Consciousness is not born from matter. Matter is not born from consciousness. They, the observer and the observed, arise mutually entwined, as inseparable as left and right. From without, there is only direction, that being.

While it may seem like the allegedly scientifically & philosophically inspired are arguing that we live in a deterministic world in which their is no self and no real choice that is anything other than a fantastic illusion created by matter somehow hallucinating a mostly coherent personal experience, I would like to disagree. I’m sure that in these people’s world views, this would necessarily be a reasonable conclusion. However, I don’t think these would-be realists actually understand what science as well as introspection have revealed about the relationship between consciousness, personal experience, and embodied reality.

Of course I could be wrong and completely talking out of my ass because I’m not as well read and haven’t done the research myself into theoretical physics to see how reality in its most miniature functions truly works, but I have a reason for discounting some of this information derived from scientific research and the musings of people who’ve thought yet not about the crucial premises. I don’t think the way in which reality appears to function from our necessarily incomplete perspective really matters. The fact that it does at all is vastly more significant, and all science does is aim to discover the how. And to this point, regardless of what the smallest scale of phenomena looks like, we have come to know that the observed requires the observer, not because of some arbitrary linguistic dialectic, but because that’s how things become. Some will claim that consciousness is the ultimate substrate of reality, but I think this too misconstrues a crucial point. The observer, consciousness as such, cannot exist alone. There must be a thing to be observed, even if it is the observer itself in a given form (perhaps beginning with unawareness?). To my point above about the method of existence, the “abstract” relation of qualities of things is not superseded by the concrete, actuality of being, nor vice versa. For reality to be, it must be as experienced. To experience, a subject must be within reality.

Aside from the suggestion that the laws of physics are simply whatever makes sense enough to be a worthwhile justification for consistency of being, I’d like to claim that the laws of being are about as necessary as moral laws, which is not to say that they are arbitrary and relative either. They are derived from an underlying logic. The 1 = 1 that is the basis for the math used to define physics is the same foundation for our understanding of consequence, cogency, and integrity. There are many ways to use logic to define a priori, immutable truth, and it is this truth that is the reason for the way in which things are. The laws of physics are not the reason for their own being. There is a necessary relation between any things which could be; there is a necessary modality to relation itself. Though often also misconstrued, the understanding of this fact is the basis for many religions, spiritual philosophies, and every epistemic discipline.

So if I may be indulged, let us attempt to consider metaphysics. I began conceiving of this essay to provide some basis for another argument against determinism and the disbelief in free will. Having securely my conclusion in my head, this will in part amount to an excavation of my argument. I do not think this is a rationalization of wishful thinking, because I believe I am actually right and that the determinists and fatalists are fundamentally wrong. I’m sure they think the same of themselves, but such is the way of the ignorantly confident. Namely, many arguments of otherwise intelligent people suffer from a few misconceptions, three of which I will address:

• If free will is to exist, it must be fundamentally personal and absolute.
• The objective world exists beyond the being of consciousness.
• There is no such thing as a true subject’s self.

Reality as Experienced and Objectivity

The second misconception I have already provided a counter-proposition for. I understand that we can observe the generation of an organism and its subsequent embodiment and localization of subjective consciousness. What we cannot observe is the generation of consciousness. Considering scientific knowledge is derived through experiment, assumed to describe objective reality, and verified through consensus of observation, I don’t think I need to try that hard to suggest that scientific knowledge is insufficient for the purposes of metaphysical discovery. It is certainly useful, but the nervous system is an unreliable narrator. We may be able to pattern our behaviors in similar formats and communicate agreement on the meaning of some things, but there is no proof that we experience reality flawlessly and identically. In fact, there is significant evidence from scientific inquiry itself to suggest that people differ in the manner of their perception, not just their description, and that perception itself is an assumed appropriate hallucination of what our interaction with objective being means for and to us. In this manner, the perception of reality is not arbitrarily relative, but necessarily subjective and subject to distortion, refraction, or whatever metaphor best fits the filtration of information that allows conscious extrapolation of perception from sensation. This includes the entire framework of the space-time continuum. The fact that you, reading this, are localized in space and time is due to an explicit constraint on your consciousness. It can no more reasonably be assumed that your consciousness is derived from your nervous activity than it can be that your nervous activity is translated to you by your consciousness to explain itself. Your body, your perception apparatus, is an unreliable narrator. The existence of the objective world beyond the existence of living perceivers is a myth used to describe the nature of objectivity and the fact that a stranger’s death does not spell the end of your reality.

