On the dynamics of polynomial-like mappings

Abstract

A model of decision and action processes is outlined, and several consequences of this model are developed. The simple plausibility of this model demonstrates that common discussions of decision making and action are constrained within metaphysical frameworks that are at best questionable. The model, in turn, enables a model of free will that is consistent with contemporary physics and likely, from an evolutionary perspective, to have emerged. The model is an alternative to decision making as computation and action as the initiation of a causal chain, and entails that decision and action processes are self-organizing, global, and intrinsically intertwined with each other. In turn, the model broadens attention with regard to ethical considerations to persons and their character, and to the development and developing processes of those persons and characters. This is much closer to an Aristotelian virtue ethics than to a primarily action focused ethics, such as Kant’s. Finally, the overall model of persons that emerges in the discussion is one of ongoingly active and ongoingly developing processes, not one of some kind of classical substance or entity.