Freedom and Process

Count Timothy von Icarus

If we conceptualize the universe as a single process, as opposed to a set of discrete objects, does this dissolve some key questions over free will at determinism?

This seems to be the case to me if we also allow that the "laws of nature" are not external forces that cause the universe to evolve in such and such a way, but are rather merely descriptions of the intrinsic properties of the universe.

It seems clear that, from a process view, the universe is "self-determining." And while self-determination is not identical with the complex idea of "freedom," it is often what we are talking about when it comes to the metaphysical side of "freedom" as a concept. The universe is self-determining because nothing outside of the universe determines how the universe evolves (we will ignore the question of a "prime mover" for now).

Thus, if we take the view that the universe is a single, unified process, then the ways in which the universe evolves, "what happens in the universe," is entirely internally determined.

But we can also use our capabilities for abstraction to "break the universe up" into systems, although these will always have fuzzy, subjective boundaries.

So, imagine two systems. There is the entire universe sans one 12x12x12 cubic volume of interstellar space, and there is this cubic volume itself. It is clear here that, even with the removal of this small volume, the universe is still largely self-determining. That said, it will, in very small ways, be determined by our cubic volume. Self-determination is on a sliding scale. Our cube, by contrast, will very much be determined by what goes on outside its borders.

In the same way, we can think of a person asa system occupying a small volume of spacetime, albeit a system that is much harder to define. To some degree, what goes on inside the person is determined internally. Yet the person's "actions," what we tend to care about when it comes to freedom, will also be determined by processes external to the "person."

What becomes apparent in this sort of process analysis is that it is very hard to define the boundaries of a "person" as a system.If I write a reminder to myself on a post-it note and this later causes me to remember an errand I have to run, is this my being determined by the environment or a form of self-determination? Such questions get even more complex when we consider that people are generally situated in families, friend groups, organizations, and states. To what degree to these higher level organizations have freedom? Could we say that we gain freedom through them?

In some cases, it seems like we can gain freedom through membership in an organization. Think of an absolute monarch. They can wield the state to accomplish things that would not be possible for them on their own. Yet they are clearly not synonymous with the state and are to some degree determined by and constrained by their role in it.

In the view of being as process, perhaps some sort of computation, it becomes clear that any arbitrarily defined subsystem of the universe will be both self-determining and externally determined. However, complex living systems seem to have an added ability to shape their environment in a goal directed way, such that their being determined by the "environment" becomes its own sort of self-determination.

This makes determining what actions are "self-determined" a bit of a mess. Likewise, when we talk about freedom, we generally tend to think of it in terms of "conscious actions." And yet we also do things to shape parts of ourself that we are not directly conscious of, as when we work out because we read that it tends to make people happier and more alert.

To sum up, these issues seem to suggest a compatibilist viewpoint to me. It suggests that any arbitrarily defined entity can be more or less self-determining, and that certain self-determined actions can serve to make an entity either more or less self-determining in the future. Freedom then, is "possible" in the right context, and it is possible to "expand" it.

But now we seem to have a different problem of being unable to determine "what is free?" Where do we draw the line on the boundaries of any single entity's being? It cannot be at the edges of our bodies. If this were the case, we wouldn't be able to account for why a queen, with a physical body very much like ours, could be able to determine so much more external to her body that us. Nor could we explain how technology allows us to do so many things that our ancestors, with very similar bodies, could not.

Who defines our boundaries? Perhaps we can define our own boundaries? But if that's true, then it seems like we become more free as our boundaries expand. When we come to identify strongly with larger organizations, which will tend to have larger causal powers, the causal reach of the self we have defined broadens. It's in this sense that I can see how the mystical insight that one is free when one is "at one with the universe," makes sense.

Mww

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

Think of me as one of those two ol’ Muppets in the balcony, nodding knowingly to the other, says, “BRILLIANT!!!”

But alas, there’s an unstated determinant condition for both systems, that which gives ground for both of them to work, each within their own domain. Coming oh so close with the systemic Universe, but not so noticed for the human subsystem within the Universe, tends to unbalance the overall thesis.

Under the assumption you’re not a fan of guessing games, I submit..…..autonomy.

baker

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

The only problem is that your teeth rot and you're not okay with it!

