On Panda's Thumb: Do we have free will? Part II

Spoiler Alert: Pseudo Question!

The free will-determinism dichotomy is an illusion

This is the second part of a two-part series where I discuss a post by Matt Young on the evolution website "Panda's Thumb" entitled Do we have free will? No.  See here for Part I.  In his post Matt mentions that in 2001 he wrote a book with the title of No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe. This is what he says of his book:

MATT YOUNG: In that book, I argued that humans were biological creatures and therefore governed by the laws of physics. Those laws are deterministic (we will get back to that in a minute), so everything we do, think, or decide is determined by those laws. We may think we have free will; we certainly have to act as if we have free will; but in fact we have no such thing.

MY COMMENT: I wouldn't take issue with Matt's statement that humans are biological creatures and therefore governed by the laws of physics.  After all, as a Christian I support the view that our highly contingent physical regime has been reified from the platonic realm in an act of Divine creation and therefore displays miraculous wonders every second of the day; it can have no property of Aseity and therefore its mere daily existence is a sign and wonder. Where Matt falls over in the above quote is that he's barged straight into subject as if we have a clear idea of what freewill and determinism are about; but we don't: See my series where I took to task a Christain who was also sure that the dichotomy was absolutely uncontestably clear and meaningful; that it certainly is not! My understanding is that even a computer running a deterministic program can be said to have "free will" in that it makes choices/decisions according to its physical make up; but it loses that freewill if outside influences coercively steer it away from its natural decision tree. I don't necessarily dispute that the laws of physics govern human behavior, although we must caution that it is clear from the state of physics that in spite a substantial understanding of the "algorithms" which constrain the patterns of the cosmos we cannot claim to have a comprehensive understanding of those laws. But as I show in my series I've linked to, the conclusion that we either have "free will" or "no free will" is an unintelligible dichotomy. 

MATT YOUNG: Now before you get your knickers in a twist, none of the foregoing implies, for example, that we should not punish criminals. The pain they may inflict is real, and we may have to separate them from society until (or unless) they reform. I suggest, however, that their lack of free will suggests that we should be rehabilitating rather than punishing criminals. But that discussion is a little off-task here.

MY COMMENT: Interesting to note that Matt in his comment about the pain criminals inflict is very probably implicitly making an empathetic extrapolation whereby he perceives the first-person perspective of other human beings; that is, he is implicitly recognizing the existence of private consciousness. 

Yes, I think I agree with Matt's rehab line but the awful public punishment spectacles of times past were a primitive attempt to interfere with human psychology via a kind of social aversion therapy; that is, fear of the consequences of transgressing the societal status quo help keep law and order. It's a crude kind of rehab on the social level. It may well be that the sometimes-irresistible instinct to punish & wreak vengeance (something we all feel at times) is a proximate motivation which finds its utility in more primitive contexts.   In fact, in times of war it swings back into action, with a vengeance.

MATT YOUNG: When I wrote NSO, I assumed that quantum mechanics was itself purely deterministic and that someday we would discover an underlying, deterministic theory. It simply seemed unreasonable that, for example, an atomic nucleus would decide all on its own to emit an alpha particle, rather than being caused to do so by some external agency. It still seems unreasonable to me, but it may not be right

.MY COMMENT: Interesting to note that Matt was inclined to rebel against the idea that QM presented randomness. I suspect two motives for this: 

a) Prior to the coming of the new mechanical sciences there was much more scope for attributing inexplicable events to the fiat of spirits and gods.  In contrast under the new paradigm stuff happened because it conformed to known (or perhaps as yet unknown) mathematical patterns. But the notion that events, some events at least, are part of larger random patterns seems to leave the door ajar for the introduction of superstitions about spirits and gods manipulating the world via fiat. After all, the apparently acausal nature of randomness is counter intuitive and spirits and gods may be resorted to as a way of restoring conventional ideas about cause and effect; human beings find it hard to except patterns at face value. 

b) Determinism, if it can be expressed in terms of succinct mathematical algorithms which can be humanly grasped, gives us the feeling that it wraps things up in a neat package and looks to be a big step toward a closed ended system that crowds out divine fiat - or so it seems.

So, it is my guess that Matt is sublimating here an ulterior need for an intellectual hegemony which lives in the hope of tying up all those loose ends with a comprehensive system of intellectually tractable deterministic laws or algorithms which describe all that happens in the universe; This is the search for explanatory completeness.  It is futile quest destined to end with a hard core of unexplained brute contingency - and I'm talking about "explanation" here in a sense that is more satisfying than mere mathematically tractable descriptions. 

But, and here is the big "but", randomness is just another pattern albeit with the mathematical property that it requires either very large algorithms to specify it or very long algorithmic generation times. In the final analysis randomness presents us with the same mysteries that underlie those humanly tractable deterministic patterns: Viz: From whence come these ultimately contingent patterns of behavior? What sustains their reification moment by moment and place by place? Their mystery isn't to be found just in their instantiation in mathematical generators at the beginning of time but also in that they continue to work everywhere and everywhen when in fact there is no logical necessity (i.e. no Aseity) that they should continue to do so. 