Before anybody thinks I’m attempting to justify a global subjectivist perspective, I will note that there is obviously a trend to perception. We do not see each other being in tandem yet in arbitrarily different truths. Regardless of how it may be perceived by myriad observers, if I were to slap one out of ten total people in a given room at a given time, so long as anyone remains conscious ever, it will truly happen. To describe it using another analogy, if a tree falls in the forest and nothing’s around to hear it, force will vibrate the air, but no sound will be heard as there is no one close enough to hear it. Given a “hearer”, there will be sound since sound is the relation of this vibration to the sense organs for hearing. But otherwise, so long as a conscious being exists, so does reality.

The Self, Essence, and the Meaning of Forms

More importantly, what is this “you” I keep referring to? It’s conventionally understood that people have respective persons, and that these persons have some sort of essence, or selfhood, which gives it consistency in form and manner. You do not wake up as the person who was Abraham Lincoln in 1859 because you are not the person who was Abraham Lincoln in 1859 (not likely, anyway). What’s the reason then for the assumption that these “persons” are similar then? Why is it that there’s some consistency in egoic consciousness? Well, if reality behaves consistently because it has its own essential logic to follow, with consciousness being the other side of the proverbial coin to reality, wouldn’t it too have its own internal logic? How many different ways can a personality manifest? How many different ways can a reality manifest? How many different forms can a person take? As many as there are bodies to inhabit? Possibly more? Regardless, no one who has ever had an ego, or persona, has not assumed to also have some personhood. It may be fairly simple, but it amounts to a narrative that parallels the existence of the embodiment. A personality is a story told about the meaning perceived by and behavior of an organism, their association, and their identification with the form of the being. That being the case, what would incline someone to conclude that the personal ego is the, purportedly, mistaken basis for the subject’s fundamental being?

First and foremost, I mention “true subject” because there are some assumed subjects, such as demographically defined groups, which are not truly subjects. A group of humans is not a unit which exists with the same existential veracity of an individual. It is certainly a convention used to describe abstracted information, but like the convention “towel” or “table”, it does not formally exist as carbon or a human exist. I will describe an individual’s characteristics below.

People lacking insight from various theories of mind, psychology, and/or neuroscience may claim that because the ego is an extension and expression of an organism’s perception, construed to give potential for self-referential meaning and to act as an interface for other conscious organisms, that there is no objective basis for the feeling that is having a self or essence. They may claim the soul is a fiction, there is no self object, and the ego is nothing but a mask worn by nothing. These claims are also nonsensical myths. If the universe is truly cosmic soup and subjective differentiation between things is necessarily assumed, what makes the identification of oneself any different from the perception of a rock? If we are to take seriously the claim that we must depreciate our egos and senses of selfhood because our clumsy language used to describe ourselves is predicated on circular definition, metaphors, and analogies about abstracted relationships between unnecessarily differentiated aspects of a singular objective existence, then why value anything, conventional or not? The subject is a type of object. The significance given to these facts about our language and the construction of ego are usually used to discredit certain notions that the speakers don’t personally value, and to argue for a deterministic universe in which you have no effect on being because you have no being. This is so self-evidently false, I think the only way you can come to believe this is through taking scientific epistemology as the only credible epistemology, then grossly misinterpreting it. That you cannot find your Self as an object does not mean that you do not have selfhood. The fact of your being, as evidenced by your experience of your existence in your own localization of consciousness and matter, is all the evidence you need of your essential existence. You may not have a soul residing in your pineal gland or whatever, but you have an entire universe around you. The stillness, the silence that sits and observes that to be observed is what you are. The self of your reality is your self. Its consciousness is yours. Its matter is your form. Its being is yours. The critic will claim that this too is a fiction and myth. Again, there is evidence enough for this claim to be considered matter-of-factly true. Forgive language, it is imperfect. You exist as your self, regardless of your egoic extension; therefore, it is as real as the body of you.

