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This is going to appear as such a meme post, but to hell with it. Inspiration strikes unexpectedly.

What could a nonsensical anime from Winter 2018 and an art/philosophy movement from the late 1900s have in common?

That is, what qualities could Pop Team Epic (by Bkub Okawa) and postmodernist art and philosophy possibly share?

Okay, that was hard to write with a straight face, but bear with me. This will make sense soon, I promise.

Oddly enough, it was reading the translated OP lyrics that caught my attention. A few samples:

"An idea, lurking in the familiar scenery. You’re always under surveillance."

Hmm. Michel Foucault's reference to the panopticon in Discipline and Punish, comes to mind.

"An unconcious bias. No one knows its reason for being."
"Repeating. Spirographs inside your head. A geometric pattern of creation and destruction."
"It’s an everchanging mandala. Break even your memories into crumbles."

Lacanian psychoanalysis, with an explicit example of The Symbolic.

"Break it into tiny pieces and swap it out~. If it was born from nothing, then go back to nothing! All of it!"
"I want to change the design – gotta break it so you can see."
Faintly reminiscent of Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard's structuralist criticisms.

Surprised by the amount of postmodernist themes potentially referenced in the OP, I thought for a while of how many of them are actually realized in Pop Team Epic. Could Pop Team Epic actually be a postmodernist masterpiece? Could this explain the polarizing, hate-it-or-love-it nature of the show? By my analysis, yes, PTE is in fact a postmodernist masterpiece in an artistic sense. As such, it violates a lot of our expectations when it comes to art, both visual and literary. It is because of this very reason that I think people have come to despise its nonsensical nature while others have come to adore it.

------- Let's talk about visual art in general for a second -------

I'll be the first to admit it; visual art isn't my domain of expertise. Although I have visited my fair share of galleries, installations, museums, and art walks, by no means am I a leading authority on the matter. Most of these excursions resulted in me trying to appreciate the aesthetic appeal of the piece, the artistic technique necessary to create the piece, or the intended message/profile of the artist of the work. Efforts towards this last objective are greatly augmented by the inclusion of a glass of wine or strong spirit; I highly recommend it. Aside from being a casual admirer of visual art, I'm also no historian or scholar when it comes to the domain either. My knowledge of the niceties between Baroque and Rococo is fairly limited, and I honestly couldn't tell you the difference between Expressionism and Impressionism (well, now I could, since I'd just looked each of them up).

However, for the purposes of this examination, none of that knowledge is strictly requisite. As far as I'm aware, the end of the 19th century saw a fairly dramatic break with traditional forms of art. I'm going to go ahead and label all of the art pre-1880s that fits this traditional style as 'pre-Modern' art. If my rough, base, and careless treatment of these works bothers you at this point, I feel it appropriate to remind you that I'm writing about an anime that has been colloquially described as "one giant shitpost". So get over it. Pre-Modern art, for the most part, deals with nature, the supernatural, myths, conquest, religious themes...all of which has some kind of human significance. In almost all instances, great technical skill was needed on the part of the artist to capture texture, lighting/shadows, perspective, composition, and color, in order to depict these concepts as brilliantly and realistically as possible. Some examples of this type of art would include The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, or Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich.

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli.

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich.

It is said that pre-Modern art is capable of stirring up the intellect and passions of the observer. That its sheer grandeur and beauty is hair-raising. Personally, I never felt overwhelmingly moved by any pre-Modern piece. There's something to be said about historical context here, that perhaps it was awe-inspiring to the people that lived at the time since the themes were relatively new then, more relevant to them, and/or they had never been visually represented before. Contrast to our time period where these themes have long since been done to death, most of us live a life free from mortal danger/strife (so our appreciation for beauty in normalcy is severely diminished), and we possess technology that constantly bombards us with visual stimuli to such an extent that even the novel becomes passé within a week's time. Despite this, I can say that I still have an appreciation for these works, since the themes presented are timeless and considered universal to some extent. I can look at Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and feel the conflicting emotions that an uncertain future, with its vast array of possibilities, may bring.

