Leaderboard

A worthwhile set of schematics to think with, I’d say, SL, at least to get started. I notice that internally, there are random processes that affect a human life in a deterministic way, such as the appearance of a cell mutation (truly random at first cell alteration) we call cancer. It could deterministically become, say, non-Hodgkins lymphoma. In the particular case of person having it, though in advance of therapies, we might say it’s a matter of chance whether the therapy will be effective in this case; that is just our ignorance, and when the particular outcome eventuates—say death from the cancer—we sensibly say that this outcome was a matter of objective, determined fact from the time the therapy had begun. With the same stage of cancer and the same age of life when the therapy would begin, different patients would make different yes-no choices over whether to undertake the therapy. Each patient could weigh all sorts of common and uncommon factors in coming to a decision. It might become clear enough to a patient which way she should go, or she might end very unsure and decide to let a coin-flip decide which way. But I’d say each person of mature sound mind freely comes to their decision. One thing that seems key in my current thinking about this is that alternatives as alternatives on what to do are not something merely out in the world without their being an agent confronting the world. The thinking agent is able to generate alternatives, and though they are drafted over what all is in the world, the more powerful at generation, the more free is the agent in the sense of having organized outputs more distant from, more deliberately organized than, immediate-emergency fight or flight response (I’ll pose the latter for William O’s deterministic case). And so long as the thinking agent’s conscious, purposive control system has been in the overall control, greater freedom seems also to go with greater distance from random acts, or anyway acts without large purpose, such as acts of someone who has lost their mind (which I’ll pose for William O’s randomness case).