n a piece posted on the Discovery Institute website, responding to bad publicity surrounding the Wedge Document , the author or authors write:
Far from attacking science (as has been claimed), we are instead challenging scientific materialism – the simplistic philosophy or world-view that claims that all of reality can be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone. We believe that this is a defense of sound science.
So there we have a one definition of “scientific” materialism: “the world-view that claims that all of reality can be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone”.
Let me turn this round. If there are aspects of reality that impinge on our world that can NOT be “reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone”, that would mean that the law of conservation of energy would sometimes be violated. Matter would sometimes move in a manner unexplainable in terms of the translation of one form of energy into another.
This would be scientifically very interesting. It would also mean that such deviations should be detectable by scientific methodology. But, I suggest, if were to observe such deviations, it would merely falsify “materialism” in a very narrow sense – and it would tell us nothing about whether or not theism is true – it would merely expand our understanding of the world in the same way that anything so many discoveries in physics have expanded it over the last few hundred years, and particularly in the last hundred. Even if we were to find evidence for bodiless intelligences possessing pure “mind” powers, capable of creating “intention fields” to guide nucleotides into place, for instance, without any energy conversion involved, it still wouldn’t be outside science – we’d simply have to expand our understanding of the world to include beings other than ourselves (we’d have no a priori reason to assume they had our interests at heart, after all), and revise our ideas about the conservation of energy. Perhaps there are aliens who have mastered perpetual motion!
On the other hand, if there are aspects of reality that do not impinge on our world, and “reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone”, then that isn’t very interesting at all, and we won’t be able to apply the methodology of science to detect it.
So is it true (putting aside the paranoia that that DI document seems anxious to accuse Barbara Forrest of accusing the DI of, and which still seems to me abundantly apparent in the original Wedge document) that science has been hampered by a refusal to consider the possibility that the law of conservation of energy is sometimes violated?
Well, no, it isn’t. Einstein didn’t assume it, he elaborated it; Heisenberg didn’t assume it, he elaborated it. In other words it simply isn’t a foundational assumption of science.
I would say that the foundational assumption of modern science is simply that our knowledge of the world is limited by our ability to make predictive models, and that therefore where we cannot predict (at least probabilistically) we can only conclude that “we do not know”. This is neither a pro-theist nor an anti-theist assumption. What it does, however, is to place limits on what we can investigate scientifically: specifically we cannot test hypotheses that do not make differential predictions. Which is another way of formulating Popper’s falsification test.
That’s why my objection to ID has nothing to do with being a theist or a non-theist, or being a “materialist” culturally, or in any other sense. It’s to do with the lack of a testable predictive model. It is perfectly possible to test the hypothesis that something was designed and fabricated by an intelligent agent – even by a Divine agent – but only if we can make a predictive model. If the putative agent is entirely postulated to be unpredictable (and frankly it would be an odd Divinity who was – we can test perfectly good hypotheses about human, or even alien, intelligent agents), then we can’t test the hypothesis.
“Materialism” is a good term to accuse others of a pre-commitment to a desired outcome, because how could anyone ever show that “materialism” encompasses all phenomena?
If they were simply accusing us of empiricism (including logic/reason, of course), of wanting sufficient evidence for a claim, that just wouldn’t sound nearly so wrong, since it’s nearly the opposite of pre-commitment.
And they’re almost always going to accuse us of being committed to an unwarranted idea, with as much evidence as ever (not that some pro-science types aren’t already committed, but many are not). It fits with the typical IDist/creationist binary view, it projects their own suppositionalist beliefs onto us, and it is the “explanation” for why their sure-fire arguments don’t work on us. There is as much utility value in the accusation as there is insufficiency of evidence for it.
Glen Davidson
Certainly that DI apologetics piece is very dishonest. Whether the alarm the Wedge document engendered was justified or not, the DI has only itself to blame. In the Wedge, these words appear:
Here, materialism has a very different meaning from the one the DI document linked in the OP implies was intended. Far from boiling down to a fairly technical view on the conservation of energy, it’s a direct attack on the atheism they see as flowing from it.
My point is that even if what they define as “materialism” in the second DI document really was a foundational view held by scientist, as opposed to a working assumption, atheism doesn’t flow from it.
Nor does the end of moral responsibility flow from an understanding of the biological underpinnings of behaviour.
