Thanks for the review, Tim. You write well, and you do mostly get my perspective, which is rarer than you might think, since most attempts to put my view in other words pull it back toward the very metaphysics I am trying to set down. I will keep this reply to a few things.
On determinism. DONT was written seven years ago, and some of what is in it is older still. In those days, I was imprecise in my approach, and the determinism reading you built your free-will section on is the careless version. I don't mean that the position changed, just that I hadn't yet learned how much care it needed. So your reading of the book is accurate, and where your section lands, on not knowing whether free will operates, is itself the careful place, nearer to what I would now say than the book's looser phrasing was. I would only add that I take one further step than you do. You stop at we cannot know. I follow the matter to determinism, for reasons I will give in a moment. What has changed since the book is only the precision, and the precision matters here more than almost anywhere, because this is a subject on which people hear far more than you said, fatalism, resignation, a license to do nothing, none of which follows, and all of which gets read in.
Here is the careful form, quoted from a recent piece on Substack: The knowing of which Juvenal spoke is not the discovery of an external fact, but an epistemic judgment made by a finite, localized system which is, as I see it, part of and inseparable from the entire universe. I follow that inseparability to its conclusion, which is determinism. Notice that this argument does not run on physics. It runs on inseparability. So I am not resting determinism on any laboratory result, which is why no laboratory result will move it. I cannot prove it. Science does not settle the question, and philosophy has not closed it. Of the available accounts, it is the one I cannot talk my way out of, and I would rather hold it plainly than evade it. This is not belief exactly, but finding myself operating as if it were so. What metaphysics is finally true, I do not know, and neither, I say, does anyone else.
That last point bears on your quantum argument, so let me separate it cleanly from the above. You use quantum randomness to rule out determinism. That is one interpretation of quantum mechanics, not its settled meaning. There are interpretations that preserve determinism, and the debate among them is open, not decided in favor of the one you used. There is also a confusion of levels worth naming. Randomness at one scale does not entail openness at another, nor does it close it. This is a comment on your reasoning, not a prop holding up mine. Even if you were entirely right about the physics, my determinism would stand or fall on the inseparability argument, untouched, because it was never leaning on the physics to begin with. I raise the quantum point only so you do not mistake one interpretation for the verdict of science.
On being awake. By the definition you quoted, yes, you are awake. The recognition of epistemic limitation that runs through your whole piece is the thing itself. I will add one observation, not aimed at you. The certainty you describe in others, your friend's certainty about the soul and abortion, is the sleepwalking state, and it is worth seeing that the sleep is not stupidity or bad faith. It is the ordinary condition. Waking is the exception, which is why it can be named at all.
One last thing, since you were generous, and I would rather meet generosity with candor than with flattery. You spend the back half of the essay letting the book send your mind off into open and relational theology, panexperientialism, idealism, and afterlife scenarios in which experiences are recorded and replayed. You know what I think of such constructions, and you said so yourself, half expecting my chagrin. No chagrin. If building those is where your enjoyment lives, build them. I will only say what I find, which is that each of them reaches behind the flow of experience to name the machinery producing it, and that the flow is what I encounter while the machinery is what I notice myself positing, never what I find. That is a report on where my looking stops, not a proof that yours should stop there too. You weigh the out-of-body and near-death testimony and judge it worth taking seriously. I cannot show you it is not. I can only say I have no access to the thing behind the flow that would settle it either way, and neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone, which is why I leave the machinery alone.
Good essay, and a kind one. Thank you for the time you put into it.
I didn't see this comment until 1 day after you added it. I would have responded sooner. Thanks for such a wonderful response, that you took the time to both take my article seriously and then, in your second last paragraph, answer to part of it with candor. I truly appreciate that. I always want (or so I tell myself) for people to say what they really think, not to say what they think I want to hear (though I prefer it to be said without rancor if possible). In that paragraph, you said, "If building those is where your enjoyment lives, build them." That is precisely why I like playing around with concepts that reach "behind the flow of experience to name the machinery producing it". I like playing with those ideas for fun. But I don't think the ideas are true. I can't know if they are or are not in the current flow. And dwelling on them with time I could be taking to pay closer attention to my actual experiences may not be making the best use of the actual experiences. But it's fun for me, so I do it.
