Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

ENFORMATIONISM

A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.

  Post 133.  April 24, 2024

  Schopenhauer’s Will as Intention

     The World as EnFormAction and Imagination

In his 1818 book, The World as Will and Representation, philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer “identifies the thing-in-itself — the inner essence of everything — as will: a blind, uncon-scious, aimless striving devoid of knowledge”¹. Hence the material world, as represented in a conscious mind, is more like an everchanging dynamic system than an inert material object. For most humans though, Willpower is presumed to be both self-control and control over the environment. Hence, neither “aimless” nor “devoid of knowledge”. Will is intentional in the sense that an idea ─ a desire, need, goal ─ in the metaphysical mind is directed out into the physical world, as-if the immaterial mind had some ability to affect material objects. I’m not talking about mind-over-matter magic, but about human technology, the application of knowledge (information) for practical physical purposes : i.e. Science.

Presumably, Schopenhauer was also trying be scientific in describing his postulated natural Force as blind phenomenal "Will", and as a random purposeless tendency in the physical universe. But, he also portrayed it as Kant’s true reality : the unknowable immaterial ding an sich. Leaving “true reality” aside though, in this essay, I’ll primarily focus on the similarity be-tween his “Will”, and my own notion of a natural creative & causal force that my thesis calls EnFormAction² (EFA) : the power to cause changes in material form, and in mental knowledge. It’s like aimless thermodynamic Energy, except directed toward some eventual future state (teleology³), as evidenced by the gradual increase in Complexity and Con-sciousness over cosmic time. Philosophically, the origin of that evolutionary force is called the First Cause.

Ironically, as a critic of religion, Schop’s “Will” combines phenomenal causation and noumenal representation⁴ into a single concept, similar to the Holy Spirit of the Bible. Likewise, my EFA thesis combines the causal power of Energy with the teleological³ tendency toward emerging, evolving organization. Philosophically, we can infer the existence of this Causal force from its history of changes in the world. That’s what biological Evolution and astronomical Cosmology tried to do: in Darwin’s theory of directional natural selection, and the Big Bang theory of a progressive burst of causal creativity in the beginning of space-time physical reality. Both theories are artificial models (representations) created by human minds from incomplete information to simplify the near-infinite scope and complexity of reality that is almost beyond comprehension.

EnFormAction is similar to Schop's Cosmic Will, except that it is characterized as Intentional instead of Accidental, and Purposeful instead of Aimless. Intention implies a goal and a plan. Purpose denotes motivation to consistently work toward that goal. In Nature, what we call Time is a regular procession in a particular direction : the Future. The Plan of Nature is unknown, except as we can infer from natural Laws. Those regulations of action could be mere averages within randomness . . . .

1. Schopenhauer’s Will :
   “Taking the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant as his starting point, Schopenhauer argues that the world humans experi-ence around them—the world of objects in space and time and related in causal ways—exists solely as "representation" depen-dent on a cognizing subject, not as a world that can be considered to exist in itself”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_Will_and_Representation

2. EnFormAction :
   Natural creative Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (aka : Cosmic Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, pro-grammed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

3. Teleology :
   Literally, future know-ledge. It implies design and purpose in the evolving world. Though natural evolution appears to be deterministic & progressive – from simple Singularity to complex Cosmos – atheists prefer the term “teleonomy” to avoid any notion of divine determinism or Will.

4. Representation :
   Mental modeling is how the mind understands noumena in terms of phenomena. Noumena are the acts of natural Will that we know by observing its effects as changes in the phenomenal material world.

Use your Will
Free Your Mind

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