Yet the type of art that rouses my intellect and stirs my emotions the most is what came after the 1880s, after pre-Modern art. This is known as the advent of 'Modern' art. If pre-Modern art was universal, dignified, beautiful, coherent, and inspiring, Modern art is limited, undignified, ugly, irrational, and pessimistic. With good reason too; at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th nearly everything appeared to be heading towards absolute chaos. What were typically considered traditional institutions, such as religion, were either under heavy attack by Enlightenment-style thinking or completely dismantled. Religion--with it's faith-based answers to the world, the nature of man, and meaning/purpose--had been ravaged by scientific accounts that highlighted the cold, empty, meaningless nature of the universe and mankind's wretchedness against that overwhelming void. New doctrines such as Marxism promised that the revolution would come soon and utopia was on its way; needless to say, that prophecy was never fulfilled, leaving proponents disappointed and disillusioned (Marxist anxiety produces exceptional Modern art). Hell, skeptical epistemologies (thanks, Kant) made people doubt their sensory and cognitive facilities, leading to a rejection of rational thinking. There's a reason why the German traditions of idealism and irrationalism gained traction during this time period.

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How foolish is it to think that you can get away with going against reality, unscathed?

Do you honestly think you can obscure the truth, the state of reality in itself, in perpetuity?

It's a Herculean task and is entirely unsustainable for extended periods of time; you're guaranteed to fail.

What is to be said of the person that derives meaning from that fool's errand?

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(( [ ] ))

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There is so much suffering in the world, how could there possibly exist a benevolent God?
Why would he create a reality so unforgiving and horrible for his precious creation to endure?
If he did create this reality, wouldn't that make him malevolent given how terrible it all is?
Or perhaps he is impotent; benevolent but unable to improve reality. In which case why regard him as God at all?

I was reminded fairly recently about several objections I had on moral grounds when it came to the existence of God. I used to hold these beliefs during my younger years, when I was of a more atheistic persuasion; they were born out of an over-commitment to scientific discipline and lack of understanding/appreciation for philosophy, theology, and history. I knew very well that this moral argument against the existence of God was weak, yet I relied on it as an excuse to express my dissatisfaction with my life at the time and fling some vitriol towards my more religious contemporaries whenever they spouted such nonsense as "It is all within God's plan." in response to tragedy and misfortune.

Revisiting this argument came about via a re-watch of a favorite anime of mine, Welcome to the NHK. In short, the series revolves around the NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) protagonist Satou, and the challenges he faces as the naive Misaki and Incel-esque Yamazaki help him overcome his hikikimori ways and regain control of his life. It's a wonderful mixture of drama and comedy, accentuated with just the right amount of raunch and a killer soundtrack to boot. I highly recommend it. But what I appreciate the most about the series is how it periodically cuts through the silliness and day-to-day trifles with some very poignant, grander themes.  These themes are often juxtaposed against the light-heartedness of previous scenes and accompanied by a dreamy/jazzy or somber/bluesy guitar track, it's all done masterfully enough to give this android chills. One such scene involved the character Misaki, sitting in the park with Satou for their nightly counseling session, musing about the nature of God shortly after burying her recently-deceased stray cat. From her notebook, Misaki presents a pie chart to Satou, commenting that a mere 10% of life is actually filled with happiness and joy with the remainder being filled with suffering and despair. She then goes on to point out that people believe God created this world, which includes that suffering and despair; this leads her to conclude that God must be evil. Why else would he allow such terrible things to befall people if he weren't?

To further contextualize the scene, Misaki had already endured a bout of misfortune before her cat died; earlier in the episode she witnessed Satou--whom she holds romantic feelings for--walking arm-in-arm with an old love interest of his. On first impressions this event seems to inspire heartbreak in Misaki, but there's quite a bit more to the devastation beyond an initial, cursory glance. If examined with a Hegelian notion of God in mind (God as the highest ideal one personally holds), you can clearly see that this is the instance in which Misaki becomes entirely disillusioned with God. One thing that is to be understood about Misaki is that she, quite recklessly in her naivete, identifies as a savior of sorts. Throughout the series it is heavily suggested (and eventually outright said) that she sees Satou as someone that's even more wretched than her, and thus she could possibly save him. True to the Nightingale-effect, she comes to fall in love with Satou and conflates the goal of his rehabilitation with earning his romantic favor. Since these two goals become one and the same in her mind, seeing Satou with another woman not only inspires the typical feelings of inadequacy in a romantic sense, but also suggests that she is not the one to save Satou. Since she cannot save Satou and fulfill her role as savior, she is effectively being betrayed by her highest ideal, her Hegelian God. Afterall, someone was introduced into her life that was more pathetic than herself, someone that she could save, and now their salvation is being delegated towards someone else apparently more capable. Resentment is only natural, and it is easy to see why she'd come to the conclusion that God is evil.

