Embodiment of Freedom

Examples of Freedom: Mom at the Market, a Ping-Pong Player and the Judge

There are enduring questions about the meaning of freedom and about how freedom co-exists with natural science. I have a new approach to these questions that begins with three examples. In each example a person is exercising freedom. We view events as they are happening.

A mother is shopping at a grocery store, accompanied by a fidgeting child. Having stopped at a bin offering table grapes at $2.69 a pound, she has a package of grapes in one hand, while, with the other hand, she holds a bag of apples she picked earlier that cost $1.49 a pound. She will buy grapes or apples but not both; and she is now choosing between them.
A ping-pong player has just completed a stroke, having hit the ball during a volley in a tournament game. He is seeing his opponent in motion while performing the return stroke and, in anticipation, he is starting to move his lower body to the left (in response to the opponent's motion) while, with his right arm holding the paddle, he starts into a swing that, as it continues, he will turn into one of several ping-pong strokes, such as a loop, a smash or a flip.
A United States District Court Judge is reviewing a request or Motion made by one side in a civil lawsuit, asking the Judge to order that a certain procedure be done earlier in the case than is the norm set forth in the rules, which also allow for an exception "for good cause." The other side opposes the Motion. The Judge can grant the Motion or deny the Motion; and she can find sufficient justification in the facts and in legal principles to support either decision.

In each example, two or more possible courses of action are changing into a single actual course of action. When one of the possible courses of action becomes the actual course of action, the other possibilities cease to exist even as a possibility. Each change is produced by a person exercising freedom. Such changes, persons and freedom are the subject matter of these pages.

Mom's decision in the grocery store is an example of a general kind of freedom that persons exercise in all markets. The ping-pong player's stroke is an example of a general kind of freedom that persons exercise in all games and sports. The Judge's ruling is an example of a general kind of freedom that persons exercise in all courts and during many governmental determinations. Other examples could be based on travel adventures in cities or in wilderness; on scientific and professional work; and on creative and performing arts. I suggest that such exercises of freedom make up a substantial part of many a person's conscious activity. I suggest that markets, game rooms, sport fields and courts, as examples, are instituted to organize and cultivate such exercises of freedom.

Copyright © 2007 Robert Kovsky

Embodiment of Freedom (2007 partial publication) download (.pdf format)

Table of Contents

Other Publications:

Testimony of Freedom (2008) -- (under construction) the intended culmination of my approach to freedom; presentation of a psychology of resemblances based on Quad Net device operations; the approach leads to analysis of resemblances in physical science, civil law and the Christian religion.

Testimony of Freedom website.

Quad Nets (2006)-- Quad Nets is the chief engineering and scientific presentation of my "thermal device models of brains."

Quad Nets website -- separately organized

web page on the formal paper Quad Nets: Material Foundations for Thermal Device Models of Brains

download Quad Nets paper (.pdf format)

Timing Devices (2007) -- a simplified system based on Quad Nets. The timing devices system shows that brains are not computers.

web page on Timing Devices

download Timing Devices paper (.pdf format)

Philosophy of Science -- "On cosmological principles in natural sciences" -- a short essay (under 2000 words) that challenges conventional approaches and supports my alternative approach.: The essay is available as a .pdf file.

Archival Materials

...Researches in Personal Freedom (2005): An intentionally imcomplete project (outlined presentation with only a few sections completed), this "website" was a breeding ground for major themes brought to fruition in Quad Nets and Embodiment of Freedom. Major components are a research paper An Objective Kind of Freedom and early designs for "The Structural Engine Model of Consciousness" and "Thermal Models of Brains."

...Constructing Reality: An Exercise of Freedom (2003): This essay discusses topics that were being developed together and that includes a concept of freedom evoked from literature. Intelligence is discussed as an instrument of cognition that has inherent limitations, resulting in omissions, distortions and artifacts in the products of intelligence, which are our experiences, ideas and theories. Sometimes (as in physics) the deleterious effects of the limitations can be reduced, even towards zero and then intelligence is most successful in engaging reality. Analysis of the successes and failures of intelligence supports inferences about the limitations. Engaging reality with such a limited instrument of cognition is an exercise in freedom.
... A Patchwork of Limits: Physics Viewed From an Indirect Approach (2000): An earlier statement of my "alternative view of physics" that includes technical analysis of the thermodynamic critical state, the basis of Quad Nets and Embodiment of Freedom. I also argue that physicists exercise freedom in carrying out experiments and proposing theories.
... Jean Piaget and the hazards of the a priori (1998): An appreciation of the great psychologist and philosopher whose work inspired me.
... Technology of Freedom (1997): An earlier development project that combined psychology and device operations and that pointed toward Quad Nets
... The Crucible: Structural Foundations of Consciousness and Freedom (1992): A natural-science approach to selected phenomena involving consciousness and freedom, e.g., verbal description of a visual image, drawing a boundary around a cluster (e.g. "downtown San Francisco") and a jury decision during a trial.

You are welcome to visit my professional web page:
Robert Kovsky, Attorney-at-law

10/02/08