Opposing Determinism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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To just cut to the chase here, the key point of disagreement is in the idea that an inability to predict outcomes can coexist with ontological determinacy, which idea I accept and it seems you reject. If you were indeed to reject this idea then it would follow that we are free because we cannot fully predict in advance, ergo any event occurring AFTER a subjective or conscious moment of “intention” could be considered deterministic in-itself as event, but with an indeterminacy or freedom causing it; in other words, if subjective agents are free precisely because we cannot predict outcomes in advance, then we freely set causes in motion (as a consequence of our actions, intentions etc.) yet those things we set in motion can still be considered determined even though they were freely set in motion by an act of free intentionality.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe the italicized above accurately captures your position. This makes sense if you accept the premise that inability to predict means lack of ontological determination, but again I don’t accept that premise. The reason is basically derived from what we know about chaos theory and emergent systems: if you take a system of many small interacting components and if the number of components is sufficiently large and if the ways in which components interact is sufficiently self-reflexive and subtle (think neurons in the brain for example, one neuron can connect to thousands of others and while will produce a binary on or off state, is nonetheless operating on a very subtle mechanism by which than on or off is determined) then you can get a situation where such a system produces truly emergent behaviors as more than a sum of all its parts. The mutuality of all parts interacting all the time leads to a chaotic situation where the feedbacks become so numerous and derivatively complex that prediction becomes impossible. It’s like a fractal, such systems are actually incredibly deep in their successive tiers of derivations because in order to know one point in the system at any given moment you first need to know many other points and compute those into the one point you originally wanted to know, but that one point is also influencing in real time those other points, and so it becomes fractal-like where you need to know multiple layers back in time in order to just know a single point in the present moment.

Deleuze takes this notion from Bergson of virtuality, and I like to think of this idea as shedding light on this kind of causality; also with regard to emergent properties and chaotic systems:

"Deleuze writes that “virtual” is not opposed to “real” but opposed to “actual,” whereas “real” is opposed to “possible.”[3] This definition, which is almost indistinguishable from potential, originates in medieval Scholastics and the pseudo-Latin “virtualis”. Deleuze identifies the virtual, considered as a continuous multiplicity, with Bergson’s “duration”: “it is the virtual insofar as it is actualized, in the course of being actualized, it is inseparable from the movement of its actualization.” -wiki

…
“An emergent property is a property which a collection or complex system has, but which the individual members do not have. A failure to realize that a property is emergent, or supervenient, leads to the fallacy of division.” -researchgate.net

…
“Chaos theory is the field of study in mathematics that studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions—a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect.[1] Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.[2] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.[3] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.[4][5] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos. The theory was summarized by Edward Lorenz as:[6]
Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” -wiki

So you can see how a failure of prediction, either an incidental failure (we simply aren’t good enough in a given moment, such as we simply lack enough data or processing power) or an absolute failure (that even with theoretically limitless data and processing power, prediction would still be impossible or at least imperfect) can arise even within the context of ontological determinism. (Perhaps an absolute God-perspective could form predictions of chaotic emergent systems, but such a perspective is nonsensical at face value, and despite this we are very far from such a perspective anyway… besides you would need to explain how the Absolute perspective is affective to the Absolute context in which it supposedly had perfect predictive information and powers, which would end up creating a set-theory issue along with unresolvable infinite regressions).

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In addition to the above three concepts I will add a fourth, my understanding of what randomness means within a situation of ontological determinacy: Randomness is simply the result of the fact that two (or more) different causal purviews (two different beings, objects, contexts, etc.) happen to come into causal interaction with each other by virtue of no reason or meaning that can be modeled or make sense causally as an influence within either of those purviews. Easy example: a hurricane wipes out a farm. The existence (causality behind) of the farm had no causal connection to the causality behind the hurricane, and the causality behind the hurricane had no causal connection to the causality behind the farm, so from the vantage of the farm or of the hurricane the event was entirely “random” (unrelated to the farm’s or the hurricane’s own causality/reasons for being).

Events like this happen all the time… Even though the event takes place in a context of overall ontological determinism it is still the case that we can say that the hurricane hitting that particular farm rather than a different one is a random event. Random in the sense that there is no meaningful or causal relationship to explain why the hurricane hit that one farm rather than another one (I realize now I should substitute tornado for hurricane in this example); it simply happened to hit that farm because its causality just happened to coincide with the causality that happened to lead to the farm to be in that particular place and time.

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And I suppose to continue the logical line of thought here, you can see that issues of real randomness (yes it is REALLY random that this one farm in the village rather than another was destroyed by the tornado) can be resolved only by elevating our perspective upward to become incorporative of a sufficiently large enough context so that both separate events are seen as part of a single unified context. Only by creating an understanding so comprehensive as to include the causality of where each farm was built and why, combined with the specific meteorological causes for the tornado to be exactly where it was, could you actually link the two causalities together and produce a credible claim that the event of that one farm’s destruction rather than another’s was “not a random event”. It involves cases where different purviews and beings “tectonically” collide, cross over or through, each other; they remain distinct ontological entities despite the fact that thei interact causally but in such a way that no one could have predicted that the tornado would strike that particular farm rather than another. In this case the lack of prediction means a “random” event, but again all within the context of an absolutely ontologically deterministic situation.

