Witten in 2003, unedited

The highly discussed free will debate is based on our folk psychological understanding of responsibility. It is a popular notion that a person who is operating without free will cannot be held responsible for their actions. Since morality is a corner stone of our society, adapting a philosophy such as determinism that removes free will is often considered unacceptable. It is for this reason, the attempt to salvage our current concepts, that libertarianism and compatiblism are pursued today.

Compatiblism takes on the duty of merging the classical idea of free will, and the resulting moral responsibility, with the more modern and persisting idea of determinism. Libertarianism, on the
other hand, claims that the two are not compatible, and that, in the interest of salvaging free will, determinism is false.

But in our world of physical laws and neural science is free will, as we understand it today, possible? Or is it to be discarded and replaced along with many of our other folk psychological elements?

In this paper I will first discuss our concept of responsibility, and examine how it has been applied to the libertarian debate. I will then focus attention on the possibility of uncaused actions, upon which the libertarian argument rests. Finally, I will offer an alternate concept of moral responsibility that is not dependent on free will.

The majority of people in our society give praise and blame to people they deem “responsible” without ever questioning what responsibility truly is. They require no law book on responsibility or morality, nor do they require a logical proof as to whom they can blame and for what for. For the majority of people, praising and blaming simply comes naturally.

This is because our notion of responsibility is part of our folk psychology, just like our notion of love and pain. There is no empirical evidence for our folk psychology, and it is only fallible on a personal level. That is, person A could not tell person B that she is wrong about her feeling pain. The best person A could do is persuade B to no longer show that she is in pain, either by hiding her feelings or by removing the pain.

Responsibility operates in a similar way, although responsibility requires that two people acknowledge the situation for the communication to be complete. If A holds B morally responsible, and then blames B, the blame will not be effective unless B recognizes that she is deserving of blame. It is this unwritten law about what is blame worthy and what is not that dictates responsibility. Since this law is unwritten, there are often disagreements and miscommunications, as is common in folk psychology. One of the most challenge tasks in the philosophy of free will is to try to make clear the rules of responsibility, in order to decide if free will is in necessary. Often this task is overlooked and the basic idea of “if you ‘did it’ then you are responsible” is adapted.

In “Libertarianism” Carl Ginet explains, and then elaborates on an important function of responsibility crucial to direct incompatibilism. The direct incompatiblist’s argument contains four premises. 1. NRP, or non-responsibility for the past. 2. NRL, or non-responsibliity for the laws. 3. NRA, or non-responsibility
agglomerativity, and finally NRT, or non-responsibility transfer, which is the most controversial premise.

NRT, according to Ginet, goes as follows: For any truths P and Q, if P logically entails Q and S is not responsible for its being the case that P, then S is not responsible for its being the case that Q. In his paper, Ginet manipulates this premise to accommodate for pre-emption and causal overdeterminism. To account for that, Ginet developed this alternate form of NRT. NRT**, For any truths P and Q, if P is of the form ‘B and it follows from causal laws that if B then Q’, Q reports an event or state that occurred later than the condition(s) reported by B, and S is not responsible either for its being the case that P or for its being the case that B, then S is not responsible for its being the case that Q.

While this does successfully defend NRT from overdeterminism and pre-emption, it fails under other kinds of responsibility. If person A lends person B a camera for a film shoot, and during this film shoot person C trips and drops the camera, person B is responsible for the camera being broken, and will therefore be put in the position to replace the camera, or be appropriately blamed in another way. In this situation, person B is responsible for the camera being broken, but is not responsible for person C tripping. This situation can be applied to NRT** as follows. P is the truth that person C tripped, and Q is the truth that the camera is broke.
It follows from causal laws that if B then the camera will be broken. The camera breaking, Q, occurred after person C tripped, P, and S was not responsible for P. According to NRT**, S would not be responsible for Q, but I would not hesitate to hold S responsible for my camera, since it was he that I lent it to.

This point illustrates how the translation between folk psychology and a fixed law of responsibility is very difficult, if not impossible. Our language and interactions are full of way too many nuances to accurately pin down a law of responsibility.

Responsibility is not the only obstacle the libertarian faces. The biggest issue facing libertarianism, in my view, is whether or not an uncaused action is possible.

