We can never be completely free given the gap between that which we might desire/want “in our head” and that which we either are or are not able to acquire. Options are everything out in the world of actual human interactions.
But: If the desires/wants/thoughts/feelings etc., that emanate from inside our head could only have ever done so then the “causal efficacy” embodied in “I” here is just another kind of piston to me.
Unless of course mindful matter has a property that sets it apart from mindless matter in interacting in sync with matter’s immutable laws.
It would be as though there was an omniscient God “out there somewhere” who does know everything that we are ever going to think and feel and do. We think and we feel and we do things and, then, just as with the car, our lives move forward. Only we are programed by the all-knowing God to think that this is all of our own volition.
But, sure, maybe I’m not thinking this through in the optimal manner. And yet what “on earth” can that possibly mean in a wholly determined universe?
“Compatibilism” just doesn’t “click” for me. No, we are not pistons in an automobile engine. But, still, as with the pistons, we do only that which we are “designed” to do.
Either that or I am making sense of it all only as I ever could have.
Yes, but are we not then back to speculating about the extent to which the refocusing itself is autonomous?
No, why would we be.
Because everything that we do is inherently in sync with that which we could only have done. You focus on something because you must focus on it. Matter then unfolds over time as it must creating a new condition prompting you to refocus on it as you must.
Again, maybe you are relating something important here that I keep missing. But if I cannot not miss it what then does that really mean?
You will only ever be able to ask these questions when you’re not in the midst of having the experience (seeing the reality of things, thinking the truth of axiomatic proposition, experiencing the badness of pain, etc.). When you pull away from the experience and focus rather on the concept of the experience, you will be able to contemplate all kinds of possibilities that the experience itself rules out.
From my frame of mind, I am either able to pull away from an experience because that is something I can choose to do of my own volition, or my mind [still in sync with the immutable laws of matter] has evolved to the point where I am able to fool myself into thinking I have done so of my own volition.
The experience itself is its own verification. It’s like wondering if pain really is undesirable or we’re just made to think so because we could not have not thought so. When you actually feel pain, you see that it’s undesirable. When you actually visualize two objects and two other objects, you see that there are four objects all together. How can you visualize two objects and two more objects and at the same time be visualizing five objects? But you can certainly pull away from that visualization and contemplate the abstract notion that maybe 2 + 2 = 5 and we’re just determined to think it’s really 4. If you stay in that abstract state of contemplation, you’ll never get the verification you so strongly desire.
I always come back to this though: If you are writing only that which you ever could have written here and now and I am reading only that which I ever could have read here and now, pulling back from it is just another inherent component of an exchange that is rooted in whatever brought into existence the immutable laws of matter themselves.
But: Do we or don’t we have a way to prove any of this? It’s just that the neuroscientists seem to be on more solid ground than the philosophers. Not that they could ever have not been?
Thank God for that.
Which then begs the question about the mind of God. Is it in sync with the immutable laws of matter? In other words, did God invent these laws more or less than He discovered them?
How then is mind not matter?
Why should it be?
More to the point: How do we address it without first having access to whatever it is that is wholly responsible for the existence of existence itself?
You suggest that…
Obviously, the correlation between mind and matter means that certain instances of one are instances of the other, but there is also a matter of scope here. The materialist, in believing that mind reduces to matter, would say that mind is an instance of matter, but matter exhausts a greater scope in the sense that some instances of matter are not mind. As I would have it, the correlation is the reverse of this: I believe that matter reduces to mind, and therefore I would say that matter is an instance of mind (sensation in particular) but mind exhausts a greater scope in the sense that some instances of mind are not instance of matter (abstraction, for example).
There is also the sense in which all instances of mind can be represented as matter, but I would not confuse the representation for that which is represented. For instance, even though I said above that abstraction is an instance of mind that isn’t an instance of matter, abstraction can still be represented as matter–it only needs to be translated into sensory form (in particular, a sensory experience of certain brain activity, the kind neuroscientists will tell you corresponds to abstract thinking). But at the end of the day, brain activity is a sensory experience, not abstract thought.
But how would this abstract “analysis” be integrated into the reality of our exchange itself? How would you typing these words and me reading them be fully explained such that you could walk us through the mind/matter interactions based on the actual analytic components [assumptions] of the argument?
And, thus, I’m back again to this: what on earth do you mean here?
Pertaining either to, say, the choice to abort a baby [prong 1] or the reaction to the abortion as a moral quandary [prong 2]?
In other words, you still have a morality. So your own sense of identity here would seem no less threatened if my dilemma above is deemed a rational [even an optimal] perspective. Somehow you are able to connect the dots between “I” and an understaning of reality that allows you to avoid [or to at least minimize] the angst embedded in my dilemma. I just don’t understand how that “works” “in your head” when your own values come into conflict with others. Despite your attempts to explain it. But, again, that may well be rooted more in my own failure than yours.
