Freewill and Determinism (Again)

Correspondence of formal structure isn't the same as correspondence of quality.

The first person perspective of conscious cognition is barely recognised as a reality in some cognitive science circles, perhaps even denied a real existence altogether in some cases. The reason for this, I propose, is because science is necessarily almost exclusively framed in third person narratives. The third person, by definition, takes the perspective of an observer external to the person who is the subject of observation and study. That external perspective is only ever going to return the subject person’s experience in terms of what the external perspective can only ever hope to observe (baring a "mind meld"); namely, ostensible patterns of the human presence; in the first instance human behaviour of which a closer look only yields the dynamical patterns of cells, neurons, fields, charges, currents, molecular chemistry etc. 

This latter fact seems to confound some people: It’s as if they expect consciousness, if it exists, should be discovered lurking like some mysterious but observable quintessence inside the brain. Since this hasn’t been found (and at my guess will never be found) then a naïve conclusion is that consciousness doesn’t exist. But in the highly focused third person account of human and neuron dynamics the equivalent of a magicians redirection trick readily comes into play and the obvious location of conscious cognition has been missed; that location is found not by looking at brain behaviours, no matter how close or detailed that look, but by looking back down the line of sight of the third person observer who in the final analysis is of course also the centre of another first person conscious perspective; the very act of observing, theorising, knowing and creating a third person narrative is an implicit acknowledgment of the existence of another first person perspective doing the observing and theorising. Third person narratives are meaningless apart from the implicit assumption that the first person observer and theoriser exists in the first place, for whom the narrative is meaningful.

Since the enlightenment formal third person narratives, as descriptions of the world, have undoubtedly proved to be overwhelmingly successful: They have identified the deeply organised wonder of creation and given us science, technology, and industry. Those narratives can be expressed in communicable formal terms of quantifiable “weights & measures” and dynamic geometry. The third person’s perspective on another person can be encapsulated in information that is transmissible & translatable between agents.  That information tells of a common underlying ontology that is the medium by which first persons perspectives can communicate and understand one another. 

The ontology of this common medium, an ontology which has a level of organisation which makes it amenable to being rendered in formal theoretical terms, reminds me of those industry standard page description languages (PDLs) like Postscript and PDF which make the world of document description portable and shareable between printing machines. A page description language isn’t an end in itself: Such “third person” narratives as PDLs are there to provide printing machines with the basis for supplying the rich colourful experience of printed output. The formal terms of PDLs are very different in quality to the printed page itself but they nevertheless have a very close functional relationship with one another.  PDLs are to the printed page as third person narratives are to human experience.

The formal third person narratives describing the ontology of the physical patterns of brain dynamics need make no reference to how this formal account of human beings breaks down into the qualia of conscious cognition; the human system appears to take care of that translation, thus betraying a close functional relationship between formal third person theories and the first person experience of conscious cognition. In the context of a potentially successful formal language description of human cognition (and the cosmos as a whole), it is very easy to lose sight of the fact that these formal third person narratives are a kind of page description language for human consciousness. The consequence is that in science and technology there is frequently a loss of connection between formality and feeling and when this has happened it has caused alienation. As I theorize in this blog post the misdirection which has lead to a loss of cognizance of the importance of consciousness as a central cosmic reality has led to the romantic reaction against what is perceived as the dehumanisation & deconsecration of the cosmos.

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It is against the foregoing background that the “Free will vs Predestination/Determinism” contention must be discussed. I have already discussed this question in these posts:

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-unintelligible-notions-of-free-will.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-incoherent-notions-of-free-will-and.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-incoherent-notions-of-free-will-and.html

I have to say that I’ve lost a certain amount of patience with those who bandy about the term “free will” without first giving us any notion as to what they mean by it. In the above posts I strongly criticise Christian Justin Brierley who launches into the topic determined to defend the notion of "free will" and attempts to smuggle past us his undisclosed understanding of “free will” (whatever that is) without ever examining whether he is dealing in an intelligible concept.

Actually, from the point of view from someone like Brierley it may well look as though I've come down on the side of determinism. In fact I came to the opinion that in a crude sense even a computer flowing through a deterministic program has “free will”, depending on how you define it. But of course human beings are just a little more complex and a little more mysterious that even the most complex computer algorithm. For a start it is quite likely that the human brain is capable of mathematically chaotic behaviour (It has non-linear feedback) which in turn would mean it is sensitive to the apparent indeterminism of quantum fluctuation: This may give humanity its unpredictable creative edge as it seeks to satisfy declarative goals with novel solutions. So, even from the third person narrative point of view, humanity is a very different kettle of fish to Turin computers. Much of my own view on the subject depends very much on my take on the nature of Disorder and Randomness; without the understandings embodied in my "book" on Disorder and Randomness I don’t think I could make much progress.

