MarshaV said to Steve:
Isn't free will dependent on causation, and isn't causation, in the MoQ, an
explanatory extension of a pattern?
dmb says:
No, causation rules out free will. Determinism is predicated on the laws of
causality. Free will says we are not bound by such laws.
Take the classic example. On a billiards table, you move the cue stick which
sends the cue ball toward the eight ball and the eight ball drops into the
corner pocket. Intellectually we chop this into the parts just named. The
player "causes" the cue stick to hit the cue ball which "causes" the eight ball
to move into the pocket. Once you chop it up into discrete segments, you've got
to figure out a way to reunite these events. That's where causality comes in to
save the day.
But stop for a moment and re-think this. How did the player's shot ever get
disconnected to the movement of the cue ball or the eight ball. Isn't all of
that really one continuous action? Those events don't just go together like
cookies and milk. They were already seamlessly connected before we started
dividing the thing into parts.
It's the same kind of logic Zeno used to prove that motion was impossible, to
prove that an arrow could never reach its target. This is achieved by eternally
dividing the remaining distance in half so that the arrow can only ever get
half way. Even though that half grows infinitely smaller and smaller, the
target will be reached. See, by using logic and math we can divide the line
between the shooter and the target into an infinite number of segments and
thereby "prove" that ordinary events are impossible. It just shows how absurd
and ridiculous logic can be. This is the logic that tells us to place our bets
on the tortoise instead of the hare. (I heard that story as a ten year old and
even then I knew it was bullshit.)
It's so much simpler to avoid the logic chopping in the first place. Then we
don't have to invent mysterious forces behind the scenes to reunite or
reconnect the fragments. This is why radical empiricism puts so much emphasis
on the continuity of experience and stresses what he calls the "conjunctive
relations". Imagine how confusing and distorted these sentences would be if you
removed all the grammatical conjunctions. That's what logic chopping does to
experience. Obviously, projectiles of all sorts hit their targets all the time.
Arrows, runners, bullets, basketballs and hockey pucks reach their intended
destinations all the time. It's no problem, not until the chopping starts.
Let's say Zeno had one of those fake arrows through his head and his tongue in
his cheek. Let's say causality is just another word for the fact that things
and event sometimes go together.
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