In other words, universal impersonalist determinism is fine as long as one isn't facing any actual problems in life. (Which are always just around the corner.)
In other words, you can tell yourself that you're stardust and you can be okay with it -- but only for some time.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Mww

Not sure exactly what you mean here. It seems to me that people are autonomous, just not completely so. Babies don't raise themselves, we can breath without oxygen, etc.

↪baker

I don't see the ideas here as being necessarily "impersonalist." Conciousness arises from process. All process is ultimately interconnected, but we can still identify long term stabilities in process that account for different entities, and some entities are concious. When mystics talk about "oneness," they seem to be talking about something deeply personal. More "the universe in me," than the "me in the universe."

I suppose a core idea I wanted to get at was that this explains how our freedom as individuals can be so interconnected; how our fellow humans can empower or frustrate our efforts to be free.

That and the simple idea that process metaphysics seems to allow for strong emergence and relative self-determination.

Joshs

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

If we conceptualize the universe as a single process, as opposed to a set of discrete objects, does this dissolve some key questions over free will at determinism?

This seems to be the case to me if we also allow that the "laws of nature" are not external forces that cause the universe to evolve in such and such a way, but are rather merely descriptions of the intrinsic properties of the universe. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe I’ve been enclosed in my particular philosophical bubble for too long, but when I see a fundamental inquiry into the nature of things begin from “the universe” as its starting point, I can’t help but associate it with notions like flying spaghetti monster. Shouldn’t concepts like universe be left as later constructions rather than as starting suppositions for basic philosophical questions?

Wayfarer

This seems to be the case to me if we also allow that the "laws of nature" are not external forces that cause the universe to evolve in such and such a way, but are rather merely descriptions of the intrinsic properties of the universe. — Count Timothy von Icarus

However the fundamental constraints and ratios, per Martin Rees’ ‘Just Six Numbers’, seem very like prior conditions required for anything to evolve. In the book, Rees discusses six dimensionless constants (often referred to as the six numbers) that are fundamental to the structure and behavior of our universe. These constants determine the properties of the universe and its destiny, and slight alterations in their values would lead to a radically different universe.Rees argues that small alterations in any of these numbers would result in a universe where life as we know it would be impossible. His book is closely related to the ‘naturalness problem’ in cosmology and physics. Meaning that the Universe, at least as far as can be discerned, is dependent on these specific ratios and values which appear to be causal rather than consequential, throwing into question the extent to which the universe can really be said to be ‘self-determining’.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Joshs

I would base this supposition on the way the natural sciences, particularly physics, have increasingly done away with any concept of fundemental substances and the fact that everything in the natural world seems to interact with everything else. So it's not so much "fundemental inquiry," as "informed speculation."

Starting with parts and building up towards a whole assumes that the whole can be defined by its parts rather than vice versa. But arguably "fundemental particles," can only be defined in terms of the whole, the field, etc. It's unclear if the smallest is the simplist re the natural world. The hopes of a unified physics sort of assume that this is not the case, that the grand rules of the whole can be "written on a T shirt," as Tegmark puts it, while the intricacies of parts like bacteria and trees could take centuries longer to understand.

↪Wayfarer

Well yes, it's a big supposition to say that the universe's properties are solely due to "what it is," and that it "has no external cause." But since this seems like a different can of worms, I figured I'd assume that universal laws aren't actually extra-universal (supernatural?) causal entities. That conception has fallen out of style at least, although I know it's still quite defendable. But if we accept that physical regularities occur because of "what the universe is," then it would seem like it is self-determining. Even if it is created by a prime mover, it would still seem to remain self-determining in some key respects.

wonderer1

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

Great thread topic!

Wayfarer

if we accept that physical regularities occur because of "what the universe is," then it would seem like it is self-determining... — Count Timothy von Icarus

…for argument’s sake.

Janus

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

What you say basically seems to come down to the idea that if the universe is one, and we are not in any way separate from that one, self-determining being, then the idea of radical freedom is inappropriate. I said "radical freedom" but I could have said 'pure freedom' or 'simple freedom'.