That’s because I don’t identify myself with my morality. The ‘I’ we have been discussion, as it concerns me, is ‘I’ as a subjectivist. If you were able to tear down my subjectivism, I might undergo some kind of prong #1 crisis. But as it concerns my morality, that isn’t rooted in any “ism” that I hold strongly to–rather, it is rooted in emotions and instincts–the kind I assume most human beings share in common–I feel guilty about hurting people, I would never steal from a child, I would feel horrible about raping a woman, I could never bring myself to kill another person–as a social animal, all these things are instinctually wired into my brain. They’re not the kind of thing that get switched on or off by a rational argument (though arguments and “isms” can override them, but that requires years of conditioning and a lot of social pressure).
Somehow you seem able to yank this conception of “I” out of my own dilemma [if that is what you are doing] but I simply don’t grasp what you are talking about here “for all practical purposes”. Like me, you are out in a particular world embodying particular values that evolved from the complex intertwining of nature and nurture. The part about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy doesn’t just go away for me.
Had the genes and the memes been differrent in your life you might have no compunction at all in raping someone, in hurting someone, in killing someone.
In fact, this is the part of my own rendition of “I” that most disturbs the objectivists. Somehow they must convince themselves that they do the right thing because 1] there is a right thing to do and 2] they do it because they are a good person.
But this is still all just an existential contraption to me.
So on the point of what happens when my own values come into conflict with others–first of all, I don’t go out looking for trouble, trouble would have to find me (i.e. I’d have to be confronted by a group that seemed to think my basic moral instincts and intuitions were outrageously wrong). Then it’s a question of what I would do in such a situation. Would I try to argue back? Argue back with points about why my morality is right? Points that I would have to whip up on the spot? Would I try to ignore them? Evade the situation? And what if they persisted? If they persisted, then maybe I ought to fall back on the law for protection, call the police, etc. ← But that’s not the same as defending my morality with my best rationality cap. But to get to your point, I suppose we are to imagine that I would raise certain arguments in defense of why my morality, rooted in instinct and intuition as it would be, is right and theirs is wrong. And then if I took your point about dasein and the groundlessness of arguments such as the ones I would make into consideration, it probably wouldn’t bother me so much because I would be very much aware that I’d be coming up with those arguments only as a strategic maneuver in order to get out of the sticky situation I ended up in–in other words, I wouldn’t care whether I was ultimately right or ultimately wrong–as long as my arguments worked to convince them of their mistakes and allow me to escape the situation. This doesn’t render me into a prong #1 crisis because, as I said, I don’t identify myself with my morality, or with the arguments I would have to whimsically come up with on the spot in that situation. I don’t invest a lot of value in those arguments, in other words, so I don’t undergo an identity crisis if they turn out to be vacuous.
From my frame of mind all of this is subsumed in dasein. Each individual out in a particular world evolves a particular identity that intertwines all of the countless variables rooted in both nature and nurture. They choose this rather than that. Subjectively/subjuntively. An “I” fabricated as a child into an existential contraption ever evolving over time from the cradle to the grave in a world bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change.
But, when you note, “I might just use a bit of common sense or conventional assumptions and values shared by most people”, these are no less existential contraptions to me. They are situated out in a particular world [historically, culturally, experientially] and, sans God, are ever the subjective/subjunctive contraptions of mere mortals.
Yes, but in a prong #2 situation, where I’m forced to argue certain points in order to get out of a sticky situation, the fact that they’re existential contraptions is not what concerns me, its whether the arguments work or not to get me out of the situation. I’m trying to convince them, not myself.
Then [from my frame of mind] you are entangled in my dilemma. You have just managed to create a greater distance between “I” and “angst”.
I too embrace “whatever works”. I just don’t know if that reflects the optimal frame of mind or if in fact there is an objective argument out there that I am simply not privy to here and now.
But I am still as perplexed as ever regarding that leap from a mind that revolves almost entirely around biological imperatives [the octopus and the shark] to a mind able to invent what we call “camouflage” in order to facilitate a successful outcome in, for example, what we call “war”. We can even camouflage our intentions in our day to day interactions with others by adopting personas or by wearing masks or by playing language games. After all, what do all other creatures on earth know of “irony”?
Thought, and the wonders it helps us achieve, are, at base, no different than the octopus’s apparently “instinctual” sensations and experience–like I said, it’s just a matter of complexity and predictability. Whereas the octopus’s knee jerk reaction (almost literally) of camouflaging in response to the detection of a predator is more or less as predictable as pressing a button, the human reaction to some kind of threat, say in a war, is far less predictable because, when he brings thought to the table as a tool for strategizing and self-defense, he can come up with all kinds of intelligent and unique responses. Thought is just a far more complex and versatile mental experience.
