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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Feel Free!

I think J is overstating the point about freedom. J says we need a reincarnation of William James, etc.

Or perhaps a reincarnation of Buridan's ass!
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10 comments:

  1. JAugust 11, 2010 at 8:26 AM

    Not really. I'm not in agreement with the "libertarianism" of the pure incompatibilist/Kantian sort (ie, metaphysical lib. not political, tho'...related perhaps). Yet strict determinism, whether Spinoza's, or Darwin, Bricmont (or Skinner's psychological sort) definitely seems quite odd--recall Searle's point on deliberation again, JL. People make decisions; ergo something like "freedom" exists--volition perhaps a better term. (and they should be held accountable for those voluntary decisions in moral sense). That said, I grant it's a difficult issue. But the behaviorist/reductionist solution really seems inadequate (not to say...amoral. Charles Manson, a product of his environment...or Hitler, Stalin. Poorly conditioned!...according to some)

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  2. Luigi SperanzaAugust 11, 2010 at 11:06 AM

    Yes. I see your point. But there's a lot of arbitrariness in 'deeming'. Charles Manon -- was DEEMED a criminal. He was, also, a criminal. What makes him a criminal and why we deem him a criminal correspond.

    We are "Held" responsible for our actions. Or 'held accountable' as you write. Perhaps 'volition' IS a better, less loaded word.

    "Held accountable" you write, which is a complicated phrase.

    "x is accountable for his action."
    "x is held accountable for his action"
    "x did a" (I don't mean he did someone called "Agatha" but that he did an action).
    "x is accountED for his action".

    Note that 'accoutable' is MODAL. It refers to some level of possibility. Versus 'accounted'.

    I would like to refer to freedom of the coin that can fall on each of the two sides. There is this level of NON-DETERMINISM that extends the realm of moral or human action. A 'coin' is FREE to fall one way or the other. No. I think this is what Golding meant by his novel, "Free fall".

    Feel free to oppose.

    Incidentally, are you free for lunch?

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  3. JAugust 11, 2010 at 12:15 PM

    the People via the Law hold Manson...or say Randy Kraft accountable, yes (as court docs show--the People of CA vs Kraft, etc). Does Justice itself? Not sure. (another issue). But BF Skinner and pals just say (well BF would were he alive)...Mr Kraft's just ...poorly conditioned, a product of his environment, product of bad parenting,education, so forth. (and many leftists adhere to that sort of thinking). The victims' family members don't say that however. They're conditioned to expect Kraft's execution, ASAP.

    As far as a dice toss, coin flip, or tides, rocket launches or any non-human event, I accept determinism (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle becomes negligible at subatomic levels)--that's another issue entirely. It's not that a toss of dice ..or say ocean wave height--are non-deterministic--it's that we don't know all the variables, or the initial conditions, certainly not at the table (or seaside). It's assigned probability, but with improved technology the result could be predicted..at least in theory. Bricmont also discusses these sorts of Laplacean issues--mere unpredictability should not be mistaken as evidence of non-determinism. But when people (even Herr Doktor Bricmont) apply the mechanical physics of coin tosses, or pendulums... or CPUs.. to human thinking, then we have a problem. Brain functions aren't coin tosses. Or something. That's what Marx (one of yr heroes JL!) meant via "human sensory activities" or whatever the phrase was in his criticism of Feuerbach. I guess that's not too linguistic or pragmatic....alas

    Incidentally, are you free for lunch? No.

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  4. Luigi SperanzaAugust 11, 2010 at 8:33 PM

    I'm saddened to learn you are not free for lunch. But then you said you were not a deterministic so I expect you don't mean 'not free not free'.

    ----

    What do people mean, Grice asks, when they say, "I'm free for lunch".

    He considers the word 'liberal'. After all, 'liber' is Latin for 'free'. Etc. "libertarian" is my friend D. Frederick. A different animal from 'liberals' per se.

    ---- I'll consider J's points. I loved J's way of dealing with coin tosses and stuff.

    ---

    I wonder if in the future what side a coin will fall on will be predicted.

