The futility of centuries of dialogue & debate about moral responsibility & free will: offering a radical proposition as the underlying reason

Paper, survey and brain experiment

see also: https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/meaningpurposemoralresponsibil

Abstract:

This paper suggest a resolution of several related perplexing conundrums:

1. Virtually everyone agrees that there is undeniable moral responsibility to do the good, and they feel it, yet some intelligent thoughtful people claim that there cannot be moral responsibility unless there exists a logically and physically-impossible type of 'free will' (eg incompatibilist ...), and perhaps some sort of physically-impossible 'objective' standards of good and evil, while other equally intelligent thoughtful people understand their moral responsibility to do the good without invoking any such irrational constructs.

3. Many intelligent people understand that significance is accorded by one's attitude – if one feels that some entity or process or situation is significant than it is so by definition, and similarly for the reverse. However other equally intelligent people argue that humans – or perhaps life altogether - possess a special 'significance' or even 'sanctity' not possessed by for example inanimate objects, despite the patent illogicality and unprovability of this proposition - or even the definability of the central term. Furthermore, they will state that the significance of person A is independent on its being affirmed by anyone else, it is furthermore a truth irrespective even of whether or not this significance is felt by A, or even denied by A, and even if all other humans alive at the time will deny it is so.

However preposterous all this is, the proponents of this claim may simply - and annoyingly - state that it is "self-evidently true", which is a clear attempt to evade the need for proving a statement that is in contention, or at least admittedly unprovable.

4. Intelligent educated people have long differed about whether there is any meaningful sense in which there can be said to be a trans-personal (meaning to the terms) Meaning & Purpose, often finding the arguments presented by the other side to be specious or meaningless or insufficiently logically/intellectually sophisticated.

5. A related conundrum is that the arguments [outlined above] have been going on for centuries without either side seeming to be able to understand - let alone convince - the other - in contrast to the way that for consensus was eventually arrived at for many scientific differences (or issues of dispute which were formerly considered to be philosophical but later categorized as physical or scientific).

6. There are other perplexing situations such as when a very prominent superbly brilliant physicist proposes a notion outside of physics which to most physicists seems obviously absurd, eg Wigner/VonNeumann re collapse of the wave function via consciousness or Pauli's synchronicity or Einstein & Eddington's views about what we could term "cosmic Mind", and modern equivalents of these physicists and notions.

7. One might have thought that humans would be split in to large camps, those who say there is real moral responsibility and those who say there is not. Similar perhaps to the split of positions regarding whether or not there is a God, creator of all. And indeed, perhaps directly related ot tha tissue: for example one could imagine that those believing in a God believe there is real moral responsibility and those who believe ther eis no God would believe there is therefore no real moral responsibility. However of course we know that the acutality is different:

a. It is striking that there is no such split but rather virtually everyone agrees that humans have moral repsonsibility for their actions, despite the fundamental disagreement on what this is based.

b. Some claim there is a Transcendent realm which provides the basis, and that were it not for that supra-natural realm there could be no meaningful moral responsibility, and also that there is true free will and without it there could not be meaningful moral responsibility, whereas others say that there indeed is no such Transcendent realm, nor is there 'true free will', yet nevertheless there is moral repsonsibility. This is unexpected in the sense that given the view of the first group, one would expect that those who do not believe in the existence of a Transcendent realm would say that therefore there is no moral responsibility, but it is not so, they say there is no need for one in order for there to be true moral responsibility. In other words the two sides disagree not only on the facts of our reality, specifically whether or not there exists a Transcendent realm, but also (disagree) on the logical necessity for there to be one. And so it turns out that those who say it is necesssary (for there to be a Transcendent realm in order for moral responsibility to exist) say it indeed exists, and those who say a Transcendent realm not exist say it is not necessary (in order for moral responsibility to exist)!

The resolution offered here for the listed conundrums starts with the realization that a common thread can be drawn separating the proponents and antagonists of the various issues listed above, dividing them into two clearly-defined camps; in other words given one's position on a few of the issues it can be reliably predicted what the position would be on the others, and the differences reflect two basic ways humans perceive reality - basically there are two types of people and their views are correlated to the two types of positions outlined above.

The underlying reason for this difference in the way they perceive ultimate reality is that (as outlined in the author's PhilSciIArxiv paper) some humans possess non-material consciousness ("nmc") associated to their brains and some do not, and this completely influences the way they intuit moral responsibility and free will, specifically whether moral obligation does or does not have a transcendent basis - or 'requires' one - and similarly re free will, as well as the notions of human significance, meaning and purpose etc.

The reason for this dichotomy in atitude to moral responsibility is that to brains which are associated to a nmc, there is a direct intuition of a moral responsibility rooted in a material-transcendent level of reality, which is inaccessible to those whose brain has no such associaton to a nmc and who therefore identify as materialists. Materialists are quite comfortable with the notion that moral responsibility is simply a neural circuit given rise to by evolutionary sociobiological pressures, without there being any existent 'referrent', and that moral responsibility for one's actions hold even if the decisions taken in one's brain are - like every other phenomenon in the unverse- goeverned by determined/random processes. Nmc's on the other hand, find this incomprehensible; they will speak of some real Moral Responsibilty ("MR") as though it is a reality, the non-material referent of the brain's notion rather than the material neural circuit of the notion itself, and will not be able to understand how the materilaist considers themselves to be morally responsible for choices made via determined/random processes.

So there is really a fundamental difference between what mc's and nmc's mean or feel when they refer to moral responsibility. And for mc's, the naturalistic universe is sufficient ground for what they feel as 'moral responsibility', whereas for nmc's, who feel the value sof the nmc-realm, it is insufficient. And this is the resolution of the conundrum, ie why those who say it is necesssary (for there to be a Transcendent realm in order for moral responsibility to exist) say it indeed exists, and those who say a Transcendent realm not exist say it is not necessary (in order for moral responsibility to exist)! ie nmc's, who experience nmc and the realm in which it 'resides', intuit true Moral Responsibility and are aware that a purely mechaincal naturalistic reality would not suport that, however mc's do not experience the nmc-realm, and their feeling of moral repsonsibility does not require its existence, neither do they fele the need for truw free will in order to provide meaning to the moral repsonsibility they intuit.

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Questions in a survey are being crafted to enable classification of respondent brains into "associated to a non-material consciousness" ("nmc") and "possessing only material consciousness" ("mc"), and thereby identify candidates to volunteer for a brain experiment aimed at detecting a correlated structural/wiring difference.

(Note: We can also include these in the list of what is incomprehensible to materialist brains: the very conceivability of notions/phenomena such as emergent properties, self-evident truths, some implications of Godel's theorem, and also attitudes towards the very possibility of: the role of consciousness in collapse of the quantum wave function, the cosmic role of the golden rule, true altruism, teleology, cosmic Mind, and even the very possibility of Paili's synchronicity)

Abbreviations:

mc = material consciousness; mc's = humans whose brain possesses only material consciousness.

nmc = non-material consciousness; nmc's = humans whose brain is associated to a non-material or "material-transcendent" consciousness.

My other site, related topic https://sites.google.com/d/1PeZvT1JLqunTa07BDUEag9m_h4WRb7Pk/p/1QNX2LbgFDU8un2_p8fHIzsH9lXNEOi-p/edit

MeaningPurposeMoralResponsibility <-- email with many attached files: subject heading: files with the word Quotes in the name, for evo morality, free will

On OC

sites.google.com/d/1DnFIwqVtovrJUrzHmUff7_UU6OF7Cz1d/p/1bhjMDkW1uQO5DU8KiA4WLyk_B4AuIO4Y/edit

Add this in:

W stace ethical relativity: "Ethical Relativity" is the topic of the first two chapters in The Concept of Morals, in which Walter Terence Stace argues against moral absolutism, but for moral universalism

...

Meaning and Purpose

Kenneth walker: channeling Eddington etc?

p104 and my commentshttps://books.google.co.il/books/about/Meaning_and_Purpose.html?id=dtNZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

The book details an alternative perception of life and reality. It offers arguments that propose that neither Charles Darwin nor religious creationism adequately describes the event of life, intellect, consciousness and various other concepts.

Meaning and Purpose, written by Kenneth Walker, was originally published in September 1944, and then again by Pelican books in 1950

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altruism: maybe that too exists, at higher-level, as part of the MR etc.

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Whereas mr is a feeling, MR is a claim about a reality. As opposed to MR, like mr so too "meaning" is a feeling, so it is subjective, there doesn;t HAVE TO BE something or other in order for there to be meaning, if someone feels somethign is meaningful then by defintion it is.

Similarly for purpose'

However, just as most people will say there is MR rather than just mr, siilarly there are those who do feel that there is something more than 'meaning', ie they believe in "Meaning" and similarly re purpose/Purpose.

...

People who say they follow the golden rule to its logic, are incorrectly attributing what is actually a deep feeling to 'logic', ie they deeply feel "ought' and they hear the golden rule and recognize it as encapsulating what they feel and believe therefore that the injunction "therefore do not do.." follows form logic. Also, there are aspects which are reasonable/logical, and they mistakenly conclude that the conclusion "therefore do not do.." therefore derives from logic.

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Is free will a topic for physics?

From the perspective of physics, the question of whether or not there is free will is in a way misplaced. A physics quesiotn would be whether or not there exists a level of causality other than detemrinism and randomness, and specifically one which in the context of a brain would enable free willed choice. Brains are not generally the purview of physic,s but only if what occurs in it is considered to arise from processes covered by physics, eg accoridng to reducitonism. However if the only place in the universe where there are events of this causal type, then it is as much an issue for physics as are the unique time-issues near a black hole, or quantum gravity and so on.

....

Even if the causal nature of the universe is such that in a brain there can be free will - and maybe nowhere else, so that there was no free will-type casuality phenomena in the universe until sophisticated brains evolved - this does not at all imply that there is an real MR as opposed to mr. However, it may be that the mysterious causality-type that enables free will indicates a richer type of existence or reality than is assumed in ordinary physics and maybe points to the existence of a 'higher-level realm' where MR resides.

...

if we can propse that free will exists, it is odd if it eists without there being Mr. After all, the only reason we feel so strongly about theexistenc eof free will is so that there could be a real MR, imagine if only free will existed butNOT MR!

And if free will exists, it must be in some transcenedent realm, and i is not unresonable then to propise that MR too exists., associated to that realm

Biblical scenario

The higher leel realm is refered to as God etc, and humans are connected to that realm via their essence which is of Gd, ie they are created in the divine image and they are composed of earth+ the breath of God, ie they are living beings who "have a 'soul'".

That these beings acquire MR is symbolized by their taking into their bodies (via eating) a substance which transforms them.

This transition to transcendent-status of knowing the difference between good and evil - ie acquiring MR - is catalyzed via eating the fruit of a special tree planted in a special magical garden....

Two main topics are discussed below:

Materialists' lack of the type of [the transcendent-linked] consciousness associated to non-materialist's brains as the reason for their incomprehension of the transcendent-based meaning accorded to fundamental concepts/phenomena (understood intuitively by non-materialist brains) such as moral responsibility, human significance, free will, Meaning, and Purpose.
The non-recognition by those with non-material consciousness of the validity of the claims of materialists that the concepts the former propound are incomprehensible or even meaningless at the semantic logical and scientific level at which they are offered in discourse, gaining meaning to the former only via their innate feeling arising from their connectedness to a material-transcendent level - where this last point is (almost but not quite disingenously) unacknowledged

Moral obligation, moral responsibility

Without taking sides in the issue, it must be accepted as a very interesting and revealing fact - a fact requiring explanation - that for hundreds of years there have been two cohorts of intelligent philosophically-aware deep-thinkers on the topic, one group which felt quite comfortable with a naturalisitc basis for the moral obligation they felt and a deterministc basis for their free will (and then quantum-deterministic, though the fundamental parameters of the argument did not seem to significantly change after the arrival of quantum physics), whereas the other group did not, and insisted on a transcendent-based source for the moral obligation and some sort of causality-transcending basis for free will they felt. And an equaly interesting fact that there was never identified any disparity in the degree of ethical behaviour of those in the two groups.

It is absurd to argue with a trained philosopher that their version of moral obligation makes no sense when it clearly does so to them and to try to convince them that as a deterministic entity their free will is insufficient for them to bear moral responsibility when the fact is that they are perfectly aware of the elements of the argument and nevertheless feel very comfortable with that type of free will and moral obligation.

As mentioned above, the conclusion we present here is that the two sides represent two types of human, one type whose brain is associated to a material-transcendent awareness and the other not, and that therefore there is no need for or utility in arguing.

Moral responsibility as a material-transcendent primitive:

Nmc is more fundamental than the material so the realm it is native to is not just non-material it is material-transcendent.

Moral responsibility of the type meant by nmc's - ie those whose brain is associated to a material-transcendent awareness - cannot arise as a logical consequence of other truths. Mc's propose 'naturalistic' types of morality, however nmc's will always be able to poke a hole in any naturalistic logic and say that "nothing of what you proved, proves that I am actually morally responsible", ie that type of moral responsibility exists only if it exists on its own.

