How to solve free will puzzles

Hello and welcome. This page discusses "How to Solve Free-Will Puzzles and Overcome Limitations of Platonic Science" and introduces an essay by that name. There are various approaches to the subject:

Key to the solution of free-will puzzles

Diagrams of "free will" and related images of freedom

How "free will" looks from the alternative view of freedom

I suggest that a person exercises freedom while making choices in contexts of goals and effort, e.g., in sports and games. In my view, a chief reason people participate in sports and games, even as spectators, is for enjoyment of freedom. During the game, the all-important "win" can go either way and players (along with any spectators) are absorbed in working through possibilities, move by move, play by play. A chess player exercises freedom when choosing which piece to re-locate on the board. A baseball batter exercises freedom when deciding whether to hold back or swing at a pitched ball. Other examples of freedom involve choices in market situations, including shopping for consumer goods and selecting a meal from a menu in a restaurant. Successful bargaining requires special skills and exercises of freedom. Route-finding in the mountains exemplifies freedom in natural wilderness. Choices made by judges and juries during trials in courtrooms provide institutional examples. My technical formulation for all such exercises of freedom is that multiple possible courses of action change into a single actual course of action (sometimes including non-action).

The problem with "free will" is the meaning of "will." It means different things to different people, e.g., to Augustine (354-430) who invented "free will" for theological purposes or to Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and Nietzsche (1844-1900), whose speculations were chiefly self-centered. In the essay, where I emphasize everyday practices rather than theories, I playfully define "willfulness" as "doing something for the sake of doing it." In other words, a willful person is firm in his or her resolve to continue repeating a specific course of action. Others may call such a person "stubborn" or "pigheaded." In the diagrams, a willful person does "the same thing" over and over. However, the repetition is not mechanical or robotic. The person is intentionally developing his or her skills. The activity is called practice. "Free will" in the diagrams is a person practicing something over and over while developing skills that include freedom.

The diagrams show a person practicing a "jump." Here, a jump is a model of a muscular act with a sudden abrupt instant of beginning and an exact instant of ending. Biologically, a jump results from collective activation of "jumpy" twitches in a large number of individual muscular units. The form of jump applies to many kinds of actual muscular movements that include a baseball batter's swing, a singer's jumps in musical pitch while shifting from note to note, eye jumps ("saccades") that track a moving object and keyboard strokes of a data entry clerk. Jumps and other moves on a chess board provide examples of representational action. Jumping can also make up a process of construction. A singer constructs a tune out of jumps in pitch. A data entry clerk constructs a record out of jumpy keystrokes. A tourist jumping from port to port or from airport to airport constructs a course of action called a trip or a passage. Jumps that can go in one of several different directions are an elemental form of freedom: they can be combined to make up multiple possible courses of action, as in playing chess or in routing a tour.

Diagrams of "Free Will"

A jump moves from an earlier instant of beginning until it reaches a later instant of ending. That is, in diagrams where details are omitted and features are distorted, the beginning and ending are shrunk to "instants," periods of time that are much shorter than all other periods of time being considered. The period of an instant is so short that, as a practical matter, nothing changes if the period of an instant is doubled or halved.

After the first jump, the jump is repeated. Further repetitions follow. The person modifies the jump in successive jumps, as discussed below. Each jump is a temporal piece in the actual construction of a "session of practice." A session of practice occupies a distinct period of time. A form for a practice session starts with getting ready for the first jump and ends when the last jump has landed.

During a session of practice, a person also constructs or develops a form for the jump. Such a form is chiefly defined by its function of being followed in future jumps, including suitability for memory and recall. That is, the form of the jump defines how jumps are to be performed. It is a single way, at least initially. In contrast, a jump performed by an unskilled person can occur in multiple uncontrolled ways. By imitating another person or by receiving instruction or by reading or by invention, the person learns or constructs the form. The form is a mental pattern that guides actual performances but that is detached from and different from actual performances. The person intends that an actual performance will follow the form but such an intention is often achieved in only an approximate way.

In sum, the form of the intended movement constitutes a unit of psychological content of a brain that is controlling actual movement. A model of a "mind" can be constructed around storage and recall of such forms of movement. Looking towards models of controlled activity, a brain generates a form of intended movement, e.g., a form featuring a desired result or purpose such as picking up and eating a tasty-looking morsel, and such generation initiates a process that leads to actual movement. Such a process may include selections that are exercises of freedom.

