This is sort of a derivative or parallel canon to the “Spiritual Mechanics” thread. Wanted to bounce some ideas for critique.
For perspective: foundations of view that prefaces this thread, in logical order…
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and
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Necessitarianism is the doctrine that the physical universe operates according to nomological necessity. The Collins online English Dictionary defines it: the theory that every event, including any action of the human will, is the necessary result of a sequence of causes; determinism Though strongly related to determinism, Necessitarianism is held to be the strongest form of Determinism.
I propose that presence of Compatibilism within reality admits a Necessitarian function to the material universe and its derivatives—including (arguably) biological life and animal consciousness/intelligence—but not to intellectual operation, which introduces the contingency that produces a compatibilist reality.
Material Compatibilism
The compatibilist who is also a materialist is justified in accepting this doctrine because science reveals a compatibilist structure in a comparison of micro and macro realities.
Matter, reduced to its smallest parts, exists in a pure t value state that cannot be falsified. [This absolute state is attested to by our ability to apply mathematical precision to test hypotheses.] Mutability in mater only exists in complexities above its smallest constituents, and this mutability, so-conceived, is merely in perception, not in actuality. A piece of fruit in stages of decay—a form of mutability on the macro level—is, on the micro level, merely a chemical rearrangement of particles into other configurations. The signification of decay, a perception of the fruit’s acquiring a state of “inferiority” or falsification, is just an evaluation of its ability to provide goods (nourishment, pleasure, etc.) to agents. The view from perception only demonstrates the natural predisposition of moral agents to evaluate things and circumstances according to the instrumental value they’re able to provide. Material mutability is a perceptual construct peculiar to macro reality.
Thus, reality exhibits a compatibilist nature: the changeability of matter on the macro level is just a rearrangement of constituent elements supervised by the nomological certainty (immutability) of natural laws. The compatibilist principle is an expression of how Form works within existence. Form is the supervising/organizing Law of nature in a T-t union, where T is the value of Form, the external force [laws of nature] providing organizational management of the t value-forces of internal material particulars in their countless relationships. (internal and external are just illustrative markers to indicate difference in roles Form (laws of nature) and the information of matter (I) play within a single reality.
As was proposed elsewhere, the compatibilist nature of the material universe is hypothetically value-driven: reality consists, from this point of view, in various modes, kinds, quantities and qualities of value in inexhaustible connections and interactions. Value is like electricity: we talk about it, use it, respect it, notice its effects around us all day every day, but don’t actually “see” it. Correspondingly, I offer that we speak in value expressions (214 feet tall, 5.67mm diameter, 14,500 BTUs, 13 AUs from earth, 78 miles per hour, etc.) without grasping that we do so because we’re just describing complex value arrangements and relationships. The laws of nature are held to be factual and not logical, but this may be just because the lion’s share of our focus is mostly on macro-material reality. The distinction between logic and fact [each are expressions of different modes of value] blur once it’s recognized that the matter-energy unification is, behind the scene, just the exercise of value arrangements in different expressions.
Regardless of status quo indulgency, logic and fact are tightly woven together and coincide in common sense, as can be seen in Anne Conway [[i]Anne Conway: The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (p. 29)[/i]], writing on the subject of mutability: [i]“…let us consider the extent of …mutability. First, can one individual be changed into another, either of the same or of a different species? …this is impossible, for then the essential nature of things would change…
…if the essential nature of individuals could change into one another, it would follow that creatures would not have a true being inasmuch as we could not be certain of anything. Therefore all the innate ideas and precepts of truth, which all men find in themselves, would be false and, consequently, so would the conclusions drawn from them. For all true science or certainty of knowledge depends on the truth of objects, which we commonly call objective truths. If these objective truths were interchangeable, then the truth of any statement made about the object would also change. Therefore no statement could be invariably true, not even the clearest and most obvious, for example…that the whole is greater than its parts and that two halves make a whole.”[/i]
Ms. Conway’s quote speaks to at least two relevant issues. First, that P in the I=P^V is an immutable component of each iota of information. If P were mutable, particulars could not progress organizationally, and taxonomic scales would be unpopulated. Coherent, structured Individuals could not have materialized if particularity itself was susceptible to mutation. This is consistent with Conway’s declaration that mutability has necessary boundaries else there would exist no recognizable, species-related being (organizational structure) of particulars. Second, and more important, Conway can be interpreted as affirming [whether intentionally or not] that truth’s presence and subsistence undergirds the fabric of reality in her statement, “…all true science or certainty of knowledge depends on the truth of objects, which we commonly call objective truths. If these objective truths were interchangeable, then the truth of any statement made about the object would also change. Therefore no statement could be invariably true, not even the clearest and most obvious…"
Obviously Conway is not speaking of evolutionary or other sorts of gradual mutation, nor of the mutability conferred on particulars as part of natural life processes, but of the mutability of being qua being itself.
But what has the immutability of P to do with the Necessitarian and compatibilist doctrines?
Informationally speaking, If P is an immutable value, from whence comes devaluation? Necessitarianism is limited to absolute, deterministic values. Falsity, which naturally disrupts proper (t) function, doesn’t exist in matter. Matter cannot be devalued or falsified, except in macro-level perception of simple reorganization of base elements, as was shown. Therefore in neither P nor V in the I=P^V equation are falsifiable for the physical universe, in either its material or incorporeal existents, i.e., things or attributes.
Yet falsity is found in existents, creating tension and resistance in intellectual operation, commonly expressed as moral values, linked to beliefs, demeanors, character and behaviors.
Because the false can be appropriately assigned to organic entities—as in the judgment that cancer is a form of material falsity because it denies the perfection of health—at least some V in information must be falsifiable. Falsity in human essence produces a different kind of mutability than the spatiotemporal relocation addressed above, which is from a microcosmic point of view, illusory. Falsification of essence is, unlike relocation mutation, substantial and embedded in some quantity [fragmentally dispersed] of V within the particular soul. Falsity in the former is merely attributable, in the latter, actual.
Devaluation has reference to a standard, and the comprehensible and unambiguous standard is truth. Truth is logically an absolute. Of the two denominations of value, truth qua truth is always and ever the benchmark of sufficiency, propriety, adequacy and appropriateness. Because fragmentally falsified humans occupy and operate within a fragmentally falsified reality, there may be instances in which the choosing of false over true can be said to best serve purpose n, but no reasonable person can suggest that one should seek the false as a modus operandi for living life because falsity qua falsity only ever leads to truth’s opposite. The false is chaos to truth’s unity, incoherence to truth’s consistency, disorder to truth’s harmony, an advance toward death to truth’s development of life.
Theistic Necessitarianism admits the physical universe is deterministic, but that the operation of human agency has limited but effectual ability to resist Necessitarian inviolability, creating a compatibilist reality—the pattern for which itself, as was shown above, exists in the material realm.
The above isn’t saying anything new—different kind of value for matter than for intellect or soul—just wanted to demonstrate that unorthodox reductionist view of information has degrees of logical correspondence to various features of orthodox schemas of existence/reality.