The story of Bu’ridan’s Ass illustrates my problem with an uncaused action.

“If a hungry ass were placed exactly between two hay-stacks in every respect equal, it would starve to death, because there would be no motive why it should go to one rather than to the other.”

Is this accurate to real life? Of course not. In real life the ass would eat one and then the other, without making a conscious decision. Since there was no difference between the two bales of hay, it would seem that the ass made an uncaused decision to eat one first. But there is a major flaw in this
interpretation. When we apply it to the real world, the two haystacks cannot be equal in every respect, or else they would be identical and the ass wouldn’t be faced with a choice at all. One of the most obvious differences between the two haystacks would be location. Even if both were equally far away from the ass, one would have to be to the right of the other, or on the opposite side of the ass. This difference alone would give rise to many causes of action. The ass eats the right one first because it is the one that first caught his eye, or eats the one in front of him first because he it is easier than turning around.

The ass was not placed in a situation with two options in which all things are equal, and for reasons I discuss later I am willing to say that if the ass was placed in such a situation, it would be unable to choose and would starve to death, assuming no differentiating factor came along.

Before I discuss why an uncaused effect is impossible, I will first illustrate what, as far as I can understand, an uncaused effect entails. Lets say I raise my hand, and that the starting action, something like my decision, is uncaused. Now lets roll back the world to before the starting action occurred, and play it forward with everything being exactly the same. This time the action doesn’t occur, and I don’t raise my hand, just as uncaused as if I had. But is this possible in our world? Can an action come about in one world and not in another?

First let us look at where this action could possibly come from. This is a surprising difficult task if you hope to avoid dualism. Lets examine the raising of a hand by a person. The hand physically rose because muscles contracted. The muscles contracted because a signal was sent to them through the nervous system. The brain, specifically the cerebrum, sent the signal. But how did the signal start in the cerebrum?
Who decided the cerebrum should send out that specific signal? Obviously our cognitive sciences are not yet developed enough to really understand how our brains work. But it is still important to recognize that
inside that brain needs to be an explanation of an uncaused event, and hopefully it is not a little person.

Even without a complete understanding of our brain we can still cast doubt on the idea of uncaused effects by appealing to the argument from the law of conservation of energy.

1. Energy cannot be created or destroyed;
   it may be changed from one form to another.

This is the law of conservation of energy. We accept this law as true on the basis of it
being a corner stone in our physics.

1. An
   action requires energy.

An action is defined as a change
in the current state of affairs. For a
change to occur, energy would be needed.

1. For
   an uncaused action to occur, energy would need to be created from nothing.

If the energy came from another
source, then the action was caused by that source, and not uncaused. If the action is truly uncaused, there can be
no source.

1. The
   creation of energy from nothing would be inconsistent with the law of
   conservation of energy.

The creation of energy from
nothing would mean that energy was created.

1. Therefore,
   an uncaused action would be inconsistent with the law of conservation of
   energy.

I am interested in hearing replies to this argument, for I am sure there are many. One response would be that mental events do not adhere to the law of conservation of energy, but of course this would imply the mind is of some other substance than the rest of our known world, which is something only a dualist would accept.

Another tactic might be to attack premise two and claim that an action does not require energy. Of course this claim would require a lot of defending, as of now I cannot imagine an action that does not require energy.

What about potential energy? Potential energy, just lying in wait in a spring or some other device could  trigger the action. Perhaps our minds are filled with potential energy that can be triggered without cause.
This is an interesting thought, but of course we must realize that this energy didn’t just come from nowhere. Potential energy was once kinetic energy. For a spring to contain potential energy, it must be compressed. To compress it requires energy from a source. So even potential energy has a cause.

Until a better idea of an uncaused event can be formed, I think it would be wise to set libertarianism, and compatiblism aside for now, and instead work on developing a better notion of responsibility and morality that is consistent with determinism. To do this, perhaps we can adapt the simple libertarian notion that you are responsible for an action simply because it is your action. Carl Ginet would argue that you have a non-causal relationship with your action that gives you responsibility.

