Collection: The Beat Philosopher

Format: Philosophy Discussion

Author: Melissa Nadia Viviana

Date: January 5, 2025

Tags: Fascism, Resistance, History, The Future

The Beat Philosopher is a reader-supported publication by Melissa Nadia Viviana; Author, Activist, Existentialist, & Philosopher.

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This is Part 2 of a Part 3 Series on Free Will:

Part 1: Quantum Mechanics, Material Determinism, & Occam’s Razor

Part 2: Being Alive, Sentient Movement, Religious Determinism, & The Anxiety of Choice

Part 3: Intelligence & Willpower Via Causal Relationships

Part 2: Being Alive, Sentient Movement, Religious Determinism, & Anxiety of Choice

I want to talk about what it means to be alive. Because in my view, there’s no point in being alive if you have no force with which to move yourself.

Essentially - to be alive is to be a force.

I’m not saying this to begin a fruitless discussion about life. I want to begin with a simple axiom that isn’t controversial. (And if you agree with me already, you can skip ahead to a few paragraphs below).

So what’s the most non-controversial way we can describe life? Here’s a biological definition.

Living things are made up of organized structures that have metabolism, growth, reproduction, homeostasis, and a response to stimuli.

But there is a philosophical commonality in those biological processes: it’s that autonomous movement is an inherent part of identifying life.

It’s an understated function we take for granted in the free will debate because to call something alive and then claim that it behaves as an inert object, doesn’t really allow us to distinguish it from an inert object.

To be inert is to be moved by forces greater.

A rock is inert, so in order for a rock to move, a force greater than the rock must move it.

But a living thing has the ability to be a force that moves itself.

But before you overthink the notion of movement: not all movement by living organisms is the same. There are different types––one of which, might be called the “biological life-force.”

A tree, for example, converts sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into energy and uses that energy to grow or regenerate itself.

Therefore it’s alive.

Our bodies have an ability to grow because they’re alive. The beginning cells of an embryo in the womb grow themselves, despite having no brain or willpower.

So the basic components of a biological life-force are the ability to consume energy and convert that into a biological movement one might call “self-growth.”

To grow itself is the first building block of “aliveness.”

But there’s one more interesting qualification for biologists to detect life and it’s: “a sensitivity or a response to stimuli.”

In the examples given by biologists, organisms can move towards or move away from a stimulus. That includes light, sound, or touch. For example, plants sitting on a windowsill can change the direction of growth in order to grow towards the light.

It may not be considered a dramatic movement. But essentially: to be alive on the level of a basic organism is to have the ability to move towards or away from something.

This is “response to stimuli” - but it is not being “an effect of stimuli.”

The sun doesn’t determine that a plant moves. A plant moves itself towards the light.

Now a tree can respond to light, but it can’t get up and walk away like an animal can.

So there is a further kind of movement of being alive. And for the purposes of this discussion I’m going to call it:

Sentient Movement

Animals have sentient movement caused by electrical activity. Biologists aren’t clear on what causes this electrical activity or “consciousness.” And I’m not here to open up that debate. Nor to suppose that biologists will have an answer to it any time soon.

But for all we don’t know about how this electrical activity works… even biologists can clearly see that sentience has a top-down causation that enables the “higher regions” of electrical activity to move the “lower regions.”

For example:

The cells in your arm, by virtue of being alive, can merely grow.

But the brain can tell the nerves in the arm to move up and down or back and forth.

These are two different movements of being alive. A tree can grow but cannot get up and walk. While an animal can.

Thus, an animal possesses some type of top-down causation enabling it to move itselfbeyond the initial biological life-force of the cells.

Sentient Movement is a really easy way of summing up this mysterious phenomenon of top-down causation.

Because all animals possess some movement. So all animals must possess some electrical activity that enables sentient movement.

How complex the electrical activity of an animal is - is up for debate. But here’s my point: to be inert is to be moved by forces outside of ourselves. A rock will move if water carries it down stream.

But unlike a rock, an animal is alive. And thus, it has the capability to use “sentient movement” to move its arms to swim and become a force that can combat the force of the water, so that they’re not carried downstream.

Furthermore, if this animal were passed out, it would behave more like the rock. Or at least more like a limb of the tree. It would simply float down the stream.

Thus, to be unconscious is to lose a huge portion of the sentient top-down causation. Being knocked unconscious temporarily pacifies our willpower.

So for the purposes of this article,

A simple impetus to move in a direction because of something we’d like to gain - that’s a huge part of being our own force in the world.

We move ourselves towards something or away from something. And this is an exercise in sentient movement or “the will to move.”

But you can see that the “will to move” is an advanced stage of aliveness. It’s the progressively more complex version of being alive.

1. Rocks are inert and can’t grow or move.

2. Trees and plants merely grow.

3. While animals grow AND move themselves to and fro.

We often call this, simply, “willpower” or “will.” But I like the phrase “sentient movement” better. And I think this sentient movement is the beginning of what humans see as free will.

Imagine now, if another day, the 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom came together and created Carbon Dioxide. And then another day they came together and created Sulfuric Acid. And then another day they came together and created Calcium Carbonate… that would be confusing.