I know this is doing more of the same, but when you write, "The knowing of which Juvenal spoke is not the discovery of an external fact, but an epistemic judgment made by a finite, localized system which is, as I see it, part of and inseparable from the entire universe. I follow that inseparability to its conclusion, which is determinism", I want to say, "Unless freedom is part of how the whole universe flows or evolves." I am not saying freedom is built in. I just can't say it is not either since what the whole universe is doing is mostly outside my flow.
And your point about interpretations of quantum mechanics is a good one. There is no randomness in the De Broglie-Bohm (Pilot Wave) Interpretation. And in the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation, I guess the little experiment with a cookie and radium that I imagined would have me eating the cookie in one universe and not eating it in another one, my actions fully determined in both cases.
You said, "The certainty you describe in others, your friend's certainty about the soul and abortion, is the sleepwalking state, and it is worth seeing that the sleep is not stupidity or bad faith." You are not saying I am seeing those people as stupid or acting in bad faith, but it does make me want to say that I am not seeing them that way. I think they are being more certain than is warranted, but almost all of the people I know who do that appear to me to be trying hard to do what they believe is right and best and are using a lot of intelligence.
Anyway, thanks again for responding so beautifully.
I didn't see this comment until 1 day after you added it. I would have responded sooner. Thanks for such a wonderful response, that you took the time to both take my article seriously and then, in your second last paragraph, answer to part of it with candor. I truly appreciate that. I always want (or so I tell myself) for people to say what they really think, not to say what they think I want to hear (though I prefer it to be said without rancor if possible). In that paragraph, you said, "If building those is where your enjoyment lives, build them." That is precisely why I like playing around with concepts that reach "behind the flow of experience to name the machinery producing it". I like playing with those ideas for fun. But I don't think the ideas are true. I can't know if they are or are not in the current flow. And dwelling on them with time I could be taking to pay closer attention to my actual experiences may not be making the best use of the actual experiences. But it's fun for me, so I do it.
I know this is doing more of the same, but when you write, "The knowing of which Juvenal spoke is not the discovery of an external fact, but an epistemic judgment made by a finite, localized system which is, as I see it, part of and inseparable from the entire universe. I follow that inseparability to its conclusion, which is determinism", I want to say, "Unless freedom is part of how the whole universe flows or evolves." I am not saying freedom is built in. I just can't say it is not either since what the whole universe is doing is mostly outside my flow.
And your point about interpretations of quantum mechanics is a good one. There is no randomness in the De Broglie-Bohm (Pilot Wave) Interpretation. And in the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation, I guess the little experiment with a cookie and radium that I imagined would have me eating the cookie in one universe and not eating it in another one, my actions fully determined in both cases.
You said, "The certainty you describe in others, your friend's certainty about the soul and abortion, is the sleepwalking state, and it is worth seeing that the sleep is not stupidity or bad faith." You are not saying I am seeing those people as stupid or acting in bad faith, but it does make me want to say that I am not seeing them that way. I think they are being more certain than is warranted, but almost all of the people I know who do that appear to me to be trying hard to do what they believe is right and best and are using a lot of intelligence.
Anyway, thanks again for responding so beautifully.
My reply
To be clear, I knew you were not saying that people with strong faith in one metaphysics or another were stupid, or claiming things in bad faith, but I am glad you said so, Tim. That view is not part of awake at all, as I understand it. In a certain and important way, we are all doing the same thing , , , surviving.
