I do not see a link in this post (the only one?) but do you know how to put a link into the body of your post? When I copy and paste I just get the URL that anyone would need to themselves copy and paste into a search.
And I'm trying to change that boring name of my Substack to "Radical Centrist" :)
I do that in the comments section of SB. My need for engagement is best served by commenting on popular stacks. This stack is about building my own corpus of writing, and if I only average a post every two months but they are good, that’s fine.
I like the way you think -- or at least the way you write about what you think. One thing I’m surprised you didn’t reference here in your introduction is the second law of thermodynamics: entropy. To me, this law explains more than we can ever know (and is the reason for my own “deterministic” bent) but that I choose to interpret primarily as that we are “purposed” (like everything else in the universe) as vehicles for the organization of energy that can serve to (efficiently(?) effectively(?) or simply inevitably(?)) increase entropy. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. However, that being said . . .
As per Descartes, because we have consciousness and to the extent that our conscious and sub-conscious “thinking” allows, we all endeavor to understand and predict what will burn us; and we to try to avoid or mitigate that. Reproduction somehow seems to be pretty fundamental in this endeavor. And beyond subsistence-enabled existence and reproduction, I am privileged enough (re: material, mental, and physical well-being) to have spent most of my adult life trying to avoid and mitigate the flaming pyres via “politics,” which one might define as the predictable efforts of people to most effectively organize their energy to predict and mitigate their consumption by the flaming pyres.
Our consciousness is but an infinitesimally irrelevant, inconsequential blip of a development in our universe and its time and space. But this is what makes being human so compelling. We get to be aware and intentional, which to me means that we do have “free will” in a way that is potentially unique (or at least very rare) in the universe, even if predictable: The inevitable march to our entropic state can be filled with all sorts of “drama” that privileges our existence. Shakespeare captured this best of all:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all men and women merely players;
. . . Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childhishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
We can create our own meaning. We can create worlds with words. We can worship idols and idiots. Within our inevitably, predictable entropic journey we are free to dream, to love, and to learn, and to despair. There are no other aggregations of atoms and energy in the universe that we know of that can intentionally and consciously do any such things. And we are free to feel that that’s pretty cool and to develop empathy and camaraderie, and Meaning, and decide to make the best of our lot. Or not.
Mae West captured a sentiment that appeals to me: “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” Many have said essentially that politics, if you do it right, is the art of the possible. But since we can never get it just right, once through is never enough. The art of politics, like the human endeavor overall, always falls short of getting it exactly right. Entropy is fundamental to the restless, fleeting, infinitesimal, and if we’re lucky, “interesting” thing called human life. Thank our lucky stars!
Thanks for commenting. Natural selection is a powerful force. It explains a great deal of the history of the planet.
The second law of thermodynamics explains the history of the universe, Im not sure it really tells us much about planet earth. Here’s my rather dilettantish thinking, correct me if I’m factually wrong.
Planet earth is not a closed thermodynamic system. The earth is constantly taking in energy from the sun, the amounts varying with our distance from the sun, solar flares and sunspots and perturbations in the earth’s revolutions. The earth is constantly radiating energy into space, changes in the atmosphere affect the rate of convection.
Isn’t it possible there are periods where earth’s entropy is decreasing? Doesn’t it decrease when an ice age begins? Do we want higher or lower entropy on earth? If the earth’s entropy sometimes increases and sometimes decreases, what does the second law of thermodynamics tell us about mankind? Was entropy on earth meaningfully different 200k years ago than today? Have changes in entropy affected human evolution.
It’s downstream from the world being entirely material. Your brain is just atoms doing what atoms do. There is no immaterial “you” that stands astride the laws of physics and thinks freely. Your brain is a wet computer.
I respectfully disagree. I believe in the laws of physics, and that our brains are made of atoms 'doing what atoms do'. And part of what they do has given my brain, and others, the ability to act with free will. That free will can drastically impact my decisions and therefore plot in life ;)
Your post makes me think you might be interested in the book The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation by Peter Tse.
To start with he has an excellent discussion of ontological determinism, which is the starting presumption of most philosophers, such as yourself.
He then makes the argument for mental causation, or strong free will.
The argument for free will is reminiscent of Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem. There exists a reality at the level of the mental domain that does not correspond to the physical world on which mentation supervenes--- a reality comprised of information, form, configuration, spatial and temporal patterns.
The argument against determinism is that at the level of neurochemistry, noise at the synapse and within neurons themselves means that identical presynaptic input will not lead to identical postsynaptic output, even if time could be “rewound” and initial conditions were truly identical. What remains is the problem of self-causation, which is what the book is about.
Just as in evolution, randomness is the source of novelty.
Concerning your metaphysics, do you know the podcast "Mindscape" by Sean Carroll? I think you are similar but not quite in interesting ways. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/
Interesting take David. Thank you for posting and sharing some excellent, interesting writing and ideas.
Must say I disagree and I’m pretty much philosophically opposite. I recently posted an opposing argument on this exact topic (before I’d read this btw lol). A topic near and dear to me personally and to the world in this difficult moment imo
I like the way you think, David.
:-)
https://www.mattball.org/search?q=free+will
I do not see a link in this post (the only one?) but do you know how to put a link into the body of your post? When I copy and paste I just get the URL that anyone would need to themselves copy and paste into a search.