Will, Compatibilism, and Causality

“A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

In my earliest years of philosophic pursuit, the notion that most significantly impacted me was Hume’s claim that causal relation is entirely an assumption about events in constant conjunction that cannot itself be observed or logically validated. In other words, though people have inferred causal relationships between such things as gravitational force and movement, or the dropping of a rubber ball and its subsequent bouncing upon colliding with an obstacle, these relationships aren’t necessarily true, nor do we have any logical basis for their assumption. I would like to now pose a question: How should things be? Not what status should accurately apply to things that are, but in what way ought reality to behave? Why is it that we find the underlying logic of being/non-being to result in one kind of existence over another? Why is it that we assume, in a more radical proposition, that this waking world of physical consistency is somehow anywhere near fundamental, necessary, or objectively “grounded”? How do we know that living in this world is not itself a kind of dreaming? Frankly, we don’t. We assume it’s not. We assume that when you die, you do the opposite of becoming. We assume that because this world has been so consistent, that the matter and perspectives have also been so consistent, that it must continue to be so.

Schopenhauer is right about the ability to will what one wills, but he is misunderstanding the relationship of will to a person. I do not know why people assume that “willing” is the best conception of intention and deliberation. I do not know why so many people assume that the ego ought to be able to control that which creates it. I do not know why so many mistaken people think that if you truly have a will that is free, that it must be subjected to the would-be determinism and alleged causation of taste and fancy. In the same manner that I say your self must exist because you are truly real, your will must be free because it is truly fundamental to your being. This juxtaposition of the will and the subject as related but not identical, with the will being an instrument wielded by a self object or belittled ego which is unnecessarily differentiated from the form which bears its being, is a ridiculous misconception of the nature of the living subject. The will is no more apart from a subject as is its body or its sensibilities. And these presumptions of one-way causal relationships between this differentiated will instrument and the subject individual are, as is causation itself, unfounded assumptions that serve primarily as rationalizations for behaviors.

What if an individual is, at least, one’s will? A person can no more will what one wills than they can bite their teeth. Does the meaning of volition suddenly become another conventional lie because you cannot choose to choose? Why do we entertain such idiotic arguments? Any reasonable person can understand that making a choice, the enactment of will, is characterized by self-determinism. This self-determinism does not invalidate the freedom of a subject’s willing. If “free will” means that the will as something not the subject can direct the subject, then why wonder whether the subject possesses that which possesses it? If, as many who probably haven’t thought about this very long may assume, the person’s egoic construct is meant to direct the will, how can that which is fundamentally an abstraction and expression of elements of the self control the expression of elements of the self? At best, the ego informs the self and its willing. I believe that those who argue against free will either don’t understand the will or don’t understand the subject, namely because the two are, again, interrelated. The question of free will isn’t one about the nature of will, but that of subjects. Are subjects determined by that which is not themselves, or does an individual’s self truly direct its behavior? Given that an individual’s nature includes its willing and is sufficiently complex to incline its behavior towards self-assessed and self-interested ends amidst myriad influences, internal and external, would it not be self-determining?

To answer this, we need to specify just how will can’t exist, free or determined. So while some may say that the free will debate is nuanced and complex, I would say that there are many unnecessary compromises and arguments predicated on untenable assumptions. Ultimately, the answer to the debate does not change what happens, only how people perceive and discuss what happens.

Is will absolute, and must it be so for one to be free? No, and no. I do not need omnipotence to be able to choose and self-determine. I need only options and the capacity to intend. Failure is merely a skill issue. My not being able to do anything I can imagine, anything I could accomplish in the most lucid and ungrounded of dreams where the only limit to action and behavior is my ability to conceive of a certain change, is not an invalidation of my freedom. Freedom does not need to be absolute for volition to be genuine. While I am not free to flap my wings, it would be ridiculous to think this makes me determined. I do not have wings, but I can board a plane. Can I not fly? Does the fact that anything at all is impossible mean that I am not free? No, because freedom can exist with constraints. After all, my will, like my taste, is an expression of my being. Why would I assume it ought to be capable of transcending me?

