According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[BSilvEsq]

As to randomness it is science not just engineering. QM is based on the fact at the quantum scale we can only predict statically. A wave function is a probability distribution.

Yeah, predicting quantum raindrops would be a trick. Fortunately for the prediction business, raindrops are massive objects that largely adhere to Newtonian mechanics.

Here is my question: Does Newtonian mechanics dictate what I will eat for dinner tonight, what time I will go to sleep, when I will awaken, what I will do tomorrow, what road I will travel, when I will die?

I believe Newtonian mechanics does dictate all of the above at its core. But, that would mean that my future is inexorably fixed -- as in fatalism, predetermined, etc. To my small mind, that also would mean that I lack Free Will to determine what to eat this evening. [And, before the detractors chime in, there is no modal fallacy in play if the presumption of Newtonian mechanics is that the future events are inexorably fixed by antecedent events].

If the answer is no, I can see how I might have Free Will. If the answer is no, that also leads to a truly chaotic state of affairs -- and not simply as a matter of prediction, but also as a matter of actuality. That, however, begs the question of how Free Will can exist in an universe in which human thought is indeterministic, random, and chaotic.

It seems to me that true Free Will (i.e., the Libertarian variation, and not the version that simply states that any unpredictable future decision is free) cannot exits unless we view humans as, somehow, divorced from nature and imbued with superhuman abilities. It is very spiritual and almost religious -- with a scientific fig leaf.

Science is descriptive not prescriptive.

Quantum, Newtonian, or relativistic mechanics do not dictate behavior. They define a model that in an experiment that predicts results.

You have to be careful to avoid conflating a deterministic math function in Newtonian mechanics such as speed = distance/time with philosophical Determinism applied to the universe.

I understand and agree that "science is descriptive and not prescriptive." That is a very short and concise way to say it. That also is what I mean when I say that science is a paradigm.

As I said in another post, I misspoke when I asked whether Newtonian mechanics dictates certain action.

I understand that a description of something, in and of itself, does not dictate anything. Thus, when one uses the term Authoritarianism to describe the form of government in a country, it would be wrong to ask if authoritarianism dictates the behavior of the citizens.

It would, however, be appropriate ask if the person whose style of ruling is described as authoritarianism dictates the behavior of the citizens.

Thus, and as I stated in my other post, I should have asked whether the behavior of the universe that is sought to be described by Newtonian mechanics dictates certain action.

I also understand that Newtonian mechanics, which I also understand to be described as Newtonian Determinism, does not necessarily equate to the philosophical notion of Determinism (or Causal Determinism), which posits that all action in the universe is caused by antecedent action -- so much so that it would be appropriate to say that the paradigm of determinism posits that all activity is "predetermined: by antecedent activity.

As explained by Karl Popper:

“The metaphysical doctrine of determinism simply asserts that all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined. It does not assert that they are known to anybody, or predictable by scientific means. But it asserts that the future is as little changeable as is the past. Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism.”

So, to rephrase my post to which you have replied (and for which I thank you for your considered response:

Here is my question: Does the activity of the universe that is sought to be described by Newtonian mechanics dictate what I will eat for dinner tonight, what time I will go to sleep, when I will awaken, what I will do tomorrow, what road I will travel, when I will die?

As best I understand it, there are some physicists who say that Newtonian mechanics does describe an activity of the universe that dictates all of the above. If that extreme interpretation of Newton's description of the operation of the universe is accurate, that would mean that my future is inexorably fixed -- as in fatalism, predetermined, etc. To my small mind, that also would mean that I lack Free Will to determine what to eat this evening. [And, before the detractors chime in, there is no modal fallacy in play if the presumption of Newtonian mechanics is that future events are inexorably fixed by antecedent events].

If the answer is no, I can see how I might have Free Will. If the answer is no, that also leads to a truly chaotic state of affairs -- and not simply as a matter of prediction, but also as a matter of actuality. That, however, begs the question of how Free Will can exist in an universe in which human thought is indeterministic, random, and chaotic.

It seems to me that true Free Will (i.e., the Libertarian variation, and not the version that simply states that any unpredictable future decision is free) cannot exits unless we view humans as, somehow, divorced from nature and imbued with superhuman abilities. It is very spiritual and almost religious -- with a scientific fig leaf.