Very interesting, Tim. What lingers for me is the paradox at the center: the one thing you can't doubt—the flow of experience—is also the one thing that won't hold still long enough to be examined. You reach for the deciding self and find only the decision, already arrived. Maybe that's the real teaching: the seeker and the sought were never two. Libet's veto tempts me too, that thin margin where consciousness leans against the current. But perhaps even the leaning arises unbidden. To sit honestly inside that not-knowing, without papering it over, may be the closest thing to awake.
Thanks as always for the consideration. If you can find a single assumption in EE I would be very grateful for the target. That would amount to an error imo and I would welcome being informed of it so I can smoosh it like a programming bug XD
The time thing is just the same externalism argument. The past is a present memory, there’s no way to prove the past that isn’t a present just like there’s no way to prove a matter that isn’t an experience.
I really only ever have the one move “prove it” directed outward or inward XD
What I appreciated most was not the conclusions, but the willingness to remain with uncertainty. Admitting "I don't know" is often a stronger philosophical position than defending certainty that cannot be justified.
This was a great read! In some ways I am probably closer to Saltzman’s position on metaphysical explanations. My challenge to myself is to figure out an understanding of the physical world in which we live, without adding some external agent to it. That doesn’t preclude a higher power, but it has to make sense to me. My training has led me to two conclusions about freewill… first it probably doesn’t exist. Second, we are better off if we act as thought it does.
I appreciate the humility in the idea of knowing what we know and letting go of the need to explain everything. I wonder whether letting go of the search for meaning is its own kind of meaning. But instead of getting tangled even further, what I take away is the simplicity of focusing on the flow of experience rather than getting lost in theories about reality.<3
Tim, remember that evolution, physicalism, materialism et al are models. Now some/many folks certainly do interpret and use them as, and assert that they are descriptive of a world-in-itself out there. There is no necessity to do that while taking them seriously as useful descriptions of what we can expect from aspects of the reality in which we are participants. "What we can expect..." is radically different to "What we know is ...," regardless of the level of confidence in that expectation.
These models are, from Robert's words below -- or above -- or somewhere, "epistemic judgment[s] made by ... finite, localized systems" and intersubjectively confirmed in collaboration with other "finite localised systems". They are epistemic judgements based on empirical, experiential practices, even though those experiential practices may be mediated by useful technology.
So confidence in the reliability of physicalism, evolution, quantum mechanics, etc. rests only on a basic metaphysics that we share the world with other experiencing subjects and our experiences are, to some extent, shareable.
Absolute Free Will is impossible. Pragmatic, daily life Free will is an situation, in which i can choose between a greater set of options, that suits my needs ,desires, wants, conditioning,upbringing, actual circumstances etc. More Options, more free will, less Options, less free will. Greetings from very sonny and hot Germany
In an pragmatic way, there seems to be a sort of free will. If i have an opportunity to choose from a great number of options, my free will is expanded. But i dont choose, what i choose. I dont know who has said it:I can do, what i will, but i can't will, what i want.
A lot of great thoughts in here, Tim. Perhaps one way we might think of free-will, is that we have have to free-the-will from the will of desire so that we can access the Will to Live. Free the Will. Free Willy. 🐳
Thanks for the review, Tim. You write well, and you do mostly get my perspective, which is rarer than you might think, since most attempts to put my view in other words pull it back toward the very metaphysics I am trying to set down. I will keep this reply to a few things.
On determinism. DONT was written seven years ago, and some of what is in it is older still. In those days, I was imprecise in my approach, and the determinism reading you built your free-will section on is the careless version. I don't mean that the position changed, just that I hadn't yet learned how much care it needed. So your reading of the book is accurate, and where your section lands, on not knowing whether free will operates, is itself the careful place, nearer to what I would now say than the book's looser phrasing was. I would only add that I take one further step than you do. You stop at we cannot know. I follow the matter to determinism, for reasons I will give in a moment. What has changed since the book is only the precision, and the precision matters here more than almost anywhere, because this is a subject on which people hear far more than you said, fatalism, resignation, a license to do nothing, none of which follows, and all of which gets read in.
