Portland State University PDXScholar Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations Systems Science 2015 Freedom as a Natural Phenomenon Martin Zwick Portland State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/sysc_fac Part of the Philosophy Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Citation Details Zwick, M. (2015). “Freedom as a Natural Phenomenon.” Foundations of Science, Vol. 20, No. 3, DOI 10.1007/s10699-015-9433-z This Post-Print is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. FREEDOM AS A NATURAL PHENOMENON Martin Zwick Systems Science Graduate Program Portland State University Portland Oregon 97207-0751 http://www.pdx.edu/sysc/research-systems-theory-and-philosophy [email protected] Abstract "Freedom" is a phenomenon in the natural world. This phenomenon - and indirectly the question of free will - is explored using a variety of systems-theoretic ideas. It is argued that freedom can emerge only in systems that are partially detennined and partially random, and that freedom is a matter of degree. The paper considers types of freedom and their conditions of possibility in simple living systems and in complex living systems that have modeling (cognitive) subsystems. In simple living systems, types of freedom include independence from fixed materiality, internal rather than external detennination, activeness that is unblocked and holistic, and the capacity to choose or alter environmental constraint. In complex living systems, there is freedom in satisfaction of lower level needs that allows higher potentials to be realized. Several types of freedom also manifest in the modeling subsystems of these complex systems: in the transcending of automatism in subjective experience, in reason as instrument for passion yet also in reason ruling over passion, in independence from infonnational colonization by the environment, and in mobility of attention. Considering the wide range of freedoms in simple and complex living systems allows a panoramic view of this diverse and important natural phenomenon. Keywords Freedom, free will, determinism, agency, autonomy, autopoiesis, automatism, sensitivity, consc10usness Foundations ofScience, Vol. 20, No. 3, 2015: DOI 10.1007/sl0699-015-9433-z Freedom as a natural phenomenon (Zwick) 2 Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 2 Determinism & randomness; freedom a matter of degree .................................................. 3 Simple living systems .......................................... ,. ............................................................... 3 Independence from fixed materiality; internal determination ........................................ 3 Available energy; unblocked activeness ......................................................................... 5 Wholeness ....................................................................................................................... 6 Agency: choosing or altering the environment.. ............................................................. 6 Complex living systems ...................................................................................................... ~ Hierarchy ......................................................................................................................... 7 The modeling subsystem ................................................................................................. 7 Self-reference ....................................... .-.......................................................................... 9 Summary ........................................................................................................................... 10 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 10 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 10 Introduction The systems theorist Stuart Kauffman (1998) once posed the question: "what is required of a system for us to say that it 'acts on its own behalf?" This paper poses a related question: "what is required of a system for us to say that it exhibits 'freedom'?" This question is addressed by an abstract systems-theoretic look at various types of freedom occurring in living systems. These types of freedom include but go beyond phenomena often given the labels of "autonomy" and "agency." The subject of freedom as a natural phenomenon also offers a broad context for discussions of free will. The paper first· argues that a condition of possibility for freedom is that the dynamics of a system are partially deterministic and partially random, or deterministic but at "the edge of chaos." It advocates conceptualizing freedom as a matter of degree rather than as simply present or absent. Freedom first appears in the biological realm, and the paper considers conditions of possibility and different types of freedom in simple I iving systems and in complex living systems having modeling (cognitive) subsystems. These types of freedom are not derived from a single principle, but are approached with a systems perspective based in graph theory, dynamical systems theory, information theory, decision and game theory, thermodynamics, and other sources in science and philosophy. The aim is to gain a panoramic view, a "crude look at the whole" (Gell­ Mann 1994), of freedom as a diverse and important natural phenomenon. Freedom as a natural phenomenon (Zwick) 3 Determinism & randomness; freedom a matter of degree Denial of free will is often based on the view that the world is governed by deterministic laws. If it is, actions are not free. Denying determinism doesn't solve the problem. If the world is random, actions are also not free, but in a different way. However, while determinism and randomness each, at its extreme, makes freedom impossible, each also remedies an impossibility implied by the other. Randomness allows for a variety of actions needed for freedom, a variety precluded by complete determinism; determinism causally links decision to action and action to its effects, linkages precluded by complete randomness (Dennett 2003). However, a system that is partially determined and partially random can have properties absent in one that is wholly determined or wholly random. Freedom is possible by virtue of interaction between partial determinism and partial randomness. A similar effect can occur even in a fully deterministic system. Such a system can have chaotic attractors, where the dynamics appear random but are not. Between dynamics that rapidly converge on fixed points or limit cycles and dynamics that are chaotic - these being analogous, respectively, to extremes of determinism and randomness - there is an intermediate regime called "the edge of chaos," where dynamics both differ from and resemble both extremes. Langton (l 991 ), Kauffman ( 1991 ), and others argue that all interesting dynamic phenomena, such as computation, occur in this regime. Altogether aside from this idea of the edge of chaos, dynamic systems can also have singularities at which the future is not merely unpredictable, but actually undetermined. None of this invokes quantum mechanics, which will not be taken up here, except to note that in some interpretations quantum theory also harbors a mixture of determinism (in the time evolution of the wave function) and non-determinism (in the mixtures of states produced by measurement). Just as freedom is impossible at either extreme of determinism or randomness, freedom itself is not all-or-nothing, but a matter of degree. In set theoretic terminology, the set of free actions and the set of unfree actions are not "crisp," where the question is whether the first set is or is not empty. Instead, these sets are "fuzzy" (Zadeh 1965), where the degree of membership in a set is not necessarily either 0 or 1, but can take on any value in between. An action can have membership in the set of free actions of 0.1 or 0.5 or 0.9. What is important in this fuzzy set perspective is not any precise membership value, but the idea that freedom lies on a continuum and that some actions or conditions for action are freer than others, depending on the system and the type of freedom under discussion. Simple living systems Independence from fixed materiality; internal determination Some systems construct and maintain themselves, exhibiting "autopoiesis" (self-making) (Maturana & Varela 1980). They do so by informational control over a matter-energy flux through the system. Control operates (a) via a boundary that allows only some forms of matter-energy into the system; and (b) via a metabolism that continually reconstructs the system and, in complex systems, reproduces it. In autopoiesis, identity is not material but informational, so although the system must be materially instantiated, it is free from Freedom as a natural phenomenon (Zwick) 4 dependence upon specific and fixed materiality. Jonas (1966) saw metabolism as the first appearance of freedom in the natural world. This freedom is an autonomy, not from the environment that embeds the system, but from the materiality that instantiates