Chapter dzǷ: Free Will and Ethics ȁȈȀoverall complexity is a mere illusion. Perhaps greater complexity in some
dimensions—in the products of the human mind and in the details of
flyspecks on published pages—is offset somehow by reduced complexity
in other dimensions. If so, what might they be? Perhaps greater complex-
ity on our earth, which, like our whole solar system, is an open system,
is offset somehow by reduced complexity elsewhere in the universe. Even
so, wouldn’t the point still hold that increasing complexity on our earth
implies incomplete predictability of human affairs? By what mechanism,
if any, could any offsetting reduced complexity elsewhere save the com-
plete predictability of human affairs, if only in principle? But perhaps I
am wrong about my notion of information required for complete causal
specification.
Speaking of total causal determination, we may well pause to ask just
what “cause” and “causality” mean. Trying to frame objection-free defini-
tions is a sobering challenge. Ļis very difficulty throws some slight extra
embarrassment onto doctrines of a great unbroken causal chain.
In arguing for indeterminacy or openness in the universe, Karl
Popper distinguishes among “three worlds.”ȄWorldȀcontains physical
objects—rocks, trees, structures, living creatures, and physical fields of
force. Worldȁis the psychological world of fears and hopes, of disposi-
tions to act, and of subjective experiences of all kinds. WorldȂcontains
products of the human mind—art works, ethical values, social institutions,
the intellectual contents of books (books as physical objects belong to
WorldȀ), scientific problems, theories, including mistaken theories, and
solved and unsolved puzzles. Especially characteristic of WorldȂis human
knowledge put into words.
Autonomous objects exist even in WorldȂ. Human beings originally
conceived of the prime numbers and conjectured about their properties,
but the primes and their properties have taken on an objective existence.
It is a bare fact, but a logical truth rather than a contingent empirical fact,
One difference from the context of inanimate processes is that in the evolution of infor-
mation, as in biological evolution, selection may accomplish a kind of inner directedness.
It may be that on our earth and perhaps even in the universe as a whole, neither kind of
evolution violates the second law.
ȄSee, for example, PopperȀȈȇȄ, selectionsȃandȁȀ;ȀȈȇȁ, sectionȂȇ; and hisȀȈȆȁlec-
ture, reprintedȀȈȇȁ. Earlier (ȀȈǿȇ, reprintedȀȈȄȇ, pp.ȂȄȇ–ȂȆȈ; andȀȈǿȇ, reprintedȀȈȄȇ,
pp.ȃǿȃ–ȃǿȄ), Charles S. Peirce had distinguished among “three Universes of Experience.”
Popper’s WorldȂand Peirce’s first universe correspond fairly well, as do Popper’s World
Ȁand Peirce’s second universe, but the remaining world and universe correspond loosely
at best.