Emerging Decisions
by BradfordAt his blog Thinking Christian Tom Gilson posted the blog entry The Will to Power–Is “Free Will” All in Your Head?: Scientific American. The link to the SA article is here. The author Christof Koch begins by posing the question: which part of the brain relates to behavioral decisions? He provides the qualifier- if it is the brain. Then in referencing the soul he adds the simile- like Casper the Friendly Ghost- which is sure to endear him to the scientific Ubermensch whose evidence of their status is a penchant for ridicule.
Herr Koch, we know the tune. It's nothing so primitive as a soul. No, volition springs forth magically emerges. Take a rain check on the specifics and don't think of inserting anything but confidence in materialist outcomes into the gaps of knowledge. The author then dishonestly describes dualism as emotionally reassuring. Even lower level Ubermensch know that only IDiots believe in dualism and that it is anything but emotionally reassuring. In the best Teutonic tradition Koch wants to know what laws Casper follows. There must be rules that describe volition. But if there are is it really free will? Take in a doubleheader and another rain check. The games will be played in a gap.
The author alludes to Wegner's experimental evidence linking conscious sensations to willful actions. I'll leave it to one of the critics to explain the importance of the insight noted in the article. Preferably right in the comment section where it can be seen by all. The author seems to think that movements linked to motor cortex stimulations bear on the issue of free will. If you dispense promissory notes drop down to the comment section and give us the benefit of your ingenius insight.
Koch though is right about there being no answer to free will. Is that an admission that the term on those promissory notes is eternal?
November 21st, 2009 at 5:07 am
Too bad Descartes isn't around to kick his a**. But is Descartes necessary to refute such nonsense? I think not.
Comment by Mung — November 21, 2009 @ 5:07 am
November 21st, 2009 at 11:06 am
A good middle school student is sufficient. You don't need a heavyweight to kick a lightweight's butt. That though is a point of the comment section. It's easy to wax about IDiots from a distance.
Comment by Bradford — November 21, 2009 @ 11:06 am
November 25th, 2009 at 1:17 am
Free-will relates to impetus and desired direction. Free-will relates to action in time and space, and knowledge so constructed from new and learned actions will necessarily imply something two-sided and pregnant with betweeness (e.g., a place for soul). One may concluded that the space-time fabric is innately two-sided if agreement is also to come from the laws of nature that are also given by actions.
This leads to a metaphical rejection of Darwin`s theory noted below.
(1) The Metaphysical Refutation of Darwinism
Life is said to have an impetus to survive, but Darwin`s theory is found equivocating badly on this issue. In one sense this theory implies that the impetus is determined by genes that interact with the environment. Then only an indifferent process of selection and variation is said to determine the successful genes that are passed on to future generations. But life`s impetus is also intended to carry a struggle for survival, and this is a duplicity. In one case, the impetus is said to be genetically determined and otherwise indifferent, but in another case the impetus is said to be a struggle for survival and far from indifferent. The two meanings are unable to find agreement, and the only way to resolve this conflict is to return to the two-sided space-time fabric.
For comparison sake, this argument may be compared to evidential and ontological rejections given below.
(2) The Evidential Refutation of Darwinism
What does it mean that Darwin`s theory is provisional? It means that it is limited to a narrow domain of application (like plant and animal breeding), and we can point to things that Darwin`s theory can`t tell us. Darwin’s theory did not anticipate biological symbiosis. It did not explain the extreme convergences of a kind noted by Simon Conway Morris. It did not anticipate the fewness of our genes. It did not anticipate the Hox systems, and the extreme examples of cooption noted by the interactive complexity apparent in the genome. It did not anticipate the findings of epigenetics where DNA is found activated by environmental cues. Darwin’s theory anticipates little, it merely rationalizes itself after the fact of discovery. And therefore, such a theory cannot be used as a foundation for evolution.
(3) The Ontological Refutation of Darwinism
Darwin’s theory assumes a friendly space-time fabric turned sample space and represented by Richard Dawkins’s bioform space (depicting genotypic and phenotypic morphology). In asserting that the fabric is a sample space the theory invents a hypothetical probability distribution function that represents “random variation.” Then this theory assumes a dynamic (responsive to biological change) and smooth (i.e., friendly to natural selection) fitness landscape. That is, Darwin’s theory comes with a precondition that natural selection can never explain, as this boundary is hardwired into the very fabric of space-time. And in deed, the boundary can be co-opted by an agency turning natural selection into artificial selection. And you see natural selection cannot explain the precondition or the agency that co-opts the space-time fabric. Darwin`s theory is found asserting a truth statement about the space-time fabric, but it is not a theory about space-time. Or stated another way: Randomness and selection are not context independent. Therefore, Darwin`s theory is provisional, and cannot serve as a framework for broad evolution.
Comment by Stephen — November 25, 2009 @ 1:17 am