For example, a baseball player facing a pitching machine during batting practice maintains in mind a jumpy form of intended movement that includes a variable instant of release and variable muscular forces that control the movement's actual shape, which variables are chosen or selected by the batter "on the fly." Later, when facing a human pitcher in an actual game, the batter can apply skills previously learned during practice. The batter recalls the form of the intended movement and activates skills of timing and selection. The batter's exercises of freedom contrast sharply with tasks assigned to test subjects in free-will puzzles that lack purpose or skill and that are detached from the streams of muscular movements that make up actual life.

A person is often able to detect differences between a standard or idealized form of intended movement and an actual movement that tries to follow the form. A teacher or coach can often detect additional differences. The person perfects performance through further practice of trying to follow the form, e.g., by reducing and eliminating such differences. Perfection in performance means that the person can generate and follow the intended form exactly on each and every occasion. Examples include parallel parking, shooting baskets from the foul line and singing one's national anthem. Extending examples to symbolic activity, many adults perform perfectly (or nearly so) at spelling and arithmetic and other adults are not able to achieve perfection in one or both of these skills.

The temporal construction of practice leads to a special kind of mental condition in the person during the practice session that focuses the attention of the person on the activity that is being practiced. During practice, there is a heightening of certain forms of mental and bodily activity. Certain definite capacities of the person are engaged in practice while other capacities of the person are suppressed. Even a kindly person may be rude if interrupted during practice. Such a mental condition, which I call dwelling, establishes a distinct character for practice, isolating practice from other activities.

Solutions to free-will puzzles are suggested by such constructions. Skills of freedom are exercised on the fly but they are not learned on the fly. Skills of freedom are specific to a situation. The situations investigated in free-will puzzles do not involve skills of freedom because persons or "subjects" who are being tested are put into a new situation and do not learn anything. Free-will puzzles do not involve skills that a subject previously learned because that would allow a "personal element" to intrude. The modern scientific view excludes "personal elements." Having excluded skills of freedom and giving the name "free will" to something else, free-will investigators declare puzzlement over the meaningless of the results.

During practice, movements occur repetitively in a way that approximates "the same." Some forms also allow for variations. A specific variation is a variant. When variant forms are introduced, the original form becomes "the standard" or "default" form.

Suppose, while the person is practicing jumps, a variant "appears," as denoted in freewill diagram 2. Like the original form, the variant may be learned, e.g., through imitation, instruction, texts or play. The result is that two forms are established where the jump can be performed in the "standard" way and a similar jump can also be performed in a different or variant way. There are two possible movements and the person selects which one become the next actual movement. Such a choice is easiest to learn and to make when the person is dwelling in practice.

Freewill diagram 2 briefly shows further development of skill in selective jumping through modifications of the variant jump. The variant jump is developed to more closely resemble the standard jump. That is, the variant form is modified to become more closely symmetrical with respect to the standard form. Symmetry is one of the chief principles applied during construction of forms. Another chief principle is continuity, which is used to shape jumps, add jumps and organize jumps so as to reduce the jumpiness as much as possible and to make the movement smooth. Symmetry and smoothness are oft-added features of forms that are being perfected.

So far, the diagram shows a choice between the standard form of jump and a variant form that involves the whole jump. The choice is made before the jump starts. Suppose we want to indicate that the choice is made while the jump is taking place. The final jump in the freewill diagram 2 denotes such a jump. Two possible ways for ending the jump co-exist during part of the jump. The person chooses either one way for ending or the other before the jump ends. While the two possibilities co-exist, the condition is said to be shimmering.

The development of shimmering is a chief design goal of my constructions. I suggest a path of development that leads towards continual cycles of waves of shimmering in multiple sub-systems, thus generating streams of selections that control the muscular movements of a free organism. The jump shown at the conclusion of freewill diagram 2 suggests a first, primal step on that path.

Freewill diagram 3 shows development of shimmering. Such development starts when a person is able to maintain in co-existence two possible ways for completing the jump while the jump is in flight and the person is able to select or choose the way that the jump is completed. Here, the two possible ways are the standard jump and the variant jump. The person develops such a capacity by practicing selections, by extending the period of co-existence and by distinguishing the two ways as much as possible. This stage of development is called "extension of shimmering" and is shown in freewill diagram 3.

Jumping can occur in many different physical environments and in many different situations that can also include social or institutional constraints. Many situations (e.g., game situations) are designed so that jumps can take place with multiple variants. In some of these, multiple variants come in opposing pairs. Opposing pairs have many operational advantages. By means of opposing pairs, balancing can be maintained, based on principles of symmetry and continuity. As investigated in the essay, balancing is a primal principle that is grounded in muscular movements and that reaches up through all human activities, including organized sports competitions and institutional activities of judges who define forms of law for our society.

