Thanks to all the people who brought up the point that mass increases as velocity increases - exponentially, I guess, if it tends towards infinity (though i do hope I am using "exponentially" correctly here) - which explains in part why things travelling at the speed of light cannot have mass. I wasn't trying to say that they could - I just think it's legitimate for philosophers (and physicists) to try to image "well, put that aside for now - what would happen if that wasn't true".

Keith W - thanks for your reply. I'm still a bit confused, unfortunately. Is what your saying this: Light and other massless particles must travel at light speed, but objects with mass can travel at varying speeds - up to but not including the speed of light? As it is possible, given how they are arranged in relation to each other, that from the perspective of a photon, another photon is stationary, so long as they are moving in the same direction, so that can't be the distinction, but that speed can vary for mass but not for massless particles.

Also, can't a body with mass travel at the same speed in all frames of reference (except light speed) providing it is provided with sufficient energy to produce the momentum. But then, if it is gaining mass as velocity increases, maybe it isn't correct to say it is the same object after a while. Presumably, if I take a dead cat, eject it into space, and being to accelerate it to near-light speeds, after a while it isn't a cat anymore.

Thanks for your comment, Gnomon.

Your position seems compatible with free will allowing an arbitrary choice between options. But how does morality become involved?

Thanks for your comments Aleph Numbers, and thanks also as I don't think I was clear enough.

"If people have free will, they can chose to act on reasons", as you write. But then we have to ask the question, do they so choose arbitrarily, or do they choose on the basis of said reasons. If they choose abitrarily, then presumably they could chose to something else equally abitrarily, and if free will is possible, then this kind of choice does nothing to militate against it. However, if they choose on the basis of those reasons, we can then ask whether they can choose otherwise. Perhaps their are come other separate reasons for taking another course of action? Let's call the first reason or set of reasons Reason A, and the second set Reason B. We now want to choose between Reason A and Reason B. If there exists a rational way to choose between them (let's call this, Reason C), then if we follow this, then ultimately we are choosing on the basis of Reason C. If this is our only choice, if we are to be rational, then we are left with a Hobson's choice. We choose, of course - choosing doesn't imply nor is incompatible with not having free will - it's just an aspect of being the kinds of creatures with the kind of psychology of whatever we have. Having a Hobson's choice isn't having free will. If the Reason A and Reason B can't be compared - if there is no rational way to choose between them - then the choice is arbitrary again. If the question is between someone acting on reasons, or acting in some way which has no reason for it (let's assume it's acting on some irrational desire), if you are rational you will act on the reason. If your free will stems from your rationality, your rationality is really only giving you one choice. If your free will isn't linked to being rational, then you can choose to act irrationally or rationally. But on what basis do you choose? Rationally, or on some other basis opposed to rationality? Whatever basis it is, if you choose on that basis, that basis won't sanction you choosing the other option, so again you aren't free to choose between these two options (on the basis of the reason you have chosen on). If there is no basis on which to choose between your options, you are choosing abitratirily again.

More generally, it's not about whether people who freely choose act on reasons or not. And I don't think it's whether the basis of your action is some kind of alien force. You can completely identify with being a rational person, and hence choose the rational choice. Or you might just have a character which is, unreflectively, rational, and so always judge in favour of the rational choice. But none of this implies that you can freely choose between the rational choice and some other option and that choice not be arbitrary.

You're right, my third paragraph is too condensed. Roughly, I was just trying to think through the consequences for consequentialism of having free will or not having free will. MY rough observation is that most people tend to think about consequentialism as if they have free will be other people in society don't. We talk about what actions will bring about the best outcomes - but how can we presume what the outcomes will be, if we can't know how people are going to behave, because we all have free will (the fact we seem to make sociological predictions about how large groups of people will behave which are often accurate perhaps tells against free will, perhaps not - we might expect more randomness, but in a certain sense, but is randomness the same as abitrariness in this context?)

Thanks again for your comments. Hope this makes more sense.

Thanks for your comments, Friendly.

On your first comment: I don't see how whether we are intrinsically malevolent or benevolent links to whether we have free will or not. We can imagine creatures whose actions aren't freely chosen of both types.

On whether we have evolved to act morally - I agree we must have, though I also say that we have evolved to act immorally. In a certain sense, anything human beings do is something they have evolved to do, given that as a species we are the products of natural selection. More specifically, however, we can ask what aspects of ourselves are the result of being selected for, and which simply came along with the way our ancestors (and our) gene's mutated, whether those mutations lead to survival benefits for ourselves or not. On the former characteristics, I agree that, to a degree, traits which helped the species survive in our typical society-based way will have been selected for, and many of those traits are associated with morality. Some of them are associated with immorality, perhaps, however, such as nepotism, for example. Finally, we can always ask the question, of any common human behaviour, whether it is immoral or not, or moral or not.