And while self-determination is not identical with the complex idea of "freedom," it is often what we are talking about when it comes to the metaphysical side of "freedom" as a concept. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say self-determination is not identical with the simple idea of freedom; the idea of pure or absolute freedom is not complex, whereas self-determination is, because it consists in the absence of external constraints on an entity's capacity to act according to its own nature, but its own nature is complex. We can act according to our natures (absent external constraint and within the bounds of nature itself) but we do create ourselves, our natures, so libertarian free will seems to be a non-starter.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Wayfarer

Yes. Although, if we defined "universe," as "everything that is," this would have to seem true in some sort of trivial sense. Maybe? I suppose maybe not, we could flip it around and say that the "universe is solely determined by what it is not," but this still sort of gets at a sort of self-determination.

↪Janus

Correct, but I think any "pure freedom," collapses into contradiction. Freedom must expand from "being able to do all things," to "being able to do what is in accordance with internal nature," or "everything one wants to do." From this sort of self-help philosophy combo boom I'm working on:

To start, let us try to conceive of “pure” or “absolute” freedom. What would this mean? If we are free it means, in part, that we are not constrained from doing something that we want to do. If we are "absolutely" free, we are free to do everything that we want to do, but also to do things that we do not want to do. An absolutely free entity can act in accordance with its nature, but it must also be free to act contrary to its nature, or even to change its nature. Elsewise, the entity's nature will itself be a form of constraint, a limit.

Let us imagine we have this sort of “pure freedom.” Imagine that we have before us an endless white plane, a blank sheet of paper with no edges. We are free to draw on it whatever shape we like.

But here, when we get to the action, we run into a contradiction. We cannot act and be free of all constraints. If we draw a triangle first, then we are not free to have drawn a circle first instead. If we draw something, then we are not free to have refused to draw anything.

Choice is its own form of constraint. What we see here is that, inherit to any positive decision, there is a form of limitation. We can not move up and down simultaneously. We cannot save our cake and have eaten it. We cannot draw a square and have our shape have anything other than four equal sides.

Thus, “pure freedom” requires the absence of any determinateness. We cannot do anything without in some way imposing a limit on what we have done. To choose A, B, and C, is to be unfree to have chosen just A and C, only A, or none of the above, etc.

But if we are only absolutely free when we flee from all definiteness then it seems that maintaining this “pure freedom,” would preclude our ability to choose anything! Yet, at the same time, if we are unable to make any choices, it would seem that this makes us completely unfree.

In this way, “pure freedom,” appears to collapse into its opposite. Our problem is not unlike the seeming contradiction that appears when we ask “can God create a stone that is so heavy that God cannot lift it?” This is because "omnipotence,” the ability to “do anything, without constraint,” implies a sort of “pure freedom” on first analysis.

So, have we disproven the possibility of freedom off the bat? No, rather we have shown that the concept of “freedom” cannot be reduced to “lack of constraint.” As we shall see, freedom is not simple. It is something that unfolds itself.

Self-determination occurs at a second level, after pure freedom as negated the lack of freedom it collapses into. Natures might be complex or simple, acting according to them requires a freedom with some positive elements.

I see it as a two part distinction. We have "positive freedom," the freedom to do what we want, and not other things, and then "authenticity," the freedom for our nature to be self-determining. I don't know if the move to authenticity is coherent for "the universe" though, and certainly the move to "social freedom," freedom between free individuals, doesn't seem to fit.

Mww

Not sure exactly what you mean here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The Universe is a self-contained system without external influence, which serves as the criteria for a conception, in this case, autonomy. Upon stipulation that the Universe is the totality of all possibilities for the intelligence that performed such stipulation, it becomes superfluous to grant autonomy to the Universe, but only validates the conception relative to certain subsystems within it.

The human is a self-contained system in itself, but at the same time, contained within a greater system and is thereby subject to influence by it. If it is the case that the only influence the Universe as a system can have as causality, is the effects of the objects in it relative to each other, which is always and only a physical manifestation, it is contradictory to then assert the Universe influences through its cause/effect, that which the lesser self-contained system exerts on itself, insofar as such exertion is NOT relative to any other object contained in the greater system.

