Is Free Will an Illusion? Navigating Kantian Thought with Dr. Vervaeke & Matt Segall 

You just blew my mind a little

As someone who went to Waldorf and has a large group of friends I’ve known since then (mid 30s now), I really don’t think the curriculum has much of an impact on outcome. I can’t think of any trait we exhibit that’s uniquely separate than my public school system peers.

Not philosophers, it's just smartass Kant.

I believe in the critique of judgement I believe what John is referring to is Kant thinks science doesn’t use telos, and he works this out in theoretical reason. However, he finds living things as displaying teleology, and therefore escape the grasp of theoretical reason, and these things are like gates into the noumena. It’s implied biology is impossible. I don’t believe Kant says this explicitly though. As though there’s a quote.

The quote from the editor shows this interpretation is not uncommon. “If we watch, e.g. the growth of a tree we perceive that its various parts are not isolated and unconnected, but that on the contrary they are only possible by reference to the idea of the whole. Each limb affects every other, and is reciprocally affected by it; in short “in such a product of nature every part not only exists by means of the other parts, but is thought as existing for the sake of the others and the whole” (p. 277). The operations of nature in organised bodies seem to be of an entirely different character from mere mechanical processes; we cannot construe them to ourselves except under the hypothesis that nature in them is working towards a designed end. The distinction between nature’s “Technic” or purposive operation, and nature’s Mechanism is fundamental for the explanation of natural law. The language of biology eloquently shows the impossibility of eliminating at least the idea of purpose from our investigations into the phenomena of life, growth, and reproduction. And Kant dismisses with scant respect that cheap and easy philosophy which would fain deny the distinctiveness of nature’s purposive operation. A doctrine, like that of Epicurus, in which every natural phenomenon is regarded as the result of the blind drifting of atoms in accordance with purely mechanical laws, really explains nothing, and least of all explains that illusion in our teleological judgements which leads us to assume purpose where really there is none.” Here are some quotes of what I think John is referring to: “In the first place, a tree generates another tree according to a known natural law. But the tree produced is of the same genus; and so it produces itself generically. On the one hand, as effect it is continually self-produced; on the other hand, as cause it continually produces itself, and so perpetuates itself generically. Secondly, a tree produces itself as an individual. This kind of effect no doubt we call growth; but it is quite different from any increase according to mechanical laws, and is to be reckoned as generation, though under another name. The matter that the tree incorporates it previously works up into a specifically peculiar quality, which natural mechanism external to it cannot supply; and thus it develops itself by aid of a material which, as compounded, is its own product. No doubt, as regards the constituents got from nature without, it must only be regarded as an educt; but yet in the separation and recombination of this raw material we see such an originality in the separating and formative faculty of this kind of natural being, as is infinitely beyond the reach of art, if the attempt is made to reconstruct such vegetable products out of elements obtained by their dissection or material supplied by nature for their sustenance. Thirdly, each part of a tree generates itself in such a way that the maintenance of any one part depends reciprocally on the maintenance of the rest. A bud of one tree engrafted on the twig of another produces in the alien stock a plant of its own kind, and so also a scion engrafted on a foreign stem. Hence we may regard each twig or leaf of the same tree as merely engrafted or inoculated into it, and so as an independent tree attached to another and parasitically nourished by it. At the same time, while the leaves are products of the tree they also in turn give support to it; for the repeated defoliation of a tree kills it, and its growth thus depends on the action of the leaves upon the stem. The self-help of nature in case of injury in the vegetable creation, when the want of a part that is necessary for the maintenance of its neighbours is supplied by the remaining parts; and the abortions or malformations in growth, in which certain parts, on account of casual defects or hindrances, form themselves in a new way to maintain what exists, and so produce an anomalous creature, I shall only mention in passing, though they are among the most wonderful properties of organised creatures.” (Kant § 64.) “In a watch one part is the instrument for moving the other parts, but the wheel is not the effective cause of the production of the others; no doubt one part is for the sake of the others, but it does not exist by their means. In this case the producing cause of the parts and of their form is not contained in the nature (of the material), but is external to it in a being which can produce effects according to Ideas of a whole possible by means of its causality. Hence a watch wheel does not produce other wheels, still less does one watch produce other watches, utilising (organising) foreign material for that purpose; hence it does not replace of itself parts of which it has been deprived, nor does it make good what is lacking in a first formation by the addition of the missing parts, nor if it has gone out of order does it repair itself-all of which, on the contrary, we may expect from organised nature.-An organised being is then not a mere machine, for that has merely moving power, but it possesses in itself formative power of a self-propagating kind which it communicates to its materials though they have it not of themselves; it organises them, in fact, and this cannot be explained by the mere mechanical faculty of motion.” (Kant § 65.) “Organised beings are then the only beings in nature which, considered in themselves and apart from any relation to other things, can be thought as possible only as purposes of nature. Hence they first afford objective reality to the concept of a purpose of nature, as distinguished from a practical purpose; and so they give to the science of nature the basis for a teleology, i.e. a mode of judgement about natural Objects according to a special principle which otherwise we should in no way be justified in introducing (because we cannot see a priori the possibility of this kind of causality).” (Kant § 65.) “Now this concept brings the Reason into a quite different order of things from that of a mere mechanism of nature, which is no longer satisfying here. An Idea is to be the ground of the possibility of the natural product. But because this is an absolute unity of representation, instead of the material being a plurality of things that can supply by itself no definite unity of composition,-if that unity of the Idea is to serve at all as the a priori ground of determination of a natural law of the causality of such a form of composition,-the purpose of nature must be extended to everything included in its product. For if we once refer action of this sort on the whole to any supersensible ground of determination beyond the blind mechanism of nature, we must judge of it altogether according to this principle; and we have then no reason to regard the form of such a thing as partly dependent on mechanism-for by such mixing up of disparate principles no certain rule of judging would be left. For example, it may be that in an animal body many parts can be conceived as concretions according to mere mechanical laws (as the hide, the bones, the hair). And yet the cause which brings together the required matter, modifies it, forms it, and puts it in its appropriate place, must always be judged of teleologically; so that here everything must be considered as organised, and everything again in a certain relation to the thing itself is an organ.” (Kant § 66.)