Freewill diagram 3 shows further practice of a jump that is developed to include a pair of opposing and balancing variants. For an example of similar action in actual life, I suggest a soccer player who can kick the ball to either of two fellow players and who must choose one or the other, depending on their momentary positions and opportunities. Or a ping-pong player who is getting ready to serve and who has two possible service strokes that are suitable. Or a person playing a hand of bridge and deciding on a discard in response to a play by partner. Or suppose your host extends a plate with two pieces of cake and invites you to take one. What if the two pieces are nearly identical? What if one is larger? What if the choice is between one piece of cake and a piece of pie? Situations that have a focus on balancing can often tilt easily in several different or novel ways.

The construction has led to a specific intermediate form of shimmering in freewill diagram 3. Freewill diagram 4 shows completion of a final form of shimmering that leads into subsequent images of freedom. Developmental forms combine a foundational and repetitive jump movement with a shimmering movement. The shimmering movement incorporates a choice that is maintained by symmetrized balancing activity for the first part of the jump movement and that changes into an asymmetrical and unbalanced selection during the jump movement according to influences as they then appear. The change is timed so that the selection is completed by the end of the jump movement.

As carried over from freewill diagram 3, the initial shimmering form of movement has two variants, a green variant and a red variant. Another form of movement is constructed that closely resembles the green-red form of movement but that is distinguished from the green-red form. The new variants are denoted by yellow and blue selections. During operations, yellow-blue balancing operates in a fashion that resembles green-red balancing but the two kinds of balancing involve distinctly different sets of variants.

In general, any constructional system, whether building from physical materials or only in imagination, deals with units that have individual character and that are combined to generate larger units. E.g., two individual movements are combined to make new individual movements. Such a generative principle is illustrated in the construction of "jumping with a full repertoire of shimmering variants" in freewill diagram 4. The new construction involves a four-way balancing of possibilities leading up to, as before, a single actual selection.

In the construction, shimmering forms of movement have been based on a jumpy form of movment in a dependent way: without the jump movement, there is no shimmering. Finally, I suggest the application of a process of detachment that separates the shimmering form of movement from the jump form of movement and that treats the shimmering form of movement as independent and self-existing. Detached shimmering movements are pure choices. Freewill diagram 4 suggests that such a shimmering movement can be coded by a color. That is, colors signal, encode and index the possible movements. The choice of movement can be recalled simply by recalling the color, as long as the person is trying to fit the form. E.g., "stop on red; go on green."

The overall course of construction of "free will" in freewill diagrams commenced with "willfulness" of repetitive jumping. Practice led to the introduction of variants and then to balanced, opposing variants. It became possible to generate and sustain shimmering on the basis of balanced, opposing variants. Further constructions developed shimmering through extension, multiplication and combination. Finally, choices established by shimmering were detached from the jumping form on which they had been shaped and the choices became functionally employed as memories.

The diagrams illustrate psychological principles of freedom as experienced by a person. Similar physical principles of freedom operate in new proposed technologies in ways that connect to such experiences. The following images of freedom illustrate such connections.

Images of Freedom

Shimmering Sensitivity is generated during a critical moment produced by a TQN. I further suggest that a "flicker of experience" is generated during such a critical moment. "Experience" is an ordinary or common word – academic investigators often use a technical word, qualia. My preferred technical word is imagery. I use the word "imagery" in a sweeping and inclusive way, drawing in diverse examples of imagery, qualia or experiences of muscular movements, bodily sensations, responsive emotions, anticipatory feelings, smells, tastes, tactile textures, words, ideal geometrical figures and other objects of our awareness, as well as obvious examples of visual images and auditory sounds.

Chief targets of my constructions are imagery of color and imagery of "Pythagorean" or musical harmonics, experiences that I suggest are generated by processes involving balances and selections. In images below, I suggest that TQN operations show "how to" generate a fragmentary unit of imagery or personal experience or qualia of color. I foresee a construction path that leads to complex systems in which many "flickers of experience," generated by diverse device parts in diverse ways, arising in momentary coalitions and in cycles and waves, unite to make up a kind of "consciousness" of a moving and changing body of imagery that resembles a person's memories and present experiences of color and shapes, of harmonics and other sounds, of movements of the person's own body, of tactile sensations, of emotional feelings, of sensory perceptions of external events and of mental operations and plans.

The adjacent image of a "mechanical metaphor" shows one cycle of a repetitive process of cyclical selection. The metaphor involves a ball that moves on a bowl-like surface under the influence of gravity and other mechanical forces. The process goes through a central focal event where an undirected form of movement (stabilized inaction, in this case) changes into a directed form of movement or action. Two distinct directed forms of movement are equally possible. A balancing principle controls movement prior to the central event but imbalance thereafter seizes control. Balance is generated and then lost, leading to a selection and to action. Then balance is re-generated for another cycle.