    Perhaps it was a bad idea to have coins with different sides. It is undeterministic.

    ----

    While J undermisestimates (misunderestimates) the ability of the philosophasters, what Grice says about this LEVEL of creature that a human is (it's not a inanimate body, but it's not a 'free-moving' body, etc. -- I should revise the quotes as per "Free for lunch").

    A plant is not free. A human is free. Surely human freedom is highly overrated. I am not free to be eternal, say. So, for any propositional content -- symbolised by "p" -- it is not the case that I am free to p -- I may not even free to pee, come to think of it).

    To q, yes.

    --

    So, it's best to start considering actions, to be symbolised by a, b, c, ... rather than mere propositions. I am not free that 2 + 2 = 9 (The sentence does not make sense). I am free to fly to the Moon? (via a rocket).

    I am free to visit Marie Antoinette back in Versailles before the French Revolution? No.

    There are so few things I am free to do that I rather not think explicitly about them. They limit my freedom.

    J even thinks one is not free to be hungry. I disagree. What about free to be ANGRY?

    ---- We need to reconsider too J's important examples of the criminal who is held accountable, rather than victim of the circumstances. "He was free NOT to be a criminal".

    Etc.

    I find J's comments liberating.

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  5. JAugust 12, 2010 at 6:17 AM

    Grazi.

    volitionism may be a better term than Freedom (FREIHEIT ala germanics)--in about any situation a person is compelled to make a decision of a sort--and we judge people on how they make decisions (whether in sports, business, academics, not robbing banks, etc).

    But being and hungry and deciding on del taco's quite different than say working out a chess combination...or calculus problem...Im against Uncle Meat materialism, actually (tho not...affirming a Cartesian ghost either). At times ...complex intellectual decisions suggest something like Kant's understanding--or we call it that now.

    ultimately...human actions, and what's called intention, even "free will", understanding, cognition may be plotted out, charted neurologically so to speak--. There's already some research along those lines. ...Tho some metaphysicians might object to the physicalist basis .

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  6. Luigi SperanzaAugust 12, 2010 at 8:21 AM

    Yes. The garden of forking paths. Grice called it "devil" -- actually "Devil" -- of Scientism. Why can't scientists leave 'freedom' and 'choose' along? I was amused by J's scenario, 'a situation when one is compelled to choose'. It's like J-P Sartre's old paradox: We are forced to be free.

    -----

    In symbolic terms, it all seems ex-post facto. Note that when Grice provided an analysis of 'meaning' in terms of 'free' intentions, he rephrased it in the preterite:

    "U meant that p if he intended that his addressee would think that ..."

    The same, I suggest, for 'he willed', and more importantly, 'he chose'.

    Once we deal with 'decisions' taken, we just need to consider the necessary and sufficient conditions. And they will involve "ATC" all things considered judgements (alla Kant) and also a 'default' or 'ceteris paribus' conditional, and a sort of 'reasoning pattern' alla practical syllogism. This would be 'homo oeconomicus', or homo rationalis. What Sophie eventually chooses is HER business. More in a separate post as to Sophie's object of desire.

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  7. JAugust 12, 2010 at 5:01 PM

    it's not exactly a disjunction ..p v q... to a rat when he comes to a crossroads in a maze, is it? He's not making a decision, JL. He's reacting ...to what his...nose takes to be a.. tasty food pellet. He moves...but won't know. So he moves to the wrong door...then backs out..may try the other (the behaviorist hacks ran 1000s of these sorts of tests), and then gets the pellet--tho, at some point he does "imprint" the door--he's conditioned. But what if pellet's location changed, or say there are 4 or more doors?? Whoa. He has to try again.