Is this a plausible idea? A sort of responsibility system like this couldn’t be definitive, due to the trouble in applying laws to our folk psychology. But maybe a loose definition of responsibility is needed to deal with the troubles of folk psychology. If folk psychology and determinism were compatible, then we could praise and blame people on the basis of their actions being theirs, with out any more clarity.

This idea of responsibility would, of course, not account for the need for alternate possibilities. But perhaps the need for alternate possibilities is an incorrect interpretation of our folk psychology.

Alternate possibilities could be replaced by a non-causal relationship theory if the non-causal relationship theory is adequate for responsibility. Can an ambiguous law of responsibility be relied on? I think it must due to our ambiguous, folk psychological use of responsibility. I also see no reason as to why this would be unacceptable.

Since free will is based on responsibility, if we could get responsibility without free will, there would be no need for free will. This would radically alter the free will debate, but then we could put forth more effort towards the real issue of responsibility. Unless we gain more information on the human brain and how it works there doesn’t seem to be much progress to be made on the libertarian front. Until then it seems
that a deterministic world that coexists with responsibility is the best solution.

With our current laws of nature an uncaused action does not seem plausible, and if it were possible to come to a fork in the road in which all things are equal, I hold that you would no longer be able to travel.

Clearly the biggest difficulty in the free will debate, and much of philosophy, is trying to make compatible our tradition folk psychological beliefs with changing technological and scientific ideas. This
is an essential element, however, otherwise we would be either overthrowing our entire belief systems every time a challenging piece of information arose, or we would ignore all challenging pieces of information and be caught in a stagnant society. The most important choice is deciding what ideas are worth trying to salvage, and which ones can be let go for bigger fish.

The Free Will debate usually gets broken down to the question, “is determinism compatible with free will?” The answer to this question would seem to definitively answer many questions about our free will. If they are compatible, determinism will be able to live happily along side free will, which would detour much of the opposition to determinism. On the other hand, if they are not compatible, we are forced to surrender one for the other, which for many would be hard to do. When faced with any tough question, it is always a good idea to stop and go back to the basics of the problem. In this paper I will first analyze the attractive qualities of compatibilism. I then will discuss the basic problems with the current notion of free will, and then look into why it is we are concerned with free will in the first place. Finally I will examine the possibility of throwing out free will while still attempting to salvage our morality.

Compatibilism is, simply, the philosophical attempt to combine the classic idea of free will and all that it entails, with the newer idea of determinism. Outright, this is a very daunting task, but at the same time very attractive. Determinism is certainly hard to deny, but with it usually comes the necessity of throwing out free will. So being able to join these two very compelling ideas seems great, but very difficult.

To make these ideas compatible, philosophers first take a close examination of what free will is. A freely willed action, according to philosophers like Hume and Ayer, is one that satisfies three conditions. According to Ayer these conditions are, “first, that I should have done otherwise if I had chosen otherwise; second, that my action was voluntary… and third, that nobody compelled me to choose as I did…”

For my argument let us grant the first condition. The second condition seems to be clear. If my action was not voluntary, I certainly didn’t freely will it, and therefore I can’t be held morally responsible. It is in the third condition, however, that I believe a problem arises. “That nobody compelled me to choose as I did” might suggest that if someone convinced me to make a certain decision, then that decision, and any action that came from it, were not free willed. For example, if someone had a gun to my head and told me to kill a kitten or they would shoot me, according to Ayer, killing the kitten would not be a freely willed action. But if I do kill the kitten, it certainly still seems that I choose to kill the kitten. I could have not killed it and tried to disarm my assailant, or I could have passively accepted a bullet in the head. No matter what the situation, as long as my action was voluntary, I still choose to act in that way.

While it is clear that I did have a choice in my action, Ayer would argue that I was coerced into my decision, and by being “compelled” to act in a certain way, my other choices, while still present, became unacceptable and so I was forced to act in a specific way. This notion of being “compelled”, however, is not a clear one. How compelling does a certain influence need to be? Am I compelled by my thirst to get a glass of water? Yes. But does that absolve me from any wrongs I may have done in the process? No. But of course these are two very different things. I was compelled to get a glass of water, but not getting a glass of water is an acceptable option for me, while getting shot might not be.