This relates to my answer to freedom and determinism: in short form, freedom means that a particular (already-always deterministic) context or being manages to elevate its scope of sensitivity and responsiveness to such an extent as to now incorporate causes pertinent to itself and which such causes were formerly, before the expanded responsiveness, unknown and thus exerted effects on the being “randomly” (without recourse for that being to intervene upon said cause in such a way as to alleviate or prevent it). Freedom is deteminism’s ability to expand its responsiveness to its own determination in such a way that grants it the ability to intervene or prevent causes that formerly exerted absolute and un-stoppable force upon it. Freedom sprouts within certain kinds of deterministic systems (I.e. living or conscious beings) and comprises a partocular special kind of determinism, one that can progressively expand its sphere of power over those causes which influence it, thus leading to said being increasing/growing over time in both an existential sense as well as phenomenological, moral, epistemological and even biological sense.

We are free only within the context of those determinations that we have already managed to circumvent and “overcome” as a consequence of what we are, what we have become.

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Random does not pertain to the spontaneous or unpredictable but to a probable outcome which is statistically possible but not as possible as
other outcomes. So it does not automatically follow that the most statistically possible outcome will always be the one that actually happens

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Noting is truly “statistically possible”, statistical possibility is only a way of describing how to predict something when we don’t know the entirety of the causality behind it.

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But:

Is the idea that we have a choice here able to be demonstrated – beyond argument – as something that we are not necessarily compelled to choose in a wholly determined universe?

How are we not all basically “stuck” here? Otherwise, if substantive demonstrations were available [as a matter of fact], exchanges of this sort would not still be unfolding – going back now to the birth of philosophy itself.

You argue that:

And I react to it as I always do: What “on earth” does this mean? If Bob chose to murder Bill and the state chose to execute him for it, how is the part about human autonomy clearly delineated? How do we get beyond the circular assumptions embedded in the premises embedded in the assumptions that constitute the argument itself?

Me, I take an existential leap to “human autonomy”. And then I embed “human freedom” in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Whereas, again, the neuroscientists are able to demonstrate how the functioning brain seems predisposed to make “choices” for us. Unless, of course, there is something “behind” this that they are missing.

I don’t know how to react to this because there is nothing here that I can take out into the world and “test”. Sure, it may well be true because the argument is entirely logically. But how would that be demonstrated other than by tacking on yet more presumptive “analysis”?

Compatibilism is the twilight zone to me. To say that we choose when that which we do “choose” is the only option, more or less confirms Schopenhauer’s surreal speculation that, “Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills.”

In other words, he will do only that which he cannot not will himself to do. And, to me, that is compatible with the sort of “freedom” that only a philosopher might suggest.

Here is the thing about living in a determined world: The masters can only have been masters and the slaves can only have been slaves.

And you can see how that might enrage some and comfort others.

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But Iambig…

What determines the consciousness of going into a slave, or master’s body?

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How the hell should I know? I’m only speculating that no one else does either.

Let alone that they chose to know or not to know this freely.

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I’ve now found it hysterical how you stated “in short form”. This can be juxtaposed to my first sentence in this thread of presenting a ‘brief’ argument… but I digress.

When I read about the expanded responsiveness of a context or being, I interpret a modal transition from one perspective to another rather than an enlightening expansion into awareness of the previously unknown causalities. I suppose I’ve failed to see a divergence from my proposition of freedom. Does a contextual being not exercise its ‘freedom’ if it (‘it’ should be interpreted as consciousness) can, intentionally or accidentally, influence or prevent the agents of causation it has recently become aware of through its modal transition? This was my answer to freedom and determinism paired with my rejection to the idea that an inability to predict the future state of a thing can coexist with ontological determinancy.

An inability to predict the future state of what is subject to contingency and transformation cannot coexist with ontological determinism because not only is a contextual being unable to fully realize and prevent/influence the seemingly infinite idiosyncrasies which have brought about a current state (e.g. the butterfly effect), but cannot account for the possible randomness of a transformation before it has transformed. The only absolute knowledge within this realm is the contingency and transformation itself. Determinancy has continuity and randomness which is necessarily ‘free’ in regards to its probabilistic future state(s). In addition to what you have previously stated and in accordance to my above explanation, the mutuality of every single part interacting all the time leads to a chaotic situation where the feedbacks become so numerous and derivatively complex that prediction becomes impossible. This impossibility represents freedom not only with contingency, but especially in accordance to a contextual being having influence within the complex determinancy of any and every possible thing it influences.

I believe you and I have expounded various interpretations of compatibilism in some way or another. The disagreement is clearly between how we interpret the inability of absolute predictions constituting ‘freedom’. From my perspective, we have tried to explain differing views which on the one hand opposes determinism and on the other, attempts to sympathize determinism with an extensive explanation of freedom which I still find to be somewhat ambiguous.

How can determinism expand ‘its’ responsiveness to numerous agents which had certain futures in determining the subject of determination? Only through conceiving a contextual being and considering consciousness could this idea be accepted, in which case, I fail to see how this opposes my interpretation of freedom. I want to oppose the idea that everything is in a state of absolute predetermination in accordance with chaos theory.

With regards to surreptitious57, for which Wyld should still consider, the probability of a contingency and transformation may result in a predicted outcome but negates mere possibilities that may have influenced the subject otherwise. In short, out of necessity for a reasonable argument opposing determinism, I agree that it is not fully automatic that the most statistically possible (or contextually responsive) outcome will always be the one that takes place. There is a fallacy here with surreptitious57’s rationale which is incongruent with his very first reply which states; “Causal patterns may be interpreted subjectively but if the probability of a certain outcome is one [ highest possible probability ] it will always happen regardless of circumstance.” Nothing is regardless or ignorant to circumstance because everything is cirumstance. In accordance to Bergsonian perception and memory, although we can at one point in time make an objective statement from any subjective experience, as our experience grows as does our perception and memory. In this case, our memory may recall a subjective experience differently from that prior point in time as we might also change the ‘objective’ statement we once made intentionally or accidentally.