And seeing as the much vaunted “objective moral standards” that are supposed to be granted by theism are completely opaque (can only be derived from a subjective choice of deity), they aren’t any loss. Rather a systematic secular moral philosophy than Divine Command theory.
And coercive governments are certainly not the prerogative of atheist regimes. History is littered with theocratic tyrannies.
But all that is irrelevant, because there’s nothing in standard scientific methodology in general, or “Darwinism” in particular that implies atheism.
That’s probably false.
As far as I can tell, mathematics cannot be reduced to nor derived from matter and energy alone. Yet nobody believes that mathematics violates conservation of energy.
For myself, I am not a materialist. I’m not an immaterialist, either. But I cannot consider myself a materialist because I don’t believe the things that materialists are said to believe.
It isn’t only theists who rail against materialism. Thomas Nagel, supposedly an atheist, did that in his book “Mind and Cosmos”.
There do seem to be people who are materialists in the sense that is criticized. I would characterize Jerry Coyne as one of them. Coyne’s arguments against free will strike me as dubious. I have had commenters on my blog with similar arguments. And they tend to say that people are just mechanical devices, which seems mistaken to me though I’ve never been able to work out what they mean by “mechanical”.
It is probably the reductionist aspect of materialism that I mainly object to. Reductionism just seems like a flawed idea.
While we are about it, I am not anti-theist either. WJM should stop assuming that those who are not theists are anti-theist.
Well, I’m not a materialist by most of the definitions I’ve seen.
And if “all of reality” is meant to encompass mathematics, or for that matter, art and music, then I don’t think it “be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone”. It would simply be a useless way of thinking about them.
And like you, I’m not anti-theism, although I’m against a lot of what is done in the name of theism, and I think a lot of theological argument is bunk.
I was very much into science, back when I considered myself an evangelical Christian. I never saw a conflict between science and Christianity that could not be dealt with. If anything, it was the conflict between Christianity and the Bible that led me away from religion.
Me too. It was seeing the incoherence of libertarian free will that got between my and me previous dualism. That’s why I’d describe myself as a monist rather than an “atheist”. Or I would if people knew what I meant!
One way that theists have of disparaging supposed ‘materialists’ is with a subtle misunderstanding of what it means to understand the basis of some phenomena. They’ll attack an extreme reductionist strawman by saying that materialists claim that the phenomena is nothing more than its parts…. so..materialists claim that the love you feel for your child is nothing more than chemical reactions in your brain etc etc. Any attempt to explain how new principles can arise by interaction between parts- emergent properties- gets brushed aside
And “emergence” dismissed as a “cop out”.
A recurring theme at the DI a few years ago was the claim that science has a fundamental inability to deal with design questions and that this is partially responsible for explaining the mainstreams rejection of ID. This is nonsense of course. With natural phenomena scientists create models and hypotheses to understand the phenomena and how events in the past may have unfolded. When design is being studied a whole new series of questions comes into play: who where the designers? what were their goals? what abilities and limitations did they have? what solutions did they employ for individual problems given their limitations? This is what Egyptologists have been doing productively for almost 300 years. If living things had actually been designed ID advocates would have a limitless number of things to productively study, and no competition.
EL:
If only. You have to be able to understand a statement before you can hope to turn it around.”round”.
No, it doesn’t. It just means that phenomena may behave in ways not derivable from known natural regularities (laws) and known patterns of energetic effects. IOW, potential energy may be “converted” into kinetic energy in a manner entirely consistent with conservation of energy, but inconsistent with known, naturalistic descriptions/models. That doesn’t mean any extra or new energy is being employed; it only means that it is being employed in a manner not described by natural theories.
No. It means matter would sometimes move in a manner not describable in terms of naturalistic models of expected behaviors.
When they can build a better mousetrap using their sound(er) science the entire world will sit up and take notice.
If you understand reality better than I then in an even competition you will win.
So what additional practical value can be seen to flow from these people? If their world-view is more complex and that complexity adds value then where are the fruits of that?
What about unknown naturalistic descriptions/models? How have you ruled those out?
So you can’t predict Mozart from Newton’s laws of motion? Is that it?
The thing is William J. Murray, I think the problem is that you just don’t have much of an imagination. For example, let’s say that the existing trend towards molecular level simulation continues and in a few decades I’ll be able to buy enough computer power to simulate an entire solar system at the molecular level.
I then wait a year, and now I can run many parallel versions of this same simulation.