The mechanical metaphor operates with two distinct but combined shifting balances. One kind of balance is based on constraining forces imposed by the bowl-like container on the ball. Constraining forces arise from the gravitational field that is denoted by the long arrow labeled "g." The other kind of balance is based on opposing and balanced (or unbalanced) selective forces that become important at the critical moment. Shifting balances are driven by deformation of the bowl-like container and are tracked by a clock. Before the critical moment, balancing is stable. During the critical moment, stability is being lost but the direction of loss may be reversed by changes in opposing selective influences or forces. After the critical moment, action is unbalanced and loss of balance becomes irreversible. The process that generates controlled shifting balances is the driver of the selection. Similar processes and shifting balances drive selection processes in sets of images presented below where the process is not mechanical.

The adjacent set of images shows a critical point process in a magnet. Such a process has actual commercial applications in magneto-optical memory systems, which apply an idealized form of process that provides an illustrative example.

A magnetic element is hot at the beginning of the process (top of the image) and cool at the end (bottom). The changing temperature T tracks the process. In actual practice, a pin-point laser heats up an element and starts the process, which proceeds upon cooling. A cool magnetic element has either a North polarity or a South polarity, like a digital bit, 1 or 0. A hot magnetic element has no polarity. As a magentic element cools, it picks up a polarity from a nearby influence, which may be tiny, and the polarity becomes either North or South. As long as the element stays cool, the polarity is fixed.

In a magnetic critical point process (and generally in critical point processes), the division between "hot" and "cool" is sharp and almost as perfectly defined as a point. The division is called the critical point or the critical temperature, often denoted as T_C, as in the image. When a changing temperatue crosses the critical point, the change in the form of activity is like crossing from night into day. In a sudden kind of way, what was obscure becomes clear; or what was clear becomes obscure.

The "Ising model" used by physicists is a mathematical model of critical point magnetism. The model involves a large number of magnetic particles that make up a collective; an investigation tracks how activities of the collective change as temperature changes. At low temperatures, the collective coheres and one polarity or the other establishes a hegemony such that delinquents are suppressed and uniformity is maintained, at least on a large scale. Delinquents appear more freuently at higher temperatures while suppression of delinquents takes the same amount of time. In other words, as temperature rises, delinquents become more numerous and uniformity is progressively eroded until, when the critical temperature is reached, the hegemony is fatally weakened and overthrown. At high temperatures, formlessness prevails.

As the temperature cools from a condition of formlessness, competing coalitions of magnetic particles appear in a germinal way, some germinal coalitions with a North polarity and some with a South polarity. Polarities are symmetrically equal and balanced, unless there is an external influence. An external influence, even a relatively tiny influence, tips the balance and establishes the hegemony of one polarity or the other as the temperature cools, a hegemony that will remain after cooling has run its course and the external influence has been removed.

The images below show a critical moment in a proposed Toroidal Quad Net (TQN) device. The biggest change from the magnetic critical point process to a Quad Net critical moment process is that "quasi-static" magnetic particles of the Ising Model become activated clock elements in the Quad Net system. Clock elements in a Quad Net are arranged in a square pattern and each clock element can influence four nearest neighboring clock elements. Influences are caused by pulses. Clock elements discharge pulses that start (or trigger) clocks in neighboring elements. After being triggered by neighboring pulses and running for a period of time, a clock element discharges a pulse and then rests before again becoming responsive to neighboring pulses.

In connecting to proposed brain models and to other technologies, a clock element is like a neuron and a pulse is like an "action potential" in neuroscience. Operational controls in brain models are based in time. E.g., as shown in the images, timing intervals (δ and β) are used in an operational way to control changes in activities, like temperature is used in a critical point system. Underlying concepts in new technologies are based in physics models of thermodynamics and in processes of material science rather than physics models of mechanics and in processes controlled by computer commands or causal linkages. Instead of temporal forms based on states, as in computers, controlled cyclical operations in proposed brain models resemble controlled cyclical operations in heat engines that drive motor vehicles, e.g., the Carnot cycle that is made up of four repetitive strokes.

Detailed QN Images of the construction of a TQN are available on the website. The Toroidal shape is based on a square piece of proposed "Quad Net material" that resembles wall-paper with a clock-like device element in each cell. Quad Net material, as yet only conceptual and imaginary, is easily stretched and twisted. Within the material, clock elements discharge pulses across cell boundaries. Clock elements at opposite edges of the square piece of material are connected "across space" so as to "weave" edges together. Stretching and weaving the QN material to make such connections turns a square piece into a toroidal shape, at least functionally.