Now we have given a stricter definition of “compel.” A person is compelled to do something if, when faced with choices, all but one are unacceptable to her. But is this really a good prerequisite to a freely willed and therefore morally responsible action? The answer lies in our definition of “unacceptable.” Clearly most people would consider death as unacceptable, and this would explain why self-defense is a great justification for murder. There have been people, however, that have willingly given their lives in order to save others, which shows that the loss of one’s own life is not universally unacceptable in all situations. If not life, then it seems that nothing is universally unacceptable, and therefore we must, as a society, agree on a pre-set list of unacceptable options that, when faced with, absolve the person of any moral responsibility. Of course the task of determining every situation in which an agent is compelled is quite impossible, and without such a list situations may arise that we are unprepared to morally judge. As a society we need to be able to have a system to judge all situations morally, so instead we need to accept everyone’s personal views on the acceptability of certain options.

This, however, leads to a downward spiral, eventually making this version of free will unacceptable itself. If a person happens to highly value her money, to the point of it being unacceptable to lose it, then with this factor she becomes morally absolved if her money is threatened. But surely we would hold her morally responsible if she murdered presidents of competing companies in order to secure her money. Or perhaps she murdered a threatening IRS agent, because had she not then she would have lost an unacceptable sum of her money. If she were faced with the choice to either killing a kitten or losing some of her money, then according to Ayer’s notion of free will, if she finds losing the money unacceptable than she can kill the kitten and not be held morally responsible. If this is not an extreme enough case to prove this point, we can replace money with popcorn and kitten with baby. No matter what fills the variable, if all options are unacceptable by that person’s standard except one, then that person can act without moral responsibility.

This absurd conclusion from the compatibalists notion of free will shows that through their third condition the compatibalists have doomed themselves form the beginning. This means they must go back to the basics of the free will argument and reconstruct a more sound definition of a freely willed action.

But why save free will? Why seek to salvage compatibalism? Why not just be happy with determinism and call it a day? Morality! Our society functions on the idea of taking and placing responsibility for actions. Once responsibility has been placed, then a proper form of praise or punishment can be enforced to either encourage or prevent the action from occurring again. This is of course our basic system of law, and the reason why free will is held to be so important. The common notion is that without free will, we cannot justifiably hold someone responsible for their actions, since their actions were not free.

For a person to qualify as a morally responsible agent, they must fulfill two conditions. First, this person must poses free will, or in other words be in control of their actions. Second, this person must know, or be in position to know what they are doing. If a person fails to meet either of these two conditions, then they cannot be held responsible for their actions. The second condition excludes young children and severely mentally retarded and insane people from being morally responsible. The first condition is obviously what the free will debate concerns. If there is no free will, there are no morally responsible agents. But with the compatibalist’s idea of free will we would have to restrict punishing people even though it may be detrimental to our society. Morality would lose its purpose of regulating our society and keeping it safe because someone with different priorities could murder everyone he saw, and no one would be in a position to judge her because she was “compelled” by her lack of other acceptable choices. We could just label her insane because of her difference in priorities, but then we would just be imposing our beliefs on her because we are in a position of power. Morality would become totalitarian, and we would lose all the freedom that logic and reasoning has provided us with.

This being the case, attempting to salvage free will from determinism for the sake of morality now seems pointless. Instead, efforts should be put forth in determining a form of morality that is not dependent on the free will of the agent, and yet still consistent with the morality that has constructed our society. Ultimately, when dealing with determinism, not only are our actions determined, but also so are our reactions. To pass judgment on a person’s reaction, a reward or punishment, to another person’s action, is no different then passing judgment on the original action. Determinism knows no boundaries, and because nothing can escape determinism, it has little effect on our day-to-day life, except for proving the invalidity of counter-factuals and possible world scenarios. Hard determinism is something we should accept, and then set on the back burner of our holistic set of beliefs. With a careful analysis and makeover of morality, we can salvage our moral society and more openly accept a deterministic view of the world.

So when we speak of truth, speak of truths, we are really speaking in IF statements, but for the sake of time we eliminate the IF….  But let us not forget it is there.  It is important to remember our original assumptions, for they are most likely wrong, and when we are met with inconsistencies those willing to go back and re-examine their assumptions will have a much easier time of things – if that’s your thing.