Some versions of those simulations create a character similar in many ways to the Mozart we know and love. I file those simulations under “Mozart”. The computer identifies these for me, obviously.
Eventually I have a library of such simulations. I have the full history of every molecule in every simulation.
Mozart is now describable in terms of naturalistic models of expected behaviors.
Questions?
That doesn’t make sense, William. That would be like saying that “materialism” was the assumption that all energetic effects are known.
Please explain how, and how you are defining “naturalistic”.
Please define “naturalistic” in this context.
Your argument seems to be entirely circular.
Here I say “fer instance” and you say “The HP Laptop” or some other artifact.
But I tell you what. Why don’t you tell me what specific known, naturalistic descriptions/models that HP Laptop is inconsistent with? Specifically? You know, like models have names? What’s the model?
William should re-read his post.
He seems quite happy with the claim that “all of reality can be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone” as long as the “patterns of energetic effects” include some that are not “natural” or “known”.
EL asks:
We’ve been over this. I no more have to explain “how” intent transfers potential energy into kinetic than you have to explain “how” gravitation transfers potential energy into kinetic. These are descriptions of the behavior of matter reified as “things” and causes.
Predicted by natural law or within the plausible range of probabilistic outcomes.
If people are going to claim that “materialism” is the exclusion of the “supernatural” then they need to define what they mean by “natural”.
In my view, there is much more that exists in reality than that which is accounted for, and/or “impinges on”, the physical universe. I don’t make arguments about that which I think lies entirely outside of the physical universe.
WJM, how do gambling casinos stay in business and make profits if people can “intend” and direct the outcome of dice rolls or roulette spins?
You never think through your woo claims, do you?
BTW, intentional effects can be predicted and measured. If it is the intent of a subject to affect a random event generator; the success of that intent can be (and has been) measured. If it is a proposed unembodied intelligence’s intent to provide certain knowledge of things to some recipient, the results of that intention can be measured. Some of the the biological effects of “mindfulness” techniques are well-known.
Yes, you do, William. We know perfectly well how gravity transfers potential energy into kinetic energy. It involves dislodging whatever was previously preventing it from falling. And if you want to make gravity do it again, you have to put the thing back on the shelf – which again uses energy.
Tell me where the energy comes from that dislodges something that falls into an intention well.
I asked you this before, and you did not respond.
But it’s irrelevant to this issue anyway, because if intention is simply a force, like gravity, there’s nothing “unnatural” about it. So it falls just as easily into the DI’s definition of “materialism” as gravity does.
So how come gravity comes under “natural law” and “intention” doesn’t?
Your definition is circular.
Define “plausible” and “probabilistic”.
Warning: do not dismiss my requests for definitions as a distraction. The woolliness of ID definitions presents a major problem for ID as a project. You may find that when you seriously try to define those terms you see a problem you had previously not considered.
William,
Sure, but why do you think that’s a problem for materialism?
Yes indeed.
In principle, yes. In practice, there are issues with the experimental set up.
But sure, we can use intention to move objects. For instance, I do experiments using magnetoencephalography. There is no physical contact between the person and the gradiometers, yet the person in the scanner can cause patterns to appear on my screen merely by intending them. In fact I ask them to, to check the SNR.
But none of that violates the principle that the world can be explained in terms of matter and energy.
All the intelligent beings whose intent we have to date measured have bodies. And you don’t need to invoke anything as esoteric as “mindfulness” to note that mental events have “biological effects”, William. You don’t even need fancy equipment. A magazine or a quick google should do the trick.
Bullcrap. Please provide evidence of such an experiment where “intent” has physically affected random outcomes, the results were published in a mainstream scientific journal, and the effects were repeated by an independent second party.
We all know you have a hard time telling the difference between one-off anecdotal woo and repeatable science.
Accounted for by whom? Nobody thinks we can account for, or ever will account for, everything that exists in the “physical universe”.
You seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place, William. You want “non-material” effects to lie within “the physical universe” and to need no additional energy, and yet still to call it “non-material”. Whereas even the DI’s definition of materialism was the claim that “all reality” can “be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone.” You don’t want to add energy to account for “non-material” components. And clearly you don’t want to add “matter”. And clearly you regard gravity as “natural”. So what makes your proposal any more “non-material” than gravity?
EL said:
I responded every time. I said, “it is embedded in the system”. Like gravitational energy is embedded in the system as gravitational potential energy.