Of course for that type of moral responsibility there has to also be some objectively existent right and wrong, and free will of course, but it is not that these then create moral responsibility - no combination of other factors will lead to that. Nevertheless, rather than appealing to an alleged "absolute morality' an "absolute good/evil" etc to enfranchise moral responsibility, we are skipping the need for this.

Instead, we are unapologetically unabashedly embracing transcendence, enfrachising a level beyond the reach of physics: not just that the concept of moral responsibility exists, nor that there is sufficient ground for it to be logically-defensible or etc, but rather that as known by nmc's there IS moral responsibility, ie it is an existent, a primitive, a fact - we ARE morally-responsible for our choices (with all the obvious caveats, eg context, given our culture, whether we are at sufficient age, what circumstances prevailed etc etc).

Moral responsibility is not 'deduced' or 'believed' by nmc's (ie by the material-trancendent-type awareness), it is known. We'll use the abbreviation MR in capitals to make it clear when we are refering to this transcendent-rooted primitive.

In this paper we are not concerned with attempts to convince anyone that MR of the type we propose exists, nor to investigate exactly how or why it exists, nor what exactly is the mechansim whereby we know that it exists etc etc, but rather to investigate the ramifications of the fact that only some humans possess the ability to know it exists.

We are not asking whether it is rational or logical to believe in MR or whether it is 'objective', nor how to define 'the good' that we ought to do, nor how it is that the non-material and material are associated in this way (ie the mind-body problem), instead we are claiming that just as non-material consciousness incontrovertily exists and we don't know why, or what it is [Perhaps one day we will know more about what this material-transcendent realm is all about, and perhaps we will need to learn how to utilize our connection to this realm in order to explore it and learn more about it, but in the meantime in this paper none of that is discussed], and how we came to be associated to it etc, neverthless the fact is that it exists and some of use are indeed associated with it, so too for MR for our choices/actions - it exists, and like nmc it is not part of the material reality studied by physics (science), and indeed it is via our nmc that we are aware of - or associated to - MR.

Similarly, just as nmc is more fundamental than the material, so too MR is more fundamental than the logic or rational guidelines or natural laws of the material universe.

We are not questioning how it came about, why it exists, nor why we should feel bound by any alleged type of responsibility which we ourselves do not orginate, nor whether there is sanction of some sort for violations, nor even what exactly is suposed to be our motivation for fulfilling our MR other than the very recognition that we are indeed morally-responsible for our choices/actions.

The are several elements required for the usual belief in MR - a true free will and an objective good/evil and perhaps more, but we will not involve these in our discussion, especially as we are postulating that MR is by itself a primitve. However it is definitley the case that a nmc typically will be incredulous at the acceptance by mc of the existence of what they will refer to as moral responsibility despite the universe being deterministic and there is no objective morality (all this of course being considered by mnc's as 'the naturalistic fallacy').

How can there be a transcendent level to reality, and why would moral responsibility be 'attached' to it?

This paper is not meant to delve into this issue. We can try if we wish to come up with a reason it exists, how it came about etc, but what is found as the source of transcendent moral responsibility is only speculation as opposed to the 'known' fact of the existence on nmc, and the associated deep intuition regarding the existence also of MR.

Of course from an anthropological sociological vewpoint one can investigate why at all our societies have these discussions.

For example: It seems that this notion of MR and of free will exists mostly or solely in societies influenced by the Biblical story in Genesis, however even the Eastern approaches involving karma, reincarnation and nirvana rather than free will and MR are effectively equivalent in terms of the material-transcendence they imply. Also, the depth of the intuition of people in those societies tmotivating them to do good is perhaps equivalent to the depth of the Western equivalent, the feeling of MR, though it would be interesting to investigate the differences, via discussion, a survey and brain-experiment.

Why conversations about values, meaning, free will etc between the two types are usually futile:

Virtually all humans recognize some degree of MR, just that there are at least two categories of people who do so - mc's and nmc's, and it only the nmc's whose MR is rooted in the material-transcendent level of reality, a notion which is incomprehensible to mc's, who will instead describe MR in their own way with its own motivations.

By definition, since they are transcendent-based, these concepts/phenomena understood intuitively by nmc's (or 'non-materialists') cannot be defined or motivated by or given rise to solely by logic or cause-effect or evolution etc - there is always the need for something 'extra' beyond these. As a result, if a motivation based on these (ie logic or cause-effect or evolution etc) is nevertheless presented, it will necessarily be considered by nmc's as flawed in one of two ways: it will produce less than the minumum and will be 'unsatisfying' in being non-transcendent-based, or it will attempt to hide the need for the trancendant and subsume it by incorporating some type of logic-transcendent jump akin to the "and then a miracle occurs" gap created in the naturalistic fallacy.

So is naturalism correct via a vis moral responsibility or does its approach suffer from the "naturalist fallay"? The answer is now clear: naturalism DOES provide an adequate basis for moral responsibility, for mc's, and similarly re free will, but for nmc's it does not, and neither will be able to understand the position of the other.

The difficulty in gauging the reason that one feels convinced by an argument

It is a well known phenomenon that people who are convinced of a certain truth may offer arguments allegedly proving that truth which are however unconvincing to others - and in fact are convincing to their proponents only because they already believe their truth. That is, the believer feels the truth inside and when hearing their own words of alleged proof, they feel a sense of being convinced of the truth of those words, but that intellectual-emotional feeling - the state of mind of "being convinced of the truth of this statement" - was actually only evoked by the words of the proof, ie it is a state of mind due to an accessing of a pre-existing state of mind rather than one arising at that moment as a reaction to the logical force of the argument.

This is the reaction of a nmc to their own words about non-naturalistically-rooted moral responsibility, and the "libertarian incompatibilist free will with agent causation" which must undergird it, and about meaning and purpose and other concepts - they believe the words are logical and make sense, and even comprise a compelling argument, and should be comprehensible to intelligent others, however it is convincing to the nmc propouning these notions because they posseses a transcendent-connection, and 'understand' it at that level not at the semantic logical level, whereas if the listener is a mc, they clearly discern the logical lacunae and lack of rational meaning.

Then when that mc responds with a statement of their own credo, of the sufficiency of naturalistic moral responsibility based on choices made by physical brains operating via deterministic/quantum random processes, they too cannot understand that the reason they are 'convinced' by this argument is due to in-built factors - in this case, it is because they are a sophisticated automaton, produced by evolutionary selection processes which led to the arising of a brain wired to operate according to pro-social algorithms, and to offer these types of arguments when challenged.

They are esentially RAI - oxymoronically, real AI - and their internal states are exactly those of sophisticated computers in an environment where supplemental hardware and software is installed in them at random times, and what they profess to believe about moral responsibility and free will is what the computers might declaim had they been linked in ways which provide positive and negative consequences to cooperation or the reverse and then allowed to 'evolve' physically in response to situations.

Basically, in propounding its theory, the mc is producing a string of sounds which directly follow in a determined/random way from the initial conditions of the big bang, whereas the nmc is expressing concepts which would not exist or be felt as they are if all that existed was the material universe of the mc (and the nmc in doing so is is perhaps operating in some way that is not fully dependent on a deterministic/random causal chain).

It is usefult to keep the above in mind when encounterring an argument between proponents of naturalistic and non-naturalistic types of moral responsibility/free will.

Two analogies: The little boy in the park and the special-ingredient food:

1. Analogy of the psychological effect of the mother's presence on the little boy in the park: Consider the following allegory, based on the adage "You don't know what you've got until it's gone".

An 8 year old boy at the park with his mother; after a while she says: 'ok, we have to go'.

He says: ' I want to stay'.

She says: 'ok, you can stay, I'll go home, have a nice time'.

He says happily 'ok, bye Mom!'.

He means it fully.

She hasn't gone more than a few steps before he flings himself at her, clinging. Why? Because the great self-confidence he had when he told his mother she could go without him derived from her presence there with him. And he did not at all know that. Only when she left and it sunk in that she would be gone did he lose all of that self-confidence. There's no way we can know what we have until it is gone.

As an application: When you are very sure you don't need someone in your life, you feel your life is fine you don't need them in it, try to figure out whether perhaps you feel so positively about your life only because that person is in it, if you are so sure you don't need them only because of the tremendous lack of existential loneliness their presence in your life gave you.

2. Analogy of the psychosomatic or placebo effect and the taste of the special-ingredient food: A certain food has a distinctive flavor due to some mysterious ingredient Someone claims they can produce it without that ingredient. Various people taste it and agree it is not the same, but another group claims that it is the same, leading the first group to believe the second simply lack the taste-buds appropriate to its detection - this is tested and found to be the case indeed, except for a percentage who do claim it is the same but do also possess that taste-bud. The conlcusion is then reached that they constitute a third catecgory, who are psychosomatically affected by the sight and texture of the food so that they still taste the special tase when presented with the same food, even without the special ingredient, where their brain produces the same sensation of taste as a sort of placebo effect. And this only occurs in those who already have once tasted that food when it did indeed have the special ingredient.

Besides nmc & mc, a third type: nsanmc's

We'll be speaking of three types of people - or more specificaly three types of brain:

1. People possessing nmc, or 'brains associated to a nmc', for whom we'll use the abbreviaiton nmc's.
2. people with only a material brain, possessing awareness of the type proposed by many materialist neuroscientists - we'll call these people mc's.
3. nmc's who are not aware of their brain's association to a nmc, or are not aware of its effect on their thinking - we'll refer to these two very different types as non-self-aware nmc's or nsanmc's.

A nmc is almost by definition "transcendent of the material" and so a brain affected by its association to a nmc may well feel differently about the possiblity of the existence of a 'level of reality which is transcendent of the material' than one that is not.

Nmc's may feel that moral responsibiity is self-evident whereas mc's would contest that there is validity to the claim that it is 'self-evident' but rather that it is solely anchored in evolutionary socio-neuro-biology, and will be fully satisfied with this, not feeling that it needs to be anchored in anything beyond the material.

We propose that in fact the type of feeling about this that nmc's and mc's have are different. Nsanmc's feel the self-evidencedness of moral responsilbity due to their brain's association to nmc, but are not aware of the source of the deep feeling they have, and therefore feel convinced by the arguments of mc's, being led to believe erroneously that the type of moral responsibility they feel deeply is rooted in the materialist causes proposed by mc's. [ie it is the presence of their own nmc which makes them think it is not needed.]

We propose that in fact the type of feeling about this that nmc's and mc's have are different, and that the difference might perhaps even be detectable via a brain-experiment.

A survey is proposed which will query respondents in a way designed to identify the three types mentioned above, and then suggest that they participate in the experiment.

Various types of brain-attitudes to Moral responsibility based on their connection to the transcendent level

It's very interesting that so many deeply-thinking people are not perturbed by the notion of our actions not being the result of "true free will", since they are nevertheless perfectly comfortable thinking in terms of moral responsibility (not just in terms of utility, what's good for them or their society etc) and even judging others accordingly (ie not just as a matter of their self-preservation).

Let's roughly categorize people into several types...

1. mc's who disbelieve in "objective moral responsibility" and "true free will", and are satisfied by material-based MR and determinism/randomness.

2. nmc's whose connection to the Transcendent level provides them with a deep feeling of MR but who are not aware of this and think that there is only the material level to reality and that it is sufficient to explain their deep feeling of MR.

3. nmc's who believe in the existence of a non-material consciousness but who do not believe in true free will etc, and nevertheless believe in moral responsibility eg Einstein, Huxley.

4. those who feel it is crucial that there be true free will in order to have moral responsibility.

As Descartes's approach points out, the brain-activity of the mc and nmc are basically identical, just that the nmc has an associated nmc so that the central brain-states come along with a nmc 'awareness'. So there may alsobe an identity in both mc and nmc brains of the actual brain-currents corresponsing to the logic of the (thinking process leading to the) conclusion of whether or not MR exists and whether this or that type of free will is required for it/implied by it; the difference is only in whether or not there is a nmc associated to the brain-states. So one chain of reasoning is not more or less 'logical' than the other!

However if a nmc does not accord "experience' to a mc, then it is not clear what corresponds in the mc to the nmc's "experience of (the reality of) MR".

A sceptical position: Assuming an mc-brain is capable of some neural configuration which produces the claim that they "feel MR", then what if one were to associate nmc to that brain, would it then be experiencing exactly what nmc experience? If so, then there is no physical effect of nmc in the universe in the sense that its presence does not give rise to physical brian states which would not otherwise exist.

Of course if this is the case, it can be that there is nmc but not MR, ie MR is an illusion felt by nmc's when they have the brain-state associated to MR in mc brains. However here will be investigating the approach proposing MR as a reality.

Is only one side right? Can one side convince the other? Is a discussion between two types productive or futile?

Both mc and nmc are right, in their own context, neither can convince the other, discussion is futile. However nsamc is different.