Here is the careful form, quoted from a recent piece on Substack: The knowing of which Juvenal spoke is not the discovery of an external fact, but an epistemic judgment made by a finite, localized system which is, as I see it, part of and inseparable from the entire universe. I follow that inseparability to its conclusion, which is determinism. Notice that this argument does not run on physics. It runs on inseparability. So I am not resting determinism on any laboratory result, which is why no laboratory result will move it. I cannot prove it. Science does not settle the question, and philosophy has not closed it. Of the available accounts, it is the one I cannot talk my way out of, and I would rather hold it plainly than evade it. This is not belief exactly, but finding myself operating as if it were so. What metaphysics is finally true, I do not know, and neither, I say, does anyone else.
That last point bears on your quantum argument, so let me separate it cleanly from the above. You use quantum randomness to rule out determinism. That is one interpretation of quantum mechanics, not its settled meaning. There are interpretations that preserve determinism, and the debate among them is open, not decided in favor of the one you used. There is also a confusion of levels worth naming. Randomness at one scale does not entail openness at another, nor does it close it. This is a comment on your reasoning, not a prop holding up mine. Even if you were entirely right about the physics, my determinism would stand or fall on the inseparability argument, untouched, because it was never leaning on the physics to begin with. I raise the quantum point only so you do not mistake one interpretation for the verdict of science.
On being awake. By the definition you quoted, yes, you are awake. The recognition of epistemic limitation that runs through your whole piece is the thing itself. I will add one observation, not aimed at you. The certainty you describe in others, your friend's certainty about the soul and abortion, is the sleepwalking state, and it is worth seeing that the sleep is not stupidity or bad faith. It is the ordinary condition. Waking is the exception, which is why it can be named at all.
One last thing, since you were generous, and I would rather meet generosity with candor than with flattery. You spend the back half of the essay letting the book send your mind off into open and relational theology, panexperientialism, idealism, and afterlife scenarios in which experiences are recorded and replayed. You know what I think of such constructions, and you said so yourself, half expecting my chagrin. No chagrin. If building those is where your enjoyment lives, build them. I will only say what I find, which is that each of them reaches behind the flow of experience to name the machinery producing it, and that the flow is what I encounter while the machinery is what I notice myself positing, never what I find. That is a report on where my looking stops, not a proof that yours should stop there too. You weigh the out-of-body and near-death testimony and judge it worth taking seriously. I cannot show you it is not. I can only say I have no access to the thing behind the flow that would settle it either way, and neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone, which is why I leave the machinery alone.
Good essay, and a kind one. Thank you for the time you put into it.
I didn't see this comment until 1 day after you added it. I would have responded sooner. Thanks for such a wonderful response, that you took the time to both take my article seriously and then, in your second last paragraph, answer to part of it with candor. I truly appreciate that. I always want (or so I tell myself) for people to say what they really think, not to say what they think I want to hear (though I prefer it to be said without rancor if possible). In that paragraph, you said, "If building those is where your enjoyment lives, build them." That is precisely why I like playing around with concepts that reach "behind the flow of experience to name the machinery producing it". I like playing with those ideas for fun. But I don't think the ideas are true. I can't know if they are or are not in the current flow. And dwelling on them with time I could be taking to pay closer attention to my actual experiences may not be making the best use of the actual experiences. But it's fun for me, so I do it.
I know this is doing more of the same, but when you write, "The knowing of which Juvenal spoke is not the discovery of an external fact, but an epistemic judgment made by a finite, localized system which is, as I see it, part of and inseparable from the entire universe. I follow that inseparability to its conclusion, which is determinism", I want to say, "Unless freedom is part of how the whole universe flows or evolves." I am not saying freedom is built in. I just can't say it is not either since what the whole universe is doing is mostly outside my flow.
