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Bounded by the Mind
Friday, April 20th, 2007 by admiralIs anything in creation really random? There are things out there so complex that they would overload our minds long before we could predict the outcomes. Such things might as well be random. From our limited perspective, such things are random. We define randomness by our inability to predict an event.
My actual question is, does the universe behave as a kind of clockwork creation at a level well beyond our grasp? You can track an atom from one end of the universe to the other and it will never do anything unexpected. It will abide by all the laws of energy, fields and matter. Nothing that it does is without cause and effect. If you could know all the factors involved, then the behavior of this atom could be predicted from the first moment of the universe through the last moment of the universe.
Does the mind work the same way? I am something of a classical determinist; however, I am neither a materialist nor a naturalist. The cold heart of the chance made universe does not work logically. Without purpose, there is no existence. So my question is on the limitations of behavior.
If you went into an automobile dealership, you could decide on a single car to buy based on a large number of factors. Reset the universe so that you could repeat this test without the influence of past experiences of the same test and you would make the same choice again. In fact, you would make the same decision for the same reasons. Reason, our ability to think, plan and understand, clearly governs our actions even though we cannot predict it on the conscious level. Our minds bound us.
This has a great effect on our understanding of behavior. It would not be possible to be a stand up philosopher in a universe where thought was a fleeting shadow with neither weight nor force in the world. When you think in these terms, does it not seem like the creation of the universe dictated the words that you are reading and the thoughts that you have concerning these words? We are given a choice and that is what makes us more than instinct-driven animals. How we make our decisions is a product of our nature.