Without much consideration it seems we do not have an omnipotent will, one entirely free or unhindered.  It does not seem I can will myself to hover above the ground, I cannot will myself to break the natural laws, so if the will has freedom, it seems limited.  The question then is, do the natural laws leave any freedom for the will? This of course taking us quickly to the question, are we not just complex machines responding and redefining our responses based upon our inputs?  Obviously the crux of the debate.  Assume for a moment we are, then freewill certainly seems nonsense.  Equivalently you could say my computer has freewill, or more to the point my calculator, and it is exercising said freewill by producing the result 4 when entered 2 + 2, in the same way I get up to get a glass of water when it suits me.  This may be the case, but it leads to no more conversation, no more discovery.  If that is the answer, that we are complex and fully determined machines, than the meaning of truth, of discovery, philosophy all goes out the window, therefore, we can discount this conclusion and continue down other avenues?  Why?  Our investigation is one for truth, for clarity, at least of cohesive concepts.  If we stumble upon a possibility that renders truth irrelevant, than we do no harm by abandoning that possibility.  For if it is true, we harm nothing by sacrificing truth, for truth is irrelevant.  Let’s call these Self-Destructive Truths, or maybe something catchier if I can think of it later.

Isn’t that a nice argument against nihilism?” 

No.  It’s not.  Nihilism renders everything irrelevant and relevant, everything wrong and right, everything worth-full and worthless, simultaneously.  If it simply rendered truth worthless, it would be a (say it with me now) Self-Destructive Truth, but because under nihilism truth is both irrelevant and relevant, it is not simply self destructive.

So let’s press on.  If nothing else, freewill is certainly an illusion, that is it say, I certainly have the feeling of freewill.  I feel as though I make decisions that I could go either way on, I feel power in making those decisions, control, and thereby I feel responsible for the outcome, whether good or bad.  Right now I feel as though I am deciding whether to continue writing or get something to drink.  To go to bed or continue writing.  To to prove to myself that I have more than those options, those options that jump out at me, I lie on the floor, or I slap my flippers together.  Silly, yes.  The machine is all encompassing.  Where can the will hide that it would be outside the machine.  My blood pumps, my neurons fire, chemicals are released, muscles contract, and where in all that is this magically will that has choice.  A little captain in my head, silly.  Of course, the question is does my will have a will?

And yet there it is again, that ability to see two paths and feel the power to decide which one to choose.  We cannot logic that away, not so easily.  Let’s go back and see if we missed something.

Much of this is operating under the notion that you only have freewill when you have a choice.  Computers do not have a choice.  When I drop a tennis ball it is not deciding to fall to the ground, for it has no other options, it cannot choose to not fall to the ground, or to fly upwards.  When I decide to start writing a Philosophical Dictionary, perhaps I had no choice, logically I had no choice, for I am doing it, the world was such a way that I fell to writing this, such as the tennis ball would fall, bounce off a shoe, bounce of a stone, and come to rest at the bottom of the hill.  And all the while this little tennis ball was thinking “should I bounce to the left, or bounce to the right.  Man I can’t decide… I’ll bounce to the left.”  Now of course there is a difference here.  The tennis ball has no ability to move itself, to inact change in any perceivable way.  We have muscles, and energy, we are chemical reactions, and this grants us the illusion, that we see ourselves as a one self, one mysterious self, where in reality we are a collection of things, a collection of explainable and observable reactions, a collection of tennis balls falling and colliding. 

I’m not saying anything new.  I’m trying to figure this out, just spitballing here.  Ultimately I think this will come down to quantum physics.  When we go in close enough we start to see breaks in the machine, unanswered questions, this are and are not, things are no loger fixed by logic, by A or not A, A can be A and not A, and it is within these indeterminacies that we have our best chance of finding our freewill.  It is only place or will has any flexibility.  This is a potentially non self destructive truth to be found, and therefore one worth keeping an eye out for.