 

MATT YOUNG:  Does quantum mechanics then come to our rescue and somehow grant free will? No. First, so many molecules are involved in, say, neurotransmission that their action may be considered completely classical and therefore completely deterministic. Even so, the occasional quantum fluctuation would not so much grant free will as it would make our decisions somewhat random, a condition that I think proponents of free will would not particularly care for

.MY COMMENT: It is possible that the human mind, like many other systems in the cosmic physical regime, is a non-linear feedback system, making it chaotic and therefore influenced by the butterfly effect of random quantum events. This actually may be a useful feature as the mind seeks creative solutions to problems: The randomness is exploited to provide useful novelty, but this doesn't necessarily mean human decisions are random; our decisions are likely constrained by overall teleological considerations that regulate this novelty, selecting or rejecting those randomly generated contingencies according to the goals and aims of the human complex adaptive system. 

However, it's true that I can't be dogmatic about the foregoing paragraph, but it does mean that Matt's conclusions above are in no way obliging. 

MATT YOUNG:  Quantum randomness may have been critically important to the evolution of the early universe. If we ran the “experiment” again, we might, for all I know, end up with a very different universe, one that does not even include us. That said, quantum randomness has very little effect on our daily lives, unless you count, for example, cancers induced by radioactive decay or cosmic radiation. Thus, as Sapolsky would argue, everything we think, say, and do is wholly and unequivocally determined by our detailed histories (except, as I have noted, for the occasional quantum fluctuation)

MY COMMENT: Matt's first two sentences here may well be true, but I feel he is likely to be wrong that quantum randomness (if it exists) has very little effect on our lives given that non-linear feedback systems are ubiquitous in our world. But this question, in my opinion, has very little impact on the free will-determinism question: The latter question as I have shown is really bound up with our definitions.

MATT YOUNG : I conclude, then, that we have no free will in any sense. I do not understand why some people consider that threatening; it simply is the way it is. We feel as if we have free will, we act as if we have free will, and we are treated as if we have free will. Free will is thus a useful fiction, but in reality it is only a fiction.

MY COMMENT: Determinism, as I've implied, is a perspective effect that is a function of the level of epistemic tractability of the patterns in nature. Determinism is an epistemic spectrum which runs from those simple (that is, short) algorithms of elementary physics which we find relatively easy to handle, to the much more complex patterns of apparent randomness, patterns which do not yield to simple algorithmic expressions. Ergo, determinism is a subjective category which depends on one's information, i.e. it depends on one's perspective. Matt's triumphant conclusion that "we have no free will in any sense" is as incoherent as those who hang onto to freewill categories. 

The two sides in this polarized debate between so-called "freewill" and "determinism" advocates find one another's stance threatening because they undermine each other's dearly held philosophy.  But for me their respective positions are void of intelligibility. 

On Panda's Thumb: Do we have free will? Part I

Spoiler Alert: Pseudo Question! 

The freewill-determinism dichotomy is an illusion.

In a post on the Panda's Thumb website entitled Do we have free will? No, poster Matt Young considers the time-honored question of free will vs predestination/determinism. As a rough rule theists tend to fall into the free will camp and those of a more secular leaning gravitate towards predestination/determinism or "no free will".  So, it is less than a surprise that Matt Young opts for the latter.  As I've proposed in my series on Free Will and Determinism, I believe both sides of this debate have polarized around a pseudo question. See here: 

Quantum Non-Linearity: The Incoherent Notions of Free Will and Determinism. Part III (quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.com)

I'll deal with the detail of Matt's post in Part II,  but I want to make some preliminary comments about the polarization we see in North America between theists and secularists over questions which don't actually justify polarisation. The freewill vs determinism question is just one of these needless contentions. 

The North American Intelligent Design (NAID) community are in strong contention with American science establishment. The latter is largely populated with thinkers who in the main are likely to style themselves as secularists; that is, they believe the cosmos as it is understood through science is all we can really know. They see the NAID community as trying to import religious notions into science by the backdoor under the guise of "the science of intelligent design".  Just how these respective communities answer certain questions can be used as faith tests or shibboleths betraying which of these two polarized groups one identifies with. Below I list three examples of shibboleth questions and their shortcomings as community identifiers: 

1. Do you believe in evolution? My understanding of evolution, as I've clarified in this blog many times, is that whether or not evolution as conventionally understood has taken place, either way a huge burden of up-front information is required to drive the emergence of life. The reason for this is the following relationship which holds for any process that can be algorithmically simulated (See here & here for more):

Information generated <= upfront information + Log (computation steps)

Unless we are dealing with a processor capable of expanding parallelism the second term on the right-hand side means that unless we supply sufficient upfront information an immense amount of time is entailed by the Log term in the above relation - times which make the age & size of our observable universe look a very small and cozy affair indeed. That conventional evolution doesn't address this origins question over the frontloaded information means that as far as evolution is concerned the science establishment vs. the NAID community  polarisation is actually a non-contention: Viz: The science establishment have a mathematically inevitable origins question, evolution or no-evolution, and therefore this leaves them open to an appeal to the Aseity of Deity. On the other hand, the NAID community still have a case even if evolution has occurred and therefore, they are not necessarily obliged to set themselves against the academic community on the basis of an anti-evolution platform. 

