[MD] Anti-reductionism in the MOQ

[Ham Priday]

Akshay --


> Ham Priday, on your comment on individual freedom (and us being robots of
> God's Will): Why, it is true, we are indeed robots of God's Will. And why
> would this be a bad idea?
>
> Wherever we can look, we will find proof of determinism, and by extension
> predestination, except of course our own personal experience. But a good
> science education will show that intuition is rarely fully correct,
> especially an unrefined one. ...

Ah!  And so we come to the fundamental point about which you and I disagree. 
Let me respond to your question first: Why would being robots of God's Will 
be a bad idea?  Good and Bad are subjective judgments, but belief in God (as 
you describe Essence) presupposes a meaning or purpose for existence.
If the individual is not a free and autonomous agent, existence has no 
meaning.  There is no morality, no reason for value, no purpose for the 
creation of a cognizant entity with value sensibility.  It's all a 
mechanistic system based on cause-and-effect probability which serves no 
moral or logical purpose.

You refute the concept of individual freedom with the laws of scientific 
objectivism.  But the objective world investigated by Science is itself an 
intellectual construct.  What the scientists do is develop a set of 
principles that define objective reality in terms of what is consistent and 
predictable about the system.  Biological evolution, for example, can be 
explained as a continuous series of events by which protoplasmic cells react 
to environmental forces and acquire the physical properties needed to 
survive and multiply.  Over long periods of time the cells become more 
complex, eventually forming conglomerate organisms that behave as 
independent creatures.  They are still subject to cause-and-effect, but 
exhibit rudimentary self-awareness.  More time passes, and one species 
evolves with the ability to intellectualize its environment, control and 
manipulate it to its own purposes, and in an accelerated time span transform 
its values into a highly sophisticated cultural system called civilization. 
It can all be explained as the outcome of natural forces operating according 
to the law of mathematical probability, the scientists say.

Of course the scientists can't account for cognitive awareness, except that 
it is "associated with" complex nerve cells and electro-chemical processes. 
They also can't account for the fact that human behavior does not conform to 
the laws of cause-and-effect but responds instead to conscious experience 
and value judgments which are unpredictable.  They don't acknowledge the 
autonomy of individuals because "selfness" can't be defined objectively. 
Because it can't be localized, quantified, or directly observed, subjective 
awareness is not included in the scientific paradigm of existence.  In fact, 
scientists take great pains to remove subjectivity from their investigation 
of the universe.  As a consequence, from the scientific viewpoint life forms 
have no purpose but to fulfill the laws of nature as they have been defined.

Now you come along, and say that's exactly right: man has no will of his own 
and cannot act independently.  Like the rocks and trees of his experienced 
environment, man is a predetermined entity--a robotized product of whatever 
created him.  Is this what you would have me agree to?  Is it the philosophy 
of Hinduism?

Essentially confused,
Ham

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

> Even though someone tried to "prove free will"
> by making conclusions out of the Uncertainty Principle, it is not provable
> in theory or in practice, simply because the Uncertainty Principle only
> tells us that we cannot know a system completely, it does not say that a
> system has been left undecided or "left on its own". Read my blog for many
> more arguments: http://thegreatwheel.blogspot.com
>
> Akshay