And your point about interpretations of quantum mechanics is a good one. There is no randomness in the De Broglie-Bohm (Pilot Wave) Interpretation. And in the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation, I guess the little experiment with a cookie and radium that I imagined would have me eating the cookie in one universe and not eating it in another one, my actions fully determined in both cases.
You said, "The certainty you describe in others, your friend's certainty about the soul and abortion, is the sleepwalking state, and it is worth seeing that the sleep is not stupidity or bad faith." You are not saying I am seeing those people as stupid or acting in bad faith, but it does make me want to say that I am not seeing them that way. I think they are being more certain than is warranted, but almost all of the people I know who do that appear to me to be trying hard to do what they believe is right and best and are using a lot of intelligence.
Anyway, thanks again for responding so beautifully.
Tim Miller
2d
I didn't see this comment until 1 day after you added it. I would have responded sooner. Thanks for such a wonderful response, that you took the time to both take my article seriously and then, in your second last paragraph, answer to part of it with candor. I truly appreciate that. I always want (or so I tell myself) for people to say what they really think, not to say what they think I want to hear (though I prefer it to be said without rancor if possible). In that paragraph, you said, "If building those is where your enjoyment lives, build them." That is precisely why I like playing around with concepts that reach "behind the flow of experience to name the machinery producing it". I like playing with those ideas for fun. But I don't think the ideas are true. I can't know if they are or are not in the current flow. And dwelling on them with time I could be taking to pay closer attention to my actual experiences may not be making the best use of the actual experiences. But it's fun for me, so I do it.
I know this is doing more of the same, but when you write, "The knowing of which Juvenal spoke is not the discovery of an external fact, but an epistemic judgment made by a finite, localized system which is, as I see it, part of and inseparable from the entire universe. I follow that inseparability to its conclusion, which is determinism", I want to say, "Unless freedom is part of how the whole universe flows or evolves." I am not saying freedom is built in. I just can't say it is not either since what the whole universe is doing is mostly outside my flow.
And your point about interpretations of quantum mechanics is a good one. There is no randomness in the De Broglie-Bohm (Pilot Wave) Interpretation. And in the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation, I guess the little experiment with a cookie and radium that I imagined would have me eating the cookie in one universe and not eating it in another one, my actions fully determined in both cases.
You said, "The certainty you describe in others, your friend's certainty about the soul and abortion, is the sleepwalking state, and it is worth seeing that the sleep is not stupidity or bad faith." You are not saying I am seeing those people as stupid or acting in bad faith, but it does make me want to say that I am not seeing them that way. I think they are being more certain than is warranted, but almost all of the people I know who do that appear to me to be trying hard to do what they believe is right and best and are using a lot of intelligence.
Anyway, thanks again for responding so beautifully.
My reply
To be clear, I knew you were not saying that people with strong faith in one metaphysics or another were stupid, or claiming things in bad faith, but I am glad you said so, Tim. That view is not part of awake at all, as I understand it. In a certain and important way, we are all doing the same thing , , , surviving.
Sent this too soon by mistake. The other thing is your vision of freedom because the whole thing is free, is vivid and interesting.
Very interesting, Tim. What lingers for me is the paradox at the center: the one thing you can't doubt—the flow of experience—is also the one thing that won't hold still long enough to be examined. You reach for the deciding self and find only the decision, already arrived. Maybe that's the real teaching: the seeker and the sought were never two. Libet's veto tempts me too, that thin margin where consciousness leans against the current. But perhaps even the leaning arises unbidden. To sit honestly inside that not-knowing, without papering it over, may be the closest thing to awake.
Great comment, Steve. Much to think about!
Do you exist? As a felt sense of identity in this moment, yes, that's self proving if you feel it.
https://github.com/Innomen/Sourcerer-Ludi
As a coherent narrative existing independently? No.