Their causal relationship would cease to make sense.

And in fact, we might better describe that if water, carbon dioxide, sulfuric acid, and calcium carbonate were all created, there would, in fact, be four different causes for four different effects.

A cause and effect relationship is deterministic. So a singular cause doesn’t have multiple contradictory effects.

Nor does it change day by day.

The 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom don’t behave differently on a whim.

But living things don’t exist as causal patterns. Every second of time has a kind of freedom and spontaneity for those who are alive to experience it.

And furthermore there are trillions of animals alive right now. And trillions and trillions of animals who have been alive since the beginning of time.

That’s an incredibly unnecessary and complicated deterministic universe with an infinite amount of movements.

Here’s my problem with deterministic free will:

Each and every day we make thousands of micro decisions. They are not the same each and every moment. Nor are they the same every day.

But if, as determinism posits, any single behavior we possess is deterministically caused, then a different deterministic force would have to exist for every singledeterministic effect.

In the universe, a single causal relationship doesn’t have moods that enable it to choose a different effect day by day.

Hydrogen doesn’t choose to turn oxygen into water because of its mood. Oxygen doesn’t choose to turn hydrogen into water either. And they can’t choose a different effect tomorrow.

The atoms come together and the effects are pre-determined and inextricably linked.

So if our willpower is deterministic, then every single new movement we make would have to be inextricably linked to a different cause.

Now, if every day we ate 100 grams of white rice with our right hand at intervals of 20 seconds per bite, with 15 chews per spoonful, while sitting in the same chair, sitting on the left side of the table, at precisely 6PM and finishing eating those 100 grams 10 minutes later… then I can see how we could conclude that our will is deterministic and there are causal forces creating the actions we take.

Because the actions that we take are finite and predictable.

Although, in this example, they might be better described as mechanistic.

But my point is that the periodic elements behave like this. They reasonably do the same thing every time. Unless a different cause interferes.

They don’t choose a different result each day. And certaintly not infinitely.

So if we eat a different food each day. If we eat at different times each day. If we chew at different rates. If we stop to speak between some bites but not others… then we must have a NEW cause for each and every micro decision made.

Multiply that by the amount of moments we’re alive. And multiply that by the amount of humans and animals that live in this world… I mean, imagine if every single living animal that can move itself had a different causal force for each and every movement they make.

Unlike H2O, which is reliably created trillions of times over, this universe would be absolutely inundated with random-ass forces that only work once. A single cause creates only one effect today and then ceases to exist. Poof. Gone. Up in smoke. And tomorrow you need 10,000 new causes for every random new action you take.

Occam’s Razor

This is where Occam’s razor comes in.

Occam’s Razor: a scientific and philosophical rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. And the simplest of competing theories should be preferred to the more complex.

The idea of deterministic will existing in a causal relationship seems insanely tedious and cumbersome.

And let’s face it––also pointless.

What’s the point of being alive to exist as the mechanistic effect of a pre-determined cause?

When, on top of which, we’re not even a finite effect. No, we have millions of different causes that create variable effects that convince us that we’re freely moving (but we’re not).

And then this deterministic cause gives us other feelings: like deliberation, anxiety, doubt, disappointment, regret, anger – all kinds of reactions that are completely unnecessary if we never had a choice.

In H2O, there’s no deliberation, in which hydrogen doubts it can become water.

It doesn’t feel anxiety about whether marrying oxygen and becoming water is the right choice.

It doesn’t fear that it will try to become water and fail to do so.

It doesn’t feel remorse that it became water, and down the road realizes it wanted to become something else.

If each and every movement we made was not a movement we made––but was a force moving us… then where the hell does the neurotic sentience fit in?

We don’t even choose to feel neurotic. A cause made us choose an action and then another cause made us feel neurotic over the action we had no control over.

I mean, it’s an exercise in the most fruitless deterministic design ever imagined.

I’m not a mathemetician. I’m not a phycisist. I’m not a chemist. I’m not even a statistician.

But I am a philosopher, specifically philosophy of mind.

And I can describe to you - as a philosopher - how I conceive of the idea of willpower in similar language as quantum mechanics.

With randomness and probability.

And I can promise you that it is a SIMPLER explanation than the uncessarily cumbersome explanation of determinism.

Because I do believe that the simplest answers are the most reasonable.

Free will makes sense from the inside. To exist in it, can help you understand it.

And I don’t think that you necessarily need to go to the atomic level to study the behavior of an electron in order to understand free will.

But you do need to define what it means to be alive first.

This concludes:

Part 1: Quantum Mechanics, Material Determinism, & Occam’s Razor

Join me for:

Part 2: Being Alive, Sentient Movement, Religious Determinism, & Entropy

Part 3: Intelligence & Willpower Via Causal Relationships

Question For Discussion:

1. Is the free will determinism theory defined by Newtonian Physics?

2. How can free will possibly be more deterministic than an electron’s uncertain behaviors, as mathematically mapped out by Paul Dirac in Quantum Mechanics?

3. Is determinism too cumbersome to pass the Occam’s Razor test?

How To Discuss

You can comment below or find a shorter version of this discussion on my profile on BLUESKY.

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