2024-02-06
Free will is necessary only for the pursuit of ethical behaviour. If all courses of behaviour were equally ethical, and equivalent in that manner, then there would, in the course of the pursuit of good, be no reason for the pursuit of one over the other. The decision becomes arbitrary.
So we say that in a course of behaviour there is an ethical and unethical. The pursuit of the ethical, of the good, is what ought be; the pursuit of the unethical, of the evil, ought not be. I suppose if the man were inherently good, he would follow the good, and in that way be without free will, in the sense that he cannot do otherwise.
Of course, the concept of free will remains fairly undefined, and the best case is to say, _it means what you know it to mean_, in the sense that Quality remains undefined.
If good is normative, then it occupies a different realm to that of the real world. Hume's law. One might think of it as an overlay.
In the same way, emergent properties are an overlay to reality. There is no forest, only trees. The normative and the emergent feel categorically different.
On the lowest level is the strictly material. These are those matters which participate in reality. Above it (no connotation of hierarchy) are those emergent things. The normative may be emergent?
What is the emergent? Is it the nature or existence of thing above and beyond its parts? Or is it the appearance of a behaviour which is not deduced from the simples? For instance, that water expands upon freezing, due to the arrangement it assumes? Regardless, I presume that the non-emergent is the state posited by mereological nihilism.
Above this are emergent properties. I've heard of the inanimate, and the animate, the human, and the (often only implied) supernatural. Schumacher. I don't really believe this hierarchy, nice as it is. It feels... made up. Even the Metaphysics of Quality seemed to buy into it. An idea of the times. I suppose perhaps it seems to divide the one from the other, and the categories feel arbitrary.
As well to ask is, where to those principles which govern the world come from? For instance, say the universe is subjugate to mathematics, as it often appears to be. To some kind of pure order. What is this in relation to reality? Does it come before (as an axiom of reality)? Does it come after (as an emergent aspect of reality)? Or is it superimposed onto reality (transcendental of reality)? And what is the concrete difference between the latter two of these?
In terms of before and above, we think dimensionally. Transcendence is associated with aboveness, yet is held in an abstract way that allows it to almost take the aspect of a fourth dimension. Is there then a form of overtranscendence, a transcendence of transcendence, a fifth dimension of sorts?
I suppose all of the ideas feel coherent. But the matter of philosophy is the separate of minor concerns. Along each step of the way, there is dissension. Not a single thing can be posited with certainty.
Not even axioms can be held to. What is to be done about first principles? Where do they come? How can we know whether first principles really come first or whether they are not emergent, and conditioned based on experience? Indeed, given that we know our eyes and ears are faulty, it could well be that we have misapprehended the first principles.
And so I suppose that gets onto Pure Reason. I won't pretend to have read Kant's Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, but this likely is significant here. To my knowledge what Kant says (again, haven't read) is that there are a priori constructs (Vorstellungen, representations) which are naturally present in the mind and that the sensory data is processed in accordance with this. This doesn't exactly help, as it just means that as humans we are set out in a certain way to process the information in said certain way, and so have a given interpretation which does not necessarily correspond to reality.
It's late, and I've run out of time for the day. I'll stop here. Not a thousand words, but I guess I can make up for it with a part two...?