“My past time is futile, because we have more and better data showing how evolution works than how gravity works. Yet, I have only seen one reference to intelligent falling! ”

Here’s the Darwinist response to the intelligent falling theory:

Differential Gravitational Success

Scientists have long been searching for the origin of the force of gravity. By simple experiment I hope to demonstrate how gravity works.

Going down to the river, I collect a bunch of oddly shaped rocks laying on the riverbed. Putting the rocks in a sack, I climb up a hill and empty the sack on a steep slope of the hill. As expected, the rocks roll down.

I notice that some rocks have rolled down further as others. There was a differential gravitational success. Next comes the important question, what may have caused this difference? On examining the rocks I find that the rocks vary in some aspects. The rocks that have rolled down most far are generally more heavy and rounded, as the other rocks.

By the established scientific methodology, the explanation becomes simple. In struggling to roll down most far, the rocks that were most fit to roll down, rolled down the furthest. So this means that the force of gravity finds it’s origin in the property of being more fit then another to go downward in the struggle for depth, resulting in gravitational success.

Richar Dawkins comments:
“Although I like to believe it is true, it is preposterous to claim that a beneficient almighty being would govern falling intelligently. In the ruthless struggle for depth the rocks are only governed by blind, pitiless indifference, in fact the rocks do not care at all. I remember once a schoolbus full of children being crushed by a huge boulder falling of a cliff, splattering the kids into a bloodsoaked mush. Was this intelligent falling of a beneficient God? No, it was just the purposeless forces of nature, the ruthless struggle for depth by a boulder that has no feeling, no care at all.”

Eugenie Scott (National Association of Biology Teachers USA) comments:

“What religionists sometimes do is exploit a gap in scientific knowledge such as the origin of the force of gravitation, and fill that gap with fantastic speculation. Slowly but surely science progresses to fill these gaps by applying methodological naturalism. This method has been succesful for science so far. There is no need to invoke intelligence to desribe the natural world around us, and the theory of differential gravitational success just proves that once more.”

Here’s a quote from it:

“This reminds me the following comment an auditor made after a conference on anticipatory hyperincursion I made: “You have found the basic theory of free will”. Indeed, the brain may be considered as an anticipatory hyperincursive neural net which generates multiple potential future states which collapse to actual states by learning: the selection process of states to be actualized amongst the multiple potential states is independent of the fundamental dynamics of the brain, independent of initial conditions and so completely unpredictable and
computable).
—-

The paper has lots of complicated math in it, and he’s a reputable professor with some awards, so therefore it must all be true….free will is science.

Apparently you and some others are under the impression—though you’ve not used the term yet—of a suggested argument about how we can have “free will” of sorts while still acknowledging the purely physical elements of human brain evolution alone; the phenomenon called “Emergence”—i.e., nature made the “free will” template, but we choose what to write on it. Man evolved as “tabula rasa“, Aristotle’s notion of the mind as blank slate until forced to act.

The argument of Emergence, THE supposed “knock-down” answer to non-materialist explanations for human consciousness, is this:

Having cultural or physically limited choices does not mean I can’t step outside certain bounds of culture, cannot know truth, cannot make reasonable decisions, etc. Having limited real choices does not mean I have none at all. Its just that they are contextually bound. Conversely none of us can do anything we like on fiat or whim. But the brain evolved to ALLOW free will and analysis of truth, etc. Right?

“Emergence” is well known in other aspects of life as a phenomenon either in, say, coloration of compounds, or physical characteristics of rocks, plants, H20, and other complicated combinations of material whose collective attributes could not have been predicted ahead of time but nonetheless show features that seem to defy deterministic behavior. In reality they either evolved or got compounded. Thus for example water has features that cannot be easily explained by looking at separated O and H atoms, that defy all other liquids (expanding upon freezing rather than contracting, etc). So–there is “no reason” to think this feature or set of features would be missing from the evolution of the human mind.

I think the confusion here, (which stuns me since the soft-core determinists have mentioned this for years), is the terminology. Several posts here speak of the evolution of a condition–a situation–that allows the brain to process propositions that give the appearance of free will. And I think this is the term you’re missing and seek. Emergence denies we are somehow out of necessity hide-bound sock puppets and not masters of our own fate (IF the mind evolved physically over vast epochs of time and thus human induction is cast out by Darwinism or evolutionary explanations).

Doubters of materialistic explanations for free will and human thought, like C.S. Lewis, said that our very thoughts and actions could not ultimately be trustworthy as seeing truth for truth (if the mind evolved) since we are metaphysically bound to materialistic action/reactions of chemicals in the brain, etc. Thus the commentary you’ve criticized– those to the effect writing that free will and physical evolution of the mind are mutually exclusive. (e.g.–we can’t know certain things for sure about the past if our minds actually did evolved, etc.) However, according to “Factor E”, they are not, and the correct phrasing he missed is that while its true that our actions and perceptions are always limited by metaphysical conditions we had no part in (I have brown eyes, and not by my choice but my father’s choice of wife, etc, and unless I want a life of crime I can’t simply “choose” to have a Jaguar XJ6 in the driveway unless I have the cash or lease money), we can and DO make choices based on our limitations.