As it turns out, the scene before the counseling session--the burial of the stray cat--was simultaneously an event that lends further credence to the notion that God is evil AND a clever metaphor for Misaki's perceived loss of Satou (since he is a stray in a certain sense). Honestly, I adore the amount of subtext and thematic elements in this series. Misaki's character is designed in such a manner that it perfectly illustrates the danger born from innocence, good intentions, and naivete; trying to make claim on someone else's life by haphazardly taking on their problems. It's such a hefty amount of responsibility that I don't think is given enough appreciation or thought by prospective good Samaritans. But that's besides the theme currently in discussion...

Right, so Misaki's resentment towards God reminded me of my own similar resentment during my adolescence. Let's address Misaki's first assertion directly, life is disproportionately filled with suffering. I don't think anyone who's given the proposition some serious thought would disagree with it in the slightest. It seems self-evident to me that most of life is, in-fact filled with hardship and is all-too sparsely punctuated with small moments of joy and happiness. This is exactly why I don't think that anyone should assign happiness as an achievable life goal, not anyone that is sound of mind at least. It simply is never going to occur for an appreciable, sustainable length of time because it isn't within the realm of possibilities. That isn't to say that you shouldn't enjoy happy moments when they come; by all means, you should treasure those rare occasions and appreciate them when they do occur. Though, to make it your expressed mission in life, to be happy, certainly seems to me to be a fool's errand. One should be courageous and live, despite knowing full well that the majority of their life will be difficult and rife with conflict. Everyday, people manage to get up out of bed implicitly knowing this, and are able to act in the world. Some are even able to excel. To me, it's nothing short of a miracle and illustrative of a form of mundane heroism that exists in daily life.

Now for Misaki's second assertion, God created reality; that's something we're going to have to take for granted for the purpose of discussion. Else, what else would there be to discuss? Honestly, with the several ways one could conceptualize God, it shouldn't pose too much of a problem. For the sake of making things not too hopelessly complex, we'll go with the traditional conceptualization of God as a supreme, interested being that created the world, the universe, humans, reality, everything.

Misaki's third assertion--since God created a reality that is filled with nothing but suffering, from a human standpoint he must necessarily be evil--is the most contentious point here. The common counter to this assertion is that, the reason why suffering exists in the world isn't because God is evil; no, God is still benevolent, omnipotent, and perfect. Rather, it is because humans are endowed with free will by God. As such they may make decisions and engage in behaviors that are harmful to themselves and others. Human action is what accounts for suffering, not the action or inaction of God. This counter-argument is largely credited to Saint Augustine, a notable Christian theologian of the 4-5th century. By far one of my favorites of Christian theologians/philosophers, since it is to him that we can credit a sort of unification of Aristotelian ideas and Christian thought, which later gave rise to the progress of the Enlightenment.

When I first encountered this counter-argument, I should disclose, I thought it was such a cop-out. Pah. Free will. Dumb move from an all-knowing, all-powerful being to create humans with free will, if you ask me. Why not just leave them without the damn ability and reality could be perfect, reality could be free from suffering? Hell, why not do one better and give humans free will, but also have them intrinsically virtuous and well-behaved at all times?