A clock element has three conditions, a ready condition shown in a gray or middle shade, a responding condition shown in a white or light shade and a refractory condition shown in a black or dark shade. A clock element may persist in a passive, ready condition indefinitely but higher levels of activity involve frequent pulses. When a clock element is ready, pulses from neighboring elements switch it to a responding condition. A specific time interval, δ, called the responding period passes after such triggering; upon the expiration of δ, the clock element discharges a pulse that can influence nearest neighbors, if they are ready. After discharging a pulse, the clock element switches to the refractory condition, in which it remains for another specific interval of time, β, called the refractory period, before it returns to a ready condition. A clock element is unresponsive to pulses from neighboring elements when it is in the responding condition or the refractory condition. A more detailed statement of operations is available as part of the timing devices system; elemental processes operate much the same in timing devices and the TQN in the image.

When δ>β, clock elements that discharge pulses will return to a ready condition before the neighbors that have been triggered discharge their responsive pulses. The resulting pulse pattern is a "checkerboard" where elements discharge in an alternating way that has no preferred direction.

When δ<β, clock elements that discharge pulses will be persisting in a refractory condition when neighbors that have been triggered by such pulses discharge responsive pulses. The image shows operations where the resulting pulse patterns of the TQN have a wave-like character with a specific direction; and four specific directions are possible. Waves in a single particular direction can also vary in intensity.

First suppose that the TQN is completely isolated and has no connections to other devices that are discharging pulses. The process starts with δ>β and δ declines in a controlled way that is uniform across the TQN. When δ=β, pulsations will cease and elements will all become ready. None will discharge and silent readiness will occupy the TQN even when δ is very low.

Now suppose that other devices, e.g., sensory devices, are attached to the TQN and that the sensory devices are generating pulses as a result of their activities. Sensory pulses are "tiny influences," like the tiny magnets in the magnetic critical point process shown above. That is, pulses that pass from sensory devices to the TQN are usually incapable of triggering clock elements in the TQN, but at the critical moment, when δ=β, operational values are such that pulses from sensory devices do trigger clock elements in the TQN and select final patterns in the TQN.

Suppose there is a case where, at the critical moment, only one sensory pattern influences the TQN. Such a pulse pattern establishes a hegemonic pattern that occupies the entire TQN through a natural process of entrainment.

In other cases, two or more sensory influences effectively compete for control of the TQN. When there is competition, e.g., as shown in the adjacent image, the natural process of entrainment also establishes a hegemonic pattern, at least on some significant occasions, and one final wave pattern occupies the entire TQN. Which final pattern establishes such hegemony depends on the sensory influences and operational processes that are occurring as the device passes through the critical moment.

While β is near, δ, the condition of the TQN is one of Shimmering Sensitivity. Any of the four patterns can occupy or dwell in the TQN; patchy patterns can co-exist; and it is possible for patchy portions of the TQN to shift easily from one pattern to another in fragmentary ways: this is Shimmering. In repetitive cycling, a tiny change in an influence or in the speed of the process can change the final outcome: this is Sensitivity.

The process shown in the image above suggests perception of color. Red and green directly compete in a balancing process; yellow and blue also directly compete and balance; and there is an indirect kind of competition and balancing between red-green and blue-yellow. Further constructions suggest that the occupation of a TQN by a hegemonic pulse pattern models the arising of a "flicker of experience" in the mind of a person. In other words, the person is experiencing the activation of the form of the color in the equivalent of a device part that is detecting the presence of a visual object. Similar contructions of experience can be suggested for experience of forms of muscular movements and of forms of bodily sensations like hunger and thirst, as well as experience of forms of sensory objects and even of imaginary objects.

Suppose there are several TQN's hooked together, e.g., in the Phase Transfer Controller to be constructed out of Quad Net materials. And suppose that all the TQN's pass through a critical moment together, in a synchronized way. I suggest that a single pervasive condition of Shimmering Sensitivity will dwell in the entire assembly, with capacities for generating and sustaining new pulse patterns according to competing tiny influences from multiple sensory devices. The resulting capacities, I suggest, can resemble those of a free organism interacting with its environment.

Actual exploration of these and similar possibilities must await the manufacture of Quad Net materials and timing devices.

