The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness
I had an interesting discussion today about free will. Usually, or, generally, I find the discussion quite tiresome and pointless, as it either devolves into a circlejerk or gets stuck on some arbitrary point because neither side sees the other and does not acknowledge this fact. Today, well, I guess it was a bit of the same. The conversation was (rightly) abruptly stopped, and so I got to continue it with myself later instead. I think this question is largely related to another dear topic of mine, which is that of scientific materialism. And of course, you can’t critique materialism without mentioning Whitehead (or Marx, but we’re not talking about that today). So the argument goes something like this.
We can measure processes in the wild, that is, matter affecting other matter. This we can calculate, and so we can predict what will happen. It’s all just atoms being affected by chemical (or, if you’re so inclined, physical) processes; with a known input we can calculate the output. The only reason we can’t “see into the future” is because the system (the universe) is unfathomably large and complicated (what is the factorial of unfathomable?), and so the input is an enigma. We could then view science through this lense as the quest to make the input, and the process, as accurate as possible, in order to solve for X, the output, the future.
This makes sense, given scientific materialism. Which we will define as the model of life as being made up of “matter” residing in simple location and time, that is, existence is ‘stuff’ which exists in a given time and place without required reference to other times and places. A stone here is a stone there, and a stone now is a stone then, disregarding changes that happens with time and place of course. Only, Einstein showed us Quantum entanglement and so the theory of Local realism died.
Atoms don’t have free will. I would be surprised if this was a controversial statement. Yet, when arguing about free will, this is the topic which the materialists seems to raise. So it seems like the question begs a few others, like, what even is free will and where does knowledge which can answer such a question reside. Let’s start in the other end. I am a human, a person, an individual. I have a body. It seems to me that I might make this body do things, like pressing on the buttons of this keyboard to write down my thoughts. On the topic of thoughts, I also have thoughts. I might search for my thoughts, but I never manage to find them, and so I am content with viewing them like small clouds in a rather large jar. I don’t know why, but it’s a funny picture and it sooths me. I am not my thoughts, because my thoughts come and go but I remain. I am not my body, because my body comes and goes but I remain. That’s not quite right. The body is always there. I am not my body because I am other things, too. I can listen to my breath and I can contemplate death. I can observe. I am the controller, the little elf in my head pressing the buttons and steering the joystick. So we might say, that out there, the body is king. The body takes decisions, the body is influenced. So where do I fit in? Is there only the body?
…
No, I am not my body. I know things. I have opinions, preferences. I have memories. I have fear of death, and I can understand what it means. I can transcend space and time, and I do, millions of times a day, simply by thinking about the past or future. But, you might say, these are simply properties and processes of the mind. Aha! So we’ve found the crux of the matter. No, I might concede that the brain stores my memories, and, by extension including the rest, myself. But that is all. And it is NOT the same thing. So I am immanent in relation to the body. The body is my universe, if you will. I cannot step outside of it, and everything in my existence rests on top of it. The body is always there. The breath, too. It’s a case of mistaken identity, with a sprinkle of misplaced concreteness. Of course I do not exist whatsoever when unacknowledged, when viewed from the outside. Point at the I in me, on me. There is just the body, which resides materially, and which enables me, somewhere, to be. When the body dies, I won’t be. At least not the part of me which I recognize as myself. If you take away everything, who am I? Nothing more or less than you, perhaps. Maybe experientally different, if you believe in souls. I am personally painfully undecided on the matter. The I is abstract, is the thing. It exists as much as the number one or the food you ate yesterday. It’s a compound, a construct. It exists on the same plane as language. Which, if you look around, is the truly vulgar plane of existence. This is where you decide, the common you, the daily you, the you which worries about what dinner you’ll have tomorrow and fancies that girl in class with glasses and a cute ponytail. The you which stays up until 3am calculating how long you will be able to sleep if you fall asleep right now. What about now? Is this existence more or less than that other one, containing atoms and electrons and some weird thing called plankton? Planks? Something like that.. In a way that’s a lot further off. Which I lives among atoms? Not me. Where is that which does? My body sit on chairs and sleep in beds, but atoms? Haven’t seen them. Even cells aren’t on the level of atoms. So the I that lives among atoms certainly isn’t any I of mine. Maybe that’s the I that remembers people’s names, always disappearing or transforming into something new..