2. Do you believe in junk DNA? NAIDs are very likely to take an anti-junk DNA position as they are so sure that an intelligent creator designer would never leave extraneous non-functional code in the DNA. On the other hand, secularists, who are inclined to believe in a meaningless & purposeless cosmos substantially ruled by the random walk of evolution have less problem with the idea that useless junk DNA has accumulated in the genome over millions of years. And yet why should a super-intelligent creator of inscrutable purposes be constrained not leave code of, say, historical interest in his DNA scripts as might a human software engineer? And can the secular establishment be so sure that enigmatic tracts of DNA honed by evolution don't have a deeper meaning?  As far as I can see the NAIDs and the academic establishment have divided on an issue that has no necessary connection with their respective world views.  

3. Do you believe entropy bars evolution? Many in the NAID community wrongly believe that the second law of thermodynamics is an evolution stopper grounded in fundamental physics. But at least one young earther appears to realize that this is an unsound argument. 

***

In contending over the above issues, the science establishment and the NAIDs are fighting on another on the wrong battle fields They should be arguing over what to my mind are much more pertinent issues such as the question of Aseity; given that science is a fundamentally descriptive discipline where the search for logical necessity is always destined to end at a stultifying barrier of hard-core contingency, it will never supply Aseity.  In his post Matt Young tells us about a book he wrote in 2001 on science and religion called No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an impersonal Universe.  I'll hand it to him: He's on the right track about the challenge of an apparently impersonal Universe: It's true that unless we are going to go for the cosified universe of Christain young earthers and flat earthers the ostensive appearance of the universe can present an enigma to theists such as myself: Is the universe the sort of place an all-powerful loving deity would actually create? This question is linked to the problem of suffering and evil. 

Below I add a fourth battlefield that the science secularists & the NAIDs tend to fight over, and this is what I regard as a pseudo questions: Viz: the question of freewill and determinism.  As I've said I'll deal with Matt Young's post in detail in Part II, but below I make some general comments. 

***

4. Do you believe in free will or determinism? If the physical regime was fully deterministic and we had full knowledge of that determinism this would be the nearest science could come to providing a complete understanding; that is, providing a comprehensive description for all that passes in the cosmos.  I can see why those who lean toward secularism favor this option; it is the best science can offer in the way of explanatory completeness, a closed ended rational system.  But as we well know, this completeness is a pseudo completeness: Ultimately the deterministic algorithms which simulate the physical regime have an explanatory edge, that is, a hard-core barrier of irreducible, incompressible information. The question of the origin of this information is either regarded as a mystery, an absurdity or a meaningless question. 

But in any case, what's so special about deterministic algorithms? In the final analysis they merely describe in compressed form the highly organized patterns of determinism. Moreover, it can be questioned as to why "deterministic patterns" are so fundamentally different from the random patterns of statistics which are simply patterns that demand either very large algorithms and/or long execution times to be described. Furthermore, once those random patterns get set into the resin block of history, they to take on, from a human perspective, the property of being potentially completely knowable and in that sense determined......likewise, any human action which claims to be freewill: Once the so-called freewill is actioned it cannot be changed and becomes as fixed into history and determined as any event fixed by deterministic algorithms. 

Determinism is a spectrum concept that is a function of the epistemic ability of humans to know; in short, it's a subjective judgement. Randomness looks indeterministic not because it has some intrinsic property of indeterminism but because prior to it being set into the resin block of history (and apart from its statistical aspects) its details are humanly unknowable, beyond human epistemic handling. Randomness's indeterminism is a human perspective effect. Ergo, determinism is also a human perspective effect. 

Does this Interview Solve the Human Predicament? Part II

Spoiler Alert: "No"

Biologist Jeremy Griffith comes over as a nice reasonable guy, so all the more reason why I'm wondering how he got caught up in this extravaganza of hyper-hype and sales promotion.

I think Jeremy has got too many people around him telling him how great he is!

Below I quote bits of "THE most important interview of all time" (!) and as usual interleave my comments.  See here for Part I of  this series. 

***

CRAIG CONWAY: So Jeremy, thank you for talking with us. Tell us, how does your work bring about ‘the psychological rehabilitation of the human race’ and end all the suffering and strife, and, as Professor Prosen said, ‘save the world’

JEREMY GRIFFITH: Thank you very much for having me on your program Craig. Finding understanding of our psychologically troubled human condition has actually been what the efforts of every human who has ever lived has been dedicated to achieving and has contributed to finding. As Professor Prosen said, finding understanding of the human condition has been ‘the holy grail’ of the whole human journey of conscious thought and enquiry. We humans have absolutely lived in hope, faith and trust that one day, somewhere, some place, all the efforts of everyone—but of scientists in particular—would finally produce the completely redeeming, uplifting and healing understanding of us humans. I know it must seem outrageous to claim that this goal of goals has finally been achieved, but it has. In fact, the human condition is such a difficult subject for us humans to confront and deal with that I couldn’t be talking about it so openly and freely if it hadn’t been solved.