Type 1: mc: They don't understand the concept of moral responsibility the way that 2 & 3 do, it is useless to try to explain it to them, or to convince them that their approach is somehow logically incompatible with moral responsibility (as Whitehead passionately exclaimed).

There is a complex interplay of intellect (logic of what is consistent, sufficient etc) and 'feeling; of MR etc, and feeling againt FW etc, and the bottom line is that even 1 has brain state of "I ought to do x" etc. watever it 'means' to them.

Possibly, although they cannot experience the material-transcendent level, somehow the existence of MR at the nmc level affects the chain of their reasoning without any knowledge tha thtis is occuring, and they come to a conclusion that is different than would nmc's in a purely-materia universe, and they brain thinks the process was fully-naturallstic-rational, in othe rowrds one can speculate that perhaps if reality lacked the material-transcendent element which it does in fact possess there would be no belief in MR at all; of course there is no way for us to know whether or not this is so.

Type #2: if they DO have nmc, how come they feel moral responsibility can exist without free will? Possibly given their status as nmc one can somehow awaken an awareness of that or at least it will eventually enable them to be convinced that it is 'ok' to believe in free will.

Types #3 & #4: MR is a transcendent primitive, and is known to nmc's in a fundamental way that makes it undeniable and self-evident, and nmc's insist it is true or real is due to this. In contrast, although true free will indeed exists, the way it is known to nmc's is via a feeling or belief rather than as an undeniable self-evident truth. The insistence on its reality by type #4 philosophically-aware people is only made for philosophical reasons or reasons of desire for a sense of autonomy. So it is possible that this is the reason that type #3 insists on the reality of MR without feeling compelled to insist on the same for free will. They are correct that there is no contingeny to the truth of MR, ie even if one denies this or that, including free will, it will not destroy the truth of MR, and they do not feel the same undeniability for true free will as they do for MR, and so they do not defend it existence; just the philosophical arguments for MR now seem lacking to many nmcs, and these are the type #4. However type #3 is correct in that the reason for the brain-state of being convinced of the validity of MR is NOT as type #1 & #4 tend to think - the logic of it - but is rather due to its being a transcendent primitive, and so they discard the need for true free will for alleged reasons of logical consistency, and still feel MR, and so are not bothered (by the seeming lack of logical consistency underlying type #4's insistence on the existence of true free will).

It is not really possible to convince type 1 that their view on this matter is or is not 'logically consistent' since the reason for their belief goes deeper than just intellectual reasoning - it is a matter of brain hard-wiring. Similalrly, nmc's can't really rationally explain their belief since it arises as a result of a fundamental aspects of the brain's abiity to connect to the deepest levels of existence

Is there a correct perspective?

Not really.

Firstly, certainly we do not claim that type 4 are more moral than 3 who are more moral than 2 are more moral than 1 - not at all, there's no known correlation.

Human evolution produced the brain's morality-logic-circuit and the strong urge to altruism. In a nmc, associated to these circuits is a feeling deriving frm the brain's being associated to nmc.

A nmc feels the transcendent aspect and so for that brain the nmc paradigm is correct, whereas a mc states "I feel there exist MR" and "all is material" and so clearly the two are consistent otherwise it wouldn't be uttered, but what it means is difficult for a nmc to understand, just as the mc doesn't understand what a nmc means. The brain-states leading to the conclusion by a nmc and mc may be identical, and the conlusion does not in fact require appealing to nmc, just that the nmc feels the MR being discussed at the nmc-level while the mc does not, and so the nmc is satisfied without invoking it.

So the mc is correct in claiming that the MR they know of does not require free will nor a materially-transcendent levle of relaity. And they are correct that the logic of a nmc claiming that they are needed is nonsense since at the level of rational material logic these concepts are absurd.

The nmc is correct in saying that their MR is rooted in a nmc-level, but incorrect in assuming tha thtis is the case for mc's, and incorrect in assuming that logican and rational argument can suffice to 'prove' MR, without invoking the transcendent level of reality.

Nsanmc's are like the people in the in the analogies (the boy in the park and the psychosomatic taste) - perhaps could be made aware of what they have, in this case that they possess a nmc, and this would then change their attitudes. This would not work however if their nsa status is innate, ie they lack some aspect possessed by the sanmc's. And in any case, then they would perhaps make the same mistake as the nmc's (as outlined directly above).

Note the important point that if the existence of nmc has some appreciable effect on the words uttere by anyone, then this means that it overcomes the Cartesian mind-body barrier. This entire quesiotn is very relevant to wehter or not there can possibly be any physical difference in the brains of nmc and mc, detectable by experiment.

Hume, Putnam and the naturalistic fallacy:

Proposition: the dichotomy of Humeans vs Ethical naturalists arises from the nmc-mc dichotomy.

As Hume pointed out, one cannot derive 'ought from is' ( ie cannot coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones; nowadays this is considered as a subset of the 'fact value dichotomy') - to do so is to "commit the naturalistic fallacy". In my terms, I would say that this is really the core of it all, that without a transcendent aspect, there is no morality in the sense intuited by nmc's.

However the issue is in dispute as outlined in Putnam's article - since the issue is felt differently by various philosophers, maybe it is correlated to being mc vs nmc: ie: To mc there may not seem to be any important distinction between is and ought whereas to nmc it is intuitively intstincitvely immediately apparent and obvious that there is a fundamental and unbridgable distinction and that the 'naturalist' attempts to bridge the gap are illegitimate, or they deal with something not of relevance to the central discussion, their distinctions are not interesting points to an nmc.

So the "naturalistic fallacy" is similar in this way to the fallacy-according to-nmc that one can be morally responsible without having true free will, where 'free will' is conventiently defined in some uninteresting way that makes it irrelevant to the issue. ie they remove the transcendent aspec tof free will and still think it is sufficient, and this is because they themselves do not possess an element of transcendence, ie they are mc.

In other words, the dichotomy of Humeans vs Ethical naturalists arises from the nmc-mc dichotomy.

Applying the analogies made above to our topic, clearly it is to those "nsanmc's" who are not aware of possessing a nmc, and feel fulfilled by the inadequate type of motivations, ie for whom an argument incorporating the "naturalistic fallacy" nevertheless seems adequate, but ony because the transcendent-level associated to the listener's brain is activated by the alleged proof and supplies the missing ingredient.

Similarly, it is the mc's lack of a nmc which is the source of the philosophy of materialism, and which underlies satisfaction with the 'compatibilist'-type approaches regarding free will, and moral responsibility.

..............

Survey: The survey will attempt to determine whether indeed positions regarding the "naturalistic fallacy" re Quine, Moore etc, will be correlated strongly to other indicators of the nmc/mc divide.

Experiment: What is it that makes us so different - genetics/brain-wiring, culture, something else?

Terminology: It would be useful to utilize diferent specific terminology that is agreed-upon by all when referring to specific concepts understood by nmc's and by mc's rather than arguing about the meaning of a term that is by definition ambiguous since its meaning is disputed. For example:

"T-ought" is defined as: What nmc call 'a transcendent-rooted ought', which is a primitve and cannpot be reduced to anything else', and which mc's consider to be an absurd notion and undefineable.
"N-ought" is a naturalist-based ought, rooted in evolutionary socio-biology or etc, which mc's consider to be a perfectly satisfying basis for moral responsibility, whereas nmc consider it "inadequate, and non-representative of what they feel intuitively deeply to be true.

Summary: Nmc have sense of morality being transcendently rooted, but mc feel fine with it being humanly-based, It is necessary to understand their argument in its appropriate context as the output of a programmed machine. There's no purpose in arguing; debate is sterile, defining what is good etc, ought/is/fw etc is futile, people have fundamentally different ideas based on thier brain-wiring, and the conneciton or lack of one to the transcendent level.

Note: Even some nmc may agree with the naturalists if they don't realize that the transcendent aspect of the issue is denied in that approach, but they are not aware that they actually rely on the transcendent aspect, so (like the analogy of the child in the park with his mother) they are not aware of the way that their essence of being nmc impacts how they feel about this issue. Maybe via a survey and experiment one can help closet nmc to come out, and separate them from the mc.

Claims of the nmc and mc: The brain which is wired to be able to connect to the non-material:

unabashedly states that it can detect a material-transcendent realm of reality;
is unsatisfied with the non-transcendent-based 'compatibilist'-types of free will and concommitant moral responsibility which the materialist brain finds sufficient;
is unperturbed with objections rooted in the material level of reality, such as considerations of causality, logic and the laws of physics.
is comfortable with types of free will and moral responsibility which require the existence of a material-transcendent-level to provide the context for its meaning.

The materialist brain futiley challenges the non-material brain to provide proof of the existence of the non-material realm, clearly sees the absurdity of proposing logically and physically impossible "libertarian' types of free will in order to solve a non-existent problem of providing backing for the moral responsibility humans intuit based on brain-processes arising from relatively well-known but still being actively-studied factors of evolutionary socio-neurobiology.

Dispensing with the need to discuss 'absolute morality' by casting MR as a transcendent primitive

The approach here is to make "belief in MR" not conditional on the existence of 'objective morality' or on discussions of the type of free will we have - in some sense we are 'cutting out the middleman'.

Instead, we are making the following point: Qualia (like color eg) are associated to sevex, and so are MR, meaning etc, however there is a crucial difference - nmc's know unequivocally that color-qualia exist, but the 'existent-status' of MR is both more and less than this - more in fundamentality, less in that though it is deeply sensed we cannot claim that it is known as is color, or sevex itself.

Neverthelesss we don't feel any need to prove MR exists. Also, we don't set our sights on explaining how there can be an objective morality, where and how it orginates and so on, nor to find logical motivations for humans to follow the rules of that morality, but rather we simply state by fiat that MR is anchored in that material-transcendent realm which hosts sevex, and it is what it is, what we feel it is, without needing to specify that it is objective or etc. And therefore we state that it is true that we ought to do the good as we understand it. (Whether that rootedness means it is objectively-existent or not is too much a matter of definitions and terminology and tricky and is not the issue here, and similarly for free will - discussed at length in a separate article - and the motivations to 'be moral'.)

It is not that this existence of MR as a transcendent primitive is our central thesis. The central thesis is that not all humans have nmc, and those who do not cvannot conceive of nmc, nor can they understand what nmc's mean when they talk of 'objectiie morality' and 'true free will' and 'ought which cannot be derived from is' etc, and so they cannot understand what nmc's mean when they speak of 'moral responsibility' as they see it. And that this is the source of the centuries-long futility of dialogue on this topic.

However in order to simplify the discussion - and as a serious proposition in itself - we will consider MR as a transcendent primitive not dependent on anything else for its existence, as outlined above.

Comparing nmc's MR and mc's mr

Mc's seem to also feel that mr (as opposed to MR) exists, however it is different than what nmc mean in that it is not rooted in the material-transcendent level of reality; mc's state that they indeed do believe the universe is purely-material and determined(plus quantum random) and that MR exists, and will insist that MR makes sense in their context.

Given that they lack nmc they cannot possibly understand the difference, nor why nmc feel that they are being inconsistent or illogical in assuming MR can exist in a purely-material (perhaps even deterministic) universe, though of course this is incomprehensible to them. In fact they will state that the approach above regarding MR as a material-transcendent primitive is nonscientific etc or illogical, and so of course dialogue is futile.

Objective morality

What creates meaning? If there is a being who finds x meaningful, then to them it is, by definition, irrespective of whether they are mc or nmc; to a nmc perhaps x is only meaningful if some consiousness considers it to be meaninful.

What makes it 'objectively meaningful' - there's no real meaning to this quesiotn, one has to define 'objective', and there is no objective definition, since it will mean something different to mc's andnmc's. If doesn't help to use a definition such as eg "it is meaningful if God considers it meaningful" since many do not believe there is a God but nevertheless enfranchise objective meaning. Basically x is objectively meaningful if someone feels it is, ie 'objective' too is subjective.

How does 'objective morality' and 'objective obligation' arise?

As above, it is useless to state that only if there is a Platonic realm or God can there be objective morality; instead, as long as some being states there is 'objectve morality' then it is so, though of course nmc's will relate to this differently. So it is not really useful to speak of "objective morality".

And what creates the 'obligation' to observe the rules of an objective morality? The bottom line is that if someone feels motivated to follow a code of action and considers it morally obligatory, then the feeling they have is the self-validation of its obligatory status. One can use this as the definition of 'obligatory'. And even if we believe there indeed God, creator, who says we must do it, however if we are not motivated by knowing that God obliges us to do it, then we do not feel obliged, so in this view the fact is that it isn't really 'obligatory'.

Conclusion:

Empirical survey vs philosophical debate:

There is not much use in arguing about whether or not determinism and moral obligation are compatible if some intelligent people say the two indeed are, and further state that they consider themselves morally obligated to follow certain rules of conduct, and morally responsible for their actions, and deserving of punishment for certain violations. If intelligent educated deep thinking people who are totally familiar with the issues can state this - and they have - then it is a fact that moral repsonsibility is compatible with determnism.