 

[BSilvEsq]

My philosophical view i if determinism means all things down to the atoms and states in our brains are
predetermined causal chains then there is no free will. All choices by us humans are predetermined.

That is a concise statement of what I have been saying in far more words, and what I understand Popper, James, and others to be saying about the philosophical paradigm of Determinism.

Of course, we lack sufficient understanding of our brains to know if our brains actually operate that way -- but they could.

 

[Jarhyn]

It would, however, be appropriate ask if the person whose style of ruling is described as authoritarianism dictates the behavior of the citizens

Only the ones who choose to "let their past define them" rather than in the present taking umbridge of what they find of their own state and doing those things necessary to transform that state.

What you seem to miss is that the laws of physics are such that they can themselves be found expressing pretty much any other thing that might be thought of as a law.

When the one dictate that the dictator has is "be as you are and act as you will with whatever concept of freedom allows you to do so", that's hardly a dictate, is it? I fact it seems to me to be quite the inverse, a direct exposure of the fact that you have freedoms.

Yesterday only matters to the extent of things that remain here, now, today.

 

[Elixir]

My philosophical view i if determinism means all things down to the atoms and states in our brains are
predetermined causal chains then there is no free will. All choices by us humans are predetermined.

I have a problem with that.
What constitutes a pre-determination, and who or what is doing the determining? Is there some entity somewhere sitting around saying “Elixir is going to step on a horse turd in 20 minutes, for it hath been determined”? If no entity has made such a determination, then WTF IS a determination?
If “pre determination” means that no matter how much free will you have, no matter how much free will you exercise, there will only be one future, then it matters not in the least whether free will is an illusion or a “reality”; FAPP the fact that free will is an experience, is sufficient to validate its existence.

 

[pood]

Of course there is only one future (putting aside, as mentioned earlier, stuff like the quantum multiverse, to which we have no access anyway).

And?

How does that invalidate free will?

 

[Elixir]

Of course there is only one future (putting aside, as mentioned earlier, stuff like the quantum multiverse, to which we have no access anyway).

And?

How does that invalidate free will?

It doesn’t. It obviates the entire question; free will and lack of free will both result in the same - the ONLY - outcome.
So go ahead and subscribe to one or the other, if only one option suits your fancy. Your choice, your free will. Unless it isn’t.
The multiverse would be (IMHO) a desperate attempt to create a surmise wherein free will alters the otherwise fact that free will can exist all you like, and still have zero effect upon the future.

 

[pood]

Of course there is only one future (putting aside, as mentioned earlier, stuff like the quantum multiverse, to which we have no access anyway).

And?

How does that invalidate free will?

It doesn’t. It obviates the entire question; free will and lack of free will both result in the same - the ONLY - outcome.

Exactly!

So wtf are we talking about?

 

[Elixir]

So wtf are we talking about?

The price of will!

Is will free, or do we have to pay?
If we have to pay, what is the cost?
Where do the proceeds go?
If it’s free, is there an unlimited supply?
Can people simply take more than their share, or are there repercussions for that?

So many questions, and inquiring minds want to know!

 

[BSilvEsq]

My philosophical view i if determinism means all things down to the atoms and states in our brains are
predetermined causal chains then there is no free will. All choices by us humans are predetermined.

I have a problem with that.
What constitutes a pre-determination, and who or what is doing the determining? Is there some entity somewhere sitting around saying “Elixir is going to step on a horse turd in 20 minutes, for it hath been determined”? If no entity has made such a determination, then WTF IS a determination?
If “pre determination” means that no matter how much free will you have, no matter how much free will you exercise, there will only be one future, then it matters not in the least whether free will is an illusion or a “reality”; FAPP the fact that free will is an experience, is sufficient to validate its existence.

I understand your difficulty with the word "determine" in the context of activity that results from nature and not any deliberative mental activity. That may be because the word "determine" has multiple meanings, and none perfectly fit the atomistic and natural concept being discussed. Synonyms for "determine" include "control" and "regulate." Not sure if they help you get over the "entity" issue identified in your post. Alternatively, we might use the term "destined," but that describes the result and not the process.

Rather than "Determinism," I like to prefer to call the paradigm "Causal Determinism" -- meaning the determining factor is simply antecedent causes, and not anyone or anything that deliberately, consciously, or purposefully decides what those causes are or shall be. But, I suppose that still leaves you thinking it needs to be about some entity. What about "Causal Regulation" or "Causal Controllism"?