Really, whether or not human beings are mathematically deterministic, it actually has no effect on my understanding of “free will”: As I've already said even the execution of a deterministic algorithm can have “free will” after a fashion. But there is one aspect true of humans (and probably also true of parts of the animal kingdom such as chimps, dogs, cats, dolphins, octopus etc) that is not true of computers, even those computers running AI simulations: Viz: that is, it is probably meaningless to ask “What does it feel like to be a computer?”. Computers are not using the created physical regime in a way that “prints out” conscious thought and feeling. In contrast the complexities of biological architecture, as we know from our own first person perspective, generates conscious cognition. As such, human beings know what it feels like to be who they are and what it means to make “free choices”; that's true even if those free choices are mathematically determined in the abstract sense of having some complex deterministic algorithm capable of describing the events of consciousness in formal terms. Those who launch into this debate arguing in favour of, or against, some incoherent notion of freewill often do so with philosophical vested interests; either in order to maintain a Christian gnosto-dualism which contrasts "spirit" against matter, or because a thoroughgoing secularist philosophy prefers Christian dualism and believes the work of refuting a gnostic notion of "spirit" to be like shooting fish in a barrel (which actually may be true). But in subliminal fear of the mysteries of the numinous some secularists have fought shy of the idea that our physical regime is the medium which supports the first person perspective of conscious cognition * 

Footnote: 

* It would be very wrong to claim that all those who believe in a purely secular worldview deny the existence of the conscious perspective. Philosopher John Searle has made a strong case for the conscious first person perspective being an irreducible feature of our "material" world. However, unfortunately Searle has queered his pitch by being involved in sexual misconduct. 

ADDENDUM 18/05/21 & 3/06/21

18/05/21 The following addendum appeared on my post of  12/02/19: It concerns the rear view mirror perspective of history:

All our decisions, whether labelled as "determined" by determinists or "free-will" by "free-willists", eventually take their place in the fixed and "determined" resin block of history. In one sense we can look back on our decisions with a kind "God's eye view" on them with the potential of knowing those decisions and their results in full. The question then is this; does this perfect hindsight render what at the time were thought of as "free-will" decisions as no longer a case of "free-will" but somehow determined?  Or if we go back in time before the decisions were made does the fact that those decisions are, from a divine omniscient perspective, seen in a kind of hindsight, make them "determined"?  That is, does the mere existence of the omniscient render what would otherwise be "free-will" no longer "free will"?  I think that questions like this are an reductio ad absurdum for the whole "free-will vs determinism" contrived dichotomy. 

3/06/21 Here's another addition that came out of an email discussion. These notes concern the nature of the ontology on which our cosmos runs. 

As you know I've attempted to express the idealist philosophy several times. I think I can trace my idealism back to my dabbling in positivism at university. But strong positivism can go too far and almost become solipsist. Somewhere a balance needs to kept. Strong materialism has trouble defining what "materialism" means in the absence of experiencing and thinking observers and strong idealism has a problem with the reality of all that ontology that goes unobserved and unthought about. As Berkley realised however the idealist problems are well addressed once one brings in a sentient God whose mind can underwrite all that ontology beyond the human sphere. 

 I attempted to express my idealism in the introduction to my "book" Gravity and Quantum Non-Linearity -. Another recent foray was in my blog entry on Freewill and determinism where I use the metaphor of a page description language. 

 But I think we are struggling here to express the true essence of the noumena; it's probably bound up with the stuff of God's mind on which the cosmic "simulation" is running and what chance do we have of understanding the essence of God?.  All we can do is describe the regular patterns of our experience and assume they are rooted in some kind of God given ontology. 

I tend to opt for circular logic: Viz The regular "material" world explains mind and mind gives meaning to materialism. That's why in my book "Gravity &* Quantum Non-linearity" I used the metaphor of a computer language compiler that is written in the very language it compile

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Mathematics provides what I refer to as the formal structure of reality. But a formal structure without its translation into experience is meaningless:  Take for example the simulation of car in computer memory: if it's a good simulation it will have a one-to-one relationship with the parts of an actual car and also the dynamic relations between moving parts. This example is not so far fetched as I believe Babbage's analytical engine has been simulated in a computer before now in order to illustrate its workings. Now, a good simulation may mathematically, that is formally, be completely correct. But it lacks one thing: A simulated car isn't a car; you can't get in it and get the car experience; In order to get the experience of a car you have to translate all that formal structure via transduces, servo motors, converters and what not, all of which provide the on screen and inertial experience of driving. Ergo, formal structure only has meaning if it is translated into experience. 

 This is why I used the "page description language" metaphor in this post. Postscript is a formal mathematical language but it makes little sense unless it is there to provided the richness of the printed output experience.