation was similar to an infusion of Energy. So, what if God is defined as Causal Power? In my thesis I call that creative force, still working within evolution, EnFormAction – the power to enform; to give form to the formless.
   Logically, the Potential for Being 2 must have existed prior to the Big Bang. Before the beginning, Potential was merely statistical Possibility, but after the Bang it became Actual Energy, and the odds are then 100%.

• Premise :
“if you accept the premise that every event must have a cause, then you have to question the possibility of free will.”
The Determinism premise assumes only physical causes. But philosophers must make allowances for meta-physical3 causes (e.g. the power of an idea whose time has come). It’s also true that “everything happens for a reason”. And rational humans have reasons of their own, that may combine incoming causes in novel ways (creativity ; imagination). So, we must consider the possibility of personal reasons as causes. The pyramids did not appear in the desert due to natural causes4.

• Holistic Causation :
“Those of us who want to believe that human beings have free will must find sufficient evidence that our minds are something more than can ever be attributed to physical causes.”
Holism is the understanding that complex systems are more than the sum of their parts, resulting in emergent causation. Evidence for feedback loops5 in the human mind has been interpreted as the source of self-awareness. Those loops may cause reciprocation, in addition to linear causation6.

• Causal Reason :
“We are entirely products of what we are born with and everything that has happened to us after that.”
That reductive assumption ignores the creativity of the human mind to introduce novelty7  into the world. Human Culture has transformed nature by turning selfish reasons into causes.

                  Blog Post 122 continued  . . .

1. Gap in causation :
When motivating beliefs conflict, one or both must change. In that case, the conscious mind may have to supply a new direction or to repair the altered belief.
          e.g. In the two-slit experiment, wave-peaks add & valleys subtract, leaving stripes of light with gaps between. But, if the mind can modify the waves with values of its own, those gaps may disappear.

2. Potential for Being :
Plato’s creation myth said that the Cosmos came out of Chaos. By “chaos” Plato does not mean the complete absence of order, but the latent order within restless randomness.
Aristotle defined Substance (Essence) as the formal cause of Being. It was assumed to have the potential to create actual beings.

3. Meta-Physical :
Or Menta-physical. Physical causes are called Energy, but non-physical causes are called Ententions.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

4. Cultural Causes :
Were the pyramids built by natural forces, or by cultural forces determined by human imagination and willpower? Intention is Causation.

5. Self-Consciousness :
See the book I Am A Strange Loop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

6. Non-Linear Causality :
 Non-linear causality …. occurs when event(s) interact bi-directionally with each other. A key characteristic non-linear causality is feedback,
https://csl4d.wordpress.com/2018/06/09/linear-and-non-linear-causality/

7. Novelty :
Human creativity introduced a new kind of novelty into the world. Randomness and Natural Selection caused new forms of physical things to evolve. But rational intention produces new forms of non-physical ideas – such as Democracy to replace Fascism, and Medical treatment to supplement natural Immunity.

The Single Simple Question
That challenges All Convictions

Peter Carter MD

Primary Care Physician

“Connecting the conundrums of God and Immortality, Free Will, the Strange Reality of Quantum Physics, and Finding Purpose in Existence”.

FreeWill
is Purpose
plus
Self-Motivation

ENFORMATIONISM

Colliding vectors knock each other off-course; If not corrected by internal willful choices (gap-fillers) to cancel the collision.