    The language of intention is deceiving: animals, including somewhat advanced like rodents and mammals don't reason or decide . They merely react to stimuli, and after some time may "succeed" (or they don't..and don't advance the gene pool), or we call it that. Perhaps at the level of chimps or dolphins there may be a ...slight intention...but they don't have any knowledge per se, tho' many humans anthropomorphize and think they do.

    we might question whether ordinary humans think of decisions in terms of disjunctions, or even logically. Some educated people might. But there's quite a bit of research that shows many decisions aren't really rational, but emotional--impulse buying, etc. Someone playing high level chess does do his best to deduce the best move--goes through various disjunctions--and that's...rationality. But Sophia & her pals deciding on ...tofu vs turkey burger, or chianti vs cabernet...(or gigolo 1 or 2, or 3 etc.) don't . It's ...probably more biological than rational. Probably fairly obvious...

    there appear to be a hierarchy of decisions (as some fancy philo. or psych. persons have pointed out). To me, the question of what brain (or...Mind) functions are involved when playing expert chess (or higher level math, syntax, etc) seems more interesting and important than just basic animalic-like functions (like eating...or sex, etc) . Any goomba enjoys his pizza. But it takes quite a bit more to enjoy (and understand) partial derivatives...(another drawback of naive leftists...who tend to value like Lucky Lucianos over Leibnizes...)

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  8. Luigi SperanzaAugust 14, 2010 at 7:12 AM

    Good you took up Sophie's gigolos, and provide the right word ('gigolo'). This may refer to Grice's obsession with refuting Davidson's clever point ("Is weakness of the will possible?"). Grice's reply (Grice & Baker) presupposes a good reading of Davidson, and it (Grice/Baker) may be confusing in that it rambles a bit. But Davidson's point was clear and strong: weakness of the will is NOT possible. I THINK it may relate to Sophie's choice, between gigolo 1 and gigolo 2.

    In more general terms, Davidson is proposing that if Sophie has this disjunction before her,

    p v q

    --- and she desires to choose p -- (or thinks p is the 'rational' decision or choice). Yet, she ends up choosing q.

    (chooses the 'wrong' gigolo --. "My mother bred me a puritan, so I'm not into pleasure. Going with gigolo 1 will be the maximisation of pleasure, but choosing gigolo 2 would not be so pleasing -- I don't DESIRE gigolo 2 -- THUS, I will choose gigolo 2, as a sort of self-chastisement)."

    So Davidson would be saying that that 'rationalization' is "bullshit". The woman DESIRED gigolo 2. And she did the 'right' choice. No such thing as 'weakness of the will'!

    ---- The troubles Grice and Baker (this is Grice not precisely 'chicken' -- i.e. late in his career, and that he would be so exegetic with an author his junior shows his 'innocence') is a lesson -- in analytic philosophy!

    I loved your examples of rats, etc. and your point about dolphins, etc. I should revise what Grice says about 'or'-thinking because this connects with his general panorama of operators which are 'truth-functors' (monadic: 'not'; dyadic: 'and', 'or', 'if'). It seems, Grice thought, ALL our ways of thought lead to the postulation of these kinds of 'thinking'. Indeed, 'hypothesise' seems like the convoluted way to say 'if-thinking', and so on.

    Grice loved chess, but he could be 'animalistic' in thought. He liked Hardy and other mathematicians, but he would often point to this anecdote about this mathematician who, systematically, ALWAYS included an error in his reasoning chain, or an omission. So, Grice was all for the 'linear' or 'longitudinal' unity: from the amoeba, in her p v q descriptions of affairs (osmosis, -- yes, mechanical explanation, but if there is a Genitor -- this relates to your point re Bricmont, etc. -- or God, the lesson to learn is a different one) -- to, er, the peak of evolution, er, Man -- or "Pirot", as Grice preferred ("Pirots karulise elatically, and some have made a trade out of it").

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  9. JAugust 14, 2010 at 10:11 AM

    Or, as Captain Beefheart once said,

    everything's wrong at the same time it's right.


    "Desires," whatever they be, are not discrete. Disjunctions are.

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  10. Luigi SperanzaAugust 14, 2010 at 11:10 AM

    Well -- this relates to this alleged counterexample to my existence!

    "He was forced to submit the money", they say.

    Surely he could have gotten shot (i.e. decide to die) and NOT to sumbit the money. So the disjunction is subdued.

    But there IS one! I'm going to post something on this as "Disjunctions and Desires", or not!

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