Does my inability to arbitrarily change my state of being mean I cannot self-determine? No. You can no more choose what you are thinking or feeling right now than you can choose how hot a stove will become without you turning it on. Will as an element of self is subject to the same logic of reality and consciousness that all other phenomena and noumena are subject to. You cannot will to feel that which you are unaware of. Having a symbol for some idea does not mean that you can inspire its knowledge to yourself. If you want to see green, you must find a green thing to see or be capable of imagining such a thing. Furthermore, if it is your will to be in a certain place, simply wanting it is insufficient. You must do more than intend. Feeling a certain way about things will not necessarily result in or incline you to change. Passivity is not the same as inaction. Not making a choice is not a choice. Choosing to not act or to ignore is. Not only is change not necessarily going to be immediate depending on what one wills, but what one wills is only sufficiently actualized given that you can act in a manner that would allow it to become. Again, the existence of limits or necessities does not invalidate the existence of freedom, and failure is a skill issue.

Do my desiring and preferences control my willing? Your taste no more controls your will than your form controls your taste. While reality has its trends, you can desire and choose to attempt to fulfill that desire or not. There is no necessary causal relationship nor any logic that would indicate that wanting a thing means you will act in the interest of actualizing it. Following desire is simply the path of least resistance. The ability to choose in opposition to your desire or in spite of it proves just how self-determining an individual can be. And even in the case that all choices are desired or preferred choices, I see no reason to assume any of these elements of a self are somehow different enough from it to be considered apart from it. An individual wanting or not wanting a thing, and acting based on information perceived about what actualizing that thing would entail, is the definition of making a choice. So long as it is the individual electing to choose, either to commit to one’s own will or that of another or the uncertainty of the passage of time, they are demonstrating the freedom of their willing. The “why” is a red herring; causation is conventional myth. The idea of controlling the self, of making an instrument of an element of one’s being, displaces one of the functions of self apart from it. Controlling your self and its will is like choosing to choose.

In Conclusion,

I wrote this because hearing people give arguments that are poor, incomplete, or mistaken due to incorrect assumptions about (meta)physics is just frustrating. If I wanted to be cheeky, I could’ve argued that because the conceptualization of will is defined as being self-directing, it only makes sense to see will as free because even the notion of causation being true to form would not dictate that the will is caused by anything other than existing. The claims of determinism are unintuitive after all. I could’ve just said people are formally autonomous, therefore, will is free. I’d like to explain my reasoning and expose the lever-pulling behind the curtain, so to say. Sure, I could be the idiot… but why would I assume that. I know that I can’t even really conceive of just how much I don’t know, but what I do know is how to evaluate an argument for validity (if I gave fallacious arguments, no I didn’t, you’re lying, I’m a grown man and I do what I want!). But in all seriousness, I’ve been meaning to detail this line of thinking for a while so I can stop having to rehash the same argument in my head and instead externalize it. I’m probably still going to rant to myself the next time I see someone speak so confidently wrong, but I have no right to complain if I do not choose to have a reason for others to learn. I would like to say more about (un)consciousness and reality as space-time from an individual’s point of view, but my main task was addressing the ridiculousness of the free will debate. Like the problem of evil, I don’t think it’s genuinely a hard question. I think people overcomplicate it with misconceptions that they don’t devote the time to address. I may just be confidently wrong myself, but whatever, prove it. If determinism is true, volition, consent, accountability, and responsibility are meaningless. If individuals have no selves, what makes them an individual and not any other highly particularized system which seems to be capable of adaptation? What does anyone get out of believing that they do not have any agency, that they’re just automated behavior ironically making justifications for itself as if it wills something? I could be called crazy for “not believing” in causation which is so clearly accurate to describing phenomena, but subjective being is too integral to even the existence of reality to pretend that this greater system is some automatic, perpetually generative machine in which sentient life is merely a physical accident.

Suspend disbelief and consider this narrative explanation: Reality and its formalization is a function of being, a being that encompasses objectivity and the subjects which embody and experience it. Reality and consciousness require each other, yet the manner in which they appear independent involves enough distortion and assumption that one cannot assume that perception or sensation is necessarily objective. Should we be able to find some manner of describing subjective existence that gives greater clarity to the nature of our being, what would make more sense? Would it be the notion that matter, unnecessarily existing, is unintelligently reacting with itself in mechanistic fashion that somehow produces another system of matter capable of perception and reason and belief, or that matter is a function of conscious perception that provides convenient formality and utility to a system primarily characterized by the meaning making of its subjects, its very own perception and cognition?