When you say there is ‘no such thing’ as separate existence of observable phenomena in space-time, yet moments later state the exception of the phenomena’s separate location in space-time, you expose another fallacy which supports my opposition to determinism. I was making the distinction that there was such a thing as separate existence of all observable phenomena because of that one exception regardless of their contextual primary and secondary qualities which consciousness has deemed them to be through subjective interpretation. Because two thing exist as two things, they are distinct (separate) from each other. In addition to your idea that everything is connected to everything because they share existential causality since the beginning of everything, you have exemplified perfectly the ignorance it takes to acknowledge implicit connections as an all-encompassing explanation to how everything is connected to the beginning of time when we both know it is an impossibility to empirically affirm this theory with regards to every existing thing.

I am really enjoying these responses and I hope to read more. One request if possible, we should all try to heighten the depth and seriousness for which we argue our different perspectives. I appreciate the sources (however minimal and questionable) Wyld provided and have some self-hatred becuase I have not been able to do the same. Lets all remember not to feed the trolls and keep this thread going. All of our philosophy is honorable.

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Why do you “want to oppose the idea that everything is in a state of predetermination” (your words)? I am curious what your motive is here. I have no such desire to oppose any of these ideas, either for or against predetermination, for or against freedom. I simply go where the ideas are the most justified and make the most sense. If we are led to predetermination by route of chaos theory/emergent behavior of networks, according to my model of freedom as deterministic causal organisms’ self-expanding their spheres of influence and control, or by some other means or model, then so be it.

There are no “probabilistic future states”, not in a real sense (ontologically speaking). Invoking probability here risks falsely conflating epistemology and ontology. Probabilities and statistics relate to epistemology, never to ontology, because they are ways of describing something in advance for which we have inadequate information to entirely understand it in advance; probabilities are always about our understanding and not about “what is really there”. But as with this idea that the most likely possibility can still turn out to be wrong, the entire concept of statistical probability and possibility is nothing more than a way that finite beings describe to themselves conditions for which those beings lack data adequate to fully understand those conditions. In hindsight everything always looks determined, in foresight everything (usually) looks probabilistic… ever wonder why this temporal divide in how things look? It’s because we can fully exhaust relevant data when looking at the past, but not when looking at the future. The past is “closed”, the future is “open” (but this holds only from a subjective point of view already locked in a given moment of time) – what is past and what is future is totally dependent upon our particular point of view as such and such an entity at this particular place in space and time.

To the first half of this sentence, I simply choose not to use the word “contingency” here because I can’t see how it adds anything useful. The impossibility for totally knowing a chaotic system is already something we understand, if you want to add to this understanding the notion of “contingency” then that is fine, but again I think it only makes things more confusing than they really are.

To the second half of the sentence, no being is ever going to have freedom within every thing it influences. We influence many things that we will never know; the set of “things we freely or intentionally influence” is much smaller than the set of “things we influence”. Freedom and intentionality are in this way a sub-set of the total set of “things we influence”, and this would logically hold for every being in existence (except the theoretical absolute God position, which is nonsensical anyway so we can dismiss that idea). In my view, the mere “contingency”, as you say, of the fact of the chaotic-ness of conscious beings does not immediately produce freedom – what is furthermore necessary for freedom is what builds upon this state of contingency, upon this chaotic system prone to emergent behaviors. In other words, the state of being a chaotic/emergent system is only a pre-requisite, only a necessary but inadequate, condition for freedom to appear. What we call freedom is simply the space of direct subjective control and understanding (capacity to image in the mind or body/instincts and respond to with some degree of “intention”) that is literally carved out of the overall set of “things that influence us” + the set of “things that we influence”, which means that there is an onto-epistemological transfer going on between these two sets and in the middle of which expanding subjectivity is situated “freely”.

Beyond this, freedom doesn’t really mean anything. We might be “free” to choose coke over pepsi, but that “choice” simply reduces in every case to incidental, accidental or predetermined factors. The choice just reflects a loop between what we call intentionality (a kind of self-reflectivity of a response capacity of the conscious whereby a conscious response is modeled to that consciousness in such a way as if the choice could have been otherwise (regardless whether or not it could in fact have been otherwise)), and the outside world conditions to which we react: the world presents us with a set of options, this is a context that we are faced with and consciousness parses this context according to what consciousness already is, how it has learned to divide objects and sense data into meaningfully different things, and then based on these “options” a conscious process unfolds whereby one is selected at the expense of others. The only truly philosophical fact of this setup is the mutual exclusivity of the options to each other, which to whatever degree this is the case sets up the initial “choice”-ness of the situation, the reason why it provoked consciousness into a state of “choosing” at all.

There is no possible way to conclude that simply because one object is selected at the expense of others, that we are “free” in how we choose that object rather than another. “Free” here is supposed to mean “non-predetermined”, but if you trace any choice deeply enough you always end up at causal factors beyond your control, or the causal chain simply fades into obscurity without actually terminating anywhere. You can never trace such a causal chain for your choices or behaviors and run into an absolute “freedom” at which the chain originated… it doesn’t work like that, and for good reason: because what we call freedom isn’t this thing of “non-predetermination of my choices”. Freedom is actually as I have described, a different and “higher” (more comprehensive and self-modeled) kind of predetermination. The supposed contradiction between freedom and determination is a fallacy generated by philosophy’s inadequately dealing with these concepts, in this case setting them up categorically opposed to each other when that is not in fact the case… you can see this if you ask them to define both of the terms “freedom” and “determination”.