Of course it is unlikely that a nmc will feel this way, and they will have different definitions than the mc for the pivotal terms we used above, but there is no use - or sense - in arguing tha tthe mc's defintion makes no sense and that if they indeed are mechanistic then they cannot be morally responsible for their actions when they themeselves say they are.

We can summarize and say that moral responsibility and determinism are compatible - for mc's, whereas for nmc's they are not.

It is interesting to craft a survey which would reveal the respondents' views on these matters, and be designed to enable finding relevant correlations.

"Then a miracle occurs"

In our context: disingenuously attempting to disarm the naturallistic fallacy simply by recognizing its existence; or alternately: arriving at a result which requires transcendent-support, buti via an argument which - speaking with irony - can be said to 'transcend logic'.

To beat the joke to death by analysis: these words represent the thought/judgment of a nmc watching a mc presenting a proof that determinism is sufficient to provide moral responsibility, or it is the analysis by a nmc of the proof provided by a mc, or possibly the words are in the brain of a mc watching as a nmc presents what they think of as a meaningful discussion of what they conceive of as "moral responsibility" and the free will which underlies it, but to a mc it seems as if they have illegitimately invoked a non-rational counter-scientific element.

Is our approach logical, or rational, or in conformity with science?

Can it be considered rational logical to appeal to an unknown unprovable metaphysical level where MR resides? Perhaps not, however to nmc's the existence of a higher level MR is more true-seeming than its non-existence.

That is, the deep feeling of 'ought' is more convincing than the denials stemming from rationality. There's no claim that MR is 'rational' or 'provable' etc, just that it seems more true than what follows when solely using logic rational and science, ie some utilitarian morality or evosociobiological instinct of altruism etc.

Also, of course Godel showed that our intuitive recognition of a truth is in some sense at a level beyond what we rationally reach within a self-consistent logic system, and so this claim of MR does not sound as entirely absurd or anti-scientific as it might have seemd before his discovery.

This is not at all to reject conforming to physics and cosmology, however one has to understand how to distinguish science from scientism, and since true physics has no place for nmc altogether, it can hardly can be considered qualified as a reason to deny MR, and only scientism will claim that it is qualified to 'disprove' its existence.

In any case, it is a truism that we cannot actually know anything, even science, ie our universe can be a fluctuation, or a simulation, or we may be a brain in a jar or dream of an alien, etc. And science is the ordering of sense impressions etc and sevex is beyond that level, and indeed a nmc's knowledge of sevex is deeper than that of the existence of the physical universe and the validity of the laws of nature/science, and so the parameters of what we can believe about MR need not necessarily be subordinate to that which is known to science.

The big bang and MR

If someone says the big bang theory shows that the universe as it is can be explained naturalistically and that all emerged from a point of energy rather than being designed so that there's no real trans-personal meaning to life, no "MR", they are making several errors. But to point out which errors they are making it helps to clarify whether they are nmc or mc, as we'll do below.

If they are materilaist ("mc"), then maybe they will claim mr CAN asrise from a big bang, and the proof is that there is indeed meaning and mr. But of course that is not what nmr mean, namely MR, ie based on nmc/sevex. And so they wil reply that MR is impossible altogether, undefineable, counter-scientific nonsensical, and certainly cannot arise form the big bang. Of course to the nmc this as tpoint is obviously ture, R cannot arise from a big bang ands so the nmc concludes not that MR does not exist but rather thant of course the big bang theory is a termendously successful theory for the material universe including spacetime, but obviously does not include the transcendent level in which nmc and MR are anchored [ie if no sevex was inserted into the model eg at the initial instant of excistence of the universe, none can be produced, and Meaning & MR (with capitals) are dependent on existence of sevex].

If they are nmc, and nevertheless for some reason they say the universe is from a big bang and there is no Meaning or MR, then they are right and wrong, ie they are wrong because there IS meaning/MR. Why would they think there is no MR if they are nmc? Perhaps they feel the transcendent MR and are not aware that what they feel is rooted at the non-material level of reality, and think it derives from the material-level as for materialists, and so they are correct in that the big bang mode indeed is insufficient to produce the Meaning and MR that they themselves feel!

If so, we would consider them a "nsanmc"

And the mc hearing the nsanmc speak is of course smugly satisfied, but the truth is that they are not really thinking of the same phenomenon at all.

EDIT

But also the reverse, if says bb model doesnt deny meaning to life, need to determine whether they are mc or nmc or nsanmc to know what they really feel and mean. If they are MC, the meaning they refer to is not what nmc mean. If they are nmc then they are not intellectually aware of the need for sevex in order to have the meaning they feel inside, and that sevex is not in bb.

[A nsanmc might think the claim is true and not be perturbed, but that is because they feel deep meaning because they are nmc and they don't realize that is the source, they think it is ok that the universe is mechanistic, it doesn't remove meaning, or it does but that's ok.]

Make point that my paradigm enables clearer discussion according to scenarios. Eg we agree that a conscious robot can be deluded it has free will, but this is a red herring because the issue is that without free will there is no Mr. This argument is used by mc s who think that they have somehow solved it disproved something but they are not even conscious robots, they are simply robots. Need to use my paradigm to analyze arguments made and tag it as from the nmc or mc perspective.

Only mc or nmc people who haven't thought sufficiently deeply will talk as though there is no problem

Clearly the usual big bang etc model doesn't give consciousness so it is lacking, and the question is whether there is more that it is lacking, eg re fw and re MR. And maybe meaning.

END OF PART I

List of topics dealt with in this paper and those which are excluded here, being addressed in other associated concurrent papers instead .

Overview: A hierarchy of what many scientifically-oriented people know, feel, believe, is true, but that is not encompassed in science:

We know that we 'possess a non-material consciousness' . See #1 in the opposite column:
We have great confidence in physics and in the scientific method in general. See paper #2.
We deeply intuit that there is a wrong and right, and that we are morally responsible for (the to-be-expected results of) our choices. This paper, #3.
We feel/believe that there is a sanctity to human life, a significance to human existence, and this is closely connected to out sense of good/evil, and undelies much of the ethical code of intra-human behavior which is a central part of our notion of moral responsibility. See # 4
We feel/believe that we have free will. Though perhaps we might have accepted that it is an illusion, we insist on it intellectually because we understand that it impacts on the issue of our moral responsibility (and perhaps because we don't like the notion of being a conscious robot). So in this sense our feeling or belief in free will is less deep than our belief in moral responsibilty or good/evil. See paper #5.
We feel meaning, but we may be satisfied that it is simply our feeling, perhaps it is ok if there is no 'cosmic' aspect to the meaning we feel. If we feel it, that is sufficient. But in some case we feel that there is somehow an accounting to our actions, and sacrifices made for the greater good are somehow 'recorded' and have deep meaning. See #6: Part II of this paper.
Perhaps we have a sense of greater Purpose, in our lives and for human civilization or all life of the universe as a whole. See #6: Part II of this paper.
We may believe in notions such as synchronicity or karma, etc, despite being aware that these may be problematic from a known-science point of view (Of course many less-scientifically-educated people believe in astrology, the law of attraction etc, though they probably do not realize the ways in which it may conflict with science or probability etc).
We may believe in religion, ie in God, soul, afterlife etc. See #7.

Several different articles explore these levels and their ramifications somewhat separately:

#1: "A Brain's self-identification..." proposes the basic idea that not all humans possess nmc as a resolution of the conundrum: Many intelligent thinking people claim that they possess a non-material 'consciousness', that they know it directly though they cannot prove it exists (ie it is 'self-evidently existent), and it is more fundamental than the material universe, while other equally intelligent and thoughtful people deny the truth - even the logical and physical possibility - of all of that.

The rest of the articles build on this proposition:

#2: "Why consensus..." explores the bounds of physics/cosmology given the incontrovertible existence of a non-material level of reality (including attitudes towards the measurement problem), and proposes the above notions as a resolution of the following conundrum: Some intelligent people who understand quantum physics very well claimed that there is a measurement problem which is resolved by the notion of "collapse due to consciousness" whereas others equally bright and professional understand this to be total nonsense and indeed either there is no problem, or there are various legitimate solutions, or that not just is this proposition wrong but there is not even any reason to invoke consciousness to solve this problem - it is a red herring in this discusson as irrelevent as saying the presence of washing machines resolves the problem (which perhaps doesn't even exist).
3: This paper: The futility..." explores 'moral responsibility'....and associated conundrums.
4: Human significance.
5: A paper exploring the cosmological implications of the acausality underlying free will
6: Part II of this paper explores Meaning and Purpose
7: A future paper will explore issues related to Religion & science, but this topic is alluded to in some of the above papers as well.
8: synchronicity, karma.

Appendix: (this can be part of a separate article re religion)

Is the issue only "Western"?

In this paper we are dealing with MR form a Western perspective rooted perhaps on Biblical conceptions of moral responsibility, free will etc, however the essence of our arguments are valid also effectively for the 'Eastern' equivalents.

Of course Buddhists, Hindus, Confucians and others in the "East" do not seem to be as preoccupied with "free will" and the types of moral responsibility we have been discussing. Many of the ancient Greeks and others were also not so concerned. Perhaps it was the Biblical influence on the West which made this more of a "Western" preoccupation but the basic aspect sof our argument in thsi paper apply equally to the Eastern equivalents.

Buddhism teaches meditation to achieve detachment, overcoming ego, and this certainly is a method to reduce suffering, and involves nothing nonscientific necessarily, but the rest is counter-scientific or beyond science, and involves effectively a material-transcendent level fundamental to reality, ie to create karma, and for reincarnation, as well as nirvana which is certainly mind-based

"Karma (Sanskrit, also karman, Pāli: kamma) is a Sanskrit term that literally means "action" or "doing". In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to action driven by intention (cetanā) which leads to future consequences. Those intentions are considered to be the determining factor in the kind of rebirth in samsara, the cycle of rebirth. Karma leads to future consequences, karma-phala, "fruit of action".[33] Any given action may cause all sorts of results, but the karmic results are only those results which are a consequence of both the moral quality of the action, and of the intention behind the action.

The real importance of the doctrine of karma and its fruits lies in the recognition of the urgency to put a stop to the whole process.[61][62] The Acintita Sutta warns that "the results of kamma" is one of the four incomprehensible subjects,[63][web 7] subjects that are beyond all conceptualization[63] and cannot be understood with logical thought or reason.[note 12]"

Hinduism/karma involves effectively the same as the western notion of God or a material-transcendent level in which MR is rooted, because:

1. there is need for a way for the universe to take account actions and even intentions, so the system must be very much like Brain or Mind;

2. this system is definitely beyond the level accessible to physics nowadays;

3. overall the totality gives the feeling of being designed for moral purposes, ie a westerner asks 'how did such a universe come to be, where good actions are rewarded and bad punished, effectively, even if that is not how it is presented.

4. the notion of rebirth according to one's past intentions/deeds, and the idea that the mechanism keeping track can effectuate karmic events and rebirth implies a power similar to that imputed to the God of the bible.

So altogether even the Eastern approach of the Buddhist and karma etc is equivalent to the notion of MR in the West, including the notion of there being a material-universe-transcendent aspect; and all these plus the idea that the workings are beyond our conceptionas makes it all rather equivalent to the biblical approach.

EDIT THIS*

So our major point is that MR is rooted in a material-transcendent realm and it is not possible to explain it using only the methods rooted in the material realm, ie logic, reason etc, and the same is completely true about the equivalent Eastern beliefs - one can try to create a logical rational fully-scientific psychological sociological theory of karma, reincarnation and nirvana however it is doubtful that a fully-convincing sicintific equivalent is possible, and it is likely that if one tried to teach nmc's such a theory, the intelligent ones would soon find out that it was all based on pseudo-science, as opposed to Hinduism/.Buddhism which for the intelligent practitioner has the same status as does religion in the West, ie it is intuitive, a matter of belief etc, and is not meant to be scientifically provable etc.

Perhaps to mc's the pseudo-Hinduism/Buddhism would seem to be a faithful morphing of the original but not to mc's.

[Note: In any case, those "Eastern" religions are ample demonstration that intelligent deep-thinking people by and large do not feel any conflict between an ethical imperative of one sort or another and determinism. However, if one phrases everything in terms of karma etc, then one is motivated by self-interest and there is no need for the notion of "moral responsibility" and sufficient freedom to "deserve punishment". Similarly for notions fo detachment from ego as the way to end suffering , etc.

So perhaps both the need for "free will" and the solution as to how it can exist are both Biblically-related, as outlined below.

Can this imply perhaps that there was some brain-mutation leading to an attachment to a nmc which led to the rise of Biblical religion? It is not clear whethe rone civilization influenced the other and which was prior, but the Buddha lived at the time of the great Biblical prophets, about 1,300 years after Abraham, Hinduism preceded Buddhim of course.]

Biblical approach

The biblical approach can be said to supply the following 'explanation': we are created in the image of God and our essence is God's breath/spirit, and MR exists at the Transcendent level of God, and since we are at essence of that, it applies to us.