A final thought, if there is will in cracks of existence, than the question arises, what restricts our will simply to our actions?  How deep does our will go?  With a clearer understanding of will can we do more than just get ourselves a glass of water?  Can we chagne our realities?  Our realities that are made up of these tiny undetermined cracks?  If all these cracks, this essence of reality is naturally undetermined, with the freedom to both be and not be, everything, all of it, the freedom to be and not be, well, isn’t that just another way to say nihilism?

Booya.
Booya.

So please read, respond, challenge, correct, praise and so on and so forth.

It’s human nature to be altruistic, that is to say that we have a deep desire to do good for one another, and that evolution would seem to go against this. Evolution, one would think, would encourage self-preservation and since it seems to be the case for some people that their natural inclination is help one another, even die for another, our altruistic nature is evidence of God.

This is a very quick version of the altruistic argument for God. Certainly I have left out some of the subtleties, but that is the basic idea. If evolution ruled our creation and determined our current selves, we would not have this streak of altruism. The reason I have broken this into two parts is that the rebuttal to this argument is not terribly interesting. There can be a million such arguments for and against the existence of God and we can go back and forth all day swapping out arguments and rebuttals, but more interesting is the argument put forth in part one where I asserted that the option of God simply complicates the situation to an unnecessary degree. I will now, though, quickly run down the rebuttal to the argument for God based on altruism.

Simply, the theory is this: Altruism is, in fact, a very handy trait to have when trying to survive. Of course, when it comes to evolution we have remember it is not the survival of the individual that is important, it is the survival of the species. And although sacrificing your self for the lives of others, particularly the lives of children (which in our Christian society is regarded highly), will certainly not help you live any longer, it will help carry on your genes or the genes of your species.

Let’s imagine two groups of people living long ago. Group A has the altruistic trait and in such they have a desire to protect their young and their society at the sacrifice of their own life. Group B does not have the altruistic tree and values their own life above all else. Now let’s assume these are less developed human beings, not the most logical gang out there. It seems group A would be more successful in fending off predators and generally continuing their society. By working together and sacrificing individuals means they are able to work together in order to ensure their survival. However, the group without the altruistic trait may not have the interest in working together and protecting one another and therefore would be on their own. When a member of group B comes across the sabertooth tiger they will be, of course, outnumbered and, I imagine, an easy meal. When his/her tribes people see the situation, they will surely run away to protect their own lives. Whereas when a member from group A comes across our tiger, one would imagine the caring father or mother or relative or tribes members, possessing the altruistic trait, would be willing help, and with their large numbers, chase away or kill or what ever the tiger.

That’s it, pretty quick. But you can see this of course doesn’t prove there is a God or isn’t a God and has very little effect on the larger God discussion. As I pointed out earlier we can go back and forth on these small little arguments all day long and not make any ground. This is why I refer you back to part one of this two-part series.

im still intrigued by the immense attraction to the idea of altruism. eating is also a survival thing we do, as well as breathing, but those things don’t make our hearts move like altruism does. why is it so attractive? i think because there’s a spiritual/god element to it that were drawn to.

I might be able to explain why we feel moved in concern to altruism through evolution. I can build a convincing story, and I really do think it would make sense. I could go into detail about how that feeling you have can be observed, can be pinpointed to certain chemicals that get released to create these feelings, but it doesn’t’ really matter. The point is that we are given a question that we don’t really know the answer to. We are given a mystery. Your reaction to the mystery is to attribute it to a God like being or element, which at first sounds very simple, but in actuality is very complicated. By introducing the god like element you disrupt the beautifully homogeneous concept of reality that every other single thing falls into.

Everything in reality falls into the same category, except for your solution to this mystery. That doesn’t sound very simple, to have to redefine all of reality to account for a god element in order to provide an answer to the mystery.

