Taking advantage of a brief discussion on Twitter to explain an idea here. I’ve still some philosophical things to archive on the blog that are already a few months old. Eventually I’ll haul it all over here.

The thing I wrote on Twitter (the purpose is to squeeze it down to a really simple and intuitive level that can be immediately understood):

(about Free Will and eliminativism)

The contradiction is born of dual path, one inside the other, both true. It’s perspective.
Free Will literally exists or not depending from where you look. Both Points of View are “true”.
Elimination being BOTH logical and impossible creates a contradiction because it juggles two planes.
Reduce perspective to one plane and Free Will EITHER exists OR doesn’t (the contradiction is resolved) – WHO IS ASKING?
“WHO IS ASKING” (or saying) is the ultimate solution to Free Will paradox

What surprises me is that no one seems paying attention to how plain is the paradox born from the contradiction. A contradiction is literally just a statement that is apparently both true and wrong and can’t seem to be solved, or brought down to ONE solution.

The problem of Free Will is exactly the same: a paradox.

These things always work the same. Consider for example the idea of “Nature”. What is the contrary of “natural” in our language? Artificial. And what does artificial means concretely? Man-made. Fabricated.

That is the seed of many contradictions that have significant impact in our lives. For most of everyone human beings have a “soul” and there’s a distinction between them and the rest of creation. The world out there is made FOR us. We are separate from it. Yet, if we believe in actual science, human beings are PART of nature, not distinguished from it. The system of nature closes around us. It INCLUDES us. It is then only consequent that nothing “artificial” can exist. If it’s man-made, and men are part of nature, it’s still as natural as everything else. Nothing can exist in nature that can transcend or violate nature itself.

It is the origin of many ethical problems. Manipulating genes is “not natural”. But if human beings can do it, and human beings are part of nature, then there cannot be anything artificial about it. It was already all part of the “design”, whatever it is. Unless you believe human beings have some special powers that make them distinct.

How is the contradiction born? Of language. But language is only a reference. If you move human beings OUTSIDE nature, and so create a plane, a system of reference that belongs to human being, to oppose to another plane, a system of reference that belongs to the rest of nature, then the consequence is about obtaining statements that are BOTH true and wrong. Because the contradiction originates from the confusion of these two perspectives, and so opposite answers.

That’s the problem of Free Will, being required yet impossible. DO WE HAVE FREE WILL? Has only a true answer:

WHO IS ASKING?

The solution (or the path leading to the solution) is brought by the double-aspect theory:
two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance.

The “substance” is one, Nature, Science (the description we make of Nature, the objective eye of God). But the perspectives are two, creating the apparent contradiction.

Human beings exist WITHIN nature, but they create two planes, two levels, that are perceptively separated. First person, third person. Man/nature. Inside/outside. The part of a whole. A slice, a point of view.

Free Will EXISTS within the first person, because of limited access to information. Free Will is concretely a limit applied, a perimeter that delimits a space. An enclosure. This enclosure creates a distinction between inside and outside. And so creates the principles of the two planes that then create a contradiction when you make statements while confusing the plane of reference.

But because Free Will exists within the first person, and the first person is contained in Nature, Free Will also is canceled when the perspective switches to third person. Science (third person) says: Free Will cannot exist. Because science postulates that there’s “one substance”, and so two contradicting truths aren’t possible. The first person/Free Will is “explained away”. Eliminated.

WHO IS ASKING? The question can be answered from two perspectives. First person and third person, yet there’s one substance only, because we can’t forget that human beings aren’t separate from nature, but caught within. So one answer/perspective is included within the other.

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