And our free will is also not of the ordinary physical level, and the knowledge of Good and Evil is not physical, etc, it is all due to our essence being Transcendent.

In any case, whether or not a God exits and whether or not the Bible is inspired, the perhaps "Western" conception of the materially-transcendent awareness , free will and moral responsibility is based on the context set up in Genesis, and within that context it may be considered reasonable to suppose that human brains are insufficiently intelligent or sophisticated or developed etc to be able to comprehend the ....and the tools of logic and raitonal thought are incapabe of originating arguments supporting the existence of a moral absolute or a truly-free will etc....

Indeed the Biblical context presents the idea that the level at which these exist - the divine or spiritual level - can be in communiaiton with humans, and that when this occurs the questions disappear.....(The best way to 'answer' a question is to make it vanish)

In any case, this paper is not meant to delve into these aspects.

..........

Part II

(Possibly this will constitute a separate paper)

Applying to other concepts the arguments we made in regards to moral responsibllity

Part I dealt with fact, the existence of a non-material and even material-transcendent 'awareness'. In Part II we depart from 'known fact',.

Topics:

self-evident truths, the Platonic Realm;
incompatibilist libertarian free will with agent-causation;
the passage of time in physics;
why some propose a role for consciousness in quantum physics.
Mind as non-material vs as software or as a quantum phenomenon.
extra-personal Meaning, Purpose, and Human significance;

Most likely there is strong correlation: mc's are likely to not believe in the above, and some nmc's will believe in some of them (this can be tested via a survey). We can probably therefore categorize these as phenomena/concepts which derive from a transcendent level of reality, and which are therefore inaccessible to materialists and are concomitantly incomprensible to them; they require nmc to be comprehended and to be 'believed', but even to nmcs's are (only) believed rather than known.

The very last one on the list is the only one which involves a 'positive' or 'hopeful' aspect - or even can be considered as being on the path leading in the direction of religion or the existence of a God creator etc - the rest are neutral in this regard. These neutral topics are dealt with in separate articles. One is focused on phyiscs, science, technology and discusses the futility of the modern versions of the centuries-old materialist-nonmaterialist philosophical debate such as fundamentally-different attitudes to AI and to the relevance of consciousness altogether when considering the quantum measurement problem, another is about the acausality underlying free will and its possible ramifications for cosmology.

Part II below will deal with the non-religious aspects of the existence of extra-personal Meaning, Purpose, and human Significance. The only relation to 'religion' which will be relevant is the attitude towards the very possibility of the existence of a God, ie rather than to a blanket dismissal of this as a possibility, which is expected also to correlate strongly to being mc or nmc (ie we expect that some nmc's will accept the possibility whereas mc's will not just as in Part I we proposed the probable correlation to attitudes towards the relation between human moral responsibility and the type of true free will humans posses, where some nmc's will accept libertarian free will which no mc's will accept).

...

not clear what it means for a mc to ‘feel’, but nmcs in our universe say they do ,so we'll use that, eg their brain processes a motivating factor, a surge of current in the 'yes do that' circuit.

why would it evolve? well, not clear why feelings evolve but it makes sense tha tif can be feelings mechanistically ie motivators, then it works to motivate to do what is best for survivial of the group etc.

M&P in a mechanistic universe without nmc

MCs say they can feel m&p and that it is enough; what about moral responsibility?

They can feel it, but if we know all is mechanistic? and know there is no fw? but still feel there is mr (as opposed to MR)? ie maybe the feeling wins out in the end, it is enough to keep going. despite the knowledge of no MR only mr.

And what about in our universe? since we know can have mr wo nmc whyassume there is MR? having nmc doesnt automatically convert mr to MR!

Answer is that even though the prresence of nmc doesnt make it proved that there really is m&p and MR, nevertheless the very fact that nmc exists may convince us: ie nmc is not required for the universe to operate as it does, nor even for the non nmc correlate of feelings to exist, including for the non nmc correlate of mr (ie MR) to exist, however paradoxically the existence of nmc despite it not being needed at all might be a reason to think that there is special ‘reaso’ it exists, eg to enable there to be more to mr than there would be in a mechanistic nmc-absent universe, ie there is MR.

NOT YET EDITED

Introduction:There are other related differences between the two or three types in regards to the notions of an objective, morality, to free will, and to the idea of the "signficance of humanity" or "the sanctity of human life" (or all life). The postions are easily associated: nmc's feel that the self-evident moral responsibility they intuit or feel

Abbreviation: S.EvEx= SelfEvidentlyExistentSelf.

Approximately equivalent to the "nmc" in the abbreviations we used elsewhere: nmc vs mc.

Materialism vs Transcending the material: Meaning, purpose, moral responsibility, free will, human significance: When sevex refer to these, generally they are intuiting some material-transcendent realm, which would presumably be incomprehensible to materialist-brains, making discussion fruitless.

Meaning & purpose: A computer/AI can of course be programmed to speak of meaning and purpose, or can perhaps be built to utilize deep learning techniques coupled with massive input from philosophical, literary and scientific libraries etc to 'self-evolve' towards higher-level discourse. However just as sevex would not simply assume that this AI can feel what a human poet felt just because it can recite - or even compose - poetry, so too it could presumably begin to discuss the meaning of life, the purpose of all existence, as well as moral responsibility and free will etc, without sevex feeling compelled to conclude that it too is sevex.

However, if sevex did not exist, would discussions of those sorts exist in the libraries used as input?

Re "the significance of humanity": Many began to propose humanity as insignificant when faced with the new Copernican understanding of Earth's non-centrality (in the spatial sense), and the immensity of the physical universe. However, to a large degree this conclusion of 'insignificance' involves a logical flaw, since ‘insignificance’ is of course a concept in human minds and certainly the universe itself cannot consider anything significant or insignificant; also, 'insignificant' carries an emotional implication of inferior position relative to that which IS significant whereas physics does not engage in assigning such attributes (ie whether 'significant' or 'insignificant'), nor does the inanimate universe; also, since to sevex the significance of a human far outweighs the ‘significance’ of infinitely more massive non-sevex matter. [For an extended discussion see the author's 1986 published article "Geocentrism": an edited version is available online: https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/geocentrism-existentialism/geocentrism-egocentrism, see particularly "Part VI. Existentialist Despair and the Significance of Humanity".]

Free will

This topic is dealt with in depth separately here.

There have long been futile discussions regarding whether there is - or needs to be in order to give meaning to moral responsibility - 'antinomian libertarian acausal free will'. Our proposition is that materialists are simply incapable of understanding what is meant by this type of free will since it requires the existence of a transcendent aspect to reality - which since it is not accessible to them is also incomprehensible.

For non-materialists,one could perhaps use as the standard "the type of free willed choice which is physically and logically impossible, is executed by a sevex, and which would be necessary but not sufficient in order for a compassionate and reasonable (divine or human) creator of that being (human or AI) to consider it morally responsible for its actions".

In order to promote less futile dialogue, one can perhaps create a convention where the usual term “free will” would be licensed for use to materialists to mean basically what non-materialists would call ‘the illusion of free will’, and where 'true free will' or 'antinomian libertarian acausal free will', or the moral-responsibility-granting type referred to above is referred to not as ‘free will’, but rather with a new term earmarked for the purpose. In this way, people can have discussions about whether or not this type of free will can exist, and whether humans - or some humans, or some AI - possess it etc, rather than futile arguments about its definition or characteristics when the two sides are actually referring to different phenomena but absurdly trying nevertheless to agree about its properties.

[END OF INSERTED HERE FROM googledoc "mindless materilaism"]

Also: even if we have fw etc, what makes me obligated, where is the fundamental categorical imperative? It does NOT follow logically from anyhting, see below.

....

There have long been endless futile arguments between proponents of libertarian free will vs determinists of various types, and we propose that these arguments are sterile since there are two types of brain involved - one is connected to nmc and the other is not, and secondly,". We propose that brains which are conected in this was to a level of reality transcendent of the material universe have a deep innate intuition regarding free will and moral responsiblity that the other brain-type is incapable of, indeed is unable even to comprehend.

There is of course a difference between knowing, inferring, and intuiting. A non-materialist knows of being aware in a non-material sense; and infers the implication and so acknowledges the existence of a material-transcendent-level to reality; and intuits (but not knows) that there is a meaningful possiblity of a materially-transcendent and therefore causality-transcendent free will mechanism associated to its brain's decisions. Also, that there is a meaningful sense in which there could be a good/bad which transcends the purely-material, and that all these are necessary components in the arising of a moral responsibility which transcends the purely-material bounds set by evolutionary socio-biology. None of this is comprehensible to the materialist, since their brain is not associated to the material-transcendent level of reality.

As a result of this disparity, discussion between the two types of brain on these topics is doomed to unproductivity. Neither type can understand that from the viewpoint of their brain, which is dependent on how it is constructed, how it operates, and how it interacts with reality, the other side's position indeed seems absurd while their own seems compelling.

Why conversations between sevex and elmats on the topic of meaning may be fruitless: Perhaps the existence of sevex affects one's feeling that there is - or could be - a deep meaning and purpose to life, or at least induces a sense of loss because of the feeling there isn't any, or that one bears moral responsibility for one's actions. If so, then if some sevex feel internally that - or may propound a philosophy to the effect that - a transcendent realm is not even needed for providing the deep sense of meaning and purpose they feel exists or can exist, but are not aware that they feel this because they do have sevex. That is, perhaps this claim (of the non-necessity of sevex) would only occur in beings with a transcendent element such as sevex - ie perhaps they are feeling the transcendent effect of sevex without realizing it - and don't realize that material entities will not feel this - and so erroneously conclude that a being without a transcendent aspect will feel "meaning and purpose" as they do.

Perhaps they may offer philosophical justifications which unwittingly depend on a hidden assumption about the existence of sevex. Or perhaps they do rely on sevex but somehow do not consider sevex 'transcendent'. However, sevex itself is in fact 'transcendent' of the material universe, and to many sevex it automatically grants concepts like meaning and purpose precedence over the nay-saying of logic, psychiatry, physics and cosmology, and accords mind-based notions like meaning and purpose a certain degree of credibility despite their not being provably-existent.

Until we can create AI which 'self-evolves' without input from us, and learn what it does and does not 'think' about, perhaps the only way to know is to compare what is felt by materialists and non-materialists - though of course materialists have been exposed to discussions of meaning and purpose and so the experiment is compromised..

[Note: If materialists do possess sevex but not the awareness of it, how would this affect what they feel, and therefore the comparison to sevex-self-aware?]

In all this, of course there is an implicit assumption that sevex can indeed affect the material universe causally, in the minimalistic sense that its existence gives rise to different words spoken by those with and without it. It perhaps is reasonable to suppose that if sevex can affect the material cause-effect chain at least minimally, it would be in some way like this.

Towards non-futile dialog: Can we define the terms meaning, purpose and moral responsibility in ways which convey the same meaning to materialist and non-materialists, so that intelligent discussion can take place on these topics, or do they require the notion of some element of 'transcendence', but as soon as that is mentioned the possibility of discourse vanishes?

Those with sevex would likely state that beings which are fully-material cannot conceive of a transcendent realm as meant by those with sevex, or in the way that sevex conceive it. To many non-materialists the notion of some realm transcending that of the material is intuitive, and to some even compelling, but even if not that, at the minimum to non-materialists one expects that they would say that it is not incomprehensible, and certainly is not to be rejected out of hand.

It would therefore be intriguing to investigate the above - regarding the attitudes of non-materialists, and also to determine what avowed materialists say about all this.

Do they dismiss out of hand the notion of a transcendent realm?

Presumably they consider it a mistaken notion that anything to do with what non-materialists call “consciousness” is at all necessary in order to speak of "meaning and purpose" as they conceive it.

What do they feel…

…..

The survey & experiment

Question to ask physicists. Can there at least in theory exist "Purpose" (ie of a "human-transcendent type": give quotes form various phsycists implying there is...) or is it absolutely impossible, nonsense, a meaningless term.

Not "do you believe there is..." but rather "is it at all possible or is it not (ie either impossible or simply undefinable and absurd nonsenical)".

Question to be resolved via a survey: Will there be a correlation between the answers ot this quesiotn and to the others re consciousness etc?

To be investigated via experiment: If indeed mc and nmc answer differently, and is that a result of a brain-difference (which mc can claim is correlated to their ability to attach to a transcendental level.)

Eg: A bunch of autonomous vacuum cleaners can be programmed to work together to accomplishta complex task, and they can be programmed to say so. Etc. This is not it.

If we give each consciousness, it still is not it. We mean when there is somehow a purpose at a higher level.

Eg according to science the evolution of humans is due to chance , not purpose, so. We don't mean that.

We mean somehow a purpose at a higher level.

INSERTED HERE FROM googledoc "mindless materilaism"

Free will: Proposition to test via survey and experiment: Perhaps sevex feel its transcendent nature and intuit what it would mean to have a moral responsibility arising from that, whereas materialists do not, and don't feel that the free will provided for by known physics conflicts in some way with moral responsibility.