The draft 2011 version of "How to Solve Free-Will Puzzles and Overcome Limitations of Platonic Science" is available for download:

My present intention is to complete section 6 later in 2012. Revisions and re-organization are to be expected. I will welcome your comments and suggestions. Please write to:

SUMMARY AND TABLE OF CONTENTS FROM THE ESSAY:

How to solve free-will puzzles and overcome limitations of platonic science

by Robert Kovsky

"Free will" puzzles are failed attempts to make freedom fit into forms of science. The failures seem puzzling because of widespread beliefs that forms of science describe and control everything. Errors in such beliefs are shown by analysis of forms of "platonic science" that were invented in ancient Greece and that have developed into modern physics. Static and quasi-static forms are suited for placid equilibrium conditions and relaxation processes. Linear forms, abstracted from geometrical space, impose rigidity and continuity. Such spatial forms fail to describe muscular movements of animals that have actual life. Limitations of platonic science are overcome by means of new forms with the character of time, e.g., forms for beats and saccadic (jumpy) forms. New technologies of action and freedom generate and control temporal forms in proposed device models of brains. Some temporal forms have critical moments of transformation, e.g., a moment of overtaking during a footrace or a jury's moment of decision during a trial in court.

Condensed outline:

A solution to free-will puzzles starts with muscular movements of actual life.
Nietzsche's "will to power" shows the fallacious character of metaphysical constructions that fail to connect to actual life.
In metaphysical constructions that were developed by ancient Greeks through "platonic science," an imaginary domain is occupied by mental objects called "Ideas" that are impersonal and eternal, that have the character of geometrical space and that are supposed to control actual lives of persons.
Modern versions of platonic science construct imaginary domains in which passive bodies undergo quasi-static changes according to eternal impersonal spatial forms called "Laws of Physics" that supposedly control everything.
Actual life does not fit into spatial forms of platonic science. In new constructions, muscular movements of actual life are modeled by temporal forms, including forms that control race contests in sports arenas and jury trials in courtrooms. Outcomes of such events turn on personal efforts and personal decisions that occur during transformational critical moments.
[Not included in 2011 draft.] In contrast to computers that use static forms and embody spatial principles of platonic science, timing devices and Quad Nets are new technologies that use temporal forms and embody principles of action and freedom.

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Detailed outline:

A solution to free-will puzzles starts with muscular movements of actual life.
1. Free-will puzzles vs. freedom in actual life.
2. Actual life begins with infantile repetition of muscular movements.
3. Infantile repetition develops into scientific invariance.
4. In contrast to empty concepts of "will" and "free will," science and technology have had good luck with metaphysical constructions.
Nietzsche's "will to power" shows the fallacious character of metaphysical constructions that fail to connect to actual life.
In metaphysical constructions that were developed by ancient Greeks through "platonic science," an imaginary domain is occupied by mental objects called "Ideas" that are impersonal and eternal, that have the character of geometrical space and that are supposed to control actual lives of persons.
1. Hegemonies in platonic constructions.
2. Hegemony of impersonal invariance in metaphysical domains.
3. "Principle of sufficient reason" imposes eternal symmetrized rigidity.
4. Platonic constructions have the character of geometrical space.
Modern versions of platonic science construct imaginary domains in which passive bodies undergo quasi-static changes according to eternal impersonal spatial forms called "Laws of Physics" that supposedly control everything.
1. Modern platonic physics has advocates and alternatives.
2. Minkowski's "union of space and time" illustrates puzzling claims of conceptual hegemony that disregard the character of time in actual life.
3. Spatialization of time fits the primal linear form of platonic science.
4. Thermodynamics is based on "equilibrium" that excludes multiple possibilities, that imposes continuity and that leads to linear forms.
5. "Quasi-static forms" effectively describe some slow transformations, e.g., formation of pearlite in steel-making; but such forms fail to describe similar faster transformations, e.g., formation of martensite.
6. Laws of Physics fail to describe or control discontinuous transformations of water vapor into individual crystalline snowflakes.
Actual life does not fit into spatial forms of platonic science. In new constructions, muscular movements of actual life are modeled by temporal forms, including forms that control race contests in sports arenas and jury trials in courtrooms. Outcomes of such events turn on personal efforts and personal decisions that occur during transformational critical moments.
1. "The beat" is a primal temporal form in models of actual life.
2. The beat generates muscle-like activation in device designs that are part of proposed new technologies.
3. "A Dogtail for Wagging" is a timing device design for production of classes of muscle-like movements, including symmetrical wagging movements controlled by a beat.
4. Sports contests and civil trials illustrate partial adaptations of strife to symmetry and invariance, leading to balancing forms that climax in critical moments of personal effort and overtaking during footraces and in critical moments of personal decision by judges and juries.
[Not included in 2011 draft.] In contrast to computers that use static forms and embody spatial principles of platonic science, timing devices and Quad Nets are new technologies that use temporal forms and embody principles of action and freedom.
1. Timing device designs of sensory-motor modules for balancing, following and focusing are based on generation of multiple possible signals that change into a single actual signal.
2. In designs for proposed engineered organisms, sensory-motor modules produce muscular movements and generate sensory signals; drive modules start, stop and coordinate sensory-motor operations; additional modules that organize such movements, signals and drives generate imagery that signals, indexes and encodes their activities.
3. Free-will puzzles confuse the commencement of a process of selection with the selection itself - which may be chiefly muscular - and confuse a selection with imagery generated during the selection.
4. Interconnected Quad Net devices generate cycles of critical moments and decision jumps so as to arouse and sustain Shimmering Sensitivity within a flickering body of movement, imagery, forms and freedom.