Far less predictable, but only because we lack the capacity to compute it. But the computation may still exist. It’s like being able to predict precisely what the weather will be at any particular location a year from now. All of the weather variables will interact only as they must in order to create those exact weather conditions. Or, rather, will if human behaviors are just more matter in the equation. We just don’t have the capacity to calculate it. But [in my mind] there is still that enigmatic distinction between how the octopus computes its camouflage and how we do.
Matter evolved from the simple to the complex, sure, but how does that really describe this distinction in such a way that we can more clearly grasp the difference between an octupus changing color in order to evade a shark and you or I camoflaging our personality in order to evade someone out to do us harm?
Unfortunately, I see these as little more than existential contraptions as well. The accumlation of experiences that we have, experiences that come to manifest themselves as, say, “intuition”, are no less triggered by “I”. We can take a leap, sure, but this is no less as subjective/subjunctive as a leap to God.
Are you sure about that? Are you sure what I’m calling the “conscience”, or “intuition”, can’t be traced to certain areas in the brain, or certain patterns of brain activity? If neuroscientists were able to map the kinds of experiences I’m associating with the “conscience” or “intuition” to brain areas or brain activity, would that count as a “demonstration” for you? Would that convince you that they are more than just existential contraptions?
All I can do here is note how existentially I have to come to embody by own judgments in this contraption:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
And then to note that the extent to which this can be traced to “certain areas in the brain, or certain patterns of brain activity” is the extent to which it may all just be the illusion of autonomous choice.
If my brain “is trying to accomplish something” and “I” really am just along for the ride then my own “survival” is just one more domino in that long, long, long chain going all the way back to whatever the hell this might possibly mean.
This is basically the crux of our exchange. I don’t really know what you do mean when you make this distinction. Human reality revolves, first and foremost, around subsistence, around reproduction, around defense. And that revolves around making choices. Now, these choices are made by minds able to choose. And to choose in a way that, if one presumes some level of autonomy, are very, very different from the choices made by every other living creature on earth. Why? Because the choices that we make seem to transcend mere biological imperatives. We think not only of the way the world is but how it might also be otherwise. And that is right around the corner from how it ought to be otherwise. And somehow prong #1 and prong # 2 are intertwined here.
But how?
I don’t know how they’re intertwined, but this is what I’ve understood characterizes your dilemma:
- We are dasein-based creatures who are entangled in a world in which we come into conflict over contradicting beliefs and value judgements, and that there appears to be no objective way of demonstrating who is ultimately right and who is ultimately wrong, or whether there even is a right and wrong. ← That is certainly a dilemma. It’s the prong of your dilemma I’m calling “prong #2”.
Yep. Yet even here making the assumption that some level of autonomy is a factor at play in the choices we make.
- Upon realization of 1), one questions one’s own beliefs and values, one realizes that if all such beliefs and values have only ever been existential contraptions, arrived at arbitrarily, then this applies to one’s own beliefs and values no less than it does to everyone else’s. Thus, insofar as one has identified him- or herself with one’s own beliefs and values, one begins to question one’s own identity–the ‘I’ fragments. ← This too is certainly a dilemma, an even more profound one. It’s the prong of your dilemma I’m calling “prong #1”.
What is completely “arbitrary” – fortuitous – is the particular world into which we are “thrown” at birth: historically, culturally, experientially. And, then, from the cradle to the grave, “I” is always situated – situated existentially in particular contexts. And within each context there are those things/relationships that seem applicable to all of us. The world of either/or. But then in interacting, we encounter the world of is/ought. And our reactions here seem to be considerably more problematic, subjective, subjunctive.
The point to emphasize here is that in order to become entangled in prong #1, it would seem necessary to first be entangled in prong #2. So insofar as prong #1 and prong #2 may or may not be intertwined, I think there is a point at which they meet. First, one undergoes the dilemma of prong #2, then when one draws the implications of that to one’s self, he or she undergoes the dilemma of prong #1. They seem to meet where prong #2 leads one to prong #1 through the former’s implications for the latter.
Would that there could be a link here to, say, a youtube video in which the point that is being made is illustrated step by step by step as it pertains to human interaction as that pertains to the relationship between the two prongs.
And, as ever, I come back to this: What “on earth” does that mean? The super-ego as I understand it is above all else an existential fabrication/contraption rooted in dasein rooted out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially. From the cradle to the grave.
Well, again, what if one day, neuroscientists are able to point to specific spots in the brain, or identify certain patterns of brain activity, and say: that is the conscience? Would that make a difference to you?
I’d wonder then if we could determine if they did so of their own volition.