Explanation: Although Attila's behavior is clearly selected for, so too in its own way is pro-social brain-wiring, for example 'feeling morally responsible' for one's actions, so it is not at all surprising that brains feel this, irrespective of whether one can find philosophical or scientific 'justification' for it. However it would be interesting to survey and brain-test physicist-brains which understand the issue and can compare their feeling with logic and science, to see whether there is a split correlating to m/non-m in those who feel that the free will provided for by known physics conflicts in some way with moral responsibility (eg whether or not it is dependent on the existence of "libertarian incompatibilist free will with agent causation"), and to then test whether the responses correlate to a belief/disbelief in (the possibility of) some sort of transcendent aspect to reality, and to different brain structure/wiring.

......

Contrasting two paradigms re the Free Will needed for a meaningful sense of moral responsibility:

i. genesis scenario: the transcendent-based intuition

ii.determinism/randomness+reductionism (rather than true emergent wholism): the mc attitude.

To what degree do m/non-m consider the paradigms plausible, not impossible, nonsensical, provably wrong?

Materialists (presumably also atheists) will consider i.entirely ludicrous, and therefore not useful in defining a meaningful sense of "freedom" whereas non-materialists will consider ii.ludicrously incompatible with moral responsibility .

Are both approaches ‘equally nonsensical’?

ii. is nonsensical within its own paradigm since it is inconsistent, ii. is nonsense if one believes it is completely disprovable, as perhaps atheists will claim, so each side may feel its claim is less nonsensical than the other’s.

the non-materialist brain's material-transcendent perspective on free will:

This recognition is particularly important today. Philosophical materialism worked quite successfully to eliminate from pubic acknowledgment the notion of the uniqueness of humanity, and now with the emergence of powerful AI, the cultural domination of materialism may be dangerous - AI created in the image of materialist neuroscientists and engineers may be the final nail in our coffin.

There is no claim here that we can know that true free will exists, however we do know that non-material consciousness not only exists but is at a more fundamental level of reality than is the material universe. One infers that it is not impossible that the interactions and phenomena associated to our 'mind' need not necessarily conform to the laws of causality and even logic - and certainly (not to) the 'laws of nature'. Of course the conundrums involved are well known, profound and numerous, but to a mind which recognizes the material-transcendent level as more fundamental than the material, this does not disuade - at least from the non-impossibility.

....

A computer/AI utilizing deep learning techniques coupled with massive input from philosophical, literary and scientific libraries etc could 'self-evolve' towards higher-level discourse and begin to discuss the meaning of life, the purpose of all existence, as well as moral responsibility and free will etc, without sevex feeling compelled to conclude that the AI is sevex.

...

Long before qp, there was the conundrum "if a tree falls in the forest". Materialists of course did not then or now understand it, however to sevex there was always an intimate relation between existence and "consciousness", where it seemed that the former could not be considered meaningful in the absence of the latter. Wheeler's diagram could well have been drawn not even in the context of the measurement problem and 'observership'.

........

My philosophical view regarding what we can know: Godel stated that a consciousness can know a truth that it cannot prove - we can see this as mirroring the fundamental feature of consciousness itself: that it knows itself to exist but cannot prove this to others like itself (and further like Godel, only perhaps a state of higher-level of awareness could know of the consciousnes sof another!) .

Nmc's understand that there (likely/possibly) are unprovable truths other than the existence of consciousness, for example the moral 'ought'.

Kant's categorical imperatives are the 'oughts', and I say that this is a primitive since it is rooted in Transcendenance, and it is thus inaccessible to materilaists.

I believe that the non-disprovability of solipsisim is a stagering truth which indicates to us (or to ME! since only my awareness is known) that we will inevitably err if we assume something more, and this is born out by EPR etc, and this over-reach includes all forms of blanket self-assured statements whether it is Russel's Realism, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, or Schopenhauers " ", all assume that we can know what exsts other than our on consciousness. A scpetic agnostic approach is less likey to err, though of course the huyman brain requires models and this requires us to make generla statements but we need always to be careful, a la Bridgman...

Berkely's idealism similarly assumes some level of existence that is not exactly accessible or comprehensible since we perceive reality as material to a large degree, whereas solipsism as mean it is simply the minimalistic assumption, what Descartes said he aimed for but then overshot.

"There is the known unknown and the unknown unknown": Kant's noumenon is completely unknowable, but if so, how do we know it exists, unless it is the name given for "what we don;t know at all" including "possible inacuracies of our theory, and inconsistencies and fundmanetal misperceptions etc"

........

A purposeful universe, or 'the universe has (a) purpose"What do these mean?

Better to be more specific eg:

⦁ The universe emerged into existence as a result of a conscious act made for a purpose. We might prefer the formulation "the existence of the universe fufils a purpose for some conscious entity" rather than "the universe has apurpose".

⦁ There are conscious entites which feel their lives have purpose: this is fact.

⦁ Consciousness arose in a randomly-emerging universe, and eventually sufficient intelligence achieved consciousness for there to be conscious entites which feel their lives have purpose: (The purpose they feel is undeniable and is not contingent on there having been a purpose to the emergence of the universe into existence).

⦁ Mind chose to enter into the pre-existing physical universe in order to guide its development for some reason, ie to achieve some purpose, so "the conscious aspect of the universe exists in the universe to fulfil a purpose".

⦁ Consciounsess arose in a randomly-emerging universe, and eventually sufficient intelligence achieved consciousness for the totality of it to be working towards some purpose (Consciousness did not choose to exist, but at some point in its evolution, it developed a purpose for its continuued existence.)(The totality of living entities has a purposive existence which its component parts are not necessarily aware of.)

...

APPENDIX

Besides the issue discussed above of differences in philosophical-stances that are actually due to brain-wiring, many discussions about these issues could benefit by a framing of the issue they are addressing, the assumptions they are making, etc.

For example, here is an excerpt from the Feyman lectures, at end of the chapter (Vol I: ch 38 https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_38.html and the same material in Vol III: ch 2:"Chapter 2.The Relation of Wave and Particle Viewpoints "]): https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_02.html (see very bottom of this webpage [or perhaps it willbe moved to source page on the menu])

re "tree falls in the forest":

Feynman: was there a sensation of sound? No, sensations have to do, presumably, with consciousness. And whether ants are conscious and whether there were ants in the forest, or whether the tree was conscious, we do not know.

AR: Does this mean that Feynman was NOT a materialist!? What do materialists think he meant?}

Feynman re Free will: ...the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics...has given rise to all kinds of nonsense and questions on the meaning of freedom of will...

Of course we must emphasize that classical physics is also indeterminate, in a sense. It is usually thought that this indeterminacy, that we cannot predict the future, is an important quantum-mechanical thing, and this is said to explain the behavior of the mind, feelings of free will, etc. But if the world were classical—if the laws of mechanics were classical—it is not quite obvious that the mind would not feel more or less the same. It is true .. the classical world is deterministic. Suppose, however, that we have a finite accuracy ... given an arbitrary accuracy, no matter how precise, one can find a time long enough that we cannot make predictions valid for that long a time. ....The time goes, in fact, only logarithmically with the error, and it turns out that in only a very, very tiny time we lose all our information...It is therefore not fair to say that from the apparent freedom and indeterminacy of the human mind, we should have realized that classical “deterministic” physics could not ever hope to understand it, and to welcome quantum mechanics as a release from a “completely mechanistic” universe. For already in classical mechanics there was indeterminability from a practical point of view.

Framing the discussion: I would say that what he really means is not 'free will' but rather "that which makes it possible for the brain to fool itself into actually believing the nonsensical notion that it freely chooses its actions".

It seems he assumes a rational brain would not be able to fool itself into thinking it acted/chose freely if the phenomena involved in thinking were simple and everything was predictable. But it COULD fool itself if there is 'calculational indeterminacy' which is an "effective indeterminacy", and that quantum indeterminacy which is inherent and real rather than just effective, is not even needed for this, and the "true free will" we are discussin in this paperhe he would say is meaningless, impossible.

...

Full chapter-section: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_02.html

2–6 Philosophical implications

Let us consider briefly some philosophical implications of quantum mechanics. As always, there are two aspects of the problem: one is the philosophical implication for physics, and the other is the extrapolation of philosophical matters to other fields. When philosophical ideas associated with science are dragged into another field, they are usually completely distorted. Therefore we shall confine our remarks as much as possible to physics itself.

First of all, the most interesting aspect is the idea of the uncertainty principle; making an observation affects the phenomenon. It has always been known that making observations affects a phenomenon, but the point is that the effect cannot be disregarded or minimized or decreased arbitrarily by rearranging the apparatus. When we look for a certain phenomenon we cannot help but disturb it in a certain minimum way, and the disturbance is necessary for the consistency of the viewpoint.

The observer was sometimes important in prequantum physics, but only in a trivial sense.

The problem has been raised: if a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a noise? A real tree falling in a real forest makes a sound, of course, even if nobody is there.

AR: He defines a sound as an air vibration, later he'll speak of the sensation: Quesiton: when people made up this conundrum though, did they mean sensation?

Even if no one is present to hear it, there are other traces left. The sound will shake some leaves, and if we were careful enough we might find somewhere that some thorn had rubbed against a leaf and made a tiny scratch that could not be explained unless we assumed the leaf were vibrating. So in a certain sense we would have to admit that there is a sound made.

[AR's bold/italics:]

We might ask: was there a sensation of sound? No, sensations have to do, presumably, with consciousness. And whether ants are conscious and whether there were ants in the forest, or whether the tree was conscious, we do not know. Let us leave the problem in that form.

[AR: Does this mean that Feynman was NOT a materialist!? What do materialists think he meant?}

Another thing that people have emphasized since quantum mechanics was developed is the idea that we should not speak about those things which we cannot measure. (Actually relativity theory also said this.) Unless a thing can be defined by measurement, it has no place in a theory. And since an accurate value of the momentum of a localized particle cannot be defined by measurement it therefore has no place in the theory.

The idea that this is what was the matter with classical theory is a false position. It is a careless analysis of the situation. Just because we cannot measure position and momentum precisely does not a priori mean that we cannot talk about them. It only means that we need not talk about them.

[AR: Is he unaware of EPR at the time of the lecture, and Bohr's position, or were the later ideas of Bell and Aspect needed to make the point?]

The situation in the sciences is this: A concept or an idea which cannot be measured or cannot be referred directly to experiment may or may not be useful. It need not exist in a theory. In other words, suppose we compare the classical theory of the world with the quantum theory of the world, and suppose that it is true experimentally that we can measure position and momentum only imprecisely. The question is whether the ideas of the exact position of a particle and the exact momentum of a particle are valid or not. The classical theory admits the ideas; the quantum theory does not. This does not in itself mean that classical physics is wrong.

When the new quantum mechanics was discovered, the classical people—which included everybody except Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Born—said: “Look, your theory is not any good because you cannot answer certain questions like: what is the exact position of a particle?, which hole does it go through?, and some others.” Heisenberg’s answer was: “I do not need to answer such questions because you cannot ask such a question experimentally.”

It is that we do not have to.

AR: In the above sentence I think he is referring to his previous statement " Just because we cannot measure position and momentum precisely does not a priori mean that we cannot talk about them. It only means that we need not talk about them". SO he is saying it seems, that Heisneberg's answer is ok, H does not NEED to answer, but the quesiotn COULD be asked. But I would ask Feynman: Isn't it extraordinary that we find that the notion of 'which slit' is 'not needed' (in your terminology)? Doesn;t that tell us something? Maybe it warns us that it might be unwise to assume the concept is meaningful?

Consider two theories (a) and (b); (a) contains an idea that cannot be checked directly but which is used in the analysis, and the other, (b), does not contain the idea. If they disagree in their predictions, one could not claim that (b) is false because it cannot explain this idea that is in (a), because that idea is one of the things that cannot be checked directly.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

AR: the above and below he seems to be merely stating that human brains can only create new physics if they can create models, and models invariably contain non-measureables. Below he admits that this can lead to errors, but says that is fine, it is the way forward, and then one eliminates the errors. So he is talking about pragmatic procedure, due to our brain-limitations, he is not talking about "physical reality", or "truth".

In quantum mechanics itself there is a probability amplitude, there is a potential, and there are many constructs that we cannot measure directly. The basis of a science is its ability to predict. To predict means to tell what will happen in an experiment that has never been done. How can we do that? By assuming that we know what is there, independent of the experiment. We must extrapolate the experiments to a region where they have not been done. We must take our concepts and extend them to places where they have not yet been checked. If we do not do that, we have no prediction. So it was perfectly sensible for the classical physicists to go happily along and suppose that the position—which obviously means something for a baseball—meant something also for an electron. It was not stupidity. It was a sensible procedure. Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were. We do not know where we are “stupid” until we “stick our neck out,” and so the whole idea is to put our neck out. And the only way to find out that we are wrong is to find out what our predictions are. It is absolutely necessary to make constructs.

AR: Again, it is all a matte of practicalities and how our brain works, not about 'reality' or 'truth' etc.

