Saturday, June 15, 2019

Material Causality and Freeing Will

Hume's concept of Constant Conjunction does not apply to Material Causality, because the latter consists in a Disjunction.  Likewise, Material Causality is a process of Dissociation, so is not reducible to the relation of Association that is a fundamental thesis of Atomism.  To the contrary, Atomists tend to ignore that it is via a process of Dissociation that their Atoms are first produced, e. g. the process by which Descartes isolates the Cogito, and the process by which Empiricists isolate a Sense-Datum.  Now, Dissociation can not only be applied to some external object, it can also obtain in personal experience, e. g. departure, emigration, divorce, escape, etc.  In such cases, a liberation from antecedent conditions is effected, often deliberately.  In other words, in such cases, Material Causality functions as a freeing Will, which is not to be confused with the standard concept of a Free Will.  But, the latter might presuppose a Freeing Will, by which liberation from prior conditions is first established.  However, Freeing Will is not part of the standard Free Will vs. Determinism debate, and, thus, nor is Material Causality.  In other words, the argument for neither side of that debate applies to the concept of Material Causality.

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