What We Call Randomness

I'm reading Dan Dennett's book Freedom Evolves. I'm about 120 pages in, and it's absolutely wonderful. Anyone who likes Dennett will like the book, and anyone who's read his other stuff will find it enriching, as it helps to tie the ideas together.

I've considered what it means to be "random." In acknowledging, as I often have (as a determinist, or at least I think I am) that the outcome of a situation is dictated by the conditions leading up to it, I've been forced to reconsider a definition of the term "random." After all, it'd be silly to throw away perfectly good word.

The point, though, is that I think I've found a way to change my understanding of the adjective without changing the nouns that it speaks for.

When we engage in a "random" coin flip, we are not engaging in randomness in that conventional sense, as the result of the coin flip is predetermined by the nature of physics, the forces exerted by the thumb that does the flipping, gravity, air resistance and any number of other things.

What we are actually doing is availing our decision to forces outside of our mind. What we are doing is taking that internal mechanism, that thought process that leads to decisions, and circumventing it by making the decision contingent, not on our past experience or our current inclinations, but on the laws of physics and the forces on a coin.

Randomness becomes an expression of sacrificing control. When you consider this, you may acknowledge that this is already something that you thought about randomness, that this was already the definition.

Random means, literally, an occurrence without aim.

That is what we need to redefine randomness as. Occurrence without intention, not "occurrence without cause," which is the present definition.

Occurrence without cause is not possible. Occurrence without intention makes sense.

Elbow Room

For people who know me personally, and have had conversations with me about what I want to do with my life, I don't make it much of a secret that it is a dream to do my masters at Tufts, if only to work under Professor Daniel Dennett (though there is something I romanticize about Boston). It shouldn't surprise people that getting a personal email back from Professor Dennett when I send him a couple of questions on free will and the implications of "chance" was mindblowing for me.

He pointed me towards one of his books, a piece of text called "Elbow Room," which is a fantastic study in free will and the nature of choice in a naturalistic society.

The truth is, free will in the absolute sense is a really frustrating concept.

It's something we want. We want to think for ourselves. We want to make our own decisions. Most importantly, we want to be in absolute control of our surroundings.

The truth is, wanting something to be true isn't a reason to accept it to be true. This is what bothers me about free will. Anything that sounds too good to be true, I have found, at the risk of being cliche, usually is.

If you believe, as I do, that you are the product of your experiences, and that your consciousness is shaped by the things that you have gone through and things that have happened, and only by things that have happened, there are certain implications.

Our choices are a manifestation of our consciousness, of the Self, and if the past shapes the Self, then the past is in control of the future.

Think of it like a two-tiered puppet master.

The Self controls the choices, manipulates the present, but the past sits above the Self with marionette strings. This is what I find most fascinating.

We know that we make choices, that our choices have impacts (and that sometimes those impacts are massive). I make choices every day, like when I choose to have eggs for breakfast instead of cereal, but my past, my relationships with eggs and cereal and the circumstances that have shaped my present feelings, motivate my choice.

This is a demon, like any of Descartes.

What's important, it seems, is not so much accepting that our past will dictate our experiences, but understanding the past that would otherwise dictate them, and considering it. There are people who believe that the gut is always right, but if you consider the nature of your gut, why it is leading you where it is, it will let you screen the decisions that might put you in a less than desirable situation.

There is a concept in martial arts, a Japanese term that I have found myself considering often. Zanshin. It is, to many martial artists, a state of complete and total awareness both of yourself and your enemies, of your past and your future.

Don't simply be accepting. Be aware, and let that piece of who you are guide your decisions to make you a better person.