There’s a reason for those changes though: so the organisms become better adapted to survive and thrive in their environment. If we consider the history of the evolution of life over billions of years, isn’t it the case that organisms tend to become stronger, faster, smarter, etc over time, even if it is extremely slow? And if we accept that, then that implies that life strives to inherently improve itself over time, because it must. Reality is a brutal, dialectical process, and organisms must gain whatever edge they can to survive. It’s evolve or die, so improvement is inherantly necessary to gain a competitive advantage in order for an organism or a species to survive. In that way all life inherantly intends to improve itself as much as it possibly can.
If by “reason” you mean that there’s some kind of explanation for why it happened, yes – by that definition, there is a reason for everything. What I’m saying is that there’s no conscious reason here.
I think you’ve misunderstood the idea of natural selection. “Life” doesn’t strive to do anything, because it’s an abstract concept; organisms that were unable to survive until they reproduced will not pass on their genes, thereby ending their particular evolutionary path. There is absolutely no need for any conscious desire or goal to guide the process of evolution.
I agree there’s no conscious supernatural being directing evolution, but there doesn’t have to be for life to tend towards improvement. The goal is to survive and to have the best quality of life, which all life wants to do.
I agree there’s no conscious supernatural being directing evolution, but there doesn’t have to be for life to tend towards improvement.
Yes, if by “improvement” you mean adaptation in order to survive.
The goal is to survive and to have the best quality of life, which all life wants to do.
Quality of life is definitely the perceived goal of many individual humans, and probably individuals of other sentient species, but I doubt that has anything to do with our evolution, and it doesn’t apply to non-sentient organisms. Our quality of life depends almost entirely on the society in which we live, which is not part of evolution in the biological sense
I mean quality of life in a broad sense which could be something as simple as access to better food sources, being in a safer position, or access to more mates.
So to tie this back to free will - free will is the next necessary step in the evolutionary process to achieve better chances at survival and a better quality of life because subconscious or unconscious will, or “unfree will”, has its limits being unable to perform higher-level reasoning.
I anticipate your next question to be where does free will and “unfree will” come from if not from combinations of particles. My answer is that individual will exists as unextended energy outside spacetime and uses extended energy to actualize itself in spacetime.
I anticipate your next question to be where does free will and “unfree will” come from if not from combinations of particles. My answer is that individual will exists as unextended energy outside spacetime and uses extended energy to actualize itself in spacetime.
All right, so you believe that our will stems from something metaphysical. There’s no way to prove whether this is true or not, so we’ll have to leave it at that.
From a materialist perspective, no, but it can be proved rationally if we think about it. The laws and processes that governed the big bang aren’t observable, and neither are any of the other natural laws that govern the world, but we know they exist through our observations of the material world. The laws of physics aren’t material, but they govern the processes of material world. A particle knows how to behave perfectly according to the laws of physics, but we’ve never found the laws of physics inside a particle.
That’s not proof that our “wills” exist outside of the laws of physics, only that there are many things we do not yet know about the material world. (That might be true, and I would certainly prefer that, but I haven’t seen anything that suggests that it is.) I doubt that we will ever be able to understand how “something” can be created from “nothing” – i.e. there is something outside of what we could possibly comprehend, which I would call “metaphysical” – but I do believe that everything aside from that is (or will be) understandable through materialism.
Yes sorry, I should have included that if we accept that if unextended things exist, then it’s possible to see how wills or souls could exist. I don’t like using the word soul because it comes loaded with a lot of religious baggage and preconceptions, but that’s what I mean, but in an uncreated, primordial sense.
We can understand how “something” came from “nothing” if we understand “nothing” as a special kind of “something” - a completely balanced state of reality where everything is completely balanced at zero. So “everything” is there, but it’s completely balanced so it’s not extended in any way so it’s not materially detectable until the balance is broken and energy becomes extended. So the will, or the soul, exists permanently unextended in this zero state and needs to extend itself into the material world in order to actualize its potential.
There’s a reason for those changes though: so the organisms become better adapted to survive and thrive in their environment. If we consider the history of the evolution of life over billions of years, isn’t it the case that organisms tend to become stronger, faster, smarter, etc over time, even if it is extremely slow? And if we accept that, then that implies that life strives to inherently improve itself over time, because it must. Reality is a brutal, dialectical process, and organisms must gain whatever edge they can to survive. It’s evolve or die, so improvement is inherantly necessary to gain a competitive advantage in order for an organism or a species to survive. In that way all life inherantly intends to improve itself as much as it possibly can.
If by “reason” you mean that there’s some kind of explanation for why it happened, yes – by that definition, there is a reason for everything. What I’m saying is that there’s no conscious reason here.
I think you’ve misunderstood the idea of natural selection. “Life” doesn’t strive to do anything, because it’s an abstract concept; organisms that were unable to survive until they reproduced will not pass on their genes, thereby ending their particular evolutionary path. There is absolutely no need for any conscious desire or goal to guide the process of evolution.
I agree there’s no conscious supernatural being directing evolution, but there doesn’t have to be for life to tend towards improvement. The goal is to survive and to have the best quality of life, which all life wants to do.
Yes, if by “improvement” you mean adaptation in order to survive.
Quality of life is definitely the perceived goal of many individual humans, and probably individuals of other sentient species, but I doubt that has anything to do with our evolution, and it doesn’t apply to non-sentient organisms. Our quality of life depends almost entirely on the society in which we live, which is not part of evolution in the biological sense
I mean quality of life in a broad sense which could be something as simple as access to better food sources, being in a safer position, or access to more mates.
So to tie this back to free will - free will is the next necessary step in the evolutionary process to achieve better chances at survival and a better quality of life because subconscious or unconscious will, or “unfree will”, has its limits being unable to perform higher-level reasoning.
I anticipate your next question to be where does free will and “unfree will” come from if not from combinations of particles. My answer is that individual will exists as unextended energy outside spacetime and uses extended energy to actualize itself in spacetime.
All right, so you believe that our will stems from something metaphysical. There’s no way to prove whether this is true or not, so we’ll have to leave it at that.
From a materialist perspective, no, but it can be proved rationally if we think about it. The laws and processes that governed the big bang aren’t observable, and neither are any of the other natural laws that govern the world, but we know they exist through our observations of the material world. The laws of physics aren’t material, but they govern the processes of material world. A particle knows how to behave perfectly according to the laws of physics, but we’ve never found the laws of physics inside a particle.
That’s not proof that our “wills” exist outside of the laws of physics, only that there are many things we do not yet know about the material world. (That might be true, and I would certainly prefer that, but I haven’t seen anything that suggests that it is.) I doubt that we will ever be able to understand how “something” can be created from “nothing” – i.e. there is something outside of what we could possibly comprehend, which I would call “metaphysical” – but I do believe that everything aside from that is (or will be) understandable through materialism.
Yes sorry, I should have included that if we accept that if unextended things exist, then it’s possible to see how wills or souls could exist. I don’t like using the word soul because it comes loaded with a lot of religious baggage and preconceptions, but that’s what I mean, but in an uncreated, primordial sense.
We can understand how “something” came from “nothing” if we understand “nothing” as a special kind of “something” - a completely balanced state of reality where everything is completely balanced at zero. So “everything” is there, but it’s completely balanced so it’s not extended in any way so it’s not materially detectable until the balance is broken and energy becomes extended. So the will, or the soul, exists permanently unextended in this zero state and needs to extend itself into the material world in order to actualize its potential.