Onyx Shoham

Homo liber nulla de re minus quam de morte cogitat; et ejus sapientia non mortis sed vitae meditatio est. SPINOZA'S Ethics, Pt IV, Prop. 67
 
(There is nothing over which a free man ponders less than death; his wisdom is, to meditate not on death but on life.)
 
Reductionism and its corollary, Determinism are deeply enrooted in the fabric of the modern mainstream philosophy. There are leftovers of the Cartesian mind-body dichotomy. Instead to reject this notion altogether Reductionists simply choose the other, bodily side of this loaded coin. Now they reached a blind alley in their attempts to explain life in terms of lifelessness. As Hans Jonas observed:
 
“Vitalistic monism is replaced by mechanistic monism, in whose rules of evidence the standard of life is exchanged for that of death.” (The Phenomenon of Life, pg 11).
 
Since Mind and Free Will are biological phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of non-life, Reductionists are necessary Determinists. Hard Determinists reject the notion of Free Will (and therefore Mind) completely; soft Determinists and Compatibalists are still trying to find explanation of Free Will in the indeterminate realm of Quantum mechanics, in stochastic rules of Chaos theory or in the mystical realm of Tao. I maintain that Free Will is a manifestation on the conceptual level of the very essential property of life itself which is biological self causation.
 
“Freedom must denote an objectively discernible mode of being, i.e., a manner of executing existence, distinctive of the organic per se” (Ibid pg 3).
 
Law of Causality is law of Identity applied to action (Ayn Rand). Since biological action is self-generated goal orientated action (SIGA) , such an action cannot be predetermined by any antecedent cause. On the contrary, any antecedent or proximate action could be only detrimental to the healthy living process.
As Rosen put it:
“it is perfectly respectable to talk about a category of final causation and to a component as the effect of its final cause…In this sense, then, a component is entailed by its function… a material system is an organism if and only if , it is closed to efficient causation.” (Life Itself, pg 135).
 
In other words the process of biological causation is a process in which a final cause (a goal), becomes its efficient cause.  Traditionally, the notion of the final cause associated with Aristotle’s primary mover, some divine, supernatural source.  However, this is not a case of mysticism, far from it.
Life emerged as result of self-organization of abiotic elements.
 
  Camazine et al. (2001: 8) define self-organization:
 
‘‘as a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower level components of the system.
The system has properties that are emergent, if they are not intrinsically found within any of the parts, and exist only at a higher level of description....’’
 
From this definition follows that 1. A process of self-organization doesn't have an antecedent cause. 2. Emergent properties of such a system are different from the properties of its components and therefore cannot be explained by means of reductionism. In other words properties of such a system are not defined by antecedent cause. Life is self-organizing, self-regulated material structure which is able to produce self-generated goal orientated action when the goal is preservation and betterment of itself. This new emergent identity which applied to biotic action defines new type of causation-self causation.
 
Harry Binswanger observed “All levels of living action, from a cell’s protein-synthesis to a scientist’s investigations, are goal-directed. In vegetative action, past instances of the “final cause” act as “efficient cause.”(1992).
 
This is the mechanism of self-causation. Now is clear why any action imposed on the organism and driven by antecedent cause could be only detrimental-it inevitable would interfere with self-generated action of the organism. Each and every organism is its own primary mover. In the low organisms the degree of freedom of action is limited by their genetic set up. However even low organisms like fungi for example able to overcome this genetic determinism.
 
“During a critical period, variability is generated by the fact that, a system becomes conditioned by all the factors influencing the spontaneous emergence of symmetry-breaking event.
In such a context variability does not reflect an environmental perturbation in expression of a pre-existing (genetic) program of development…It is expression of a process of individuation.” (Trewavas, 1999)
 
SIGA is limited by organism’s perceptual ability and capacity to process the sensory input. The process of evolution is a process of development of these qualities, since organism’s survival depends on them. More freedom of action means better chances of survival. The end product of such a process is Free Will and self-awareness, that is-human mind. Free Will therefore is an expression of self-causation on the level of self-awareness
The human abilities to choose goals consciously and to act rationally in order to achieve them turn biology to ethics .But the origin of these abilities lie in the very fundamental property of any living being. This property is self-generated goal orientated action driven by self causation. Any attempt to reduce this property to the set of biochemical reactions or to undetermined behavior of subatomic particles is doomed to fail. Ayn Rand profoundly summarized the meaning of life in “We, The Living”. “I know what I want, and to know HOW TO WANT-isn’t it life itself?”

From Counting Crows to Talking Crows – an interesting advance in their "Bostonian" Crow Epistemology   Researchers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found over 200 dead crows near greater Boston recently, and there was concern that they may have died from avian flu.  A bird pathologist examined the remains of all the crows, and, to everyone's relief, confirmed the problem was definitely not avian flu.   The cause of death appeared to be vehicular impacts.   However, during the detailed analysis it was noted that varying colors of paints appeared on the bird's beaks and claws.  By analyzing these paint residues it was determined that 98% of the crows had been killed by impact with trucks, while only 2% were killed by an impact with a car.   MTA then hired an ornithological behaviorist to determine if there was a cause for the disproportionate percentages of truck kills versus car kills.   The ornithological behaviorist very quickly concluded the cause:  When crows eat road kill, they always have a lookout crow in a nearby tree to warn of impending danger.    They discovered that while all the lookout crows could shout "Cah", not a single one could shout "Truck."

Yeah, it is crap. Godel has non of the implications most people assign to him. Read Boolos' proof (which can be found in a book of mixed quality called "Philosophy of Mathematics: An Introduction to a World of Proofs and Pictures" by Brown---its Platonic bent is a little annoying at times esp. since it gives far to little say to naturalists and logicists) of Incompleteness and then read Hintikka's response to it. Hintikka achieves the benefits of constructivism without the unnecessary and unwarranted destruction of the mathematical edifice intuitionists would cause.

The guy who wrote Godel, Escher, Bach is one of those humanist bastards who read far too much into Godel.

No, you don't hold to determinism you hold to souls and supernature because that is the only way you know how to reject determinism. You have picked one side of the false dilemma. There is another way to reject determinism. There is nothing necessary about your position.