Further, you speak as if we could escape metaphysical commitment and assumptions. I don’t believe so. Materialism (or in more contemporary terms physicalism) is as much a metaphysical view as process thought. Further, nothing could be less simple than the pluralism inherent in materialism. There are at least unifying Ideas (yes, those eternal Ideas) in Whitehead’s thought.

Thanks for the description, even though I’m not able to access the link. I’ll roll it over for a while.

By the by, perhaps you could do me another favor. Your views on free will, like everything else it seems, are highly influenced by process thought. I must confess that I am highly suspicious of metaphysics in general, especially when it is used to “prove” anything which is to be found at a more accessible level (not to say free will is at such a level).

I was wondering if process-talk can be thoroughly translated into non-process-talk and vice-versa? I ask because I was wondering if determinism is even a possibility within process thought.

After all, determinism seems to be the most plausible conclusion (at least in my mind) if one assumes something akin to materialism. The way you speak, is seems that emergent LFW is the most plausible conclusion if one assumes something akin to process metaphysics.

What I worry about is whether these two positions are even incompatible with each other once one performs the proper translations? If determinism is not even a logical possibility within process thought, it makes it difficult to believe that process-LFW is really the same thing as materialism-LFW (for lack of a better name).

That is also why I have always insisted that free will is not the same as mere randomness or mere open alternatives. A will acts — it is not merely something that happens or that happens to us. A will that must act, that cannot refrain from acting, is not a free will. So if I am obsessive and I cannot control my thoughts, then I can will to not think such thought but I cannot realize my will in this respect. In that sense, I have a will that is not free. So there is a distinction between an act of the will and a free will. The distinction is the ability to refrain from willing if one so chooses.

M causes M*

P causes P*

In this diagram, a single mental event M is seen as causing another mental event M*. This mental event is physically realized (for example in a brain state) by a physical event P, which causes P* i.e. the physical realization of M* . Kim’s argument (greatly simplified) against the existence of mental causation is that the top layer does no real work. P can cause P* all by itself, with no help from M, and there is no coherent way in which M can cause M* without P’s help, or without causing P*. Thus it seems that physical causality is all we’ve got, and mental descriptions are somewhere between being shallow and being outright falsehoods. Kim claims that the only coherent{1} alternatives are:

1) dualism, which says that M and M* are independent of P and P*. This position is non-reductive, without being materialist;

2) Reductionism, which says that physical events are identical with mental events;

2a) Eliminativism, which says that mental events do not exist at all;

3) Emergence, which says that M supervenes on, but is not identical to, P.

Kim’s argument is discussed here: http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/physicalemergence.pdf

Blake, I know you guys have asked me about Kim’s argument before, but I’ve never really looked into it. Could you maybe provide me with a link to an article of his or something? More to the point of your question, however, my current position and intuitions regarding the reduction of the mental to the physical aren’t quite solidified. I really like the ideas contained in Dennett’s Intentional Stance, but I’m really confused as to what, exactly, this position entails for reduction.

Clark, I haven’t really touched my blog in a long time.

Geoff, you ask whether other animals can make decisions which change their natures. While I don’t want to address this question directly, I would point out that the ability to make decisions which change one’s nature is entirely compatible with compatibilism. For instance, one could have been determined to change. (I just hope this particular point wasn’t motivating a rejection of determinism.)

You are right that the very power to veto the causal chain is libertarian free will (whether one actually vetoes or not). I certainly think that mature and mentally functioning humans have this veto power.

So the question is whether little children have this veto power. I say they don’t. And if they don’t that explains why they are not morally responsible for their choices. But I do think that as children mature they begin to gradually experience especially lucid moments where they could indeed veto the causal chain. I envision these moments as being passing at first but they gradually increase as the child matures.

I hope this doesn’t muddy the waters but I also suspect that in the Mormon context the concept of “the light of Christ” must be brought in. (I mentioned this in #148.) The light of Christ is reportedly the universal moral sense that applies to all (mature) people. I think it is safe to say that little children are not fully under the influence of the light of Christ because if they were they too would be morally responsible for their choices in the way that all adults are universally responsible. (The notion as I understand it is that even a person raised by wolves would be morally responsible to the extent that the light of Christ influences all people.) That is, if the light of Christ enlightens people concerning right and wrong then little children are unable, or at least less able, to discern its influence than adults. If there is the great causal chain influencing us on one side, and the light of Christ on the other side, why should we not assume that it is in fact the light of Christ that provides full LFW to mature humans as opposed to the hypothetical free will that I say little children and animals have? So if the light of Christ is what gives mortal adult humans LFW and it is what is behind universal morality then the two are inextricably linked.

The degree to which they can veto the causal chain as they grow is the degree to which they are morally responsible.

Great, but I am still totally unclear on what you mean by “the degree to which they can veto the causal chain.” For any given choice it is either possible for them to veto or not, right? If it is possible then they have free will, even if they did not exercise it with a veto, no? After all, your theory says that most of the time we all go along with the causal chain and this doesn’t mean we lack free will, it simply means we didn’t exercise our will to veto. Thus, the question of whether we have free will comes down to whether it is within our power to do so, not whether we actually did, in some particular case, exercise veto power. Again, for any given choice it seems that it is either within our power to veto or it is not. How can that be a matter of degree?