We should be using a more existential and phenomenological method here, we should start with the relevant concepts and work inward toward their sufficient definition as well as outward toward their furthest meaningful convergence and divergence points; we should be trying to exhaust the conceptual spaces of meaning with respect to these “master terms” in the equation of the problem. But instead philosophy usually just begs the question by failing to exhaustively or adequately define the terms, setting them up already in advance as mutually exclusive, and then trying to run the equation as if they will get anything useful out of that method.

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Nice post Wyld. A pleasure to read on its general merits.

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Causal freedom vs coercive freedom.
It is politically correct to conflate the two.

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Kennyrisk98, I can’t PM reply to you for some reason, so I’ll write a proper reply to your message tomorrow and post it here.

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It’s not something I can explain very clearly, because I have yet to really formalize this or even explain it to anyone clearly, but I will try. If you’re familiar with Husserl then you know of his eidetic reduction, bracketing the phenomenon and trying to reduce in order to isolate necessities; I don’t get into his intentionality thing, rather I take from his method what is useful to me, which here is the reductive progressive isolating of what in the experience (the object) is a necessary component of it. Then there is existentialism as with Nietzsche (I don’t favor Sartre so much) and digging for reality-depths beyond ‘essences’ (what are assumed to be), which is of course ruthlessly critical, self-critical and “naturalizing”. Husserl tried to make German idealism more “scientific” while Nietzsche offered an end-point interpretation of modernity-logos and -logic and consequently ushered in postmodernity as a result. Both of these approaches should be combined together.

We are working with concepts, it is good to remind ourselves of that. We can take Deleuze’s idea of “philosophy is the creation of concepts” but take it even further once we combine phenomenological and existential methods in our analysis. Here is what I mean:

“Freedom”: take this concept and isolate its necessity of meaning. What does it mean to say ‘freedom’? In the context of this freedom vs. determinism issue, it means largely two things: 1) non-predetermined, and 2) intentional.

“Determinism”: same deal, what does it mean when we say ‘determined’ (whatever determined means is the core meaning of “determinism”, since the “ism” is just formalizing a system approach around that meaning)? Again in the present context we might say it means un-free as 1) predetermined, and 2) non-intentional, but that would be too tautological… in fact determinism is the grounding term in the equation of freedom vs. determinism, because determinism means something beyond the present context of that equation. We can say that freedom also means something beyond it, but it really doesn’t (the whole historical religions “free will” thing can be disregarded as irrelevant at best, nonsensical at worst).

So now we have identified that in the equation of freedom vs. determinism, of these two terms it is determinism which is the grounding term. Therefore we need to dig more deeply into what we mean when we say determinism:

Determinism, or “to be determined”: Principle of Sufficient Reason (i.e. Spinoza), that no thing occurs or is without having reasons sufficient to that occurring or being. Interpretation: it is necessarily absurd and irrational (absolutely anti-rational) to propose that any thing might occur or be while having no reasons sufficient to that occurring or being thing. Determinism basically boils down to the scientific rational idea of causality-as-such, which idea precedes the whole freedom vs. determinism thing and is rooted as the primary principle of rationality as such, the grounding idea of all thought. Without the assumption (more on that below) that no thing can occur or be without reasons/causes for that occurring and being, which if we turn that around is the idea that it literally makes absolutely no sense to say that anything happens for no reason whatsoever, then no thinking, no reason, no reality-relating is possible. Thinking and reason are based on inductions and deductions, which operate derivatively and require the linkages between things… even if we make or identify incorrect causal links, this is a failure of our creation or identification and not a failure of “linkage as such”, we simply need to improve our methods and find the correct causal links which we know a priori are always there waiting to be discovered (in the case of chaotic systems, of course, that “to be discovered” might not in fact be, a posterior, discoverable).

Once we understand that the term ‘determinism’ means the entire apparatus of rationality and thought as such in so far as the idea, which is irrefutable, that causes are behind everything and that by “causes” we simply means linked-realities and relations between beings which relations are entirely ontological in nature; even if the relations are interpreted secondarily by beings after epistemological, moral, empirical or whatever else ways, then we are able to look again at freedom vs. determinism as a philosophical equation of investigation: Freedom is defined against determinism, while determinism is defined prior to freedom. Freedom has no meaning “in itself” but gains meaning by how it is defined as juxtaposed against what we call determinism, which determinism is again the basic condition of all existence and the grounding assumption of our reason. (as for “assumption” as I also mentioned above, this proposition acts as an assumption but is an entirely justified one in so far as, again, there is no possible refutation of the idea of causality as such being an ontological certainty, not only because we can argue positively for the notion of causal linkages between beings as I have already alluded to somewhat, but more significantly because we can argue more effectively negatively against the notion of non-causality by virtue of the simple fact that it is necessarily impossible to construct any argument of any kind whatsoever that would not always-already employ causal rationality and causal linkages in its argumentation: imagine forming an argument for non-causality, the idea that “things sometimes just happen for absolutely no reason whatsoever, no causality involved at all”, how would you form such an argument? It would be impossible to avoid contradicting your conclusion in your premises, since any possible argument you could concoct would rely on causal-relational, rational logical argument; and if it did not rely on rational logical argument, then it can of course be rejected at face value as having no philosophical significance at all). <— so based on these two, one positive and the other negative, arguments, we can easily defend the “assumption” of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