My approach is to show "how to" accomplish certain purposes rather than to try to provide an "explanation." My view is that our race of human beings is not smart enough to construct satisfactory explanations for important events, but that we can sometimes get things to operate regardless of our limited knowledge. For example, medical researchers have prolonged many lives, including mine, with partially understood methods.

In other words, notwithstanding errors and limitations of grandiose cosmologies, e.g., the modern scientific view, I suggest that forms of our intelligence are often sufficient as a practical matter to enable us to reach specific goals. Early developers of steam engines, Joseph Black (1728-1799) and James Watt (1736-1819), explored unmapped territories through experiments and inventions at a time when fashionable forms of science could provide little guidance. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) never learned mathematics but younger mathematicians later intepreted his inventions of electric and magnet fields, electrical motors, power dynamos and electro-chemistry. Some judges perform similar functions in the domain of institutional operations, crafting opportunistic solutions to disputes that are later developed into governing regulations. See, e.g., Religious Technology Center v. Netcom On-Line Communication Services, Inc., 907 F. Supp. 1361 (N.D. Cal. 1995), a case that originally defined online protections for copyright owners in ways that led to statutory codification by the U.S. Congress. (The case arose when a religious dissenter published "secret" teachings in newsgroups and religious authorities tried to make the online service provider bear the responsibility.)

I suggest that constructions that show "how to" can be more creative than explanations. One of my chief purposes is to show "how to" develop new technologies to build brain models as tools to investigate and develop freedom. I use the word "freedom" to refer to certain processes through which multiple possible courses of action change into a single actual course of action, e.g., using examples from the psychological domain, choosing a meal from a menu in a restaurant or finding a street address in a city being visited for the first time. Phenomena of growth and development show freedom on a larger time scale. A related purpose is to show how the models resolve questions that are raised by "free will puzzles."

["Free will puzzles" are constructed in certain experiments in psychology and neuroscience that are supposedly connected with ancient philosophical questions called "free will." See, e.g., B. Libet, "Do We Have Free Will," Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, No. 8-9, 1999, 47-57. My view is that "free will" is not a useful concept except for purposes of criticism. It is a vain attempt to make personal freedom, expressed during practice through a person's muscular movements, into an impersonal static object in a theory.]

I have pursued my purposes for more than 40 years and have accomplished some of them. The essay wraps up my views, methods and results. It combines multiple literary genres and attempts to create impressions of movement rather than stating fixed positions. Passages in the essay take the form of constructions that show "how to" build various kinds of concepts and "how to" put them together to accomplish certain purposes. Models are constructivist in a style that follows that of pioneer child psychologist, Jean Piaget (...). A chief theme of the essay is that activities in different domains of activity incorporate common forms of action that are based on muscular movements and that such forms can also be incorporated into novel constructions and new technology. The forms occur in time, in contrast to spatially defined forms of the modern scientific view.

In order to create impressions of movement in the essay, materials from various kinds of human activities are put together in constructions. Constructions compare and contrast forms from diverse areas of experience, e.g., forms of following, focusing and balancing. I suggest that such forms, including scientific forms, are products of human activity and intelligence rather than features of a supposed impersonal reality. In support of the suggestion, all kinds of forms are investigated in the essay. Passages resemble pieces of legal briefs, physics lectures, exercise programs, psychological speculations and cultural polemics. During the investigation, forms themselves change, develop and grow. Change, development and growth are chief subjects of the essay and the constructions provide illustrative examples. Compared to a traditional statement of fixed positions, the essay may appear disjointed or meandering.

In other words, the essay is trying to create an impression more like climbing a mountain, where the experience is made up of changing views, than like propounding a theory, where there is a fixed view. I am proposing alternatives to fixed theories of modern science. My rigorous technical designs are set forth on other pages, where they embody developmental principles rather than a fixed theory. In the essay, I challenge fixed theories using a broader style to aim at such theories from multiple directions and with multiple rhetorical styles. After showing limitations of fixed theories and of their domains of application, I propose a basis for a new, alternative approach to questions of freedom. Although the new approach stands with one leg on technical designs, it stands with another leg on ordinary, common, experience of actual life that is discussed in the essay. The essay also locates the new approach within general contexts of scientific history and philosophy. The essay is written for an open-minded person who has an adventurous attitude about new ideas. Such a person might jump over materials or jump around materials to find what is personally useful.