Plainly, we do not think of a rock as having Free Will -- at least most if us do not do so. A rock will sit still unless and until something acts upon it and causes it to move. That something may be as simple as gravitational force (not to suggest that gravity is a simple concept), gravitational force combined with wind or rain, a bolt of lightning striking the rock, a tree falling on the rock, a horse kicking the rock, or a person picking up the rock, among other things. An earthquake is another example of a causal force of the rock's movement. In none of those circumstances do we consider the rock to have made any decision to move.

The same is true of a toy creature, which is constructed well enough for it to have very flexible movement. That movement will occur only through outside forces, because the toy is an inanimate object that we do not consider to have Free Will.

By contrast, most humans consider themselves to have Free Will in the sense that they believe that their getting up out of bed in the morning is personal and deliberative decision unconstrained by natural forces of which they do not know (leaving aside the fact that they may need to get up to go to work in order to earn funds to pay for food to survive). An earthquake could push a person out of bed, but that is not the sort of thing we are talking about.

For the most part, humans feel as if they are making decisions throughout their lives. The fact of that feeling, however, does not make it so. I can have a very vivid dream in which I feel as though I am flying. All the while, however, I am tucked snuggly in my bed, and I am not moving at all. The feeling of flight is not true flight. Or, think of the movie the Matirx. In the Matrix, people have seemingly rich lives in which they do all sorts of things and even make all sorts of decisions. In reality, however, they are prisoners in a pod, being fed a dream state that has the feel of reality.

In the Matrix, Elixer stepping on a horse turd is determined by some entity.

If Elixer's brain is a part of the natural world, and Elixer is a very well constructed toy (and by constructed, I simply mean that his form has come together through acts of nature that are not, in any way, deliberative or conscious -- like the wind and ocean shaping the beach -- then Elixer stepping on a horse turn would not be the result of the exercise of any Free Will, but simply the result of antecedent activity that regulates or controls Elixer's movement.

As I understand Steve's comment, he is saying that Elixer's stepping on a horse turd would be regulated or controlled entirely by antecedent extrinsic forces and not by any deliberative decision of Elixer if the atoms that comprise Elixer's brain are regulated and controlled in the same way that a rock or well constructed toy are regulated and controlled. Moreover, if that regulation or control is the cause of all activity in the universe, such that every instance of activity is the inexorable result of antecedent activity, it is fair to say that all activity (following some initial cause) is pre-determined or, without using a word that has the baggage of a possible entity, pre-destined, or simply unavoidable in advance of occurring. That is what is meant by the word "Determinism" as used in philosophy. As Karl Popper explained:

“The metaphysical doctrine of determinism simply asserts that all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined. It does not assert that they are known to anybody, or predictable by scientific means. But it asserts that the future is as little changeable as is the past. Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism.”

Lastly, turning to the point that

If “pre determination” means that no matter how much free will you have, no matter how much free will you exercise, there will only be one future, then it matters not in the least whether free will is an illusion or a “reality”; FAPP the fact that free will is an experience, is sufficient to validate its existence.

As a practical matter, I agree with that statement. But, that is no reason to cut off philosophical inquiry into the subject. Or, maybe it is.

 

[Elixir]

the word "determine" has multiple meanings, and none perfectly fit the atomistic and natural concept being discussed.

Right.

Rather than "Determinism," I like to prefer to call the paradigm "Causal Determinism" -- meaning the determining factor is simply antecedent causes

…and that includes the antecedent experiences and biochemical responses of the free willer dictating what they “freely” will.
I don’t see how prefixing determinism with “causal” provides meaningful differentiation, unless there are examples of acausal determinism to offer. Maybe a different prefix?

For the most part, humans feel as if they are making decisions throughout their lives. The fact of that feeling, however, does not make it so.

The fact of that feeling obviates any and all need for it to actually be so, AFAICT.

@pood asks “WTF are we talking about” and I believe answering THAT question supplants all the hifalutin’ fillossifee questions that seem to arise.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

difficulty with the word "determine" in the context of activity that results from nature and not any deliberative mental activity.

I am going to put forth a different, maybe even more basic confounding factor.