...

AR: Below he speaks of Free will, but I would say that what he really means is "that which makes it possible for the brain to fool itself into actually believing the nonsensical notion that it freely chooses its actions".

We have already made a few remarks about the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics. That is, that we are unable now to predict what will happen in physics in a given physical circumstance which is arranged as carefully as possible. If we have an atom that is in an excited state and so is going to emit a photon, we cannot say when it will emit the photon. It has a certain amplitude to emit the photon at any time, and we can predict only a probability for emission; we cannot predict the future exactly. This has given rise to all kinds of nonsense and questions on the meaning of freedom of will, and of the idea that the world is uncertain.

Of course we must emphasize that classical physics is also indeterminate, in a sense. It is usually thought that this indeterminacy, that we cannot predict the future, is an important quantum-mechanical thing, and this is said to explain the behavior of the mind, feelings of free will, etc. But if the world were classical—if the laws of mechanics were classical—it is not quite obvious that the mind would not feel more or less the same. It is true classically that if we knew the position and the velocity of every particle in the world, or in a box of gas, we could predict exactly what would happen. And therefore the classical world is deterministic. Suppose, however, that we have a finite accuracy and do not know exactly where just one atom is, say to one part in a billion. Then as it goes along it hits another atom, and because we did not know the position better than to one part in a billion, we find an even larger error in the position after the collision. And that is amplified, of course, in the next collision, so that if we start with only a tiny error it rapidly magnifies to a very great uncertainty. To give an example: if water falls over a dam, it splashes. If we stand nearby, every now and then a drop will land on our nose. This appears to be completely random, yet such a behavior would be predicted by purely classical laws. The exact position of all the drops depends upon the precise wigglings of the water before it goes over the dam. How? The tiniest irregularities are magnified in falling, so that we get complete randomness. Obviously, we cannot really predict the position of the drops unless we know the motion of the water absolutely exactly.

Speaking more precisely, given an arbitrary accuracy, no matter how precise, one can find a time long enough that we cannot make predictions valid for that long a time. Now the point is that this length of time is not very large. It is not that the time is millions of years if the accuracy is one part in a billion. The time goes, in fact, only logarithmically with the error, and it turns out that in only a very, very tiny time we lose all our information. If the accuracy is taken to be one part in billions and billions and billions—no matter how many billions we wish, provided we do stop somewhere—then we can find a time less than the time it took to state the accuracy—after which we can no longer predict what is going to happen! It is therefore not fair to say that from the apparent freedom and indeterminacy of the human mind, we should have realized that classical “deterministic” physics could not ever hope to understand it, and to welcome quantum mechanics as a release from a “completely mechanistic” universe. For already in classical mechanics there was indeterminability from a practical point of view.

AR: So it seems he is talking about the notion that a rational brain would not be able to fool itself into thinking it acted/chose freely if the phenomena involved in thinking were simple and everything was predictable. But it COULD fool itself if there is 'calculational indeterminacy' which is an "effective indeterminacy", and that qunatum indeterminacy which is inherent and real rather thant just effective, is not even needed for this.

However, all this is not relevant to the discussions of "true free will" - which he would say is meaningless, impossible.

....

END

Next-level discussion (but not religion)

For many, their deepest intuitions are about meaning, purpose, human significance, moral responsibility and true free, and it is the author's view that these all rely on the existence of sevex both in the sense that they derive their significance from its existence and that their meaning is evident to those with sevex but incomprehensible to materialists, ie those without sevex.

Of course materialists will say they too experience meaning and feel a sense of purpose, and the categorical imperative ‘ought’ etc and are eminently qualified to dismiss the non-materialists’ take on all this however non-materialists who accept the thesis expressed in this paper may state that those without sevex – ie materialists - clearly do not experience sevex and therefore cannot understand these phenomena/concepts and so cannot make legitimate pronouncements about them, only about the material-level versions of these phenomena/concepts which materialists are capable of knowing.

Another example: To materialist physicists, true free will (incompatibilist libertarian, with agent-causation) is clearly impossible and even absurd since it violates both quantum randomness and determinism, and even logic, and involves counterfactual impossible-to-ever-verify statements such as “X could have acted otherwise and so we hold them morally responsible for their actions”. However to the anti-materialist physicist for whom the sevex-realm is more fundamental than the material realm governed by the laws of physics, the fact that true free will violates known physics and even logic is not sufficient reason to assume it is impossible; one can accept the possibility of its existence and then decide it does or does not actually exist, rather than ruling it out a priori even as a possibility.

Another example takes the divide to the next level to discuss the ‘anti-materialist’ physicists such as Einstein and Eddington – and their contemporary camp-followers - who see sevex as an aspect of the most fundamental level of reality.

There are even-more-speculative beliefs broached by eminent physicists, such as Pauli’s synchronicity. To a materialist it is incomprehensible how someone of his great brilliance could accept such a preposterous notion, however among sevex(people) - who understand the fundamentality of sevex(consciousness) – some will comprehend why he might even be willing to contemplate the very possibility that the strange coincidences happening to him could be the result of some different level of causation than the usual.

Also of course one expects a correlation between one status as non-materialist/materialist and attitudes to religion and metaphysical philosophies – not specifically the belief in these, since presumably there are non-materialist atheists (we will be testing this in a survey), but rather correlated to a willingness to even consider the possibility that they are valid rather than rejecting them out of hand as absurd.

Whitehead

Whitehead wrote re his view of the incompatibility of free will and 'mechanism':

"A scientific realism, based on mechanism, is conjoined with an unwavering belief in the world of men and of the higher animals as being composed of self-determining organisms. This radical inconsistency at the basis of modern thought accounts for much that is half-hearted and wavering in our civilization".

In the author’s opinion, there is a flaw in Whitehead’s reasoning, if only because of the unwarranted assumption he makes - which is made almost universally - that all humans are sevex. In contrast, the author’s claim is that some humans - materialists for example - are not, and so to them it is clear that there is no true free will. In other words, what to Whitehead is an inconsistency since of course sevex exists, and he assumes that so too does true free will, is not really an inconsistency in the case of the materialist since they are not sevex. Instead what is remarkable is that even materialists can be so committed to moral behavior, ie the “belief in the moral responsibility” is not dependent on one being sevex.

In other words, it might have been thought that materialists are sevex who for some reason are blind to this, and it is their innate sevex nature which leads them to deeply hold themselves and others to moral behavior, but the truth is actually even more amazing - the deep commitment to moral behavior, the capacity for ‘passionate’ defense of ethical action - is innate even in non-sevex! And this point can be agreed upon by materialists, just that they include in the category of ‘non-sevex’ all humanity -including those who deludely think of themselves a s ‘non-materialists’. [Terminological point: Note how much simpler it is to make the statement above by using a dedicated term - sevex - rather than the contentious term ‘consciousness’ which has different meaning to materialists and non-materialists.]

Perhaps therefore a materialist would counter Whitehead with: "A scientific realism, based on mechanism, is creatively conjoined with an unwavering belief in humans as being morally-responsible for their actions. This radical inconsistency - from the philosophical perspective - embraced at the basis of modern thought, allows for much that is ‘humanistic’ in our civilization".

in addition of course not all intelligent scientists have thought through the consequences of materialism so that some sevex physicists express materialistic views.

Speaking to sevex who indeed know they are such, do we arrive at the sentiment that physics is 'incomplete' in this sense? Substituting in the above quote from Whitehead the term "sevex" for his "self-determining beings" (and ‘materialism’ for ‘mechanism’) etc, we can paraphrase his statement as: "A scientific realism, based on materialism, is conjoined with an unwavering belief in humans as sevex, aware of their mental state and making conscious choices of how to act, thus being responsible for those actions. This radical inconsistency at the basis of modern thought accounts for much that is half-hearted and wavering in our science".

Physicists often sneer at metaphysics... saying "we have no need of that hypothesis" because it doesn't help them advance to new theories.... so THEY don't think it is a problem…[similarly, mathematicians may think physics has a problem with rigor, but physicists sneer at that, pretty successfully - at least in their own estimation.]

Thus physics is complete at least in the sense that physicists get away with not including math precision and philosophical discussion and metaphysics, and continue to produce new physics to their satisfaction, as well as producing new tech based on it, to the satisfaction of civilization and techies and to medical science etc. As a result, physics is fine in the estimation of physicists...they don't need to be philosophically 'complete' in order for them to say it is "complete enough", they don't have completion as a criteria as eg mathematics may have. Physicists don't need criteria other than provability as meant in their terms. Of course physicists utilize intuition and make creative leaps etc, but the process of coming up with physics is not part of "physics".

Irony of talking about Mind rather than developing it: self-transcendence as a goal

The most boring conference: academics engaged in humorless analysis of jokes. And the least spiritual conference - dry discussions of the arcana and minutiae of philosophies of mind.

If Mind is sui generis, fundamental to the nature of the universe, and we are unique in possesing it, then why do we not seriously engage in developing it?

The answer I think is simple: human nature...the most difficult task to bring ourselves to do is brain exercises, and hw successful are we at brain-control when trying to fall asleep and do we prefer to shy away from the difficulty of controlling our bedtime chaotic thoughts even knowing tha tthe price is an exhausted tomorrow? How difficult it is to try to achieve lucid dreaming - ie to even try - or exercising brain-control in overcoming fear during sleep-paralysis... we run from these efforts, we'd rather do ten hours of physical labor than 10 minutes of this type of brain activity. ...but that is where the greatest benefit lies for us...

But perhaps of all the eras of human history we are best-situated to begin that exploration in earnest as a legitimate civilizational endeavor fully in line with science.

The tower of Babel story illustrates the misconceptions of ancient human civilization, with the notion that spiritual entities exist within physical space, "above us". And similarly for 'sheol' below us. Even the far more recent and more sophisticated Copernican view of what to us today as a microscopic universe. Humans might have thought of our significance as stemming from our geographic locaiton at the center of the material universe, but the insights of the Copernican revolution have helped us free ourselves of this misconception, and we can now more fully understand that our significance arises from an entriely different consideration.

Descartes successfully separated out the strands of the material and mental, and after centures of our struggling to reduce the mental more and more, to the point where the materilaists among us have alost convinced us all that it does not exist, finally we are ready to engage in the development of our unique abilities (and reach our destiny).

Humanity has come full circle but to a higher level, a helix- we started out mixing the material and mental, then learned to separate them succesfully, but dropped the mental, and now we can return to a far more clear understanding of what is physical and what is mental , and use the technology of the material, and the scientific knowledge and cosmological insights we have arrived at, in order to aim our efforts of connection to the transcendant more correctly - eg not as did those who tried to construct the tower of Babel, nor those who mixed it all seamlessly into religion or 'spirituality' or 'extrasensory phenomena' or 'new age', nor of course those who denied it altogether - and therefore reach the desired goal of self-transcendence more effectively.

EDIT THIS

The acausality of free will

It is v counterintuitive that random events must follow a pattern,, so maybe fw events also?! Of course we understand the logic re random, and not yet or ever re fw. However perhaps before random was understood, perhaps people would have said it is equally unlikely that it would be so for random and for fw,c so now that random is understood but fw isn't , we should not necessarily assume fw is different.

The truth is that individual events being random itself is mysterious. And the truth is that even cause effect determinism laws of nature were shown by hume to be illusion, so fw is not necessarily different in that.

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Search: "transcendent" + "moral responsibility" + "free will" + "meaning" + "purpose"

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Review Nature, Freedom, and Responsibility: Ernst Mayr and Isaiah Berlin STRACHAN DONNELLEY

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Can program an AI to come up with criteria for truth? If so, maybe it will recognize truth without being able to prove it, like a human. Unless one has programmed it to recognize as true only that which has been proven true.

This is like'self evident'

,..

Most people don't understood what is meant by logic, they think it means it makes sense rather than it follows logically

CAN BE FOR COVER LETTER:

Many approaches eg radical pragmatism claim that it 'solved' the problem of free will and determinism 'problem', but to those like me these approaches are completely irrelvevant or opaque or misderected or maybe disingeuous...

However "James called compatibilism a "quagmire of evasion," just as the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume—that free will was simply freedom from external coercion—were called a "wretched subterfuge" by Immanuel Kant." This I agree with, but then when reading further, based on what the source I was reading said about his ideas it seems to me that he then went on to make some noises that made no sense to me.

And Bridgman for example wrote re free will "I challenge anyone to prve they ever could have acted differently than they did" and htis is a brilliant point, but it doesn;t 'disprove' free will, it just cements the uncderstanding tha tif free will exists, it is beyond the raitonal, scientific, causal, logical.... So, basing a philosophy on the need to find empirical result sof statments etc, or to show nafka mina's, means that one is assuming that there is nothing beyond the logical raitonal etc, and that is simply wrong. Of course it may be uselss to discourse rationally about something that is beyond the rational, but it is worse to assume the supra-rational does not exist and then use that to prove it doesn;t exist or isn't needed or whatever.