MY COMMENT: I think you will find that these people see themselves as having no pretentions of invoking an other-worldly solution to the human predicament: That is, they are likely to claim that their diagnosis of the human condition and their proposed (or should that be "asserted" rather than "proposed"?) solution to it are purely secular and scientific.  And yet they express themselves with the superlative language of religious aspiration, epiphany and certainty. In the above quote we hear that humanity has lived in hope, faith and trust that out there somewhere, somehow there is a solution that remedies their difficult lot, a final answer which classifies as a kind of salvation. In fact, Jeremy Griffith, clearly borrowing his language from the Western Christian tradition, describes his revelation as “the completely redeeming, up lifting and healing understanding of us humans”. It is the “holy grail” which according to Craig “...ends all the suffering and strife and as Professor Prosen said 'saves the world'”. Gasp! This isn’t a tentative statement fielded as a proposal for comment as one might expect from scientists, but this “goal of goals” has finally been achieved according to Griffith. He has been enlightened by the ultimate epiphany!

Griffiths and his followers are in fact admitting something that many theists have said for a long while: Namely, that human beings aren’t like the beasts of the fields who have little more than an idle curiosity about some of the superficial aspects their world; as far as we know animals, unlike humans, do not question the fundamentals of their lot. For them life is an unquestionably given state of affairs, like it or lump it. In contrast, many humans have that deeply probing curiosity about the numinous and resist an unquestioning acceptance of the status quo. They don’t readily accept the cosmic state of affairs as a brute given; for them a cosmos which is just there and where further questions are regarded as futile because it is all meaningless and purposeless is an absurdity.  (But see here)

Though it may be deeply buried there is among humans an existential yearning for meaning and purpose that is not easy to get over.  Humans not only have an unquenchable curiosity about deeper matters but also proactively seek betterment of the secular status quo, and more; they have a soteriological hope in their hearts. The surprise is that Jeremy and his followers, who I suspect purport only to seek solutions in the secular realm, have effectively admitted the existence of these deep existential yearnings and motivations: Viz: a soteriological faith & hope which perhaps hints at that residual hankering after the Divine.

 ***

CRAIG: Okay then Jeremy, solve the human condition for us, we’re all ears!

MY COMMENT: We’re all ears? You can say that again!

*** 

JEREMY: Firstly, I’m a biologist, and that’s important because I think everyone will agree that what we need is a non-abstract, non-mystical, completely rational and thus understandable, scientific, biological explanation of us humans. So how are we to explain and understand the human condition, understand why we humans are the way we are, so brutally competitive, selfish and aggressive that human life has become all but unbearable. In fact, how are we to make so much sense of our divisive behaviour that the underlying cause of it is so completely explained and understood that, as Professor Prosen said, the whole of the human race is psychologically rehabilitated and everyone’s life is transformed?

CRAIG: Yes, that’s what we want; the human condition finally explained, fixed up and healed forever!

MY COMMENT: As I’ve already said Jeremy, in spite of his quasi-religious expressionology, is not claiming to offer any more than a scientifically accessible explanation of the human predicament. This is clear in his first statement above where he says that being a biologist he seeks a non-mystical, scientific biological explanation of the human predicament.  Fair enough, but this to my mind clashes with the sensational fanfare we are getting from his World Transformation Movement.  Where’s the studied scientific detachment? Where’s the “Let’s try this hypothesis and see where it takes us”? Can they be so confident when their solution hasn't been tried & tested yet?

Humanity has a very poor track record when it comes to implementing what they believe to be comprehensive solutions to the human predicament. Let’s recall those many failed ideologies & their intoxicated ideologues who have promoted them: From the French revolutionaries to Marx’s followers, from Hitler to Donald Trump**, from the Inquisition to Islamic state, we've heard from their respective ideologues who have made loud and emphatic claims about proffering comprehensive solutions to humanity’s problems but look where their deluded followers have taken the human race. Such unquenchable and convinced confidence starts the alarm bells ringing. The studied detachment and caution of scientific and rational attitudes are being thrown to the winds here.

Jeremy continues to lay on the religious archetypes with a trowel as he goes on to describe in strong terms what I, as a Christian, would call sin (That word with the “I” in the middle) and its effects: He tells us that We are so brutally competitive, selfish and aggressive that human life has become all but unbearable. Yes, I think I can just about agree with that!

Jeremy’s last sentence in my quote above alludes to his solution to humanity's rampantly divisive behaviour. Using the language of psychology, he hints that the solution is also scientific by saying that the whole human race needs psychologically rehabilitating.  He continues with his melodramatic tone by assuring us that this rehabilitation will mean everyone’s life is transformed!  Gasp! But will a bit of psychological tinkering & rehab be the holy grail solution which heals us and fixes us up forever? In fact are there enough psychoanalysts in the world with the level of skill to fix us up? I think we need more details here!