So we have determination as the grounding term, itself grounded in the PSR and the two-sided defense of it; freedom emerges as a possible counter-condition to determination, but what is really going on here if indeed determinism is understood as outlined above? What could “freedom” even mean with respect to this determination? We see that what we mean by invoking the idea of freedom is that we aim to retain something of our feeling of freedom, something of the meaning of what it means to be this conscious, sentient being that we are which experiences its behaviors, thoughts, inclinations and emotions as if they could have been otherwise AND as if we in fact have some kind of primary control over them (even regardless if we could really have done otherwise). These are two different arguments, really they are just two different feelings we all have: 1) that whatever we do, say, think, or feel we could have done, said, thought or felt otherwise, and 2) that we have some kind of primary control, maybe not absolute but at least significant, control over what we do, say, think and feel. It is these two dimensions of our self-feeling which really explains the meaning (the true significance and the sufficient cause-for), phenomenologically and existentially speaking, behind the idea of freedom in the whole freedom vs. determinism equation… but this easily gets lost when philosophy treats freedom and determinism as categorically equatable terms by posting the question as “freedom or determinism?”, likewise the whole thing of silly preemptive labeling “compatibilist”, “non-compatibilist”, etc., namely treating each term as functionally equal to the other and using the exact same kind of approach to looking at each term, rather than trying to truly define and understand each term FIRST before we proceed to forming an equation out of them.

So the entire debate between freedom and determinism needs to be reframed as follows: How do we reconcile the feeling of freedom with the ontological condition of determination-as-PSR-causality?

(You will probably notice a small excess here, namely that we need to attach “pre” to determination but in doing so we risk offending our feeling of freedom all over again and just as we have gotten past the initial resistance of reinterpreting the terms as we have now done. I will not bother demonstrating the addition of the “pre” because you are intelligent enough to see how, once we accept the full scope of the meaning of determination, adding “pre” either adds no new content at all, or adds content that is irrelevant to the domain in question such as would be the case in chaos-theory or emergent behavior systems where we might wish to claim that despite total determination of PSR-causality it is still the case that things happen for which no possible prediction obtains, and therefore within these systems themselves and even within larger meta-systems that might observe them it makes no sense to say the systems are pre-determined when in fact their own determination is feedback-looped into itself in such a way that the resultant non-predictability becomes primarily causal to derivative iterations of that system itself; suffice to say that “predetermination” rather than “determination” risks confusing the issue even more and just when we are really getting somewhere. So I will bracket predetermination vs. determination as a side-issue we can focus on tangentially after we have successfully finished the present inquiry. )

Back to How do we reconcile the feeling of freedom with the ontological certainty of determination? First we take “feeling of freedom” and do a similar deep analysis of what this really means, existentially speaking (priority of existents over “essences” (assumed givens, doxa, etc)) as well as phenomenologically speaking (how does the sufficient necessary quality of the term “feeling of freedom” actually look, how does it build into reality, how does it relate to things other than itself?). The existential works by critically and ruthlessly shedding layers of error and excess that have grown up around the term, while the phenomenological works by first identifying the sufficient and necessary form of the idea but then second and more importantly by using that established ‘geometric’-logical form of meaning and seeing how it builds into the realities (externalities, others, larger or meta- purviews, etc.) that it influences and affects, as well as how that form is utilized by realities as a mere tool or utility, as perhaps as we are seeing here, an assumption and kind of unquestioned dogmatism.

What is the feeling of freedom? What do we really mean when we say “the feeling of freedom”? I should remove [the], to bracket this appropriately: feeling of freedom, what do we truly mean by uttering this, by forming the idea of this in our minds? Phenomenologically we can experimentally posit this meaning, whatever it ends up being, both in terms of the ontological determination already established above as well as against this ontological determination, because despite that we have established determination we have much to gain by forming two speculative constructs here, one with/in determination and one without and even against determination, so that we can study both side by side and by that compare-contrast gain more insight into the nature of each as well as see how various other cognitive factors might innately align themselves more to one of those speculations than the other, which means that our investigation also has a secondary benefit of acting as a litmus test or “metal detector” for our own deeper and more buried inclinations, motives and sentiments as pertain to our reasoning and to the requirements for forming adequately reasoned, rational, complete and non-pathological ideations (the requirement of philosophy, which is at its simplest nothing more than holding truth as the highest standard above any other possible standard. )

So at least now we know where the investigation needs to go from here… all this and we are just now getting to a starting point. But I will leave it for now, because I know this is a lot to take in.

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Response to prior posts

Both the past and future is open. Once a statistical probability has or has not occurred (which does not matter as an absolute), the future state of both object and subject will have altered our perception of the past because the faculties which attempt to determine statistics and probabilities will have changed to the actuality of the occurrence predicted upon. In other words, we reflect upon and determine the past differently in accordance to the contingency and transformation that had taken place. For example, historians considered the French Revolution successful once Napoleon had taken rule, but as time went on and reflections of history developed, many more negative consequences (such as despotism and warfare) were determined for the French Revolution. The temporal divide between hindsight and foresight is undoubtedly dependent on our current point of view, which always changes with time. But lets not deductively determine this change as the impossibility of contextual knowledge (as we will exemplify in this thread).

I have seen, in repetition, the fallacies which the numerous underpinnings of hard determinism attempt to justify because they have failed to exhaustively define the terms which occupy its system while simultaneously claiming to have found an all-encompassing Ontology. The extreme versions of determinism, hard in particular, have ventured into the idea of absolute predetermination of all things. I have chosen to oppose the idea that everything is in a state of comprehensible and predictable absolute predetermination with my uses of the word contingency. The only thing that builds upon the state of contingency is transformation due to the impossibility of absolute knowledge through statistics and probability. Contingency and transformation immediately produce freedom because we have the intentionality of giving meaning to things. I do not see freedom as control over choices but control over meaning. I want to justify this point because it shows how, through pure subjective being, freedom can coexist with Ontology and Epistemology throughout time.