So sets the conditions by which a lesser self-contained system can at the same time be free of influence from the greater system, which justifies the validity of the preconceived conception of autonomy. Nevertheless, while autonomy is a necessary condition for self-determination intrinsic to any self-contained subsystem capable of it, it is not itself sufficient causality. But a self-contained subsystem must have its own causal ground, else the authority for such system to be self-determining becomes internally inconsistent.

That’s what I mean…..

NOS4A2

The idea that we exist beyond the surface of our body is absurd, so I was hoping you might expand on this point. We can explain how technology allows us to do more than our ancestors without imagine ourselves as being one with the technology.

Manuel

Well to speak about the intrinsic properties of the universe is very hard. We may not attain such a standard of evidence, because all the knowledge we can get, comes in the form of representation.

But this leads to a closely connected question, which I sometimes find puzzling, why do we assume that whatever happens with the micro-physical properties of the universe are relevant to the macroscopic aspects of the world?

To put it in a trivial manner, we see red and yellow objects, this is as evident as things can be, but we do not find red or yellow in the fundamental constituents of the universe. Too bad. We have to accept both.

When it comes to something like freedom, there is an evident distinction between me raising my arm vs my arm being raised because a doctor is tapping my shoulder with a device.

Maybe free will is like color. We have it but cannot see how it could possibly fit in to our description of the universe. Sucks for our understanding (or lack thereof), but nonetheless is a brute fact.

wonderer1

To put it in a trivial manner, we see red and yellow objects, this is as evident as things can be, but we do not find red or yellow in the fundamental constituents of the universe. Too bad. We have to accept both. — Manuel

This aspects of our visual system is pretty well understood. There is a somewhat complicated relationship between the wavelengths arriving at a spot on our retina and the color we see. Understanding of this relationship is what allows you to see yellow on your computer display even though your computer display doesn't emit any light with the wavelength corresponding to yellow.

We certainly can be scientifically informed about the details of how it works. We don't treat it as a brute fact because an explanation is available to anyone willing to put in the effort.

Manuel

This aspects of our visual system is pretty well understood. There is a somewhat complicated relationship between the wavelengths arriving at a spot on our retina and the color we see. Understanding of this relationship is what allows you to see yellow on your computer display even though your computer display doesn't emit any light with the wavelength corresponding to yellow. — wonderer1

Sure, we do have a good understanding of how vision works in terms of the processes involved. But I am talking about the experience of yellow or blue, such as seeing the sky on sunny day, that phenomenon of blueness is not encountered in the theory of how photons hit the retina and then goes to the brain and so on.

Unless you think that by saying that photons hitting the retina then proceeding to the brain is what yellow or blue experience is, then I think we may be speaking about different things.

But back to the OP, with free will it's worse. We don't even have a theory of how willed action works at all.

wonderer1

Sure, we do have a good understanding of how vision works in terms of the processes involved. But I am talking about the experience of yellow or blue, such as seeing the sky on sunny day, that phenomenon of blueness is not encountered in the theory of how photons hit the retina and then goes to the brain and so on. — Manuel

Ah ok. As far as the way light spectrums are symbolized in our minds with the qualia we experience, that is certainly less well understood, and I suspect we are a long way from having the technology needed to figure that out in detail, but I certainly don't think that is a good reason to think it a matter of brute fact.

Regarding free will, Peter Tse has done some serious neuroscientific thinking on that. However I'd guess most people would need to adjust their idea of what is meant by "free will" to agree that free will is what Peter Tse is talking about.

wonderer1

What becomes apparent in this sort of process analysis is that it is very hard to define the boundaries of a "person" as a system. If I write a reminder to myself on a post-it note and this later causes me to remember an errand I have to run, is this my being determined by the environment or a form of self-determination? — Count Timothy von Icarus

To take that a little farther, suppose you ask your spouse to remind you of something which you subsequently forget. It is only due to your spouse's timely reminder that you manage to do what you had wanted to do.

Did your spouse play a causal role in you doing what you did?

More generally, don't we play a causal role in each other's thinking, and subsequent behavior?

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪NOS4A2

I shall expand.

