Free Will, “Fixed Arbitration” and Property Dualism

Free Will, “Fixed Arbitration” and Property Dualism

I will let the previous section stand as an introduction for what I am trying to do here, and just jump right into the discussion. This is the argument listed in the introduction as 2. The Argument from Qualia: This is what blue feels like, though I hope to be expanding it simply from the concept of qualia.

Mental states, as with words, can be considered to be a fixed arbitration. Now, fixed is not so simple as “permanent” – there is the concept of connection here, a relationship that is steady but not unchangeable. When we agree on the meaning of “cat,” this word is fixed to the idea of the actual animal. This connection is arbitrary insofar as there is no real reason for “cat” to mean cat, other than we have fixed it there. But even somehow our fixing it there does not explain the real relationship between the three letters and the feline, for even had we never chosen to use “cat” for cat, “cat” could always mean cat. There is no reason for it not to mean cat, and there is no reason for it to mean cat – but in terms of possibility “cat” always possibly means cat and also always possibly does not. It is a fixed possibility, but not a necessary one, and therefore it is arbitrary. That is to say, in whatever world we imagine “cat” to mean or not to mean cat, it is always fixed and it is always arbitrary.

I am tempted to say that the fixed, in this sense, may always needs be arbitrary, but I will back off from that, as I am not yet certain. But we can say that language is fixed in two senses: one, that any linguistic unit could or could not mean any relationship, and two, that it is made to represent or not by the culture using it. In both stages the relationship is arbitrary, but fixed.

Now, we can say that the relationship between a person’s physical arrangement and mental state is, in fact, similar if not identical to this notion of fixed arbitration. In terms of symbolic cognition one could simply argue that since words are fixed arbitrations (by words here I mean a perception of a thing where the mind is aware that it is perceiving that thing, a very broad definition I realize), and we think in words, our minds operate with fixed arbitrations. But this would only involve the tools, and not our minds (by minds I mean minds, not brains). What I seek here is to say that, minimally, mental states are fixed arbitrations – that perhaps, furthermore, we as human persons are fixed arbitrations.

But I must slow down and carefully how why I would dare say such a thing. I begin with David Chalmers and his concept of property dualism. He argues, effectively I believe, that the experience of a thing cannot be reduced to the physical nature of that same experience. In other words, he would say that the experience of pain is not fully contingent upon its physical companion. This is so because we can imagine: 1. A different physical structure having the same felt mental state. 2. A mind comprehending the full physical structure but not the experience itself. So the physical structure does in fact explain one sense of why its qualitative mental impression exists: because that is the relationship which, in this universe, exists. When things are arranged for something to appear blue to an eye, it does so. And that arrangement is incredibly precise and beautiful in its own right. But in terms of a pure logic, there is no reason for the thing to be blue with that arrangement other than, that qualitative state and that physical state are in relationship in this world, but not necessarily in others. This is my understanding of property dualism.

In other words, we can say that the qualitative experience of pain is only connected to its quantitative (physical) counterpart through fixed arbitration. Like in language, X nerves experiencing Y stimulus causes Z pain is in terms of pure biological possibility fixed, for it is always possible that pinching my arm hurts or not, and therefore arbitrary. So we could see the structure of pain-feeling nerves like the “words,” and the qualitative experience of pain like the meaning the words imply.

Now it may be objected that how we reach these experiences is not arbitrary. How a nervous system came to be able to experience pain (God or evolution or both), caused it to be so, how I came to be pinched was for teasing my sister, etc. But this argument has missed the point. Certainly an etymologist can chart the path of how “cat” has come to mean cat, but this does not make, in terms of pure possibility, it any less fixed or arbitrary when “cat” in fact means cat. It is the same, then, with the mental experiences of a physical brain. A scientist has the pleasure of exploring how a physical brain and a mental experience do in fact match up, but that a scientist can do so with excruciating detail does not change the fact that the relationship could have been different. So I submit mental states of humans to be fixed abstractions.

Here is the crucial piece. Let us agree for now that mental states are fixed abstractions. Let us say that hard determinism holds cause is not free, and that randomness is not free. Is the word “cat” random or caused? Well in a sense its use is caused by society, but as I have demonstrated above this sort of cause does not change its arbitrary nature. It is also not random, for it is fixed in both possibility and actuality. Sure we could use a new word, but “Cat” exists through fixed arbitration first, not causal relationship, not caused because it is arbitrary, and not random, because it is fixed. So too with mental states – they are a fixed arbitration, a way of existing similar to all words.

So when I choose to eat a sandwich, you can give physicalist diagrams about it, but the why of it, my mental state, my state of choosing, exists alongside the physical state as a fixed arbitration. That is to say, simply, it exists freely – in principle neither causally nor randomly.

Whew. Please leave objections or comments in the comment section, and I will make a new post in reply. Four more to go!