Are randomness and free-will compatible concepts?

[Deveno]

Some have mentioned in this thread that it is rediculuous to reject the notion of free will will, because that entails denying the self, or sense of "I".

I agree that rejecting free will does indeed have this consequence. Where I diverge with them, is in the rediculousness of such a notion. Our brains are good at symbolic manipulation, abstraction is a basic form of our thought processes. When we think about the world, and the things in it, we do not do so entirely faithfully, but use (with more or fewer degrees of awareness) representations of the world adequate for evaluation. We lose the fine detail, in order to see larger aggregates of ideas. It's really kind of an awesome thing that we can function so fluidly this way.

But one thing we over-look, is that "I" is just a central symbol our brains create to refer to ourselves. And that, being a symbol, leaves out a great deal of imformation. This symbol is no more who we are, than saying "my friend John is John." I may indeed have a friend named John, but he is surely more than his name. He is also surely more than everything I have ever thought about him. The actual details of his physical existence are so many, I doubt there is room in my consciousness to hold them all.

Such is the bane of self-awareness. Eventually, we realize that the very reasoning process that allows us to have these conversations, also bars us from discovering what is ultimately true. Naming apples, blinds us to the uniqueness of every individual apple, in an essential way, the idea of an apple takes us even further from the truth. What is, isn't "I", what "I" is, doesn't actually exist. The world of words and ideas, is in many ways a profound and beautiful one, but its structures and concepts are those are our own devising, not what may (if you believe in an independent reality) be there without us.

 

[apeiron]

While the unnamed way is the continuous ebb and flow of all that is and its propensity to strike a balance of same.

It is this idea of ebb and flow where I think the two approaches diverge.

If reality arises as the crisp division of some raw, vague, unformed potential - a symmetry breaking phase transition - then either a) there is ebb and flow. What is divided is just as easily reunited. Or b) there is only flow. Once a breaking has started, it must flow all the way down a gradient until some new different, and permanently broken, equilibrium is arrived at.

Tao is based on a.

Anaximander's apeiron is more b. What is produced can subside again. But overall, the story is of a succession of phase transitions which gradually create the complex materials of the world.

I would describe my own position as strong b. And this would be based on modern cosmology and thermodynamics. For example, the ancients never imagined a dynamic universe that cools~expands towards the nullity of a heat death, the ultimate phase transition. Taking the potential for anything and transforming it into the most immense nothing possible.

So there are both similarities and essential differences of view here. And the ancient traditions were only a metaphysical start.

 

[apeiron]

I agree that rejecting free will does indeed have this consequence. Where I diverge with them, is in the rediculousness of such a notion.

This is certainly the correct view. The idea of a "chosing self in charge" is a social construction, a convenient fiction created with language.

 

[baywax]

This is certainly the correct view. The idea of a "chosing self in charge" is a social construction, a convenient fiction created with language.

I'm not sure how the Greeks see it but the taoist and asian take on "self in charge" is more like "to serve is to rule" and "to rule is to serve". Interesting that this is a dichotomy yet apparently a hybrid like "simplexity and complicity" of ideas and function.

Another thing is that if one does act or chose to act in a stubborn or "brittle" way, eventually nature will "crumble" you. And, yet again, there is the unspoken rule that the way or nature has prompted your stubborn or "take charge" actions because they not only provide a compliment to the humble and persevering approach of nature but perhaps also somehow provide other means that continue and support the duration and progress of all things.

When you say the tao suggests there is a beginning that is simple and whole which then splits into the myriad of all things, then returns to the whole... I would beg to differ. The multitude is the compliment to the "uncarved block". This is can be seen as being depicted by the yin and yang symbol where there is always a compliment and there can be neither without the compliment of the other. Thus the two compliments are the whole. However, we must add a third element which is the observer taking note of the whole... slightly perplexing.