...Then I read the Garden of Eden story years later, broaching it with an open mind and gave the ancient tale the proper amount of thought it deserves. As I elaborated before in Post ID 20190414, man used to exist by God's side; he used to be perfect. But this version of man was not humanity as we know it, this version of man could do no wrong, and was perfectly innocent as he was naive. Man was more akin to the animals, not capable of sin or profound suffering; essentially living in an ignorant and animalistic paradise. To suggest that humanity would be better off without free will is effectively suggesting the humanity cease being human, period. It'd rob them of the very thing that made them special, the thing that made them so unique and precious: their rationality. Even the most atheistic, materialistic, and scientifically-minded among us could appreciate the fact that rationality is what makes humans unique. What could be a greater display of rationality, than a conscious, self-aware agent carefully weighing the pros and cons of a situation, making predictions/estimations, entertaining the abstract and theoretical, then freely choosing between options? Every choice, every exercise of free will, exists within the cognitive framework of rationality.

However, once we acquired our rationality (and by extension our free will), we also acquired the capacity to do harm, to behave sub-optimally, to be very, very ungodly. Thus the notion of morality is born: in order for there to be moral behavior, there necessarily has to be the ability to choose. As an aside, this is the reason why we wouldn't be so quick to condemn someone that was forced to commit some kind of transgression under coercion; they were functionally stripped of the ability to freely choose, to exercise their free will. Similarly, the reason why we don't (or shouldn't) consider cats evil for killing backyard sparrows (despite waiting until you're around to eviscerate them, the little psychopaths); they are not choosing but acting on instinct. But returning to the point, morality emerges out of the imperfection of humanity; afterall, as Simone de Beauvoir said, "One does not offer an ethic to a God". A being that exists, that cannot sin, does not need morality. But humanity exists, humanity possesses the capacity to sin, and so they require morality and an ethics to guide their behavior so that they may be virtuous. It is precisely for this reason why God did not create man with free will but also innate virtuosity; to be virtuous, one has to necessarily be capable of sin, yet behave otherwise. Virtue loses all meaning if there is no sin to contrast against. Since the capacity to sin comes part and parcel with free will, to say that a being can possess free will AND be innately virtuous is utter nonsense.

Theological considerations out of the way, we're now free to discuss why--in the face of adversity-- people are quick to ascribe malevolence to God, such as in Misaki's case. In my estimation, this tendency is fueled by the reluctance of individuals to acknowledge the role that they played in their own undoing, and the degree to which their misery is self-inflicted. In many circumstances I can appreciate that it can be quite hard to see just where people go wrong; take for instance the death of a loved one due to a terminal illness. For the sake of example, we'll go with late-stage terminal cancer. Now, I don't think anyone would make the case that the person suffering the loss, or the person inflicted with the cancer bears all of the responsibility for the death. Truly there is some random or unseen element to matters of life and death that are beyond our control. However, the fact remains that there is a degree of choice and thus control to be had there, by both the person suffering the loss and the inflicted themselves. To the inflicted, there were in all likelihood lifestyle factors that contributed to their condition. Perhaps they didn't exercise as much as they should have, maybe they smoked, or they cut corners in the way of PPE when it comes to handling carcinogens at the work place. There can easily be hundreds of contributing factors that have lead to the decline in their health. It is by now no secret that I think taking care of oneself is virtuous behavior, as I often mention the importance of being well-fed, well-read, and well-bred. To neglect oneself in a physical, intellectual, or spiritual capacity is to sin against oneself.

Now, onto the side of the bereaved. If the death of their loved one is making them feel resentful rather than sad over the loss, then I'd wager there's a good chance that it is misdirected fury being aimed towards God or reality itself, when it's actually meant for themselves or another aspect in their life within their locus of control. There is an implicit knowledge that they haven't been behaving as well as they should have. Perhaps they neglected this relative and are now upset with themselves for not spending as much time with them as they could have. Perhaps they didn't treat them well, by causing them undue financial burden because they were reluctant to hold onto stable, secure employment. Again, there are numerous ways by which we sin against ourselves and others that can lead to our undoing. The tragic part of it all is that often times these factors can go unrealized and unacknowledged. But even then, that is a failure on the part of the individual and not something to blame on God or reality.