That doesn’t tell anyone how potential energy is transferred into kinetic energy; it just describes what occurs preceding the transition. What occurs preceding the transfer of potential energy to kinetic is that a conscious entity intends a result. Does that satisfy you? If your explanation was supposed to satisfy me, mine should then satisfy you.
I agree that the experiments William has cited are of dubious provenance. However, there’s no reason in principle why “intention” shouldn’t be proposed as testable hypothesis, not why we shouldn’t test it in just the way psi researchers do.
What I want William to answer is why such an experiment would be counter to “materialist” science as defined by the DI.
But you did not respond when I pointed out that that is a non-answer. For instance, I gave the example of a vase on a shelf. The potential energy of that vase is “embedded in the system”. Which includes a shelf preventing the vase from falling to the floor. If I want gravity to turn its potential energy (which it has by virtue of having been put by me, on the shelf, and by virtue of the bracket that keeps the shelf on the wall), then I have to dislodge the vase – put more energy in, to get it out of its current well, and into a lower one.
If you want to change the trajectory an object has in the world, you have to move something in a direction it wouldn’t otherwise have moved. So you have to accelerate something that wouldn’t otherwise have been accelerated.
I know of ways things with brains can do this – they can cause their arms to knock the vase off the shelf. And with some fancy equipment, I can even get them to do it at-a-short-distance.
So it’s perfectly possible. But energy transfer is involved, and I can tell you something about what is burned where, to do it.
Saying the energy is “embedded in the system” tells me nothing.
No, it doesn’t satisfy me at all. It’s entirely circular, again. I can trace the energy transfer when my cat knocks the vase off the shelf. I can also trace the energy transfer when I ask someone in the MEG to relax and produce some alpha waves, or to focus and produce more beta and gamma.
So if all you are saying is that when a person makes a Random Cascade Generator accumulate balls to one side or the other (not that I am persuaded that these results are legit, but per arguendo, I’ll say they are) is that they burn some ATP just as my subjects burn some ATP to change the neural oscillations that are making changes to the electromagnetic field around their head, and thus to the trace on my screen, then in what sense is this anything other than a material phenomenon by the definition given by the DI?
And if you are NOT saying that ATP is burned – then what is?
EL said:
What my situation “seems to be” to you isn’t of much concern to me, because, frankly, you have demonstrated yourself time and again to be utterly incapable of understanding what I’m saying.
Where did I say this?
If we’re defining “material” as that which is predictable and/or the result of natural laws and stochastic processes. That leaves intention/teleology out as a fundamental force, which I think it is. Now, if “materialism” is so horrendously vague a concept as to allow “intention” to be a fundamental force not describable in terms of natural law and stochastic processes, but describable in terms of intent, then the term doesn’t really even mean anything and can only be a proxy for something else.
I suspect that when DI refers to “matter and energy”, under materialism, they are referring to mindless “matter and energy”, where everything is ultimately caused by non-mindful, non-intentional forces. My view is that mind/intention is a fundamental force that has demonstrable effects in the world and cannot be reduced to/derived from “matter and energy”.
As far as gravity is concerned, it is a description of behaviors reified as a cause. That behavior is part of what we refer to as “then natural behavior of matter”. What causes gravity, however, cannot itself be “natural”. Unless you think a thing can cause itself, nature cannot generate nature. Something else must be that which generates the behaviors we refer to as “nature”.
And you seem, frankly, to be incapable of considering that that might be because it doesn’t actually make sense. I’m not saying that is definitely the case – but it’s something you ought to consider.
You wrote:
And yet you seem to be referring to “non-material” effects within it.
But that is not the definition used by the DI. It would be circular – it would be defining what is “material” as what is “natural” – a word you still haven’t defined.
I know you do. I disagree, but let us assume you are right. If you were, what would make that “fundamental force” any less “natural” than, say, gravity?
Quite. I don’t think it does “mean anything”. That’s exactly my point. I think it’s a straw man, and I don’t know why the DI is so dedicated to combating it.
We could get rid of it entirely and simply argue about whether “intention” is “a fundamental force”. Which we could investigate empirically, as you suggest.
Indeed I do – as I’ve said, it’s my research area. Right now, we are looking at the differences between the patterns of electromagnetic fields generated in the head when someone looks at a pattern with the intention of making a decision about it, and when they look at a pattern with no such intention. There are, unsurprisingly, marked differences.
Does that make me a materialist or not-a-materialist?