My approach is grounded in activities of common life in modern civilization. In such activities, a person coordinates muscular movements with sensory perceptions according to forms suited for mental capacities and bodily functions most of us possess. Typically, such forms are provided by culture, technology and government. I suggest that a single set of principles is operating while a person is driving a car, exercising in a gym and playing a musical instrument. The general idea is that such diverse activities of actual life are controlled by simple operations of brains that function in closely similar ways in all adults with ordinary intelligence. I suggest that a course of investigation and construction based on such common activities leads to models of brain operations. Methods of construction juxtapose, coordinate and organize muscular movements that make up the substance of human action. I suggest that motor vehicle operators, runners in a race and performing musicians are all exercising freedom through organized muscular movements of actual life.

The essay presents a new view that is alternative to the "modern scientific view" based on physics and embodied in computers. The modern scientific view disregards muscular movements and concentrates on imagery that is grounded in geometrical space and that leads to concepts made up of states. The modern scientific view is detached and sedentary. I suggest that, among other errors and limitations, the modern scientific view leads into dead-end mazes of free-will puzzles. In the essay, I show a way out of the dead ends by deconstructing the modern scientific view and using modified and alternative pieces to propose new technologies grounded in time that have a content of action.

In part, the essay re-states results involving "following" and "focusing" that are based on technical designs presented in prior projects. Recent projects include ( ... ) An Ear for Pythagorean Harmonics (2009-2010) (following) and ( ... ) An Eye for Sharp Contrast (2011) (focusing), which are parts of the larger presentation, ( ... ) Brain Models Built from Timing Devices (2011). I suggest that the projects provide solid technical foundations for psychological, institutional and speculative constructions of the essay.

Now, in further developments, the essay states and develops "balancing" principles and constructions that start from idealized kinds of of muscular movements, that are applied in sports competitions and that are aimed at goals of institutional design and operations, e.g., judicial procedures that "balance" competing economic, health and safety interests of employers, workers and consumers. I suggest that a person's capacities to follow, focus and balance start with muscular movements and develop from that base to interpersonal and institutional decisions.

The draft 2011 version of "How to Solve Free-Will Puzzles and Overcome Limitations of Platonic Science" is available for download:

My present intention is to complete section 6 later in 2012. Revisions and re-organization are to be expected. I will welcome your comments and suggestions. Please write to:

Engineered models of human action and psychology are based on sense-like representations that are produced by computer programs.		Engineered models of human action and psychology are based on muscle-like movements that are produced by material processes.
Controlling forms require or impose fixed or rigid situations. "Laws of Physics" state authoritative mandates and prohibitions. Such Laws are said to state universal principles and to apply to all situations, but, mostly, they apply extraterrestially or in environments that have been modified to conform to their requirements. Successful paradigms and operations lead to exact predictions and to exclusion of alternatives or novelties. An underlying character is fixed in static, symmetrized imagery; changes are generally excluded and suppressed, e.g., changes called "perturbations" or "fluctuations." Such a character is contrary to the movement, strife and change of actual life.		Persons develop controlling forms in changing situations by combining idealized exemplars, by extending operational ranges of variation and by invention of novelties. Such forms are grounded in muscular movements that appear in specific situations of actual life. Development incorporates patterns learned and practiced in multiple ways, beginning with repetitive muscular movements of infancy and developing through lifestyle habits at home, language and gesture, sports drills, arithmetic operations, work routines, handling of technology, musical performances, traffic patterns and institutional procedures. Similar processes of development appear to operate in science and technology.
The modern scientific view is founded on a belief in the power of invariant Laws of Physics that are inherent in the universe. Such Laws are based on principles of conservation, symmetry, continuity and causation. According to the modern scientific view, we experience changes through mechanisms that follow the Laws. The texture of reality is reducible to distinct mechanisms. Changes may also result from collective randomized accidents that are secondary to controlling Laws		The alternative view of freedom is founded on a belief that changes are the ground of human activity and experience. We are able to create and control some changes through means we invent, including applications of laws. Laws of Physics have useful but limited domains of application. Laws of the State of California apply in different domains of activity, e.g., laws controlling movements of persons by means of traffic signals. Some laws, e.g., traffic laws, are designed to enable persons to exercise freedom.