Let’s face it, Jeremy's demeanor is that of a modern-day Scientific Apostle of Salvation and this appeals to those recrudescent religious archetypes we find in our hearts. In fact, he seems to have succeeded in planting the faith in quite a few people; enough to form the World Transformation Movement, a strongly self-publishing movement which leaves me with the impression that it is a sales organization rather than a scientific think-tank. Well, if the WTM is chiefly about advertisement then the self-praising sales talk is understandable; but that doesn’t amount to a recommendation. *

 ***

JEREMY:  Exactly Craig. So, to start at the beginning, I know everyone listening is living with the belief—well it’s what we were all taught at school and are told in every documentary—that humans’ competitive, selfish and aggressive behavior is due to us having savage, must-reproduce-our-genes instincts like other animals have. Certainly, while left-wing thinkers do claim we have some selfless, cooperative instincts, they also say we have this selfish, competitive ‘animal’ side, which Karl Marx limited to such basic needs as sex, food, shelter and clothing. I mean, our conversations are saturated with this belief, with comments like: ‘We are programmed by our genes to try to dominate others and be a winner in the battle of life’; and ‘Our preoccupation with sexual conquest is due to our primal instinct to sow our seeds’; and ‘Men behave abominably because their bodies are flooded with must reproduce-their-genes-promoting testosterone’; and ‘We want a big house because we are innately territorial’; and ‘Fighting and war is just our deeply-rooted combative animal nature expressing itself’.

CRAIG: Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve understood is the reason for our competitive and aggressive nature—that we have brutally competitive, survival-of-the-fittest instincts, which we are always having to try to restrain or civilise or try to control as best we can; I mean that’s what I was taught in school

MY COMMENT: Speak for yourselves chaps! My schooling was long enough ago for me to not be taught any significant evolutionary theory at school. And when I got into higher education (A levels and beyond) I specialized in maths, physics, chemistry and computing. So, I didn’t start grappling with evolutionary texts until quite late in life. For example, I read the book Sociobiology: The Whisperings Within (David Barash) and The Blind Watchmaker (Richard Dawkins) when I was in my thirties, In these books I heard about the selfish gene and how even altruism was a manifestation of this selfishness. On top of that I had also pondered those survival of the fittest notions as promoted by Social Darwinists such as we find among the fascists and Nazis. I assume that it is this sort of thing which Jeremy is referring to in his first sentence. But by the time I was seriously considering these topics not only was I already a Christian but predating that, I believed I had located the core problem with human nature. Let me explain…

I can remember a time at first-school when I would walk around the playground by myself convinced that those other young human beings were robots without feelings – it took time for it to sink in that that wasn’t true. It took me time to sample human behaviour sufficiently for me to realize that their  behaviour was entirely consistent with they too being conscious beings and that they were not just some kind of façade like an unfeeling computer simulation: This was the awful discovery that they had pains, pleasures and fears like myself. Obviously, this didn’t mean that I then started experiencing other people’s conscious feelings; their first-person perspective remained hidden: Rather via an extrapolation of my own feelings I inferred (but did not feel) other people’s first-person perspective. It’s what I called in later life an empathic extrapolation or empathic construction.

Therein lay the rub: That I had at last acquired the ability to empathize certainly didn’t mean I would necessarily act on it in a morally acceptable way: I didn't suddenly become free of the temptation of putting myself at the centre of my universe; after all I didn’t feel others feelings, I only inferred them and consequently it was too easy to ignore those other first-person perspectives all around me and get on with my own life in a very self-centred and selfish way; frankly, that is how my inner nature is skewed even today. I had the choice of affecting other people’s pains and pleasures for either good or bad, but there was no automatic switch which suddenly turned me from a naturally self-centered person to an unselfish one; choice, especially the potential for bad self-centered choices, loomed large: If I kept my self well insulated from the social world around me, I wouldn’t even hear about those feeling other beings. In short, I had discovered “sin”; the word with “I” in the middle. So, when Christianity came along and told me I was a sinner I said, “Of course I’m a sinner!”. This personal discovery needed no evolutionary theory about that competitive struggle in the survival of the fittest or teaching about the selfish gene. My first-person perspective meant that I was always tempted to choose self-first and neglect others; As Saint Paul said in Romans 7:14-20:

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

That sums up my experience of the power of the self. 

The information in our genes is the recipe, which when baked in the right environment of the womb, generates what ultimately turns out to be a humanoid structure with that private first-person perspective of consciousness. (I have made some guesses as to what physical conditions might be required to give rise to first-person consciousness; see here). It is this first-person perspective which entails the potential for those bad self-centered choices we identify as sin. It is irrelevant just how the population of conscious beings has come about via the genetic code and some kind of evolution. Moreover, it is irrelevant whether or not those physical processes which entail sentient choosing beings are deterministic; choice is always entailed (See my posts on free-will and determinism). We cannot escape choice and choice opens the possibility of choosing self at the expense of other selves. The genes & evolution are just mathematical generators; they don’t rid or excuse the final human product of the responsibility of choice and the potential to sin - that is, to make selfish choices. 