EL said:
Yes, I did. Every time. I reiterated that it is a perfectly good answer.
I see. So unless someone removes a shelf under a rock floating in space, its trajectory won’t change when it floats close to other massive objects?
William’s non materialistic science idea was so poorly relieved even UD didn’t want to know.
EL said:
Definitionally, since naturally doesn’t mean by artifice or intentionally. Does “dying of natural causes” include murder, under materialism? I mean, if we’re going to equivocate “natural” and “material” to include intention as a fundamental force, then why not also equivocate atheism to include belief in god? That way, everyone is a materialist and an atheist!!!
OK, so you seem to agree that, as written, the DI definition is inadequate.
And I take it that your case is that it is the view that “everything is ultimately caused by non-mindful, non-intentional forces”.
OK, I’m willing to take that as your definition of materialism. In which case, my response is:
What do you mean by “ultimately” caused, and why is the “ultimate” causation important?
Assuming that by “ultimately” caused, you mean “the most distal cause in the chain”: that would indeed by a useful definition of theism – the difference between believing that the most distal cause in the chain of events was/is something with a mind, and between believing that it was something without a mind.
I take the second view (although I used to take the first) and that is why I no longer call myself a theist.
However, I would argue that a) that does not mean that nothing is caused by intentional agents – it’s just that those intentional agents are a much more proximal cause of events than the primal cause – and that b) thinking that the primal cause of events is something with a mind actually reduces me to a thought in the mind of someone else, rather than being a freely choosing and intending agent in my own right.
Which brings us back to the issue of libertarian free will, and, indeed, to the energy question: if intention is “fundamental” rather than “emergent” then, as I keep arguing, it requires an energy source to divert matter from the trajectory it would otherwise have taken. It also needs to be affected BY forces in the world – otherwise it will be uninformed. Another way of putting this is to say that there needs to be information transfer between your intentional entity and the entity that executes the action.
That is easily solved under an emergent view of intention – because there aren’t two separate entities – the intender and the executor are one and the same.
But it is not solvable at all under a libertarian, “fundamental force” view. If your intentional part is completely unconstrained by information from the world, it will be unable to make informed decisions. Sure, it will be free, but only as a flapping sail is “free”, or a coin is “free” to land heads or tails. In other words, the only freedom it can possess is the trivial freedom of a random process. On the other hand if it IS constrained by information from the world, then it is NOT free in the libertarian sense, nor is it “fundamental” – and there’s no good reason to posit that it doesn’t have a perfectly explicable information transfer system accomplished in terms of the system that makes an intention-capable organism, complete with sensory organs, muscles, and central nervous system.
It is perfectly possible to differentiate between a “natural” (unintended) event and an “artificial” (intended) event without positing that “intention” is a “fundamental force.
And there is no “equivocation” going on on my part, William. I’m the one asking for definitions. You’ve told me you think the DI didn’t say what it actually meant. So it’s not me equivocating. If people are against materialism, they need to be clear what it is they are against.
You seem to be against the view that “intention” is “not a fundamental force”. And that is your definition of “materialism” apparently – the view that intention is not a fundamental force.
OK, fine.
I don’t think it is. But I don’t rule it out on principle, so there’s no “ism” involved for me. I just think it’s an empirical question, and I think the evidence suggests it’s wrong.
When you say “random event generator” what sort of random event generator would that be, precisely? How random would it need to be?
And where would that random event generator have to be? Would it be on the server or on the browser? Does it matter? Does proximity make a difference? How close is close enough?
As I can write a program that will run in your browser or on a server so we can attempt to reproduce your claimed effect. There are sources of real randomness that can be accessed in real time.
The best quality source I have in mind has the randomness coming from atmospheric noise. Would that be suitable? Is there a time component? If I get 1000 bytes and “use” them once a second will the effect be seen even in bytes already generated? You’ll have to get quite specific, as you can see, the devil is in the detail!
So the question is, do you want to have a go at what could potentially pass for “science” (if you squint)? If you describe it, I might actually build it. If you really believe in it, perhaps you’ll do that. Or, easier, just choose to believe.
Did you do that William?
William, if your “intention field” is to alter the trajectory objects would have had in the absence of that field something has to happen differently. If the trajectories of your rock and massive object were on a collision course, then if you do nothing, the trajectories won’t alter. They will collide (or near miss, or whatever). If you want to CHANGE the trajectories to something different, you may have to fire a rocket at the rock, for example (as there are plans to do with earth-threatening asteroids). That requires additional energy to that required to do nothing – let matters take their course.