I more and more believe that my approach is correct - there is something beyond the material rational logical, and some of us have access to it, perhaps to varying degrees, and talking philosophy etc to someone who does not have access to it is a waste of time. And some people who have it but are uncomfortable with enfranchising it, try to rationalize the transcendent-based intuition they have, to make it fit into the rational/scientific scheme of things, and turn it thereby into nonsense.

I know that consciousness exists and that it is the most fundamental aspect of reality, and so I consider entirely inadequate a picture of the cosmos relying only on physics etc and what is directly knowable rationally etc. And if I strive for a minimalistic picture of reality, I would certainly not assume that it can be adequately discerned via my low transcendent mental level development. I know that I occasionally experienced more, and that there ar people I admire who seem to have experienced even more, and so even for a minimalistic model I would include the likelihood of a far deeper reality than what i have so far) experienced.

Somewhere between that and the maximalist versions espoused by various religions and cosmic Mind proponents etc, or maybe even beyond those since we know from quantum physics and general relativity and logic etc how incredibly complex and sophisticated is the purely-material level accessible to proofs and theorems etc, so I make the assumption that the material-transcendent level which is more fundamental is far more sophisticated....and therefore perhaps more sophisticated than someone at my level of non-development would be able to discern..

I now physics and I know its limitations and I am not afraid to day the things I said above, and I am in rather good company (Einstein Eddington and many others), all as long as one doesn;t mix the metaphysics with the physics.

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Religion

Is physics limited? Does religion deal with the area that science cannot deal with?

NMC is self-evidently true, religion is not.

Therefore we deal with sevex/nc not religion.

Religion may claim it has all the answers etc, physics doesn't, however one must keep in mind the famous statement "Sire, we have no need of that hypothesis".

Religion may claim its answers are better than the lack of answers provided by physics, but physics can say the questions are meaningless or the answers are "not even wrong" and so are certainly not of more value than no answer.

Some religious people will say physics is limited, but many physicists will dispute that. Imagine the following discussion:

Some religious people: "physics doesn't deal with God since the existence of God is not provable by experiment and so 'physics limits itself to the provable' ".

Response of some physicists: "What is even in theory not provable doesn't exist, and therefore physics rightly does not include God".

That is, it is not a weakness of physics that it cannot and does not include that which does not exists, quite the contrary.

So a more careful statement for a religious scientist might be: "Physics self-limits to provable statements according to criteria of experimental provability and so does not deal with unprovables such as God – so whether God exists or does not is not a statement included in physics, but that is not a limitation of the validity of physics"; that is, limiting oneself to true statements would not be considered a 'limitation' in the negative sense.

However a religious person who is not scientifically inclined and believes they know of the existence of God might claim physics is indeed 'limited'.

In contrast to physics, philosophy has no problem including the unprovable. Philosophy is more of a discussion than is physics, and so it includes a reasoned discussion of whether it should include the unprovable, what is provable, what is philosophy, as opposed to physics which does NOT even include a discussion of what is physics! And for philosophy it would be a "problem" if it didn't include a discussion of itself, whereas for physics it is NOT a problem!

A paper asking physicists if there's a problem for physics would seem at first as though it is really for a physics journal but of course it is only appropriate perhaps for a philosophy journal… So is that another sign that physics is "incomplete"? This kind of question is not of interest to most physicists, they feel they would more profitably spend their time trying to find new physics models and equations, and would suggest it be sent to a journal investigating the psychology or anthropology of physicists, or methodology of physics perhaps, or to an even lower form of journal – one devoted to pedagogy of physics ☺.

Atheistic and Religious mind-based understandings

If there is mind somehow logically prior to the physical universe, that is very much like the medieval philosophical conception of god as the ground of being of the universe, and also the idea of god the creator - not the same idea, and not with all the trappings of the notion of god or creator, but in that direction. Religion is a type of 'maximalist' extension of the self-evident truth of the existence of sevex/nmc.

If mind (sevex/nmc) is fundamental and ‘prior’, then deep mind-based intuitions may be granted more credence by a non-materialistic than by a materialist - for example the notion of there being some sort of transcendent meaning to life, and purpose to the existence of the universe, and a real moral responsibility and some particular significance to human life, maybe to all life, etc.

Religion is "in this direction", but maximally, making claims that have not been verified, maybe have even been contradicted, so the above is not necessarily religion, it is more like a metaphysical extrapolation based on the knowledge that sevex exists, and it is the type of extrapolation which seems natural for sevex-beings to perform. For many people, the above is indeed their ‘religion’. However it seems that one can accept some version of all this and be an atheist, so it is definitely not the same as classical 'religion'.

Extrapolating from sevex to religion

Classical religion is a further extrapolation of this process, for example:

if the universe manifests Purpose, if life is said to have Meaning then how did such a universe come to be? Ariving at the notin of a designer/creator is not a long leap away as an answer.

Even moreso, if there is real Moral Responsibility and perhaps some karma or punishment for evil actions, what is the mechanism to crste and 'enforce' all this? If one takes this queisotn seriously then something like the biblical scenario of God the creator etc is certainly a natural type of consclusion to reach

Since human brains communicate with each other via speech and symbols etc, maybe if there is a mind which 'caused' the universe it can also communicate with our minds - to sevex-brains this would not seem unreasonable if indeed there is an underlying mind-aspect to the universe. And if the content of that communication would be passed along to others, one arrives at the format of most classical religions which enfranchise inspired human messages to humanity.

All the above are indicaitons that enfranchsiniong menaing and purpose and moral responsibility etc definitely bring one along in the direciotn leading to classical religion, though they are by themselves not specifically 'religious' concepts, but rather are in the category of deep intuitions arising in nmc and assumed to be rooted in the non-material or material-transcenedent realm of reality..

Categorizing, and minimizing or resolving science-religion conflicts

It could be useful in resolving science-religion conflicts in schools and society if the conflict were recognized as being based on deeper more fundamental differences, and if there could be an investigation to find the degree to which the conflict is based on the materialist non-materialist divide, and each side could agree on its location in the scheme outlined above:

the provable to all: science
the known by all but not provable to anyone (which might be an empty set, or it is the notion “I exist”, or is just the content of Godel incompleteness theorem);
the known but not provable but not all consider it to be known, ie sevex etc
the believed but not known (and certainly not provable) eg religion etc.

Example: How to present evolutionary theory in a school setting

In some first intreoduciotn to scinence class, there would be a statement/explanation regarding sevex, and the division of approaches to its existence.

And then a presentation of evolution from the religion-neutral persepective which enfranshises sevex/nmc., for example as follows:

Sevex is associated to human brains but could not “evolve” due to selection pressures etc since it is not material (as pointed out by Eccles and others). As such, evolutionary theory too is incomplete, basically for the same reason that physics is complete.

If the above were taught in intro science class, the admission of this fact of the existenc eof two types of people , sevex and non-sevex, would resolve most of the issues some Biblically-religious people have with evolutionary theory or the teahcing of it in scholld, and might resolve otherwise intractable conflicts in schools and in society.

For those students interested in following up on that point heard in their intro to science class, a religious studies class can introduce that which 'fills the gap' according to religion, and ID class can do the equivalent, as can various other approaches, including a materialist atheist presentation.

However, underlying all of this would be the recognition that science deals with what can be proven, and then there is the realm of what is known but cannot be proven, and after that the realm of that which is deeply intuited but is not known and certainly not provable, and it would be helpful if religion also accepted its place in this scheme, so that it would self-admittedly be described as dealing with that which is believed but not known and not provable. And if atheist materialism would self-admittedly be presented as from the reality experienced by non-sevex, and honesty admitting that a certian approach to science not only deals exclusively with that which can be proven, but just as importantly negates all that cannot.

If this type of self-limitation on both sides is practically implementable, it would be a useful way to eliminate much of the intractable aspect of the "science-religion conflict".

For example, one can present to a classroom the spectrum of views from an atheist materialist and a reigious person, with a non-religious nmc within that sepctrum.

The atheist materialist would see natural law producing humans via evolution etc. Biblical religionists can agree that if there was no god and no creation and only natural law operated, and if only natural law were accepted as explanations for fossils etc, then there would have to be some process unfolding according to natural law which would lead to the development of humans since they aren’t found in the earlier fossil record. They could agree that if indeed a universe existed in which all operated according to natural law, it could include the production of human physical bodies via a mechanism such as suggested by evolutionary theory. Neither side would claim that minds and souls would arise this way since atheist materialists do not believe they exist and biblical religionists believe these can originate only by divine action.

Both sides would agree that they cannot prove their own views, so there would be no conflict.

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However, it may be important to explain all this to nmc who are intimidated by the strident self confident proclamations of the mcs, regarding values, human significance, religion, and end confused, and thinking that if they are to be rational, modern, and not anti science, they need to give up these deep rooted beliefs etc.

The presentations here are different than those of similar topics (meaning, fw etc) on the other webpages in that they are all based on the above thesis

meaning, purpose, moral responsibility

MeaningPurposeMoralResponsibility God, Human, animal, Machine Hasidic philosophy re eating meat: human, animal, vegetation, mineral Material to distribute at lecture: make one copy so that it needs only photocopying not printing (unless I edit it on the way). Descartes: Mind separate other than body; humans different than

Materialist non-Materialists

Mindless Materialists or Delusional Dualists A specially-designed survey (expanded from the author's 1987 survey regarding free will) will help respondent brains clarify their positions, and will identify unambiguous representatives of the two types, who will be invited to participate in an experiment comparing their relevant

Here, for instance, are the word-limits of the top-20 "generalist" philosophy journals according to this poll:

Phil Review: no word limit.
Journal of Philosophy: normally no longer than 7.5K
Nous: 15K word hard limit
Mind: 8K hard limit (used to be unlimited?)
PPR: 15K word hard limit
Australasian Journal: 8K normal, 15K hard limit – standard rises with length
Phil Studies: 10K max, contact editor for exceptions
Analysis: 4K hard limit
Phil Quarterly: rarely accept longer than 10K words.
Aristotelian Society: invited manuscripts only
Phil Imprint: no limit
Phil Perspectives: no limit (2/3 of publications invited)
American Philosophical Quarterly: 7K hard limit
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly: normally no more than 10K
Monist: no limit (must consult with Advisory Editor to submit)
Canadian Journal of Philosophy: typically no longer than 10K
Philosophical Topics: invited only
European Journal of Philosophy: no strict upper limit, but rarely over 12K (18%)
Ratio: 5-6K, longer rarely accepted

TO MKoppel

Your approach is intriguing, trying to bootstrap reasoning to kind of get everything you need (ie to support your 'feeling' level rather than the knowing level) without there being anything there (ie without there needing to be any metaphysical level 'justifying' those feelings)....It's a clever approach (deserving of being a chapter in G.E.B.), and I appreciate its minimalistic ethos, relying only on what is known and perhaps directly knowable (including the results of science including archaeology history evolution cosmology physics), and maybe you could even write a formal-logic expression of it, with some new mathematical theorem arising from that bootstrapping self-reference etc, however I am personally not 'satisfied' by that approach in the life-context (but would love to see the formal expression)...

ie I think the logic and conclusion gives you the feeling that you can just continue on your merry way in the rich life you crafted without worrying about whether or not you believe or 'observe' this or that, but I may not have the same need and may not be satisfied by the same method....

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James called compatibilism a "quagmire of evasion,"[53]: 149 just as the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume—that free will was simply freedom from external coercion—were called a "wretched subterfuge" by Immanuel Kant. AR note to AR: My 'physics' article "Why consensus..." https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B6mcL155XkLnjrBB_NN1IITJLwFxtlDGnEZL3VR8hsg

also has material re moral responsibility, free will, quantum collapse, so it should be placed here, and mentioned there only in brief (as part of a discussion of cosmlology, ie does the universe coitains some other level, which is the transcendent, which supports moral responsibility etc, doe sit have an acausal ele,ent supporting free will, ie all this is part of physic sand cosmogy, and then place there a reference to here.

The relevant material there is mainly in point #5 of the mini-article at the beginning, and then some more in the extended article following it, in two specific places: the discussion about Whitehead (see section with his name as heading), and then later re religion and re cosmic mind, see heading: "Atheistic and Religious mind-based understanding".

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Meaning and Purpose

Kenneth walker: channeling Eddington etc?

p104 and my comments https://books.google.co.il/books/about/Meaning_and_Purpose.html?id=dtNZAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

Meaning and Purpose, written by Kenneth Walker, was originally published in September 1944, and then again by Pelican books in 1950

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altruism: maybe that too exists, at higher-level, as part of the MR etc.

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Similarly for purpose'

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Is free will a topic for physics?

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And if free will exists, it must be in some transcenedent realm, and i is not unresonable then to propise that MR too exists., associated to that realm

Biblical scenario

That these beings acquire MR is symbolized by their taking into their bodies (via eating) a substance which transforms them.

This transition to transcendent-status of knowing the difference between good and evil - ie acquiring MR - is catalyzed via eating the fruit of a special tree planted in a special magical garden....

Re all the topics above: See also brief discussion here.

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