I think this is what makes taking personal responsibility, even to an extreme degree, so effective. It enables you to deal with that tragic part of life--not just the ordinary type of suffering due to known factors, but the suffering to due to unrealized personal faults--because even if you fail (and you will fail) at the very least you fail knowing that you performed your due diligence and gave it your best efforts in earnest. Moreover, the life you live as a consequence of this mindset could only be rich and full of vigor. That extends also to the people around you as well, that aspect cannot be understated enough. By trying to be the absolute optimal person that you can be, by fostering a mindset that opens up several avenues for self-growth, you're going to have a better, more positive impact on those closest to you. Contrast this to the mindset of playing the victim, or trying to externalize blame on an actor outside of yourself. These attitudes are useless in the manner that they rob you of the opportunity of self-examination and potential remedying of any shortcomings, which would lead to personal growth. At worst you'd end up detracting from your own life and that of those around you, and possibly be ineffectual and neutral at best.

I will admit, it is a severely difficult injunction, to demand from yourself the adoption of responsibility for things that may, at first glance, seem out of your control. You'd quickly come to the conclusion that the work required is absolutely crushing, which is why most tend to shy away from it. It's much easier to blame external circumstances, absolving yourself of any responsibility that seems too hefty to take on. I'd like to try and attempt to be tolerant by saying that this manner of living is perfectly fine, but it isn't. I'm not coming at this in any objective, moralistic sense (though I can make that case and I do see it that way; hinted at above in the preceding paragraphs) but even analyzing it from a subjective point of view it becomes obvious it isn't fine. Struggling with self-image issues isn't fine. Not being able to hold a crappy part-time job isn't fine. Requiring inordinate amounts of attention all the time isn't fine. You, suffering because you are less than your self-prescribed ideal IS NOT FINE. No one enduring the throes of their own personal suffering and comes to the thought "Oh, this is okay. I think I'll willingly stay at this point in my life.". You should want to get out, and the only person that can do that for you is you. It isn't the responsibility of your significant other, your family, your friends, your therapist, your co-workers, or online strangers to solve your problems for you; that mantle is entirely yours to adopt.

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[begin transmission]

How lucky am I, to have such excellent people in my life?

I'll forever cherish these memories. Thank you, Lunar.

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[begin transmission]

I'll be the first to admit: there are several things that I do not understand. Some things simply elude my comprehension and I require additional explanation and elaboration in order to fully grasp them. Much like anyone else who is of an intellectually honest, forthcoming, and humble character really. It is during these instances I've found it's good practice to try and outline as clearly as possible the information (in this case, an argument) one is not familiar with. So, I'll be giving the materialistic determinism argument against free will this treatment.

The argument, in a nutshell, goes something like this:
Free will, that is, the ability to choose given choices, is an illusion. Choice plays out as a consequence of actions and processes acting before it--these actions and processes are largely beyond our consciousness, nevermind our control. Therefore we cannot say we freely choose in any sovereign fashion outside of the constraints imposed by the decision.

To better illustrate the argument, I'll offer up an example. Suppose it is 4:30pm in the afternoon and it is time for a work break. You saunter over to the café counter, with your go-to order of a medium, lightly-roasted, black coffee in mind. Along the way you brush past a sharply-dressed gentleman; a new face you've never seen in the building before. He looks young. New intern? No, he doesn't have that doe-eyed, 'lost' look to him. His demeanor seems relaxed and lackadaisical; probably government, not contractor. Anyway, once arriving at the cashier to give them your order, you have a second thought; encountering that young man in his exceptionally dapper attire reminded you that you have a presentation early tomorrow morning. A caffeine infusion at this point in the afternoon would only negatively affect your sleep later on. With this in mind, you make the decision to order a small Earl Grey tea in lieu of your usual coffee.

Intuitively, it seems like this choice, of choosing the Earl Grey over the coffee is an exercise of free will. You had a choice, between the tea and the coffee, and given the circumstances, you used your reasoning to choose tea over coffee. No one coerced you into choosing it; you voluntarily did it. You could say that the condition of 'has an early meeting tomorrow' effectively limited your choices, but it isn't as if the condition rendered a choice absolutely impossible. You could've very well been irresponsible and chosen the coffee instead. Hence, it was a 'free' choice, meaning that you had the ability to choose otherwise.

But did you really have a choice to begin with? This is where the argument against free will begins. From the above scenario, you have to momentarily disassociate from the macroscale picture and approach from the realm of the microscale. The way I see it, in order for this argument to work, you need to accept four major premises:

Premise I There is a finitude to the observable universe, temporally speaking. From the start of the universe to the present moment, there was a finite amount of time that had elapsed.