Think about it like this. Does a "person" still exist in their body after they are dead? If not, what has changed? Their body is still largely the same. All the matter that makes up their body shortly after death might be a good deal closer to their recently living body than to the same person's body months prior. But if that's the case, then it seems its processes that are important in defining a person.

Place a body in vacuum and it will not produce any conciousness. It will be quite dead. So if corpses aren't persons, and I would argue they are not in an important sense, it seems a little hard to argue that persons are just bodies. Actually, placing a body into most of the conditions that prevail in most of the universe most of the time will not result in conscious, it will result in a corpse, or not even a corpse in many situations (e.g. a body close to any stars). Conciousness requires a continuous stream of interactions with the enviornment to exist and the contents of concious experience are also heavily determined by the environment.

If corpses are persons, when do they cease to be so? While deceased people might "live in on some way," presumably this can't be attributed to their bodies. But if persons are objects how can they vanish at death? And if they don't vanish, are all dead people floating around in bits and pieces everywhere?

Also, if I would be a "different person," if I was raised by different parents, in a different country, with a different culture, then it seems that part of what defines individual instances of personhood is deeply dependent on the enviornment. And how could it be otherwise? We don't develop the higher level cognitive functions that make humans unique if we are left locked alone in a room. Doing this will kill a child or at the least lead to profound cognitive impairment and brain damage.

We replace almost all the atoms in our body every few years. Do we become new people then? Maybe in some ways, but it also seems like people are in many ways "the same person," throughout their life time. In any event, this seems to make any sort of simple superveniance relation difficult.

It can't come down to simple structure, because our synapses are regularly "rewired," to a surprising degree.

Take other examples where boundaries seem hard to come by in defining a phenomena. What particles does a flame supervene on? It would appear that it's a different set every moment. Where is "the edge of the forest?" When it comes to some organisms, the line between species gets similarly blurry.

Take the microbiome. Is this part of the person?

Then we can get into all the sci-fi questions on this topic too.

For all these reasons, it doesn't seem to work to equate people directly with their bodies. The point is not that people "are" the things they interact with, but that the boundaries are necessarily blurry. Life seems to be best defined in terms of process, but it's a process with interaction points with the enviornment everywhere. So there is no clear separation.

Moreover, consider the way in which corpses don't appear to be persons and yet historical persons and dead friends and relatives do seem to be persons. We can easily talk of "dead philosophers," or "dead communists." Some aspects of personhood do seem to exist and persist apart from the body. It's easy to talk about "discovering more about x dead person's personality," or we can say "Robin Williams made me laugh yesterday," despite his being dead for many years. And in this way, the process associated with personhood, if not qualia, seems to spread fairly far.

It's prehaps less intuitive than the simple object view, but the object view seems to run into insurmountable problems IMHO. Bodies alone are necessary but not sufficient to cause conciousness. But how can a thing "be" that which is not sufficient to cause it to exist?

baker

I don't see the ideas here as being necessarily "impersonalist." Conciousness arises from process. All process is ultimately interconnected, but we can still identify long term stabilities in process that account for different entities, and some entities are concious. When mystics talk about "oneness," they seem to be talking about something deeply personal. More "the universe in me," than the "me in the universe." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Reading your OP, I immediately recognized notions of impersonalism.

Impersonalism
A belief system that places little importance on individuals and their subjective viewpoints and experiences.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impersonalism

Impersonalism is the notion that ultimate reality is without any personal attributes.

https://gitadaily.com/the-ceiling-of-impersonalism-is-the-beginning-of-transcendental-personalism/

The term Advaita (literally "non-secondness", but usually rendered as "nondualism",[5][6] and often equated with monism[note 3]) refers to the idea that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while the transient phenomenal world is an illusory appearance (maya) of Brahman. In this view, jivatman, the experiencing self, is ultimately non-different ("na aparah") from Ātman-Brahman, the highest Self or Reality.[3][7][8][note 4] The jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection or limitation of singular Ātman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies.[9]

In the Advaita tradition, moksha (liberation from suffering and rebirth)[10][11] is attained through recognizing this illusoriness of the phenomenal world and disidentification from the body-mind complex and the notion of 'doership',[note 5] and acquiring vidyā (knowledge)[12] of one's true identity as Atman-Brahman,[13] self-luminous (svayam prakāśa)[note 6] awareness or Witness-consciousness.[14][note 7] Upanishadic statements such as tat tvam asi, "that you are," destroy the ignorance (avidyā) regarding one's true identity by revealing that (jiv)Ātman is non-different from immortal[note 8] Brahman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta

I suppose a core idea I wanted to get at was that this explains how our freedom as individuals can be so interconnected; how our fellow humans can empower or frustrate our efforts to be free.