And I'm trying to change that boring name of my Substack to "Radical Centrist" :)
Thanks
I’ll write another post when I get inspired. Basically, I want to wait until I have a trenchant argument against some new consensus. Or an ephinany
I'm much more willing to "just say it." I even claim that I'm looking for feedback to improve my opinions.
I do that in the comments section of SB. My need for engagement is best served by commenting on popular stacks. This stack is about building my own corpus of writing, and if I only average a post every two months but they are good, that’s fine.
Here is a Link i mentioned:
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/religion-is-not-incompatible-with?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=461280&post_id=114789230&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Hers is not my position exactly but it's not too far off,
I like the way you think -- or at least the way you write about what you think. One thing I’m surprised you didn’t reference here in your introduction is the second law of thermodynamics: entropy. To me, this law explains more than we can ever know (and is the reason for my own “deterministic” bent) but that I choose to interpret primarily as that we are “purposed” (like everything else in the universe) as vehicles for the organization of energy that can serve to (efficiently(?) effectively(?) or simply inevitably(?)) increase entropy. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. However, that being said . . .
As per Descartes, because we have consciousness and to the extent that our conscious and sub-conscious “thinking” allows, we all endeavor to understand and predict what will burn us; and we to try to avoid or mitigate that. Reproduction somehow seems to be pretty fundamental in this endeavor. And beyond subsistence-enabled existence and reproduction, I am privileged enough (re: material, mental, and physical well-being) to have spent most of my adult life trying to avoid and mitigate the flaming pyres via “politics,” which one might define as the predictable efforts of people to most effectively organize their energy to predict and mitigate their consumption by the flaming pyres.
Our consciousness is but an infinitesimally irrelevant, inconsequential blip of a development in our universe and its time and space. But this is what makes being human so compelling. We get to be aware and intentional, which to me means that we do have “free will” in a way that is potentially unique (or at least very rare) in the universe, even if predictable: The inevitable march to our entropic state can be filled with all sorts of “drama” that privileges our existence. Shakespeare captured this best of all:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all men and women merely players;
. . . Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childhishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
We can create our own meaning. We can create worlds with words. We can worship idols and idiots. Within our inevitably, predictable entropic journey we are free to dream, to love, and to learn, and to despair. There are no other aggregations of atoms and energy in the universe that we know of that can intentionally and consciously do any such things. And we are free to feel that that’s pretty cool and to develop empathy and camaraderie, and Meaning, and decide to make the best of our lot. Or not.
Mae West captured a sentiment that appeals to me: “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” Many have said essentially that politics, if you do it right, is the art of the possible. But since we can never get it just right, once through is never enough. The art of politics, like the human endeavor overall, always falls short of getting it exactly right. Entropy is fundamental to the restless, fleeting, infinitesimal, and if we’re lucky, “interesting” thing called human life. Thank our lucky stars!
Thanks for commenting. Natural selection is a powerful force. It explains a great deal of the history of the planet.
The second law of thermodynamics explains the history of the universe, Im not sure it really tells us much about planet earth. Here’s my rather dilettantish thinking, correct me if I’m factually wrong.
Planet earth is not a closed thermodynamic system. The earth is constantly taking in energy from the sun, the amounts varying with our distance from the sun, solar flares and sunspots and perturbations in the earth’s revolutions. The earth is constantly radiating energy into space, changes in the atmosphere affect the rate of convection.
Isn’t it possible there are periods where earth’s entropy is decreasing? Doesn’t it decrease when an ice age begins? Do we want higher or lower entropy on earth? If the earth’s entropy sometimes increases and sometimes decreases, what does the second law of thermodynamics tell us about mankind? Was entropy on earth meaningfully different 200k years ago than today? Have changes in entropy affected human evolution.
I agree, 'Making good predictions can save your life.'
Why do you think 'Whatever happens was inevitable.'?
It’s downstream from the world being entirely material. Your brain is just atoms doing what atoms do. There is no immaterial “you” that stands astride the laws of physics and thinks freely. Your brain is a wet computer.
I respectfully disagree. I believe in the laws of physics, and that our brains are made of atoms 'doing what atoms do'. And part of what they do has given my brain, and others, the ability to act with free will. That free will can drastically impact my decisions and therefore plot in life ;)
Your post makes me think you might be interested in the book The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation by Peter Tse.
To start with he has an excellent discussion of ontological determinism, which is the starting presumption of most philosophers, such as yourself.
He then makes the argument for mental causation, or strong free will.
The argument for free will is reminiscent of Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem. There exists a reality at the level of the mental domain that does not correspond to the physical world on which mentation supervenes--- a reality comprised of information, form, configuration, spatial and temporal patterns.
The argument against determinism is that at the level of neurochemistry, noise at the synapse and within neurons themselves means that identical presynaptic input will not lead to identical postsynaptic output, even if time could be “rewound” and initial conditions were truly identical. What remains is the problem of self-causation, which is what the book is about.
Just as in evolution, randomness is the source of novelty.
Concerning your metaphysics, do you know the podcast "Mindscape" by Sean Carroll? I think you are similar but not quite in interesting ways. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/
Interesting take David. Thank you for posting and sharing some excellent, interesting writing and ideas.
Must say I disagree and I’m pretty much philosophically opposite. I recently posted an opposing argument on this exact topic (before I’d read this btw lol). A topic near and dear to me personally and to the world in this difficult moment imo
Please check it out if you have a moment. Cheers
https://radmod.substack.com/p/schrodingers-cat-fatalism-and-faith