Card universe, both definitions of life, and consciousness.
https://philpapers.org/rec/SERTCU (time isn't a thing)
https://philpapers.org/rec/SERRRT-2 (life is anything that has experiences)
https://philpapers.org/rec/SERWCI (consciousness is experiencing itself)
Context and foot in the door.
As for assumptions, only one system is genuinely without them as far as I know.
https://ko-fi.com/s/84e9801ef7
Yes, I think EE is either close to using no Metaphysical assumption or it all the way there. "Time Isn't a Thing" looks very interesting!
Thanks as always for the consideration. If you can find a single assumption in EE I would be very grateful for the target. That would amount to an error imo and I would welcome being informed of it so I can smoosh it like a programming bug XD
The time thing is just the same externalism argument. The past is a present memory, there’s no way to prove the past that isn’t a present just like there’s no way to prove a matter that isn’t an experience.
I really only ever have the one move “prove it” directed outward or inward XD
Fascinating!
What I appreciated most was not the conclusions, but the willingness to remain with uncertainty. Admitting "I don't know" is often a stronger philosophical position than defending certainty that cannot be justified.
Thanks for that. I know I'm very uncertain about most things and I always wonder if expressing uncertainly lands with others or just seems absurd.
To me, it comes across as intellectual honesty, not weakness. It invites conversation instead of ending it.
I REALLY enjoyed this review and your writing here Tim! Talking about reality…that includes walking into the pantry and finding those damn cookies! 🤣
This was a great read! In some ways I am probably closer to Saltzman’s position on metaphysical explanations. My challenge to myself is to figure out an understanding of the physical world in which we live, without adding some external agent to it. That doesn’t preclude a higher power, but it has to make sense to me. My training has led me to two conclusions about freewill… first it probably doesn’t exist. Second, we are better off if we act as thought it does.
Very interesting ideas. Thanks for your reply.
I appreciate the humility in the idea of knowing what we know and letting go of the need to explain everything. I wonder whether letting go of the search for meaning is its own kind of meaning. But instead of getting tangled even further, what I take away is the simplicity of focusing on the flow of experience rather than getting lost in theories about reality.<3
Tim, remember that evolution, physicalism, materialism et al are models. Now some/many folks certainly do interpret and use them as, and assert that they are descriptive of a world-in-itself out there. There is no necessity to do that while taking them seriously as useful descriptions of what we can expect from aspects of the reality in which we are participants. "What we can expect..." is radically different to "What we know is ...," regardless of the level of confidence in that expectation.
These models are, from Robert's words below -- or above -- or somewhere, "epistemic judgment[s] made by ... finite, localized systems" and intersubjectively confirmed in collaboration with other "finite localised systems". They are epistemic judgements based on empirical, experiential practices, even though those experiential practices may be mediated by useful technology.
So confidence in the reliability of physicalism, evolution, quantum mechanics, etc. rests only on a basic metaphysics that we share the world with other experiencing subjects and our experiences are, to some extent, shareable.
So true! I love this: what we can expect is radically different to what we know.
Absolute Free Will is impossible. Pragmatic, daily life Free will is an situation, in which i can choose between a greater set of options, that suits my needs ,desires, wants, conditioning,upbringing, actual circumstances etc. More Options, more free will, less Options, less free will. Greetings from very sonny and hot Germany
Thanks for your comment, Matthias. So you think limited free will is possible?
I hope one of your possible choices is to be in the shade out of the sun!
In an pragmatic way, there seems to be a sort of free will. If i have an opportunity to choose from a great number of options, my free will is expanded. But i dont choose, what i choose. I dont know who has said it:I can do, what i will, but i can't will, what i want.
I think this version us right, a quite from an german philosopher:I can do what i want, but i can't will, what i want.
A lot of great thoughts in here, Tim. Perhaps one way we might think of free-will, is that we have have to free-the-will from the will of desire so that we can access the Will to Live. Free the Will. Free Willy. 🐳
Great idea!