Taoism and Determinism

Taoism and Determinism

Determined World vs Random/Determined World

In a wholly Determined World it could be ascertained from the Big Bang that I would roll a pair of dice today and the outcome could be known.

In a Random/Determined World only the probability of that happening and what the outcome is could be know.

Contained energy vs uncontained energy; matter vs gravity, particle vs wave, thought/emotion vs biology, Yang vs Yin. Think of light, is it a particle or a wave?

In the past, science has often implied a completely determined reality, while leaving humanity outside of that reality. Most religions do something similar by removing humanity from Nature and allowing free will in the human world but not the natural world. Taoism doesn’t describe a completely determined reality, its emphasis on looking at the past to predict the future (intuition) is more of a reaction to Confucianism’s overemphasis on humanity making it’s own choices and people “making” something of themselves. This thought continues today as: “we can be anything we want to be” often prevails in some circles. (I try to imagine myself as Simon Biles.) Taoism’s “wu wei” doesn’t suggest that our actions are completely determined, rather it suggests that we look into our intuitive selves and find those actions which harmonize with our past (genetics, experience, location, etc) as well as our future.

When Carl talks about there being “no free will” I usually hear that as being similar to Taoism contrasted to Confucianism. That it is an overstatement to make a clear point that the sense we have of control over unfolding events is mostly illusory. However the phrase “no free will” has a very specific meaning in formal Philosophy.

When “no free will” is used in a formal philosophical sense it brings up its parallel concept of “determinism”. Determinism is the idea that all of existence is predictable, not necessarily by people, but theoretically so. Determinism does not allow for any randomness in the unfolding of events. Randomness, indeterminism and free will are all essentially the same concept. Free will being the human shape of randomness and indeterminism. Determinism requires a causally chain of events unbroken by randomness at any point; one event causes the next event and that event causes the following event, all in a chain unbroken by any unknown outcome. Also it implies not only that the past exactly determines the future and present, but also that the present and future determine the past. There is only one way that events can play out both backwards and forwards.

Proving the falseness of “randomness” is the key to proving both determinism and no free will. Those who champion determinism are also know as “free will skeptics”.

In my observation, determinism is inconsistent with Taoism’s statement that “The way possible to think runs counter to the constant way. The name possible to express runs counter to the constant name. Without description the universe began”. On the other-hand the interplay of determinism vs indeterminism (randomness) fit very comfortably with Taoism’s conception of Yin/Yang Male/Female dual interplay of a single The Way. The “contained” Yang would represent the determined events of the causal chain while the “uncontained” Yin would represent the indeterminable (random) events. Their interplay would require that randomness was constrained in some degree by determinism or what I will call “limited randomness”.

Randomness is not an easy thing to prove however, one can usually attribute that any seemingly random event has simply not been determined yet, but can be determined at sometime in the future. I think the best way to show randomness takes a part in the causal chain of events is to look at the fact that determinism requires both a single causal chain of events both moving forward in time and moving backward in time because any random event in that chain would allow for more than one outcome both moving forward and backward. If there were random events in the causal chain then the past would not be precisely predictive of the future/present and visa versa the future/present would not be precisely predictive of the past. Though the present/future could be generally predictive of the past if there was not a large degree of randomness in play, a limited randomness.

So for free will skeptics, the lack of randomness is the key to proving both determinism and no free will. Here is an example of something we think of as being random but that is clearly not random:

If I roll a pair of die and they end up as two sixes most of us think of this as being and example of randomness. However this is not an example of randomness because if one could measure all the physical elements that went into the dice roll; the weight of the die on all sides, the hardness and texture of the landing surface, the moisture in the air, the trajectory and velocity of the die as it left the hand, etc; the results would be predictable, in theory though it would be hard to imagine how anyone could measure all those factors. This apparent non-randomness outcome from what we usually think of as a random event is possible because of constrained observation. One could easily look at most events in our lives and see how things we think of as being random, actually are not random with constrained observation. However if we take the same event of me rolling the die, and then claim that all the events in time since the Big Bang, all the accumulation and dispersion of energy, the dispersion and accumulation of energy over eons and eons of time could lead to the prediction of me rolling those two sixes at that particular time in history. Determinism would also require that if one looked at that single event of me rolling those dice and it coming up sixes and all the events in the universe at that same moment both singularly and cumulatively, they could only lead back in an unbroken causal chain to an exact description of the events of the Big Bang happening so many eons ago…...That seems like quite a stretch. But without randomness in the world, such would have to be the case.

The Tao Te Ching often speaks of a single reality (The Way) as manifesting itself as a duality, Yin/ Yang, Male/Female etc. The duality of predictability and randomness would seem to fit nicely with the Taoist view of Yin/Yang, The concept of limited randomness allows for the possibility that cascading events ,as they reach way down to our minuscule level of existence do allow for a limited random outcome, or one that we can effect. When we speak of being able to effect an outcome, we really speak of “free will”.