Use of the term determine in any of its forms suggests that something needed to be, needs to be, or will need to be determined. However, in static eternalism, the term universe refers to a context in which nothing ever needs to be determined. Of course, the supposed stasis is incompatible with change and, hence, does not accommodate the actuality of what is perceived as change (other than as illusion).

In order to accommodate observed change as actual (and not always illusory), a non-static eternalism could be in complete agreement with static eternalism with regards to all occurrences and their where-when coordinates while insisting that change and movement are actual. In both cases, nothing needs to be determined, because nothing is ever not-determined or indeterminate.

Then there is the matter of "free will" in each of these cases. I believe that pood somewhere in this discussion said something along the lines of the descriptor free is appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to so act. Now, in both the static and non-static versions of eternalism, everything everywhere is always determined without there being any control over everything everywhere. This means that the descriptor free is also appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without being controlled to act so.

I expect that this experience of freedom-from is common to all determinism proponents whether they are incompatibilists or compatibilists. As a consequence, if an incompatibilist hears a compatibilist identify free with the free-from meaning which in fact registers with the incompatiblist's own experience, but the incompatibilist still insists on the incompatibility between the eternally determinate universe and the characterization of persons acting freely, then the entire matter clearly comes down to something about how the term free is understood apart from the free-from meaning which both perspectives share.

Essentially, the incompatibilists think that the acknowledged (and presumably agreed to) free-from condition is not the complete or sufficient description of what the incompatibilists have in mind about free when objecting to compatibilism. This is to say that the issue in this discussion is not determinism, causal determinism, pre-determinism, fatalism, etc., etc. It seems that proper focus would be on the characteristics of - on what is meant by - free beyond the common ground of free-from.

 

[BSilvEsq]

Rather than "Determinism," I like to prefer to call the paradigm "Causal Determinism" -- meaning the determining factor is simply antecedent causes

…and that includes the antecedent experiences and biochemical responses of the free willer dictating what they “freely” will.
I don’t see how prefixing determinism with “causal” provides meaningful differentiation, unless there are examples of acausal determinism to offer. Maybe a different prefix?

The following pertains solely to your sentences quoted above and not the balance of your post, which makes total sense to me.

In my post, I had gone on to ask you the following:

What about "Causal Regulation" or "Causal Controllism"?

Leaving aside any issue you have with the concept, itself, do those terms help eliminate the issue of who or what caused the effect?

 

[steve_bank]

Philosophy, not just a job an adventure.

Things I am sure of.

Without food and water I die.
If I don't pay my rent I get evicted.
If I don't pay the electric bill it gets shut off.

If it is predetermined I lose a job and get thrown out on the streetit is meaningless. The only thing I can do is deal with reality as it is perceived. Make decisions.

Free will has to be qualified.

Post WWII during the Nuremberg trails some young Nazis who were indoctrinated from birth were given a pass on the grounds they lacked the ability and knowledge to make a free choice.

Does free will depend on education? Is it something you learn?

If you grow up today in the hyper mass marketing influences on video are you capable of making free choices?

Does free will require awareness?

 

[BSilvEsq]

Things I am sure of.

Without food and water I die.
If I don't pay my rent I get evicted.
If I don't pay the electric bill it gets shut off.

I have a high degree of confidence that the things of which you are sure (which I take to be synonymous with certain) are probable to occur.

Leaving aside the consequences of the possibility of destiny and fate (which are possible and beyond the ability of humans to know one way or the other), I do not view anything to be certain, even though I do assign a sufficiently high degree of probability of the things you identify (and many other things) to live my life on the assumption that those things are true (or sufficiently true, in any event).

I do not engage in philosophy or thought experiments to teach me practical things or even moral things. I learn them from other sources -- likely the same types of sources from you have learned that sort of thing (e.g. school, parents, friends, clergy, the news, text books, everyday experience, among other sources). Rather, I engage in philosophy to consider the possibilities of the unknown and unknowable -- call it a spiritual quest if you wish.

Since we do not know what we cannot know, I understand how some very pragmatic folks may find that endeavor to be a waste of time. For my part, I find great peace and serenity in pondering the unknown and unknowable, which makes the endeavor worthwhile. I also ascribe to the approach of Bertrand Russell that "time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

 

[BSilvEsq]

the descriptor free is appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to so act.

