Rog, Struan, all
Have recently been rereading some essays by K.R.Popper on metaphysics from "Popper Selections"
edited by David Miller. I imagine they are available in other sources. The essays in question are:
Metaphysics and Criticizabilty (1958)
Realism (1970)
Cosmology and Change (1958)
Natural Selection and Its Scientific Status (1977)
Indeterminism and Human Freedom (1965)
The Mind-Body Problem (1977)
The Self (1977)
All of them bear on issues touched on in what I will call "the free / X threads" but the most
relevant to freewill are last five. In C&C he traces the development of "the problem of change" from
PreSocratrics up through Maxwell. Natural Selection introduces the relationship between"the problem
of change" and "the problem of design" and how these to interelate. Also a discussion of levels that
parallels the MoQ and a brief discussion of "bottom up" and "top down" change which is relevant to
that recently exited thread.
The subtitle to I&HE is "of Clouds and Clocks" where.."...clouds are intended to represent physical
systems which like gases, are highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable..... a
precision clock, is intended to represent physical systems which are regular, orderly, and highly
predictable in their behavior." Following the Newtonian revolution, physical determinism became
dominant which he sums up as "All clouds are clocks - even the most cloudy of the clouds.... Among
the ..dissenters was Charles S Peirce..the first post-Newtonian.. philosopher.. who dared to adopt
the view that to some degree...all clocks are clouds" The essay ends ... mere physical
indeterminism is not enough. We have to be indeterminists, to be sure; but we must understand how
men, and perhaps animals, can be "influenced" or "controlled" by such things as aims, or purposes,
or rules, or agreements. This then is our central problem."
Anyway they're out there and they seem to me to have bearing on the issue check them out if you so desire.
DLT
PS: Rog haven't read Nishida but it will go on my list. Thanks
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