Thank you Enrique! I work through things like this slowly, as I often get tired using a computer, but I'll will try to work through these, then get back to you. Best. R

Hello Ernestm, thanks for engaging in the conversation.

Could I just check - your post implies Schopenhauer is disagreeing with me, but I couldn't see that. Should I be looking at the thread that Schopenhauer posted before I answer you. Just to flag it up, I may not get round to that tonight. Thanks very much.

Well, I don't know off the top of my head. I know that some physicists think that there are more dimensions than the 4 standard ones, though I can't remember if it's orthodoxy. I'm afriad I'm not a physicist, so I didn't want to presume that I could just say "quantum mechanics" and get at everything they may be exploring, but rather present the problem in more general philosophical and methodological terms, which is all I'm trained to do, really.

Thanks for your comment Echarmion.

So I didn't take it that I was giving an argument for Physicalism and against Anti-Physicalism, but I was trying to think about - given the assumption that we want to try for a physicalist explanation, what kind of approach should we take with regards our overall methodology and hypotheses.

I agree that the illusiveness of qualia in the physical world is an argument against physicalism, but it isn't a decisive one, until we have explored all the options (within the bounds of what counts as reasonable justification, given our epistemology).

Thank you both of you.

The one thing I would add Isaac is that I've tried not to assume that the explanation of consciousness would necessarily be to do with quantum physics (though that definitely seems the most likely avenue, if at all) - though using quantum biology as an example probably suggested that. It's the more general point that we have this phenomena, we have these developing lines of enquiry in physics, so we should be exploring all options.

Thank you Schopenhauer. I may not get round to having a look today, but I will try to remember. You're worries about it sound similar to mine.

I can't see any way to disprove the idea that we may have free will in the following sense:

We have a will which is able to choose between two or more options, without that choice being determined by anything else.

However, when you think this through, it seems that the choice is arbitrary.

Imagine you are faced with competing choices. One in what you desire to do. The other is what you think you should do, or that you believe you have reason to do, or whatever.

If you recognise that one choice is the rational one etc., then presumably you will do it if you are rational, see that you have the most compelling reasons to do it, etc. It might be said that you still have the option of doing the other thing. But how could you then be said to be rational etc.?

Now imagine you simply do what you desire. The above dilemma assumed that this wasn't the choice that it made sense or you had reason to do. But then you must have been more drawn to doing that than being rational. Maybe you could say that you still had the option of being rational.

But how do you decide whether you are going to be a rational person, or a person who acts on their desires, whatever reason says? Well, if this is even something that you can decide (and maybe it's not) then you need to decide on some basis, or else on no basis, which would be arbitrary. But if you decide on some basis, then it would not make sense to say you still have the option of choosing to be the other kind of person. As if you did choose the second option, you would not be choosing on what you take to be the basis of the first option - as that would lead you to take the first option. So you are either choosing on some basis which supports the second option, or else though you want to choose the first option, some other aspect of your psychology is getting in the way and you end up choosing the second option.

Now if the choice between the two options is arbitrary, then you can choose either, and, if you have free will as described above, then your choice isn't determined by anything beyond your caprice. But then you aren't choosing either on any basis. But if you can think of a basis for one or the other, then if you accept that basis, and you don't get deflected by some other part of your psychology, then you will act on that basis. If you can think of a basis for either choice, then you can either evaluate those bases comparatively, or not. But if you can evaluate them comparatively, then you will go for the one which wins out in the comparison, unless something throws you off course. And if you can't evaluate them comparatively, then the choice between them lacks any deciding basis, and hence is in a certain way arbitrary. If you have free will, you can then decide for either, but there won't be anything counting for one or the other distinctly (it might be that both have something going for them, but we furthermore need a way to arbitrate between them).

If I remember, Sartre's view of freedom was very similar to this, and the criticism was much along these lines, as free will ends up bring arbitrary. I guess what I think is that Sartre's view was correct, if free will exists, but it suffers from the kinds of criticisms pointed out at the time. What people want of course is for us to have free will and be morally culpable for doing the right thing or the wrong thing. But I think these things come apart and can't be essentially connected.

If a person recognises the reason for doing the right thing, but ends up doing the wrong thing, that can either be because their motivation to do the right thing was stymied by some other aspect of their psychology (weakness of will), or because they decided there was more reason to do the wrong thing (i.e. they aren't a good person), or because they chose arbitrarily. If we move the choice one stage back, and ask them to chose between the reasons to be righteous, and the reasons not to be, then either they compare them on a common scale and chose one which wins out, or they chose one but chose it for no overall reason, i.e. an arbitrary reason. If they end up being a bad person at the end of all this, I think it is fine to call them that, but we can't then say they are ultimately choosing badness because they are bad, because they either see badness as having the most considerations behind it, or because they have chosen it arbitrarily and not because it is bad.

Sorry if this is more verbose than it should be. I guess this is a forum.