# forwarded message of mine, as an example of how PCT keeps coming to mind

**URL:** <http://discourse.iapct.org/t/forwarded-message-of-mine-as-an-example-of-how-pct-keeps-coming-to-mind/13842>\
**Category:** CSG2005\
**Created:** [November 3, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/forwarded-message-of-mine-as-an-example-of-how-pct-keeps-coming-to-mind/13842 "2005-11-03T17:37:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tracy\_Harms1](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/a587f6/32.png) [@Tracy\_Harms1](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/Tracy_Harms1)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/forwarded-message-of-mine-as-an-example-of-how-pct-keeps-coming-to-mind/13842/1 "2005-11-03T17:37:52Z")

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Christian Ross wrote:

> In light of ES's explicit converational return to

the tension between

> "volition" and "physics", I want to re-post this

most interesting

> essay entitled "The Biology of Free Will".  
> ...  
> [The Biology of Free Will](http://www.i-sis.org.uk/freewill.php)

I find many of the particulars in this paper very  
interesting, and I do think many of these must be  
relevant to the thesis being argued. My frustration  
is that these seem to form a sequence of independent  
facts, without an overarching theory. I expect these  
facts to serve as components or examples of a larger  
whole, but so far I have not seen the unifying ideas a  
paper like this should provide.

Admittedly, I've not truly read this paper, and  
certianly not studied it. The following heading,  
however, is very discouraging to me. I am especially  
frustrated by the way the author uses the term  
"mechanistic control" as though no conceptual  
difficulties attend it.

Here it is: "IV. The organism frees itself from  
mechanistic control as an interconnected,  
intercommunicating whole"

My irritation turns on the word "control". This word  
can have a technical meaning. In the absence of a  
technical meaning, it has questionable connotations.  
In this particular context I cannot anticipate how  
said "mechanistic control" is intended to be  
understood, other than as a rough gesture that points  
to whatever-people-mean-when-they-invoke-determinism.  
This will not do if the contrast is to be clear. Also,  
if the author thinks that what occurs in physical  
processes at large counts as control, my opinion is  
that she has no grasp on that topic.

Tracy Harms

> **···**
>
> From: "Tracy B. Harms" \<t\_b\_harms@yahoo.com\>  
> Date: Thu Nov 3, 2005 8:50 am  
> Subject: Re: "The Biology of Free Will" t\_b\_harms
> 
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> Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.  
> [http://farechase.yahoo.com](http://farechase.yahoo.com)

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**Author:** ![BJORN\_SIMONSEN](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/8baadc/32.png) [@BJORN\_SIMONSEN](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/BJORN_SIMONSEN)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 9:02pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/forwarded-message-of-mine-as-an-example-of-how-pct-keeps-coming-to-mind/13842/2 "2005-11-03T21:02:29Z")

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[From Bjorn Simonsen 82005.11.03,21:50 EUST)]

Martin, you are the one who most often talk about nonlinearity in the CSG.

I studied the essay "The Biology of Free Will" to which Christian Ross/Tracy  
Harms gave us a link.  
[http://www.i-sis.org.uk/freewill.php](http://www.i-sis.org.uk/freewill.php) . There I learned that  
It was geneticist/embryologist C.H. Waddington (1957) who first introduced  
nonlinear dynamical ideas into developmental biology in the form of the  
'epigenetic landscape' - a general metaphor for the dynamics of the  
develop-mental process.  
You said:  
&nbsp;&nbsp;"I think Bill says that he has tried it, or something similar, on  
&nbsp;&nbsp;occasion, and found that a small tolerance band does improve the  
&nbsp;&nbsp;model fit".  
Does this statement (if it's correct) move PCT nearer System Dynamics?  
(....the mathematician Peter Saunders (1992) who shows that the properties  
of the epigenetic landscape are "common not just to developing organisms but  
to most nonlinear dynamical systems.")

I know you are interested in System Dynamics (ECACS).

Bjorn

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**Author:** ![BJORN\_SIMONSEN](http://discourse.iapct.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/8baadc/32.png) [@BJORN\_SIMONSEN](http://discourse.iapct.org/u/BJORN_SIMONSEN)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 9:50pm UTC](http://discourse.iapct.org/t/forwarded-message-of-mine-as-an-example-of-how-pct-keeps-coming-to-mind/13842/3 "2005-11-03T21:50:37Z")

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[From Bjorn Simonsen (2005.11.03.22:50 EUST)]  
Mail from Tracy B. Harms received 2005.11.03,18:38 EUST)]  
Tracy B. Harms sent us a link to an essay, "The Biology of the Free Will". I  
have studied the essay and I will present some comments.

The first phrase I will quote is:  
"From a thorough-going organicist perspective, one does not ask, "What is  
life?" but, "What is it to be alive?"".

I think it bad for the organicist science that they don't rather ask "What  
is life". I find it naturally to ask "What is PCT" and afterwards "What is  
it to be alive?".  
Later  
"The animal body does not act as a thermodynamic engine...consciousness  
teaches every individual that they are, to some extent, subject to the  
direction of his will...."  
He talks about will as a truism. PCT explain what will is.  
And.  
In the essay there is a paragraph saying:  
"The organism is a free sentient being and hence able to decide its own  
fate".  
I can agree, but PCT tells us that once organized, our cognitive systems no  
longer make decisions or choices. They operate in a fixed manner until some  
failure results in further reorganization.  
And.  
I don't understand the heading of a paragraph saying: "IV. The organism  
frees itself from mechanistic control as an interconnected,  
intercommunicating whole" when he in the end of the paragraph writes: "The  
metabolic network turns out to be a "molecular democracy" of distributed  
control. "  
I think everybody say there is a system in the molecules that executes  
mechanistic control.  
And.  
I can agree with another heading saying:  
"Organism and environment - a mutual partnership". It depends on what  
partnership. I think as PCT tells us that the organism excites actions and  
influence the environment to perceive what the organism wish to perceive.  
It looks to me that the essay is more behaviorism, saying:  
"In constantly responding to and transforming its environment, it partakes  
in creating the possible futures of generations to come".  
And  
I think the statement:  
"The coherent organism is, in the ideal, a quantum superposition of  
activities - organized according to their characteristic space-times - each  
itself coherent, so that it can couple coherently to the rest" is  
interesting, but PCT explains this better as I said earlier: "The organism  
operates in a fixed manner until some failure results in further  
reorganization". When we are in the fixed manner we are in the  
superposition.  
I say this because I am not sure if I understand those who say that "The  
many worlds" are our experience and our imaginations.  
At last.  
The ending of the essay tells us:  
" I venture to suggest, therefore, that a truly free individual is a  
coherent being that lives life fully and spontaneously, without  
fragmentation or hesitation, who is at peace with herself and at ease with  
the universe as she participates in creating, from moment to moment, its  
possible futures."

And why not agree. PCT tells us the same.

Bjorn