What may be confusing Jeremy and his followers is that the objects of scientific study are conventionally described purely in the language of the third person; that is, as if there is no such thing as the first-person experiencer and observer of those objects described by science. This linguistic trick has confused many, so much so in fact that some people have even taken onboard the absurd idea that there is no such thing as consciousness; these people have read the third person language of science far too literally. The irony is that the touchstone of reality for the objects of science is that they deliver observation, conscious observation, enabling those hypothesized objects to be tested for reality. The reality of those highly regular laws is underwritten if they reify a rational ordered conscious experience. The reality of a cosmos which doesn’t deliver this world of organised experience is under question. Exactly how those laws create our first-person experience we are still discovering, but it seems that the potential for temptation and sin is built into the cosmic physical regime because that regime generates the first-person experience, regardless of whether or not we’ve been taught about competitive survival instincts being written into our genes. Summarizing then, my conclusion is that Jeremy and his followers, in spite of their confident and over-hyped sales talk, have got their diagnosis of the human predicament fundamentally wrong. 

Well, be all that as it may, what about the WTM's proposed treatment of the human condition? That will be my consideration in the next parts of this series: Does humanity, as the WTM suggest, simply need to have some psychological rehab and then its problems will all be fixed up forever? The straight answer to that, as we will see is “No!”. Moreover, compounding the problems of the human tendency toward the self, as I hope to show, are some very significant epistemic issues concerning the physical & social constraints on the way we interrogate and form opinions about the world we are in: This makes harmonizing our opinions far from straight forward This is why in my estimation we need the accountable open government of democratic forums. Psychological rehab isn’t going to make those challenges go away, because again, psychology isn’t able to change the status quo of the physical regime.  

Footnotes: 

* It can be fairly objected that the Christian sub-culture of which I am part is all too often given to the hype and bigotry of certainty. True. In my case however my faith is less than certain: I take epistemic responsibility for having pieced together my own sense-making explanatory structure around meaning and purpose - being a clay vessel myself (2 Cor 4:7-9) whose epistemic technique and morality are flawed I acknowledge the strong possibility of error and that my faith is subject to futility. It's an interesting paradox that Christianity, which is so clear on human imperfection, should consequently have a self-referencing conflict, an almost self-undermining effect. Christianity has clauses that lead faith to doubt itself and indulge in self-examination (2 Cor 13:5). But if there is a Biblical God why worry? He is the giver of faith no matter how small and therefore we should not think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think (Romans 12:3). But faith as small as a mustard seed means nothing is impossible.  (Mat 17:20)

** Hitler lived for the evil Nazi ideology, Donald Trump's ideology is ..... Donald Trump. 

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. 

The Incoherent Notions of Free Will and Determinism. Part III

Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot

This is the third part of a three part series that discusses an article on "Free will and Determinism" which appeared in the November issue of Premier Christianity magazine. The article was written by Justin Brierley. Brierley is an otherwise respected Christian commentator but as it turned out his article is, as far as I'm concerned, "exhibit A" in the case against Christian dualism. The other parts of this series can be seen here and here.

Below I follow my usual practice of interleaving my comments between article quotes.

On subject of Calvinism Brierley comments as follows:

BRIERLEY: Can the person who commits a heinous offence be judged guilty of a crime if they were bound to act in such a way by divine decree of God? Indeed, it could be argued that God himself is more culpable than they are.

MY COMMENT: As I have said in the previous parts of this series,  just how humans chose to act, whether good or bad, has a kind of "pre-existance" in platonic space, the space of possible outcomes. Thus, given this space of potentiality the role of Divine sovereignty is that of either positively selecting the possibilities or allowing their emergence from platonic space into a reified cosmic story. This role makes me think twice about attributing Divine culpability to human activity; for that activity need not have been positively selected for by the Creator, but rather permitted. Looked at  like this we find a way of respecting both human responsibility and Divine sovereignty.

However, as I have already said we are still left with the age old theological conundrum over the existence of suffering and evil and why the Divine will should allow such to be reified. On this particular issue I can only direct the reader to the enormous body of theological literature which addresses this question. The only time I have addressed it is here.

Brierley now goes onto consider atheistic materialism:

BRIERLEY: ...in a purely naturalistic worldview, all that's really happening at a fundamental level is a variety of atoms bumping into other atoms, triggering electrochemical responses in the brain. What's more, because  the universe runs on the deterministic principle of cause and effect, all of those collisions were predetermined in the distant past. You and your beliefs  are a product of along chain of inevitable physical events.

MY COMMENT:  The deterministic principle of cause and effect? Sorry, I've never heard of it outside naive interpretations of physics! As I have already said in the previous parts, I fail to recognise Brieley's depiction of the physical regime. There have been some attempts to try to restore an underlying mathematical determinism to quantum theory but I'm not aware that these efforts have resulted in any successful predictions. Physics today is not about a cause & effect billiard ball mechanics but about the mathematical constraints on patterns of behaviour. Ally this to the inherent mathematical chaos of the physical regime and we find that Brierley's billiard ball model looks downright silly. 

In any case given that the cosmos comes with two perspectives  ( i..e. the first person and third person perspectives - that is, respectively, my view of myself and the third party's view of me) it is not immediately obvious why even a highly deterministic particulate third person account of human beings is anymore fundamental than the first person sense of choice; the first person perspective is irreducible and the third person account, in the final analysis, actually traces back to a first person's observations, perceptions and theories. The first person perspective cannot be factored out of science; first person observations are the corner stone of science. 