But free from what, and free to do what?

baker

Maybe I’ve been enclosed in my particular philosophical bubble for too long, but when I see a fundamental inquiry into the nature of things begin from “the universe” as its starting point, I can’t help but associate it with notions like flying spaghetti monster.

Shouldn’t concepts like universe be left as later constructions rather than as starting suppositions for basic philosophical questions? — Joshs

Not at all, unless we wish to suggest that we come from some other place than the universe.
Answering where we came from we can answer what and who we are and where we're going.

NOS4A2

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for taking the time to explain.

Myself, I do not think there are any insurmountable problems regarding the body, the self, and personhood. I say this because thought experiments such as the Ship of Theseus paradox and philosophical zombies are seemingly inapplicable to human beings given the evidence revealed by biology.

Take death, for instance. When someone dies, the only thing that can be said to change from one moment to the next is the body’s movements, its “processes” as you call them. It ceases working in the way it usually does, and the almost immediate consequence is its self-destruction. So though the person is deceased, what’s left of him after death is still him, until, like all living things, he decays into baser elements.

It does come down to simple structure because the structure is what moves, maintaining life. The structures change and regenerate, but their movements are for the better part maintained throughout. However, it cannot be said the person is this movement, the “processes”, for the simple reason that movement is not a thing. The person is the structure, that which moves and changes in magnificent ways: the body.

Joshs

↪baker

Not at all, unless we wish to suggest that we come from some other place than the universe.
Answering where we came from we can answer what and who we are and where we're going. — baker

Where did the concept of ‘universe’ come from?What is the history of its etymology? When was the word first used and in what context? In what ways did our use of it change over time? These are questions that must precede the naive assumption of universe as a purely given reality.

baker

↪Joshs

Are you suggesting that self-awareness precedes awareness of the environment?

Joshs

↪baker

↪Joshs Are you suggesting that self-awareness precedes awareness of the environment? — baker

I’m saying that self and environment reciprocally produce each other.

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Joshs

In this case, I meant "universe," in the sense the term is generally used in the philosophy of physics and physics itself. I should have made that clear.

Corvus

If we conceptualize the universe as a single process, as opposed to a set of discrete objects, — Count Timothy von Icarus

But would it be possible to conceptualise the universe as a single process? Can the universe even be conceived or defined? If yes, how and what would it be?

Count Timothy von Icarus

↪Corvus

Generally in philosophy of physics the universe is "everything that exists that causally impacts our world." The idea of "multiple universes" is that other universes might exist (we have some reason to think they might), but they are causally isolated from our own.

The idea of multiple universes is sometimes attacked for being "unfalsifiable," for this reason.

Corvus

↪Count Timothy von Icarus

In my Companion Book to Philosophy, there is neither entry for the Universe, nor the World. So I went to Wiki, and read about the Universe. It seems too monstrously vast in size and scale. I was wondering if human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe. If we cannot conceive the true reality of the universe, how could we conceptualise it?

Banno

In my Companion Book to Philosophy, there is neither entry for the Universe, nor the World. So I went to Wiki, and read about the Universe. It seems too monstrously vast in size and scale. I was wondering if human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe. If we cannot conceive the true reality of the universe, how could we conceptualise it? — Corvus

Yet there it is, the article that shows how we conceive of and conceptualise the universe.

You want to express awe in the face of the vastness of existence, and so on; fair enough, except that what you actually say here isn't quite right. Human minds do grasp the universe. That's shown by this very thread.

Perhaps it's the expectation of a "true essence" that is problematic.

Banno

If we conceptualize the universe as a single process... — Count Timothy von Icarus

...we mix physical explanations with intentional ones. It's not unlike getting an ought from an is. It's like mistaking the physical body for the mind.

Freedom and Process

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