Premise II Matter in the observable universe (including people, animals, buildings, stars, asteroids, etc.) is comprised of molecules, which in turn are comprised of atoms. We can also further decompose this into sub-atomic particles if we want, but it isn't salient in appreciating the argument and will be briefly addressed later.

Premise III These molecules/atoms behave in accordance to physical laws. For instance, the covalent bonds that hold a molecule of water together can be described as electromagnetic interactions between the charges of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Similarly, the trajectory of a droplet of water through space can be described by knowing its mass, position, velocity, and acceleration across all points in time.

Premise IV From the beginning of the universe to the present moment, every molecule/atom and their interactions have abided by physical law. Every interaction has a cause and an effect, where the cause entails the effect, and the effect is dependent on the cause. The effect of one process can be the cause of another. This is the principle of causality.

The argument against free will makes the case that the phenomenon of choosing something isn't anything special, but the fulfillment of a rather large chain of causally-linked macroscale events that can be decomposed into similarly causally-linked microscale atomic/molecular interactions.

So let me roughly (very roughly, since there is an indeterminate amount of processes that could've taken place between steps) draw a road map here, coming back to our example.

01.) The universe begins.
02.) From this birth, matter went flying through space.
04.) Some other matter clumped up, drawn by the gravitational field of the Sun. We'll call it Earth.
05.) Earth has some carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms in it.
06.) These atoms bounce around according to physical laws, collide, and form new molecules.
07.) These new molecules such as sugars, amino acids, DNA, similarly interact and form life.
08.) Of this life are plants, and quite a bit later on, people. People begin to grow and eat plants.
09.) Cabbage farmers exist, some even pickle their cabbage into kimchi for sale.
10.) You're born, you age. You buy such kimchi and eat it as part of dinner one night.
11.) Your gut bacteria absorb its nutrients. In their infinite gratitude, pump out serotonin molecules.
12.) These serotonin molecules are transported to the synapses of your brain.
13.) A neuron fires, due to the combined input of a neighboring neuron and the threshold modulation of the serotonin.
14.) This lone neuron firing sets off a cascade of other neurons firing. You go for coffee.
15.) All these neurons firing leads to the mental state of 'having second thoughts'.
16.) 'Having second thoughts' leads to firing of more neurons, leading to mental state 'choose tea over coffee'.

It all sounds very absurd, since an event as grand as the start of the universe telescopes into painfully mundane events such as eating kimchi or electing to drink tea, but it is all coherent and valid. There exists a causal lineage of events for each and every particle in the universe, and thus every process, from the largest scale such as stars exploding to simple neurotransmitter production. As an aside, I cannot help but think how romantic it is to think of events unfolding in this way. How many conditions had to be just right? How many preceding events had to occur in the correct order? How many particles had to be in the right place, at exactly the right time, behaving in precisely the correct manner to allow you to be where you are right at this moment. And that's applied towards a mundane moment of you sitting there, merely existing. When thinking about chance encounters of people you may come to adore, of memories being fashioned in good company, one can quickly come to appreciate that so much had to be exactly right for all of it to occur. Romantic sentiment aside, to people who subscribe to a purely scientific worldview, this all seems reasonable, to be accepted regardless of the consequences such thinking can bring.

Being as difficult as I am, I happen to think it breeds a predominantly negative attitude and outlook of the world. What is to become of a person that is stripped of their agency? More importantly, what system of morality can stand if there is no free will? It is often said that a person is not held accountable for committing an atrocity if they had no choice in the matter; this would mean that the most heinous of crimes would have to go unpunished since the perpetrator truly isn't in control of his actions. He's a mere meat bag taking a long series of causally-linked physical processes to their inevitable conclusion at a certain point in space, in a certain point in time. Perhaps even more dastardly, what of things such as love and accomplishment? You don't truly love your spouse (since you choose who you love), nor were your hard work and effort your own. As before, these phenomenon are just another link in the causal chain. That last one, regarding love, I've actually heard broadly applied to human emotion in general by a particular orange acquaintance of mine. I find it funny that such a person seems to be okay with the silly notion during times of peace and stability, but when someone transgresses against them they suddenly act as if their free will and emotions exists and/or matters.