Continuing with his billiard ball paradigm Brierley talks of the processes in the brain as follows:

BRIERLEY: But the atoms [in the Brain] aren't doing any reasoning. It's all just a series of physical events - snooker balls bouncing off each other. They aren't the least bit interested in the truth or falsity of the thoughts they are producing.  As CS Lewis wrote "If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees".

MY COMMENT: To be frank I'm not sure whether Brierley is just acting as devil's advocate in using his snooker ball paradigm or whether he truly takes it seriously; certainly, sophisticated atheists would be unlikely to take it seriously, so who is Brierley being devil's advocate for?

Brierley's reasoning here doesn't work even for something as deterministic as a computer. Whether we are dealing with human minds or computers, we don't expect to find reasoning down at the microscopic level; the phenomenon of reasoning is a high level feature and as such it is only found in the organisation of the system. Moreover, if you are a theist, the idea of teleology isn't going to be the problem that it is to atheists and therefore teleologically speaking the high level organisation has meaning in so far as it has goals and purpose; we don't expect to find that meaning at the low level. Teleology throws an entirely new  light on the system; it might be just wind in the trees to atheists but it can't be so for the Christian. Like computers, human thinking systems are there for a purpose.

But really it is no surprise to me that the billiard/snooker ball paradigm, if used in a reductionist fashion,  induces disbelief; after all, if billiard balls are supposed to be the primary reality then where in such a system is conscious sentience to be found? The paradigm puts precedence on the third person perspective in a way which obscures the implicit presence of the first person perspective and may prompt the erroneous conclusion that there is no such thing as a first person perspective; in fact some atheists might even declare that consciousness is an illusion. If some people have tricked themselves into thinking that consciousness, the very core of personality, is an illusion what chance does the perception of God stand? For some Western Christians the only way to respond to this impasse is to become dualists and introduce the ghost that haunts the snooker ball machine! Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot. 

Brierley goes on to make some comments about the problems atheism has with rationality: Viz: "The only way to guarantee that our reasoning  is itself rational is if there is a transcendent mind beyond the physical  stuff of nature. Getting rid of God turns out to create more problems than it solves". This I am inclined to agree with; without a sympathetic rational deity the rational integrity of the created order cannot be assumed.  But why determinism, or as Breirley appears to define it, "predictability",  should desecrate the sacredness of matter for Breieley I can only conclude that he really can't think round the intellectually toxic snooker ball paradigm. It is a paradigm that promotes disbelief in atheists and terror in the minds of Christians. Christian dualism is Christianity on the back foot. 

Brierley then moves his attention to Christian determinists: 

BRIERLEY:  Meanwhile Christian determinists are faced with the problem of how to rescue the concepts of love and justice from being rendered meaningless by a God who controls every thought and desire. 

MY COMMENT: This argument about the meaningless of love and justice in the face of Calvinism holds no weight at all given that at this stage Brierley's failure to clarify the free-will vs. determinism dichotomy renders it unintelligible and therefore itself meaningless. He has given us no coherent definition of either determinism or freewill and this means that no rational judgement regarding his dichotomy can be made.

In an attempt to make sense of what St Paul says in Romans 8:28-29 about the predestination of believers Brierley gives us this metaphor:

BRIERLEY: Imagine a Boeing 747 is scheduled  to fly from London  to New York.  Anyone who  gets on that plane  is 'predestined' to arrive at that destination. But the individuals who choose that flight  were not predestined to do so. Likewise all those who are in Christ are predestined to glory, but choosing whether or not to be part of that collective group is something within the free control  of each individual. 

MY COMMENT: This is a gallant try but there's a problem here: If we change the aircraft to a ship then we can see that it is possible for the passengers to bypass the "predestination" bit and jump over board and try their chances by swimming for it. After all, people do choose to leave the faith. So potentially there is the possibility that the boat, which presumably is predestined to arrive at its ultimate destination, arrives with only few on board. So whether or not passengers arrive at the predestined destination is a conditional rather than a "predetermined" certainty.  Quoting Romans 8:28-29:

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

So, should Paul have made it clear that the "predestination" of salvation is a conditional outcome and really only applies if you stay on board with the faith? In which case since we can't be sure whether people stay on board or not, then they have lost their "predestination" (since Brierley appears to equate "predestination" and "predictability").

It is doubtful whether God operates in the same time dimension as we do and therefore I don't here want to be drawn in to the question of exactly what Paul meant in these verses. But it looks to me as though the least we can say is that Paul had a strong view of God's sovereignty (see also Romans 9:14ff) which to me means that God at least has a veto power on what pops out of platonic space into reified reality.

I also raise here a point I raised in the first part about the apparent observer relativity of "determinism". If an agent (whether God or human) knows an outcome in advance, even though that outcome is part of a random sequence of events, that outcome then subsumes as a "determined" outcome as far as that agent is concerned (i.e. it is known). This means that, depending on one's informational frame of reference, even a so called "free-will" event (or a random event for that matter), if known in advance, becomes "determined" or "predestined" relative to the informed observer.