I don't believe you are suggesting this, but to be clear, does that mean that a person who is hypnotized is acting of their own free will when they do what they have been directed to do, so long as they do not understand themselves to be operating under the compulsion of a post hypnotic suggestion and believe they are acting freely?

Same question about a person who has a mental defect that creates a compulsion to act in a given manner without any self-awareness that they are compelled to do the act they feels as if they are doing freely?

Now, I know this is an extreme hypothetical, but would humans have Free Will if everything they do is, in fact, compelled by forces extrinsic to the human actors, but which forces are unknown to the actors who feel and/or believe they are acting of their own Free Will?

Unlike a person who has a sense of being compelled or coerced to act under duress (such as, for example, when ordered to do something at gun point), a person in the hypothetical situations posited above acts without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to act, but they are, in fact, acting under such a compulsion that is unknown to them and even unfelt by them. How does that square with the statement "that the descriptor free is appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to so act"?

This is a genuine question, and not an argument. I am trying to understand the ramifications of the statement that "the descriptor free is appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to so act."

 

[DBT]

So, in your view, where does that leave the concept of free will?

I already discussed this: it leaves us with exactly the ability to describe what actually happened, particularly after the facts, from any one of an infinite number of reference frames.

The issue comes in understanding that when two systems come to different conclusions on the truth of something, one or both is wrong about their observations.

It has been discussed to the point of ad nauseum. But none of it has gone beyond semantics, how various sides define free will, compatibilists have a version, Libertarians their version, common usage of the term, etc.

None of it resolves the issue.

When what actually happened was someone deciding to not think deeply about their actions despite being asked to repeatedly; that leaves them responsible for being an idiot and not listening to others.

That demonstrates the very ignorance you refer to. You have yet to grasp the implications of determinism as you, yourself define it to be, for example.

Your bitchy attitude does you no service.

That wrongness can be ascribed directly to the thing reaching the conclusion, without need to dig further into why they are wrong in that moment.

There are plenty of moments where "he did it because noise overcame signal". It's not very satisfying, but that's the point. It's the one time "the big bang did it" actually pans out.

Meaningless. For instance, what does ''noise overcoming signal'' even mean in relation to compatibilism?

You use a lot of words and irrelevant terms that do nothing to explain how free will is meant to work, not in relation to determinism, nor random events or a probabilistic world.

It's just more noise.

This actually gets us to the point where we are observing it in the Newtonian scale.

Also, I'll note with regards to the Newtonian scale events and the split between quantum group-concepts giving way to more classical physics, it just means we have to think of the particle not as a fixed group with static so gilar structure, but as a permutation group.

To understand this next part requires some group theory reading;

Imagine for a moment that if, instead of just one way to represent a "group", there were as many ways as the shape has permutation groups; that the thing really important to how it behaves are not where the points or necessarily even how many of them, but that their connection scheme has some abstract property, and it is this shared abstract property across the permutations that actually generated the quality we are looking for.

In this way, it wouldn't matter which of the "micro-states" lead to the "macro-state", it is the quasi- or meta-particle properties that matter.

So humans, instead of focusing on all this shifting junk of QM, end up seeing the invariants of the more abstract properties between them.

These in turn are what we see on the scale of Newtonian physics.

This means that the mechanics of freedom and wills from compatibilist leaves us with the ability to debug, blame, respond, and be responded to in ways that allows us to meaningfully apply controls to who we are and manage outcomes so that our wills remain more free with respect to accomplishing our goals.

It tells us a tiny little fact about reality that lets us more adequately get what we want and survive.

It also lets us know that things like "the empty self" are really a lie on behalf of empowering others and convincing us atrophy some part of our brain's ability to do something important for our survival.

Instead of trying to kill some important-seeming part of ourselves, we should be focusing on understanding the frames of reference that the heuristic of self produces, and the nature of the interaction of those things in REAL terms so that more of the inevitable action of the human race becomes compatible, and thus achievable by its members rather than rotting our minds with the idea "it couldn't have turned out differently", when the reality is merely that it "wouldn't"; it turns out differently every day, and where it doesn't, it IS the fault of stuff there, from the perspective of the goal.

That is a fine example of noise.

Noise with little to no relationship to what free will may be defined, or how it may work.