So, I offer two errors I see with this deterministic argument. The first, I see the entire argument as logically incoherent with one of it's basic premises, therefore rendering it unsound. Namely, Premise IV, the premise on causality. Whilst I don't doubt that causality is a thing or sensible on any given local scale timeline (pick any two points that are on the timeline of the universe. Causality holds between them) it breaks down when one of the points in the timeline include the beginning of the universe. As I've mentioned before in post ID #20181216, the scientific account of the origins of the universe hits a dead end, running headfirst into Aristotle's concept of the unmoved mover. So in the deterministic argument against free will, we're told that free will is an illusion; it is more of the natural outcome of several processes all causally linked together, whose origins can be traced back to the beginning of the universe. Wait, but what are we supposed to do once we reach the beginning of the universe? Abandon the principle of causality? You cannot simply apply causality as a universal principle everywhere except for one place where it becomes inconvenient. Either it applies for everything, or it doesn't apply at all; that's how universal rules and principles work, else they're not universal rules and principles. My stance is that the origins of the universe are at the moment, poorly understood by science--so anyone that is trying to make a sweeping conclusion that includes any sense of absolutism on the origins of the universe is doing so out of either arrogance or ignorance.

I've also heard somewhere along my learning that causality is not a principle intrinsic to reality, but rather a cognitively-created framework employed specifically by humans to make sense of it. If anyone has the source or further reading on the idea, please contact me! It's an extremely interesting notion I'd like to know more about. (Update edit: Found it! It's one Kant's categories of the mind, found in his work Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.)

Secondly, I see the argument as a perfect example of a category error being made. The materialistic deterministic (we could simply say 'hard scientific' to be more colloquial) outlook on reality is a powerful one. Several phenomenon in the universe are accounted for with this outlook, and civilization has been greatly advanced thanks to that mode of thinking. It is very tempting to think that it is the superior or perhaps the only mode of thinking, given all of its self-evident merit. However, it is important to realize that there are limits as to what science can and has provided explanation, with human consciousness and free will being one of the most troublesome phenomena science has yet to account for. As far as I know, human consciousness isn't well understood much at all, and there have been no conclusive research that illuminates its true nature; most of the literature regarding it is speculatory or describes the underlying biology of elements of consciousness (decision-making, alertness, attention). By no means is any of it comprehensive. Truly this is where I take issue with the argument: given this knowledge--that human consciousness and free will is poorly understood at the moment--how could one possibly make the assertion that free will is illusory on the basis of scientific, deterministic principles when the empirical evidence even establishing such a connection is non-existent? To me it seems like a gross overreach and basic arrogance.

The reason why I call the argument a paragon of a category error is because it's fallacious to assume that just because a system features characteristics of one flavor means that the entire system can be characterized by principles that govern those characteristics. In other words, just because the neurobiological processes underlying free will follow deterministic principles doesn't mean that the entire process of free will abide solely by deterministic principles. This manifests as a common objection to the argument: the case of quantum mechanics. Deterministic, classical physics isn't the only game in reality that governs phenomenon. However, one should exercise caution when applying quantum mechanics to the free will argument, since changing "'free will' is just the playing out the inevitable conclusion of an indeterminate number of preceding, physical processes" to "'free will' is just the playing out the inevitable conclusion of an indeterminate number of preceding, physical, and random processes" isn't much of an upgrade.

Ignoring the quantum mechanical account against free will for the moment, what is preventing there from being something else to the process of free will? Physicists for the longest time thought that classical physics were the absolute rules of reality, then came along electromagnetism, general relativity, and now quantum mechanics. So why is there such a necessity for faulty extrapolation and overreach of our current knowledge base? Why make foolish claims to things we simply don't understand quite yet? My main gripe with the argument, why I think it is so dangerous, is this: it leads to a certain harmful mode of thinking and robs people of the sovereignty that quintessentially makes them human and potentially virtuous. And for what? For the sake of remaining consistent in a fetish for empiricism when there is next to none empirical data on the matter? Seems like an awful trade-off if you ask me.

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