BRIERLEY: In the end we will always have imperfect knowledge of God who exists beyond temporal limitations. Paul recognised it: "for we see through a glass darkly" (1 Cor 13:12).

MY COMMENT: Well at last there is something here I can agree with; namely, that the subject has  a mystery at its core and this mystery is God himself.  I would say that that mystery is a facet of the age old problem of suffering and evil. For if God is absolute sovereign as he appears to be in the Bible why does he allow the emergence from platonic space creatures which so often make such bad decisions?

The only other mystery is this: Just what do theologians mean by freewill and predestination? There's quite a nifty tactic here: Offer a dichotomy with the suggestion that one is to endeavour to make a choice one way or the other, but leave terms so vague that it becomes all but impossible to successfully engage the question. One can then safely chose one of the options and cover one's tracks, smoke and mirrors style, by declaring that it is all rather too mysterious for us mortals to arrive at a clear resolution of the question and this excuses the theological obfuscation that tries to pass itself as reasoning.

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I recently saw the following comment on the freewill question: Do I have freewill, if by free will I mean "The ability to do otherwise"?  The definition of freewill implicit here breaks down horribly; for using this definition I would have said that I certainly don't have the ability to act otherwise about certain things that I nevertheless very much chose to do: For example I chose not to kill my grandchildren. My mental set up is such that it is a very sound prediction that I would never chose to do such a thing; that is, while I remain sane it is all but impossible for me to chose to do otherwise. And yet in spite of this impossibility it is entirely meaningful to say that it is my choice not to carry out such acts. But on Brierley's understanding of determinism, an understanding which is apparently very closely related to predictability, there would be no "free will" being displayed here; the implications of Brierley's thinking is that in my cherishing of my grandchildren I'm a puppet in the grip of determinism!

There are a whole host of human actions and non-actions that are highly predictable and according to Brierley's concept of predictability as the anti-thesis of free-will, wouldn't therefore classify as "free choice". The further absurdity here is that even Divine choices, which are predictably constrained by truthfulness, justice and love, wouldn't, according to Brierley, classify as "free choices"!

However, there are, nevertheless, a range of choices where the outcomes are not so predictable. For example, given my human nature it is quite within my powers to either be truthful or to lie when my pride, social image and that kind of thing are at stake. Here we have something that is far less predictable and yet the outcome is as much a choice of mine as my choice to not to kill my grandchildren.  There is of course a host of moral decisions where human nature finds itself in a zero sum game and caught between choices which favour self over others.  This is the human predicament of societal living. 

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I suspect that the so called problem of "freewill and determinism" is a problem manufactured  by  the snooker ball cause & effect model and cack-handed attempts to circumvent this with ghost in the machine dualism. In dualism we have a pathological paradigm that has prised apart mind and matter into two distinct categories. Brierley depicts the world of atheist materialism as a world of strict cause & effect, of billiard balls bumping into other billiard balls and where these interactions are to be regarded as the primary reality and every thing else as a secondary illusion (Although to be fair this model is probably a straw man as far as the more sophisticated atheists are concerned).

Not unnaturally Brierley is repelled by his snooker ball model. And so he should be on several counts. Firstly, as I have repeatedly said, it isn't even an accurate depiction of the physical regime as we understand it today, a regime that has random aspects and chaotic balances. Superimposed on top of this is the first person perspective of conscious cognition; any attempt to reduce this to mere billiard ball interactions would in any case trace back via the third person perspective to a conscious observing, thinking, theorising first person. The very meaning of materialism is grounded in conscious cognition and conscious cognition's rational and theoretical apprehensions. 

This theoretical apprehension has less the character of a cause & effect snooker ball model  than it does a world of mathematical patterning, a world where even random patterns have a role to play.  In the snooker ball model one may be tempted to pass on the responsibility by claiming "A snooker ball bumped my elbow and that's why I did it!" or "A tiny snooker bumped my neurons and that's why I did it!". But in a world of mathematical patterning this is not quite so easy to pass off!. 

The billiard ball cause & effect model has multiple issues: How can a billiard ball entity host conscious cognition without being haunted by a "ghost in the machine"? For Christians (unless they have escaped into ghost in the machine dualism) billiard ball mechanics also creates a problem with death: For if death entails that the unique set of identifiable billiard balls making up a person are scattered how can there be any life after death?  (Hence, the dualist's solution of patching in a "ghost"). But as we know from quantum theory there is no such thing as identifiable and unique billiard ball particles; the exchange of particles in a quantum configuration entails no new configuration; one can't meaningfully exchange quantum particles any more than one can meaningfully exchange the bits in a binary sequence; quantum particles have identity by virtue of their configuration; that is, their identity is relational. What this means is that personality cannot be identified with a unique set of billiard balls. Rather, a person's identity can only be bound up with an identifiable configuration. If identity is found in configuration then we have something that can be passed on from one medium to another and yet retain its configurational identity.

ADDENDUM 25/3/19: 

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.