Defending Pantheism

[vulcanlogician]

I think the real argument is whether materialism is reductionistic or emergent.  If it is emergent, and new properties are possible with more complex arrangements of matter, then there seem to be many more properties than property dualism acknowledges.  In addition to the material property, life and mind are two more properties and perhaps individual identity as well.

But emergent and reducible are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Chemistry can in turn be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of physics. Biology (including biological evolution) can be viewed as an emergent property of the laws of chemistry. Similarly, psychology could be understood as an emergent property of neurobiological laws.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

But even so, chemical properties are reducible to the behavior of subatomic particles (physics). Biological processes are reducible to the interactions of molecules (chemistry). And psychology is reducible to the neurobiological processes in the brain (biology).


Because physics can (in principle) explain each and every process that occurs in the brain, "willing" (a function of the brain) is reducible to the laws of nature. Since none of us can control the laws of nature, none of us is able to to control what our brain "wills."

This doesn't mean their aren't good arguments for the existence of free will... it simply means that the complexity of the brain isn't one of them (or perhaps needs revision to explain how brains control physical processes and not vice versa).

There are theories of mind that propose that all feedback mechanisms in the universe are sentient. By this reasoning, the back of your toilet enjoys some crude form of consciousness. I reject this kind of reasoning as superfluous and unfounded. And I also reject a similar sort of reasoning that says: once a feedback mechanism is so complex it become autonomous. How exactly does that work? It may appear autonomous to those who can't see exactly how it works, but my default position is that a brain is subject to the laws of cause and effect just like a rock or any other piece of inanimate matter.

What about a cell in a person's body? Does it too have free will? If not, how does a collection of cells gain it?