And as we look back through history we see this behavior is not a new thing. Mankind constantly attributes unknowns to god elements, it’s what we do. We are problem solvers and when we don’t have a solution, we create one. God elements used to explain everything, rain, sun, moon, stars, gravity, bad weather, good weather, good harvest, bad harvest; but by attributing these things to God mankind is rendered helpless in affecting them. But as we begin to attribute a good harvest, or good growth, with water and sun, we begin to think about how to get water to the fields, we plant fields near rivers, and in the sun. As we understand that all things fall, we learn to move, instead of pray, if we are about to be crushed by a tree. Belief in a god element tends to retard advancements in technology. I’m not saying advancements in technology should be our goal, I have little to support that, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I enjoyed my computer, television, quick and affordable means of transportation, clean drinking water, healthy tasty food, so on and so on. I suspect that you, too, enjoy the fruits of advancements in technology, and if you do, you may wish to advance technology even further. I’m not advocating this action, but simply pointing out that based on your current belief system, this is likely a consequence. If it is the case that you would like to advance technology further, perhaps cure some horrible disease or find a way to feed the world, then it seems far more profitable to search for answers within the physical realm where everything else seems to exist, and where answers cannot be found, simply place an asterisks to remind yourself to go back one day to search for an answer again, and move on.

One more note, I’m also not saying “throw out all religious ideas.” They could very well be correct, but since they are not currently, or foreseeable provable, there is little sense in worrying about that at this point. Yet you can still entertain them, still check to see if perhaps they are, today, provable. For example, I am aware that my dog doesn’t understand anything I say. I still talk to the dog all the time, just for fun, and I get the impression that she doesn’t mind it, she is getting attention which she likes. But now and again I entertain the thought that the dog does understand, gets everything, and is smart enough to not respond, so as to continue being treated like a queen. I believe ideas like this keep us alive and interested in the world around us. If all hope for magic and wonderment is dead, that leaves little for us to do an a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

That’s a daunting title. What does it mean?

Third Person Experience, or TPE, is the phenomenon of experiencing life indirectly, which can either be caused by, or help to cause, depression. It should be noted here that as a fictional character, my ideas may not have been studied or tested by non-fictional individuals. Adapt at your own risk.

Ok. So what is TPE?

Right. A good way to understand TPE is to compare it to First Person Experience or FPE. To illustrate the meaning of first and third person I will use video games. Specifically “shoot-em-up” games. There tend to be two types of “shoot-em-ups,” first person shooters and third person shooters. First person shooters are intended to create the illusion that you are looking through the character’s eyes. The player will often see a gun in the lower third of the screen, or the character’s hand, but nothing else of the character. Third person shooters, however, take the view of a camera floating just above and behind the character. In this game the player will often see the characters entire body, but still maintain the same amount of control. The difference between the games being in the third person shooter the player has more information to process – they can often see more of their surroundings, they have a clear understanding of where their characters body is in relation enemies or cliffs, and they no longer have just the outside world to examine and consider, but also their own character.

First person shooters, on the other hand, can be much more immediate and fast paced – shooting is more natural and less distracting and calculated responses can be executed quicker and feel more natural. This is why third person shooters tend to be more puzzle and problem solving driven, and first person tend to be more action and skill driven.

Geez. Ok, so what.

So, there are also two ways to experience life – first person and third person. FPEs are happening now, happening to you, and you are doing little but experiencing them, good or bad. These tend be intense, forcing us to tend to only them – think of a roller coaster, or a terrible break-up. These are situations which often allow little time for reflection, all you can do is hold on and scream your lungs out. In these experiences there is just the experience. It goes right from experiences into you memory, deep into your brain.

Now TPEs, on the other hand, are entirely different. They are full of analysis, worry, consideration, observation and so on. In these scenarios when something happens we tend to first ask “how does that apply to me?” This is not innately bad, of course. Consideration and mediation are wonderful tools, and when used appropriately are very effective in helping us deal with and understand situations. When we find ourselves in downward spirals of depression, we tend to treat every experience like a third person experience.

Ok. Can you give me an example?

Can I! Here is a simple one: Let’s say the experience is eating a cookie. If this is a FPE you are going to be enjoying that cookie (assuming it is a good cookie and you like cookies). You will be paying attention to the savory dark chocolate chunks, the hint of vanilla, the soft just-out-of-the-oven-warm texture. Your life will be that cookie. That is your experience. If you were to be born at that moment, and die only a moment later, life would consist of nothing but delicious chocolate. Dig?

Now lets look at it as an TPE. Now you are not looking at the cookie, you are looking at you looking at the cookie. You are not experiencing the cookie, you are experiencing you experiencing the cookie. Now, like I mentioned earlier, this is not strictly a bad thing. This can be a great thing, a wonderful thing. To be able to step back and appreciate yourself appreciating something is wonderful. It’s a wonderful exercise, very soothing, very grounding – But, when you are stuck in that mode, when you go through all of life this way, and when you cannot have perspective on that perspective it can be a miserable place.