Wyld, I agree with your statement which concludes that a free choice stands in synthesis to intentionality of the subject and the subject-object relationship. The freedom we can identify with our will represents the limitless ways in which consciousness determines the meaning of externalities which are subject to contingency and transformation. As the object changes, so must the meaning of the object and the subject ascribing this meaning. In accordance with the prior, no object holds an absolute predetermination through statistics and probability because it holds separate distinction in-itself from all things because it is a thing-in-itself. These principles allow consciousness to freely ascribe meaning to every externality as both subject and object transform with the impossibility of absolute predetermination.

Introduction to a Phenomenology of Freedom

I would like to start by clarifying what exactly should be attempted when approaching a method of existential and phenomenological inquiry into the nature of freedom. When we consider one thing as we ourselves subjectively commit to identifying it as, it can include the absence or lesser content of what it cannot be. For example, warm is more warm and less cold. Therefore, with a comparison to the extremity of ‘hot’, warm may be identified as having some cold within its meaning. In addition, if we envision an iconoclast, we ascribe an image to an externality which possesses the power of destroying ascribed images. This rules out the possibility of linguistic contradiction a general method of inquiry into the meaning of essential terms we will discuss.

With this consideration, we can begin to setup a phenomenology with an empirical element which has analytical value. To explore this phenomenology exhaustively, I will delve into the focuses of determinism, the nature of freedom, consciousness, contingency, transformation, intentionality, causality, free will and meaning. All of the conecptual space in which each of these individual terms occupy should, out of necessity, be explored for the benefit of this thread and serve as a point of departure for discussing the nature of freedom and how it supports or disproves the numerous underpinnings of determinism.

The semantics of key terms will be essential to our understanding of the issue at hand, Without disregarding tautologies, I will make an effort at providing extensive inquiry into the phenomenology and existentialism of each concept. First, I will consider formal definitions. Secondly, I will investigate the numerous fallacies of each formal definition. Third, I will provide a phenomenological basis for understanding each concept. In conclusion, I will attempt to provide a connection to how the concept applies to the issue. Hopefully my inquiries into the sufficient definitions for each key concept will lay the groundwork for the main discussion of the issue.

1. On the sufficient definition of Meaning

We should be deeply concerned with the meaning of meaning. Meaning could be considered as what one intends to convey and what is ultimately conveyed, signified, denoted or connotated. How and what we will any particular thing to mean does have an influence over everything else we attempt to conclude or comprehend. Once a will has established its own analysis and interpretation of any thing, it becomes a concept of a phenomenon. What puzzles me is how exactly we are to approach a phenomenology of the meaning of meaning. If meaning is identified as an absence of meaninglessness (for which it cannot have a lesser amount of meaningless within meaning), what is meaningless identified as and is it possible to convey meaningless? We should be concerned with the meaning of meaning because we are concerned with the meaning of the key concepts for this discussion.

2. On the sufficient definition of Freedom

To provide an adequate definition of freedom so we can continue with this issue, we should ask several essential questions; What is the meaning of freedom? What is meaning of whatever is contrary to freedom? What can harness freedom? What is ultimately influenced? And of course, to conclude this phenomenology, we must consider this definition with regards to the issue. A formal definition of freedom could be considered as having the state of being free. For which free can be considered as disentanglement, liberty, relief, voluntary existence, independence or emancipation. As I have expected, we can see that formal definitions of philosophical concepts result in a dead end of tautologies. Our understanding of a tautology leads into perpetual explanation for those terms as well. To provide only formal definitions will prove ineffective for our goal.

But it is imperative that we consider freedom from a existential and phenomenological analysis to provide an extensive investigation into the nature of freedom. So what can be said about the meaning of freedom with regards to what it is and what it is not? We should first consider freedom as a state of being exempt from absolute predetermination. It is not that all forms determinism are bound to absolute predetermination in a contextual or probable sense, but that determinism most often opposes freedom because it often vouches for absolute predetermination. Therefore, freedom can coexist with determinism, but most often opposes determinism because it must have less of or an absolute absence of predetermination. In addition, freedom must have the characteristic of being free, and at its very least, considered apart from an all-encompassing determination.

The above investigation may serve only as a beginning for our investigation into the meaning of freedom. The understanding of this concept must connect to our discussion because it involves discovering the boundaries between how freedom exists and acts within the meaning(s) we ascribe to it, and how this meaning can or cannot coexist with the forms of determinism. Once we are able to effectively identify each of these meanings and the conceptual spaces these terms occupy, we can begin to understand our issues.

3. On the sufficient definition of Contingency

The formal definition of contingency could be considered as the state of being liable but not certain while adhering to chance. Furthermore, contingency can be labelled as accidental, causal, conditional, incidental or possible. Once again, a tautology demands the higher organization and explanation of those defining terms, and the defining of those defining terms, and so on. One problem we may have to incur with the consideration of contingency is how it can be causal. As I have used contingency against determinism, it seems it could coexist with predetermination even though it is incidental and possible but not necessarily exempt form all forms of predetermination.

Contingency must be exempt from absolute predetermination of perpetual stagnation. Contingency has little or a complete absence of unchanging externalities. In reality, nothing is eternal and unchanging except for change. This consideration could lead to a paradoxical contradiction. However, with the characteristic of possibility lies the concept of contingency. So when we consider anything which is possible or absent of eternity, we must also consider contingency.

This concept should play an important role in the discussion of the issue because not only is it an originating concept I have utilized in my opposition to determinism, but plays a role in considering anything as possible and exempt from or less possessive of absolute predetermination of perpetual stagnation. Is this phenomenology instead an endless tautology? I would like to see some response with regards to the concept of contingency.