Exactly the same is true with an “intention field”. If you want to stop an asteroid on a trajectory projected to hit earth you will have to CHANGE the trajectory of the asteroid, because if you don’t, as it approaches earth, it will tend to fall into the gravity well of earth.
And if you do it by focussing intention on the asteroid, you are going to need to find the equivalent of the energy that a rocket would have needed, from somewhere.
I’m just going to assume this might actually matter to some people.
Elizabeth, you’ve claimed that the DI has defined materialism in self-contradictory ways but I don’t see where you actually make the case for this claim. Or do you say there’s no actual inconsistency?
I don’t think I said it was self-contradictory. I did say it was different to William’s (and William said that he thought they meant something different to what they said).
I do think that it is unclear what they have in mind as an alternative to the view that “all of reality can be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone” – if events can occur that are not “derived from matter and energy” – what sort of events would those be? Non energetic? In which case how would they impact on our senses or on matter?
My other point is that their definition doesn’t seem to me to square with what they imply “materialism” entails in the Wedge document. Sure, they dismiss the Wedge document as “an early fundraising proposal”, but they don’t disown it, and UD certainly is regularly filled with posts decrying the moral bankruptcy of “materialism”.
So my plea I guess, is: if people are opposed to “materialism” then they need to be very clear what they mean by that.
William has now been very clear: he means the view that intention is not a fundamental force.
Do you have one?
Why would one more lie from an organization of professional anti-science liars matter to anyone? Every convicted felon in prison swears they’re innocent too.
“There are many monisms.” SEP
Which sort are you?
Materialism
Why don’t we start with this definition of materialism and work from it? Is it objectionable?
c.f.
materialism
Hi Lizzie,
It isn’t clear to me what you are asking with that question. Do I have one what? An objection to materialism? Something else?
Well, I’d like to know what the “philosophy” is supposed to be, and what “false scientific theories” are supposed to support it.
They do say:
But it’s not at all clear to me how these scientific theories support “the philosophy of scientific materialism”, defined as they do. None of these theories even attempt to demonstrate that “all reality can be reduced to, or derived from, matter and energy alone”. They merely show how some of reality might be derived from matter and energy.
To try to demonstrate that there are aspects of reality that are not derivable from matter and energy would seem to me to be a tall order (even if true). Unless they mean abstractions like mathematics and music. In which case, there isn’t a dispute in the first place.
Personally I think it is unlikely that the world consists of anything other than matter and energy – but that wouldn’t make theism untrue. Indeed there are good theological traditions that take for granted just that: that God is the ground of being, not some added hot sauce that materialists are determined to ignore.
No, a definition 🙂
Or, if you prefer: can you articulate what it is you disagree with those often referred to as “materialists” about?
ETA: cross posted with your definition! Thanks.
Damn. I have no idea. I just meant I am not a Cartesian dualist. I don’t think mind is independent of the physical substrate that in my view gives rise to it. I think mind is, to use one of William’s favorite words, how we “reify” the experience of thinking.
So I guess that makes me a “physicalist” by your definitions.
That sort of works as a description of my position, for certain values of “explained”. “Explained” is certainly better than “reduced to”. But I do think that in principle we could explain (or even build, one day) an entity capable of thought, feeling, mind and will.
And indeed of taking moral responsibility for its actions.
ok, that got a laugh out of me. 🙂
And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I think you were just being honest. By the way, there are alternatives to monism and Cartesian dualism. I am exploring one known as Hylomorphism.
The basic equations of physics will tell you how an object floating in space will move if it interacts with a force. The equations make no distinction between a force that arises from a random asteroid or the gloved hand of an astronaut- the effect will be exactly the same. Of course the chain of causation is very different between the 2 possibilities. The one with the astronaut will involve chemical reactions in muscle, motor neurons and a very complex network of nerves in the brain from which ‘intention’ must arise. I think the recognition of this is why many no longer believe in free will. To them you could draw out a long chain of cause and effect leading to the movement of the object – draw a circle around a short part of this chain and label it ‘intention’ or ‘free-will’ but the chain of cause and effect is not fundamentally different between any other causal chain that doesn’t involve a mind. I think the notion of ‘free-will’ is salvageable, but I could only make a meek defense of it.