So how does the cookie thing go down as TPE?

Right. Well, instead of thinking all about the cookie, and the chocolate and the aroma and how wonderful it is, you are watching yourself eat the cookie, and considering the same line of observation and questioning. “Am I eating the cookie properly?” “Should I be eating this cookie?” “Is everyone else eating cookies?” “Am I eating more cookies than them?” “Why am I eating a cookie?” “Is this cookie supposed to make me happy?” “Wouldn’t it be nice if such a simple activity like eating a cookie could make me happy?”

See how much that sucks?

So to make a big point quickly, don’t do that. When you notice you are down, you will probably notice you are doing this. Try not to do this, try to just slow down and enjoy that cookie. Man, that’s bad advice.
The point is, it’s easy to do. It’s easy to get into this mode. But the best way to get out of it is to recognize you are in it.

There is more to this I am sure, but this will be a good launching point for discussion.

Sid, can I ever know anything for sure?

Short answer, maybe.
Here is the the issue with “no.”  The answer no would lead you to know for sure that you can never know anything for sure.  Seems it would be self defeating.
Here is the problem with “yes.”  You probably can’t know anything for sure.  That is to say, there is nothing that leads one to believe they can know anything for sure.  Every piece of knowledge seems to depend on some assumption, some leap of faith, and is not true in and of itself.

These are some bold claims, and I imagine often highly disputed.  Can you the reader think of anything that you can know for sure?

Is it not that by saying forever you’re acknowledging the contrast to never, not that they are interchangeable?

Typically saying forever is an attempt to acknowledge the difference between forever and for sometime, not forever and never. For example, Janet says to Linda, “I will love you forever.” Another way to accurately express this statement would be to say “It is not the case that I will love you for only a limited amount of time.” What would not seem tautological is “It is not the case that I will never love you.” It would be assumed by Linda that Janet currently loves her, and by this proposition she can deduce that this love will continue for the length of time defined as “forever” by Janet, and be comforted by her deduction. Had Janet said the latter, however, she would have in no way been declaring her love for Linda as everlasting. Instead, simply by loving Linda for a period of time ensures the soundness of this proposition.

However, perhaps Janet means both things with her use of forever. It is not the case that she will love Linda for a limited amount of time, and it is not the case that she will never love her.

Forever does not serve as a good example for infinite. Forever is often defined semantically by life spans. If Janet dies tomorrow we would be inclined to say she did love Linda forever. Instead, let’s chose something like “everything is love.”

If everything is love, love would be a meaningless term. When someone says “everything is love,” they mean “it is not the case that only some things are love.” To make this statement sound, either everything can be love, or nothing can be love. But this is not the point. To define something we must show how it is different from something else, otherwise it is not a distinction. If an X is in no way different than a Y, than an X is a Y. It seems that a world where everything is X is the same a world where nothing is X, therefore there is no difference between everything and nothing.

Let’s look at that closer. The reason “everything is love” makes sense to us, and sounds great, is because we understand what not love is. We are not really considering what the statement means. If everything is love, that is everything that is and ever was and ever could be is love, then the word love doesn’t help us define anything. To say something is love will tell us no new information. To say something is love will be the same as saying something is something. If nothing was love the same would apply. It would be the same world. In both worlds defining something as love would be equally meaningless.

Another good example: “God is everywhere.” That is the same as saying “God is nowhere.” If there is not a place that is without God, than to say this place has God is meaningless. There is no distinction between a world in which God is everywhere and God is nowhere. Either way things will be the way they will be, God’s presence or absence will be irrelevant.

The world with God everywhere will be a happier place than the world where God is nowhere.

How? How so? Because when God is around things are better? How could you know things would be better if God was everywhere? You could never experience the absence of God, nor could anyone or anything. There could be no knowledge or understanding of what the absence of God would be like. It couldn’t possibly be better(or worse) than not having God, because the concept of not having God would be nonsense. It would go right against our tautology created by God being everywhere.