From: Mark Phillips (clay8@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 09 1999 - 15:26:39 MDT
Not that I'm a (meta)mathemetics whiz or anything (although I have read not
only Godel, but also Ernst Nagel, Paul Benaserraf, and, most importantly,
John R. Lucas on "Godelian Incompleteness") but, J.R. Lucas to the contrary
not withstanding, Godelian Incompleteness with respect to (any) formal
systems (at least those robust enough to compute/instantiate elementary
arithmetic), including physical instantiations of such formal systems (e.g.,
discrete state, Turing machines) simply does *not* imply (much less entail)
"free will." Simply because such a Godelian system (including, e.g., human
beings) cannot (always) know what it will do/decide next, this does not
inherently imply (much less entail) that said system is not utterly
Laplacianly (or quasi-Laplacianly) determined down to the micro-level, and
that the future behavior/decisions are not thereby utterly inevitable and
incapable-of-being-otherwise. Godelian considerations are more of a
(meta)epistemic element, rather than an ontological one. A system or entity
can be utterly Godelianly epistemicly indeterminate, and still might be
*physically* determinate down to a micro-level. Quantum-level
uncertainty/randomness does nothing for the cause of free-will, either,
without some theory linking it (say) to some sort of *agent-causation*
(championed in this century in turn, by Rod Chisholm, Carl Ginet, Richard
Taylor, and Peter Van Inwagan). On almost any current theory of quantum
physics (Bohm/Hiley hidden variable/pilot wave [now somewhat passe],
Everett/Tipler/Deutsch/McCall Multiverse Ensemble, etc.) free-will is not
especially well-served. True, we no longer have Newtonian/classic-Laplacian
determinism (replaced by Prigoginian dissipative emergence), but we don't
have sufficient bridge-theory(s)---*yet*---to save free-will from
quantum-randomness. And *randomness* is just as bad as strict
determinism---you sure as hell don't get (what we [used to?] think of as)
"free-will" (which is actually agent-determination or agent-causation) out
of utter--"mindless"--randomness.
What is needed is a robust theory of agent-causation which takes into
account--indeed, incorporates--state-of-the-art quantum-cosmology (here
broadly conceived to include Prigogine's stuff). No philosopher/scientist
has yet done this (at least nowhere near completely and thorough-goingly),
but some interesting groundwork has been laid by the philosophers Peter Van
Inwagan and Storrs McCall (among a few others). I don't have specific
citations handy, but I'll look 'em up and get 'em to whoever wants 'em. (I
should note, however, that when I say groundwork, I mean, to extend the
metaphor, only [so far] scratching the service!)
I'm all for freewill, but Godelian Incompleteness in and of itself doesn't
get it for you.
Ciao!
P.S. Philosopher Edward Pols, of Bowdoin College in Maine, has also done
some good stuff on the metaphysics of agency, extending the work of
Whitehead, Polanyi, and others. See, e.g., his *Meditation on a Prisoner:
Toward Understanding Action and Mind* (Carbondale, Il: S. Il. U. Pr., 1976),
and his later stuff. He spins some interesting metaphysics--indeed, quite
sound in my judgment--but fails to link it to contemporary physical
concepts. Still worth reading, though.
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