4. On the sufficient definition of Transformation

To provide a formal definition of transformation will repeat the prior fallacies which occur in providing any formal definition of a philosophical concept. From now on, I will avoid tautology by diverting directly to a phenomenological analysis of concepts. To transform could be to change in structure, character, appearance, or meaning. In short, to transform is to change. But what does this dictate in regards to what transformation means in-itself and in relation to what is cannot be? Transformation cannot be stagnation, or the state of eternal unchange/stagnation. In addition, transformation at its limits could be the presence of any change as this negates a state of stagnation. With relation to contingency, it shares the property of an absence of perpetual stagnation. However, transformation is not absent of absolute predetermination as something could’ve changed as an absolute predictability (which should b deemed impossible for the sake of our arguments) while negating the state of stagnation.

The meaning of transformation not provide as much of an importance to our topic in comparison with the other concepts that must be discussed because it could be more simply translated into change. Change, in general, is considered here because we are looking into not only the nature of freedom and determination, but the nature of change in accordance to these concepts.

5. On the sufficient definition of Free Will

First, we must investigate the meaning of ‘free’ and then the meaning of ‘will’. Once we can understand both concepts separately, we can start to comprehend how the latter is possessive of the former, what free will means together, and how this concept pertains to the issue of freedom and determinism. The state of being free was briefly explained when considering freedom. To reconcile this concept, we should understand it as the absence of one thing and the presence of another thing which we ascribe its meaning. It is the absence or lesser of absolute predetermination which disallows for an alternative. The state of being free does not adhere to a state of being unchanging, all-encompassing, eternally bound and absolute. Once again, somewhat of tautology which can be avoided if we consider this phenomenology as the ‘Freedom of the Will’ or the state of which the will is in the state of freedom and acting freely.

The will could be formally accepted as the choice, wish or desire of determination. May I add, in defining the will of an individual human, a will may a choice, wish or desire of subjective determination. Whether or not this choice is causally determined relies upon the Principle of Sufficient reason. The choice does adhere to causal factors, but to which microcosms we are ignorant to. As a will exists as the ability to make a subjective determination, it also exists as an absence or lesser form of not being able to make a choice of subjective determination. This idea is opposed to determinism because with consideration of PSR, we may not actually be able to make free choices of determination. Furthermore, the paradigm of the will should be exempt from absolute objective meaning. Further discussion is requested for this topic because I see a contradiction; why is the only true ability of the will - the ability to make choices of subjective meaning(s) - striving to dictate an objective meaning?

Conclusion

How can we reconcile the feeling of freedom with the ontological condition of determination?

I would like to briefly offer an explanation to the addition of ‘pre’ with regards to determination. What I wanted to convey is that when something is predetermined, the possibility of applying subjective meaning to a future state is absent. It is an obvious agreement that “adding “pre” either adds no new content at all, or adds content that is irrelevant to the domain in question such as would be the case in chaos-theory or emergent behavior systems where we might wish to claim that despite total determination of PSR-causality it is still the case that things happen for which no possible prediction obtains, and therefore within these systems themselves and even within larger meta-systems that might observe them it makes no sense to say the systems are pre-determined when in fact their own determination is feedback-looped into itself in such a way that the resultant non-predictability becomes primarily causal to derivative iterations of that system itself; suffice to say that “predetermination” rather than “determination” risks confusing the issue even more and just when we are really getting somewhere.”

The feeling of freedom should be directly reconciled to the functioning of the will’s ability to subjectively apply meaning to what is past and future (keeping in mind both are open for the sake of a alterable meaning). The application of meaning is the same as determination, but not in an empirical sense. Only through analysis and interpretation do we find conceptual meaning in what was and what will be. There is still an issue here, with determinism, that ‘predetermination’ takes away our ability to freely apply meaning to any thing which is contingent and alterable. When hard determinists state freedom is an impossibility, they are attempting to disregard the will’s ability to provide meaning for what it naturally feels intentionally or accidentally.

Requests for Participant(s)

i) replies into the above inquiries

ii) a phenomenological analysis of:

               a) Determinism

               b) Influence

               c) Consciousness

               d) Predetermination versus Determination

iii) further discussion of the issues of freedom and determinism

Hopefully we can eventually provide a phenomenological analysis and sufficient definition for the faculties which influence determination, the forms of determinism which support or disprove freedom and how the meaning of freedom directly influences the meanings of free will and determination.

36

I don’t have time to formulate a really coherent thesis right now, so I’ll just make a few points that I notice need to be addressed:

“Will” is another term that I try to avoid, because it is obfuscating and imprecise, also unnecessarily metaphysical. I see you’ve equated the distinction between determination and predetermination with the capacity of “will” to either ascribe meaning or not ascribe meaning; this is on the right track, but does not exhaust the distinction between ideas of determination vs predetermination. Technically speaking (logically speaking) if something is determined then it is PREdetermined of necessity, because that is what “determined” means; the sticking point is how far back in time, in the causality-sequence, do we want to go and establish determination? Predetermination can imply total determiniation regardless of how far back in time one wants to look, whereas determination can imply only a relative and limited scope of this kind of predetermination, but of course such distinctions are semantics only. The point of determination is that you can’t arbitrarily stop somewhere along the causality-sequence and claim that determination stops or starts there. That is an ontological claim, but you’re skipping that to make an epistemological and phenomenological claim about subjects ascribing meaning… so while I applaud your move into meaning I wonder why you are not addressing the purely ontological side of the issue.