For instance, what does ''we have to think of the particle not as a fixed group with static so gilar structure, but as a permutation group'' even mean in relation to the notion of free will? Or the brain as a decision maker. Or what happens when the brain as the sole means of generating consciousness and mind starts to break down.

 

[steve_bank]

Pragmatic is my middle name.

Regardless of convoluted long running philosophical debates over thousands of years we are faced with a reality as it is not what we want or imagine it to be.

We have to make decisions. What to do fora living, grocery shopping, who to vote for.

Determinism is a brief as is a religious belief.

Pragmatically we have free will, our choices are not forcibly coerced. At least in western liberal democracies.

Pragmatically endless debate for pleasure over free will and determinism on the net 24/7 is a modern luxury.

 

[bilby]

Of course there is only one future (putting aside, as mentioned earlier, stuff like the quantum multiverse, to which we have no access anyway).

And?

How does that invalidate free will?

It really doesn't.

Almost everyone agrees that there is only one past. But very few people are of the opinion that this implies that our freedom didn't and couldn't exist in the past.

I chose to have coffee rather than tea yesterday. That's an immutable and unchangeable fact; It will never be true that I chose tea yesterday, and we are all comfortable with the immutability of this history, and most people, including all non-philosophers, are comfortable with the fact that it was a choice.

Put the same exact data into the future, and assume that the future is as immutable as the past, and suddenly a bunch of people lose their minds, and insist that choice cannot possibly be a real thing. Why not? Nothing has changed.

Marty McFly didn't have an existential crisis when he discovered that the past would play out exactly the same way every time, as long as he didn't interfere. And audiences would have been perplexed if he had, because they all know that that's how reality works - given identical conditions, we will make identical choices. But we are, nevertheless, making those choices. If we choose to rob a bank, nobody suggests putting the starting conditions of the universe in jail.

And I can't argue in court that as the bank robbery last week is in the immutable past, I therefore had no choice but to commit that robbery. (Well, I could, but only if I wanted to plead insanity).

 

[BSilvEsq]

Pragmatic is my middle name.

Regardless of convoluted long running philosophical debates over thousands of years we are faced with a reality as it is not what we want or imagine it to be.

We have to make decisions. What to do fora living, grocery shopping, who to vote for.

Determinism is a brief as is a religious belief.

Pragmatically we have free will, our choices are not forcibly coerced. At least in western liberal democracies.

Pragmatically endless debate for pleasure over free will and determinism on the net 24/7 is a modern luxury.

Most of the practical things you enjoy today are the product of people in history devoting uncounted hours over the course of multiple generations exploring concepts that were thought to be impractical (and even heretical). Much of that time led to nowhere -- at least as of today. Much of it was abandoned. Some of it produced the food you eat, the home in which you live, and the power you enjoy -- in very high level ways, and not specifically.

Newton was as much a philosopher as a mathematician. The giants on whose shoulders Newton stood included many pure philosophers, as well as theologians, whose philosophical investigations could be branded a waste of time, and yet they produced Newton and his discoveries / theories. The same is true of Darwin, whose Origin of the Species is as much a work of philosophy (and plainly based on earlier philosophy of others), and also a well written legal brief, as it is a work of scientific genius. Indeed, Darwin's work, which is influenced by Newton, among others), lends credence to Determinism as much, if not more, than does Newtonian mechanics. Einstein was a philosopher before he was a mathematician, scientist and physicist. It was the philosophical idea that Einstein explored as thought experiments that led to his later scientific masterwork. Freud and Jung were philosophers before they developed their pseudo-science, which later yielded to true medical science. Jung also incorporated spiritual concepts into his philosophy.

Centuries earlier, the stoics spent hundreds of years developing philosophical ideas that were both pragmatic, as well as academic and epherial and spiritual.

Your focus on science, engineering, and other practical things is admirable, but it is not an end to itself. As John Adams wrote:

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Painting and Poetry Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

In the end, it is the things that we enjoy that are the most important. I happen to enjoy writing endlessly about the unknown and refining my writing through interchange with others who similarly enjoy the endeavor. Those who do not enjoy the endeavor and/or find it to be a waste of time need not engage -- unless, of course, they are compelled to do so.

 

[Elixir]

Leaving aside any issue you have with the concept, itself, do those terms help eliminate the issue of who or what caused the effect?

Nah - I understood you the first time. I was just questioning your lexicon's appropriateness for public consumption.