I’ve spoken with Stu Hameroff who acknowledges Whitehead’s concept of concrescence is an important influence on he and Penrose’s model. Concrescence overcomes the Kantian dualism between causation and decision.

@Footnotes2Plato I'll have to study Whitehead, sounds like that's a pretty accurate description. Thank you for the feedback! Edit: Just heard you bring it up 46 min in, fantastic content

I know enough about ken😅. I'll stick with our little corner thanks

Agreed.

@@Ac-ip5hd thanks 😊

No problem, c0t3l did a set of streams on Vervaeke, Peterson, Vanderklay and Mark Leferbve, at the basi level, and Vervaeke’s Silicon Sages and work w Sam Tideman and Ryan Long on “christian” transhumanism, Twitch’s AI “jesus”, Christian Transhumanism debunked (deeper on their presups) and debunking transhumanism as false theosis. He’s going to be getting into the meat of Vervaeke and the very issue you are raising and so is Dyer, some time in the near future. Possibly Fr Deacon Ananais as well.

@@Ac-ip5hd not sure who c0t3l is. Jay dryer is a Coherentist and a presumptionalist. Something that I don’t think it tenable after Derridas criticism of structure.

Well I disagree there but it seems we have some overlap. Cotel is Church of The Eternal Logos, I misspelled it due to the algo often eating links.

You haven't even watched the video...

Why is academia part of the problem? What problem are you referring to?

A silly, confused remark. What does academia have to do with the free will conversation?

He's a whiteheadian, so a very different academic, so silly statement

@@Joeonline26 hmmm whose post are you responding to? Sorry, I may actually have been confused.