physicalism, emergent properties, anomalous behavior and how to avoid reductionism & leave room for freedom

Consider the following four postulates:

1. The affirmation of physicalism (if by this term we mean the thesis that every physical state corresponds to only one mental state), and

2. The denial of the converse of postulate 1 (i.e., the denial that every mental state corresponds to only one physical state) (to put this in other words, the same mental state can be instantiated by more than one physical state).

3. The affirmation of the claim that the relation between truths 1/2 vis-a-vis mental physical states is but an instance of a patter occurring in all cases between a lower order property and a higher one.

4. The affirmation of the claim that emergent properties can be sources of action rather than merely epiphenomenal (something discussed in an earlier post)

If we grant the above four posulates, then there is room for freedom in human beings.

Below: an elaboration on a couple of the postulates made above:

(As I noted in an earlier post) I affirm with the physicalist that every physical state corresponds to only one mental state, but I deny the converse. In fact, I think this truth is merely an instance of a more general pattern. Every lower order state or set of lower order conditions corresponds to just one higher order state, but not vice versa.

Borrowing something I learned from Plantinga, I deny epiphenomenalism because otherwise evolutionary theory would be absurd. If animal consciousness is adaptive, then it must direct behavior rather than being like the froth on the beer.

Entities, in virtue of their higher order properties, act so as to attain higher order equilibria. These actions are anomolous with respect to lower order properties. And that in two ways.

First, because, given only information about the lower order properties, you couldn't predict how the entity with higher order props would behave, except on the basis of patterns observed in previously encountered higher order entities of the same kind. But I am assuming that you have no such information. Your task--an impossible one I maintain--is to predict behavior SOLELY on the basis of what has been observed at the lower level.

Secondly, because the higher order behavior is in part a function of its interaction with other higher order entities. True, it can do this only through lower order properties (e.g., speaking). But there is a lawfulness in this interactive behavior that can be discerned only by regarding it as a higher order interaction somewhat embodied in the lower (communication), and in such a manner that the lower underdetermines the higher.
In such a case, you have a kind of teleology, for each level has its equilibrium that it acts so as to attain. And if to the degree that that the goal is something of a sufficiently universal nature, then to that degree the entity wouldn't be determined by specific differences. And to the degree that the entity strives to interact with other entities at a higher order, to that degree it is not determined (underdetermined) by lower order differences. And if there is an entity that strives toward an interaction with the universal good (whatever that means), it will not be determined to seek any specific good. And if this same entity also seeks the highest good, then it will not be detemined to seek any lower good, except inasmuch as it refers to the highest....

Oh well, this is just a rough sketch... more polishing needed.

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...

what is an organism?

How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition? Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter: (Complexity) Many diverse parts (functional) acting for the sake of the whole I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that. Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and...

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson. He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal. My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this. I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true. Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist. In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

The Human Question

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