I also see you’ve chosen to definition of freedom that I specifically said must be avoided, namely you identify freedom as “not being predetermined”. This isn’t a true definition of freedom, this is just rhetorical and tautological, circularly redefining determination in the negative. This is the very problem that has kept philosophy so confused on these subjects. As I said, determinism is the primary term in the equation and freedom is the secondary term; freedom can arise from certain conditions within the already-determinate, but the nature of freedom is not simply this bare condition of “opposed to determination”, not only because freedom includes more than this but because even when freedom is the case we cannot therefore say that determination is not also the case. You attempt to indirectly solve this by using predetermination instead of determination here, and thereby in your understanding of it invoke meaning-ascribing as the fundamental axis around which these issues turn. Again, meaning-ascribing is very important to take a look at but that doesn’t substitute away a need to also look at the pure ontology of what is going on.

A few more points:

-I was not talking about our perception of the past, but the past itself, with regard to open and closed. The past SEEMS closed in a way the future does not, and this isn’t simply because we perceive the past and future but because of something inherent to what it means to say “past” and “future”. Time works in one direction, forward, and not any others. This fact establishes a very clear delimitation in which conscious acts must accurately understand the natures of past and future as fundamentally different from each other; however this seems to hinge upon that conscious perspective as time-situated and for which there is a separate past and future, and I am not making any arguments about this being an absolute of reality as such but it is undeniably an absolute of subjectivity: beings are time-situated and operate on a kind of internal “clock” that syncs itself temporally with other similarly clocked ranges of experiences it has, so that every being is going to have a somewhat different time consciousness and time as we already know from Einstein is relative anyway.

-You didn’t address PSR as I wrote about it being the ground for causality within a deterministic context. If every thing has sufficient reasons (causes) for being then no thing can be without being sustained and supported and CAUSED by a network of preceding “reasons”. I say preceding because as I established already that time moves forward and not backward, nor does time stand still; for any reason to be a reason for some being it is therefore also the case that such reasons extend through time to the degree that beings persist over time. So “pre” added to determinism can simply mean “beings exist over periods of time, therefore so do the reasons/causes for those beings persist over time and perpetuate in the direction [past—>future]”.

-You mention repeated “fallacies” committed in defense of determinism, but I didn’t see you state what these fallacies are. I am defending the notion of determinism and I don’t believe I’ve committed any fallacies, but if you think I have then you should point out what they are.

-“Control over meaning” as opposed to “control over choice”, this is interesting and we should look at the first kind of control, definitely, but it doesn’t substitute for the second kind of control. Just because it’s important to look at meaning doesn’t mean we can dismiss as irrelevant to our ontological inquiry the aspect of “control over choices”.

This is partly the problem with the notion of will, because it gives a nebulous and falsely reified picture of what is in control, of the self. “Will” could easily enough just be an abstraction of various psychological and sociological processes of which consciousness is aware only of a finite or very small number. Just because something is willed doesn’t mean that such an act is necessarily free, nor referent to “the self”. A much more clear and complete definition of the self is needed.

-Yes I do think freedom “coexists with ontology and epistemology” as you said, although the mechanism by which this is achieved has everything to do with the other side of then equation that it seems you’re choosing to ignore, namely determination as PSR-causality. We should look at HOW freedom coexists, what is the ontoepistemological makeup of subjectivity-consciousness?

-Just because objects change does not mean subject too must change accordingly. Subjectivity can in part be understood as that which remains the same (holds itself as, propels itself forward in time as static self-coherence; self-values) despite its immersion in a world of changing objects.

-Again, just because subjects may not possibly know or predict outcomes or how things will change in advance does not mean that such changes are not absolutely (pre)determined. I feel this needs to be emphasized. I don’t think you’ve at all refuted the idea that chaotic-emergent systems can produce unpredictable behaviors and outcomes while remaining, ontologically, entirely deterministic. But as I already said above, the real problem is due to defining freedom in the narrow and merely empty-tautological manner as “not (pre)determined”.

37

One point, fitting with Wylds position.

A thing can not be free of itself.
Itself includes what it is composed of, and that includes all sorts of history.

A human can not be free of his body, mind, soul or spirit. There would not be freedom, but death.

38

Freedom as the spiritual-moralist values it, means the freedom to select for cultivation those parts of ones ground and being that one values most. We have the freedom to determine, in part, what we become. But based on what we already have become, what we are: this includes the existential valuing principle (pure logical necessity) and history.

39

Yes this is a great point, and I am hoping it converges somewhat with kennyrisk’s use of the terms “contingent” and “transformation”. If so then we are on track to a common understanding.

We absolutely need to throw out this garbage definition of freedom as “not (pre)determined”. This definition is seriously fucking thing up, and entirely misses the reality of what freedom means and is.

A thing is not to be found wanting or lacking in freedom simply because it, or that freedom, has reasons for being, as you said a ‘history’. That’s all (pre)determinism necessarily means, that and nothing more. Every thing has its many reasons for being and would not “be” if it did not have them. The idea of freedom contrary to this is absurdity. I’ve never understood this compulsion on the part of certain philosophers to reject (pre)determination as some kind of four letter word. In fact it is because of predetermination that morality even means anything at all, and that we can become moral agents and valuers in the first place.

40

To deny, or disregard, or reject the value of ones historical and ontological ground, and to seek the ground of ones future actions in a seemingly universal Idea, such as freedom, equals precisely all metaphysical religions. These value systems literally steal the being away from his ground, his self, his being.

That idea of God or Freedom is the mortal enemy of true freedom-to-oneself. For that freedom one needs to passionately affirm all that has come before.