A little informal snapshot on what matters. (Ontologically.)

A HUGE amount of the “free will” debate is messing with or avoiding altogether what “me” in fact is.

Who is doing the doing? Or forget who…what?

Right away we have a bunch of axes to play with and we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff. And therein lies part of the issue.

Flexible ontology isn’t a huge problem when it comes to how we actually live and the reasons we ultimately double down on when shit gets real, like your hand over the flame.

When my hand is over an open flame long enough, it’s unequivocally, self-evidently, screamingly true that “I, as in yours truly, ought and should move my damn hand away from the flame now because it hurts me very much if I decide not to.”

People like to dismiss that as instinct or not relevant to the enterprise of philosophy, but I disagree.

At the end of the day, life is a story of mattering. This mattered to me, that mattered to me, she mattered to me. And forget the ME. When I was born, breathing mattered, so my body gasped for air and I cried my first cry. I wasn’t paying much attention back then and I’m not even sure how much I can say that was me, but I’m not sure that detail matters.

Anyone who denies that life is a mattering game is lying. You can’t even respond to this unless it matters to you to do so.

We pick the ontological definition that matters in the moment. And if you argue that’s not true, that you pick the one that’s the most metaphysically true, then it means metaphysics matter to you when trying to label the ontology of the concept of “truth.”

When we decide that determinism doesn’t “matter” concerning what we call “free will or moral responsibility,” that’s a choice about mattering. Because there’s nothing concrete connecting metaphysics to these concepts, especially if you use the semantic wiggle room we discussed to label will as this instead of that.

And so finally that takes us to Dennett saying “it’s the only will / freedom / responsibility worth wanting.”

That’s the dead giveaway. “Worth wanting” is a poetic way of saying “mattering.” And what “matters” is emotional and intuitional, not metaphysical.

Swapping the definitions isn’t an avoidance of ontology. It’s participation. It’s the wiggle room we’ve been given by the universe to label things according to what matters to us.

There’s beauty in that. Without this wiggle room, I’m not sure we’d be able to tunnel our way out of Hell. With it, there’s no cell strong enough to hold us in, not even solipsism.

When society gets too brittle, too uniformed, too committed to a single ontology, we sometimes lose our sense of how to play the wiggles. Religion is one antidote to this, one way to lock down ontologies so tightly in your favor that you never have to worry again, as long as you don’t lose your faith.

But I think it’s better to stay loose and nimble and work the wiggle room.

I don’t think it’s a free-for-all. Some ontologies are more immediately intuitive, especially after serious, clear reflection (like walking through Pereboom’s manipulation argument). And some ontologies are, like Dennett said, “worth wanting.”

We can measure that. A little. We can measure what’s more intuitive, and more parsimonious, in what stage of rigor, and even what’s worth wanting, i.e., what matters to us, short and long term, personal and in aggregate.

If we do this wisely, we might increase wellbeing and reduce suffering. I’m betting on it, because the more intuitive and parsimonious is often the more scalable in the end. (Get it one toxic inch off and pretty soon our lies come back to haunt us.)

I also think there are ways to stomach the more intuitive and parsimonious truths that don’t spin us off into nihilism and despair. It works for Spinoza and Sam Harris. Many Eastern gurus. And it worked for me, as a joyful hard incompatibilist.

Spreading this info in the right way could reduce unnecessary suffering in the long haul and help us survive the “great filter,” waiting to snuff out our species for the sin of our technology outpacing our wisdom.

That matters to me. So that’s the work.