Emergence says this is darn good enough to qualify as an “evolved” version of free will. For flies or people.

Free Will, or choosing to see a proposition as true/untrue dichotomy (which is vital to all propositions of actual free will), is thus said to be no more dependent on “induction” and “stepping outside the bounds of physical reality” any more than “choosing” to jump off a bridge violates the laws of gravity normally holding you to the rails.

Just because the human mind evolved and could have physical explanations for all its aspects does not deny that within realistic bounds, the human mind holding certain propositions or notions or having choices is not contradicted by the fact that this “emergent” property of the mind is not well understood. The fact that it is complicated and thus far “simply is” based on observation says nothing that bolsters the notion of “induction.”

In short précis, if Emergence is true, then Lewis’ notion on Induction (and all others) as a challenge to orthodox Darwinism is irrelevant, and is thusly annihilated as a logical response to the problem of human choices “stepping outside of naturalistic explanations”–or the “truth” of certain propositions.

In MY opinion, the problems here are manyfold, using orthodox Darwinism itself as the friendly witness:

First, if the locus or loci of free will can in fact be “found” in the brain, then we are probably less able to make free will choices or hold propositions to be true as we gleefully suppose. A narrow gene range in the brain that “evolved” for this purpose would be just that: Narrow—by very definition.

Second, the prime directive to all biological evolution is reproduction. Period. All else is held to be slush and gush by most materialists or is a side effect of the main event—an effort to reach that lofty goal . Bees make nests, humans build cyclotrons and farm equipment. So what? The fact that humans have larger brains than dogs means only that dogs and humans share the common goal of making pups and babes but that via various pathways have had to diverge from the survival needs of their distant common ancestor. It does NOT mean humans are “better” than dogs. Only different. Thus Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous quip that he assigned no more moral or other specialized significance to the thoughts of humans than those of baboons. So determinism is inherently found even in “emergent ideas” for many materialist thinkers. The goal of thinking, after all, is sublimated to making eggs–ones with a shell (chickens and lizards) and those without (humans and doggies). In this idea the brain is but a tool for making eggs, much as a shovel can be used to dig ditches but on the side can be used to clunk gophers on the head. But the actual purpose remains digging–thus shovels have no “insights” into anything other than a sharp edge.

Third, Emergence is not demonstrated as an observed or located property of the physical brain, it is guessed at, with regard to human beings and higher biological systems. We don’t know if the analogy to water is even appropriate or could hold. It is simply an uninstructive statement that proves nothing but master guesswork–masquerading as science which basically says, “That’s the way things are, go home, get out of our yard, and take your non-materialist ball with you”.

Hopefully that was not all…predictable!

–SWT
Atlanta Ga.

“Because deliberation requires a choice between multiple options. But the determinist has “at any instant exactly one physically possible future.”

There’s nothing necessarily incompatible about these two sentences. The options lie in the world, not in us, and in the end we choose one or another. The question is just exactly how and why. Perhaps it seems strange that we would bother to “deliberate” if we have only one possible future. The important thing to remember is that the determinist is not saying we only pretend to think while our bodies are actually following some kind of Newtonian trajectory. We do think and plan and deliberate and reason, it’s just that these processes, like any other, may have emerged from, and may ultimately be determined by, laws of nature. Our culture and language wrap these concepts up tightly with ideas of free will, but we could be wrong.

I’m not trying to prove determinism, I’m just trying to prove that it isn’t self-refuting. Nothing about the truth of determinism would mean that events–including discussions on the web–can’t change us. Maybe my arguments will change your mind. More likely they won’t. But I don’t see how you have demonstrated that it is logically impossible that I am making these arguments, and that you will subsequently accept or reject them, unless there is more than one physically possible future.

Both of us seem to be entering the repeat cycle. I’ll leave the last word to you. Thanks for the discussion.

W

Though I think your study is fascinating and your responses thoughtful, I do not believe that the inference link between your observations and your conclusions is well enough warranted for me to change my mind about the possibility of the existence of true free will.

The “conclusion” that there is a deterministic brain mechanism to explain what looks like free will is an a priori assumption, not something that follows from your evidence.
To me the flies’ behavior could as well be interpreted as showing a spark of true free will initiative.
I admit, of course, that my inference arises from my pre-existing thought system, as does yours.

More data is needed. Keep flogging those flies!
Regards,
dacook.

You ask: “Why can’t deliberating become part of the stream of causality?”

Because deliberation requires a choice between multiple options. But the determinist has “at any instant exactly one physically possible future.”

This is where many of these world views do OK in the salon, but fail utterly in the real world. You challenge me “to elucidate…” If I’m truly capable of doing this–if I can act, think, deliberate, reason and explain–I have genuine agency, and determinism is falsified. If I can’t, there’s not much point in challenging me to do what I am incapable of. Further, there’s not much point in criticizing me for it (even if that criticism is subtle), as all either of us have been doing in this little exchange is carrying out our respective programming. Might as well blame the oven for burning the brownies.

Is it for a high school science fair?