Yes it certainly is, PH! But I think you need to explain to me how "something as wondrous" as me reduces to a pile-up of "a chain of causes and effects," and yet this wondrous "me" at the very same time is said to have free will; that is, is capable of making free decisions and implementing them. What wondrous Maxwell's Demon intervened to reconcile these two mutually inconsistent claims, and when (figuratively speaking, of course)?
Plus remember, we exercise our free will in pursuit and furtherance of our own goals and purposes. If your theory is true, this would mean that human beings chronically suffer from baseless illusions; e.g., that we can actually control anything by deciding, making choices. (Notwithstanding, if I am not mistaken, this sort of thing is fundamental to scientific experimentation generally speaking.)
For if everything that is, is constituted from "a chain of causes and effects which are 'determined' by natural laws," then surely, willing anything other than the inevitable set-up being shaped by nature (which we cannot know in advance in any case) is an exercise in futility. Life is futility. Knowledge, science itself, is impossible. And we are delusionary to think otherwise.
Somehow, this doesn't make any sense to me. But just show me the source of the error in my thinking, and you might persuade me yet.
Patrick, you wrote: "Sometimes, when we look back on a long sequence of natural cause-and-effect events, teleology may seem to have been involved, but this may be an illusion of the retrospective viewpoint."
I know that, Patrick. But it's a different problem from the one we're discussing here -- the teleology implicit in [Aristotelian] logic itself, not what events look like to me in restrospect, once I've had the chance to "filter them" through my normal set of expectations, desires, and prejudices.
Thank you so much for writing, dear Patrick.
I really can't explain free will. It may be an attribute of our big brains. We had a thread more than a year ago in which the concept of "emergent characteristic" was considered. It's an attribute of complex systems that gives the whole certain features that the component parts alone don't possess. Some people around here are knowledgable about such things. I'm not. Free will may be that, or it may be more than that. It's difficult to make any kind of scientific test, either way. All we can demonstrate is that when a person's brain dies, we have no more indication that the dead person has any free will. This is, to me, inconclusive, except to demonstrate that the brain is necessary. It it all there is? I don't know. Nor do I know of any way to find out, to anyone's scientific satisfaction
Plus remember, we exercise our free will in pursuit and furtherance of our own goals and purposes.
Yes, we do.
If your theory is true, this would mean that human beings chronically suffer from baseless illusions; e.g., that we can actually control anything by deciding, making choices.
I don't think that's a "baseless illusion." We can excercise a great deal of control over things, and we can certainly make choices. (Example: the American Revolution.) We're not omnipotent, so our free will is limited. Yet it's real. Otherwise, we're just characters in an old movie, the end of which is already determined. Life would be pretty much the same from one generation to the next. For a long time, life was like that. But it isn't like that now, so there's evidence of free will in action. We can't literally prove that we have free will, but I certainly live as if I do. I suspect we all do.
For if everything that is, is constituted from "a chain of causes and effects which are 'determined' by natural laws," then surely, willing anything other than the inevitable set-up being shaped by nature (which we cannot know in advance in any case) is an exercise in futility. Life is futility. Knowledge, science itself, is impossible. And we are delusionary to think otherwise. Somehow, this doesn't make any sense to me. But just show me the source of the error in my thinking, and you might persuade me yet.
But BB ... knowledge certainly is possible; and we do have free will. I've suggested that after the event of creation, everything unfolded naturally -- stars, planets, life itself. If the universe had produced nothing but worlds, rocks, and tundra, then I'd agree with you. Futility. Lotta stuff, no pizzaz. But as part of that process, we came along. Whatever we are is consistent with the laws of the universe. But ...
But we're special because -- perhaps alone in the universe, yet in accordance with natural law -- we have the capacity of free will. That means our lives are the exact opposite of futile! Here we are, at the tail end of an enormously long, perhaps improbable, never-to-be-repeated chain of events, and we've got intelligence and free will. (Consider a sequence of Brownian Motions, to give you the idea I have in mind of a perfectly natural, yet probably unrepeatable sequence.) We're probably unique. Even if we're not the only intelligent life in the universe, we're certainly rare. That means, to me, that we're precious. We're the icing on the cake. We're irreplaceable in the whole cosmos! [Pause, as my hand-waving, red-faced rant cools down.]
How could anyone ponder that and even think about futility? I literally tingle with awe at the magnificence of it all. I can't understand how someone could find it depressing.