So here are a few theoretic phenomenon that do point to the existence of a limited randomness. 1. This example from John Norton (2003) in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy uses only Newtonian physics that deals mainly with the interplay of Gravity and matter. Or in my Taoist interpretation gravity (Yin uncontained) and matter (Yang contained). If a theoretic ball were sitting at the apex of a frictionless dome with no other forces at play besides gravity which direction would it roll or would it roll at all? To quote: “This rest-state is our initial condition for the system; what should its future behavior be? Clearly one solution is for the ball to remain at rest at the apex indefinitely.

But curiously, this is not the only solution under standard Newtonian laws. The ball may also start into motion sliding down the dome—at any moment in time, and in any radial direction. This example displays “uncaused motion” without, Norton argues, any violation of Newton's laws, including the First Law. And it does not, unlike some supertask examples, require an infinity of particles.”

This would appear to be a genuine example of theoretic limited randomness.

2. This example uses Quantum Mechanics which I don’t admit to entirely understanding except in a very general sense but again there is the interplay of the particle (Yang contained) and wave (Yin uncontained). The particle wave theory describes how light acts as both a particle and a wave. The particle is very Yang-like very contained and predictable. The wave however is much more dispersed and Yin-like. Historically wave and particle had been viewed as one or the other. The particle/wave theory and the concept of something being simultaneous both a wave and a particle seemed paradoxical. But simultaneous existence of both wave and particle led to clues into subatomic particles which behave similarly to light. However it also led to a conundrum, that being the outcomes of movement of subatomic particles are not predictable, as would seem necessary in our quest of a determined description of existence. The best that could be had were rules of probability and of course probability leads directly to limited randomness. It is Schrödinger equation which creates probabilistic outcomes under constrained circumstances, and makes the behavior of these particles quantifiable. This is not to say some determined explanation of these events are not possible at sometime in the future.

3. Another example of a case for limited randomness is the nature of proteins and how they determine our thought process. I will need to quote George Ellis in “From Chaos to Free Will” ; “In the case of the biomolecules that underlie the existence of life, it’s the shape of the molecule that acts as a constraint on what happens. These molecules are quite flexible, bending around joints rather like hinges. The distances between the atomic nuclei in the molecules determine what bending is possible. Any particular such molecular ‘conformation’ (a specific state of folding) constrains the motions of ions and electrons at the underlying physical level. This can happen in a time-dependent fashion, according to biological needs. In this way, biology can reach down to shape physical outcomes. It changes constraints in the applicable Schrödinger equation.”

This quantum chemistry, as it is sometimes called, determines our emotions, thoughts, instincts and similar virtual events in our lives. So again we can define the dualistic nature of living organism from this quantum chemistry point of view, they would be “physical biology” vs “virtual events” (thought, emotions, instinct). Again the “contained” nature or our physical biology vs the “uncontained” nature of thought and emotion. However in this example the nature of the interplay between contained and uncontained is easier for us to observe. Our thoughts and feelings actually change the nature of the quantum chemistry in our bodies which in turn change our future virtual events. Again to quote from George Ellis: “So what determines which messages are conveyed to your synapses by signalling molecules? They are signals determined by thinking processes that can’t be described at any lower level because they involve concepts, cognition and emotions in an essential way. Psychological experiences drive what happens. Your thoughts and feelings reach ‘down’ to shape lower-level processes in the brain by altering the constraints on ion and electron flows in a way that changes with time.

An example which I think applies: Let’s say you are very stressed about randomness that might occur in the future. For example you are taking a very important test in the near future and are unsure whether or not you will pass. As a calming exercise you practice “determined thinking”, meaning you think to yourself, whether I pass or not is not up to me it is something that will be determined by the universe. This thought helps calm your stress and actually improves your focus allowing you to pass the test, which you wouldn’t have passed if you were stressed. This would seem to be a perfect example of “free will” changing an outcome. However one would have to show that your choice to practice a calming exercise was indeed random, at least in a limited way and not 100% predicted by previous events, a difficult thing to do. Why does higher level function, such as thought reaching down into our biology and changing it seem to show free will exists? Because higher level functions seem to be less contained and more prone to randomness than lower level more contained functions, just as waves seem to create more chaos when interacting with particles and gravity creates more unknowns when interacting with matter.

This third example of possible limited randomness is probably the one most pertinent to us and the one which describes the likelihood of free will. So does this prove the impossibility of determinism and no free will? I’m not qualified to say, even those which much more knowledge don’t consider themselves qualified, but it certainly makes the possibility of there being no randomness in the world look very improbable.