I think people are creating a society with differing end goals and values that are actually counter productive and incompatible.
There is obviously a compromise, however I do not think these fundamental ideological differences are taken seriously. — Andrew4Handel

But are these surmountable through increased communication and increased knowledge? Surely a person who is moving towards enlightenment moves away from such misconstrued incompatibilities? And doesn't everyone desire the good, fundamentally, as Socrates thought?

Will is simply what the universe "will" do through the mechanism of cause and effect in every one of its parts. The will that every person feels that they have is the result of universal laws playing out in the body and mind of that person. — punos

There is some truth to this. In Oneself as Another Ricoeur looks at Gertrude Anscombe's event ontology, actions versus events, wanting and the why question (why did something happen). As Anscombe puts it, "I do what happens." And in a sense, we are always following laws or rules when we make something happen. But maybe there are emerging layers. What if we become Kantian self-legislating beings? Is that also what it means to be a self-positing being?

I feel that the role of the social and physical world in which we live in making us who we are is very important and should not be neglected. — Ludwig V

Definitely. Much - I might even say most - of our 'significant doings' are no longer merely mechanical in nature but operate by invoking and engaging social norms and perceptions. Hence the will becomes entangled with both reason and ethics.

I'm believe that people often don't know what they want or what they are doing. — Tom Storm

This is absolute true and relevant. To use will in a non-trivial and non-destructive way (which I don't consider exemplary willing anyway, just doing) you need to have a clear understanding of your goals. Your can't will what you can't conceive.

It is easy to come up with examples in which a strong will is not a good thing, but actually destructive. — Ludwig V

Yes, as I describe in people who can violently defend clearly absurd positions, will can be misused. For me, they would be self-consciously acting in bad-faith at some level.

The mystery is, however, that one can put together a perfectly clear rationale for an action, but yet fail to undertake it. — Ludwig V

This is also something that interests me. Reason definitely ought to bolster will. I think it is a question of being able to achieve certainty, rational certainty, versus irrational certainty.

You don't believe there is an inherent capacity which causes will-like actions. How do you feel about certainty then? Do people have different capacities for certainty? That is, to be possessed of the truth of their own thoughts? Certainly Descartes recognized that everyone is equally capable of believing, whether in truth or in error, the will being much wider in its range and compass than the understanding, as he says. And yet there must be something fundamentally different about being certain of what is true versus what is false. One is a growth of understanding, the other is not. So the certainty which is of a falsehood must somehow be in bad faith, hence not a true certainty. And yet the more absurd the belief, the more ferociously people will commit, you see it everywhere.

Edit:
If one is correct in their certainty, than surely all of the energy being put into verbalization of that certainty can find better expression as the instrument of that certainty, better means of productively enacting knowledge. Otherwise, what is the benefit of understanding? And if the enunciation of an understanding is the incarnation of that understanding, then it is self-exemplary, and its objective should be and is to reveal its own essential nature. This is also Fichte's foundational concept of Self-Positing. Which is an act of pure willing.

we are not even certain that humans have free will. — Tom Storm

Once again, we are at a fundamental impasse. The notion of free-will and, co-extensively, responsibility, is central to my entire understanding of reality. If you don't grasp that, I can only say that we must have very different experiences of what it means to exist and to think.

I am not saying people don't set and achieve goals, sometimes with the zeal of an addiction. I'm not saying that people can't be determined. I just don't think will holds up to being fetishised or understood as a transcendent, transformative virtue — Tom Storm

I don't think identifying a capacity is fetishizing it. Transcendent? Well, again, that is a fundamental orientation. Yes, I believe in the transcendence of consciousness, at least to the extent that materialism is a box and there is stuff that doesn't fit into it.

You have person A with a set of problems. You have person B with a similar set of problems. You say that providing person A with a certain idea (X was not your fault) thereby gives A the ability to overcome some functional impairment. But then, different people are differently receptive to that idea. Some people cling to trauma. Some people can utilize external authority to facilitate change. In Freudian terms, the superego can be projected onto external authority figures. An abrogation of responsibility and will.

Yes, we are all ensconced in a set of contingent mechanical circumstances. I am a certain type of person with certain strengths and certain weaknesses and I was born into a certain social context. If my social context and my native capacities align well, I may roll happily through a life that unfolds easily along a gradient of traditional norms and goals. But even in the case of perfect adaptation, there is the nagging question, isn't there something more? Hence the mid-life crisis , the turn to involution. If we perfect our external adaptations, eventually we turn inward. Then an effort is required to break out of an easy and comfortable rut. But it is still will, it is always will. Anytime you do anything difficult, that is what you are exercising.

A decision is not an action. Some things are difficult and not easy. Will is what separates action from decision.

people don't need more will power, they need to reimagine who they are. — Tom Storm

Indeed. And do you not think that is the ultimate act of will? I had chronic substance abuse problems. And suicide attempts after my fiance was killed in a car due to criminally negligent driving by one of my best friends. I was painfully shy as a child and youth, and fearful of human contact. So I took karate to overcome that and became a black-belt. I've run fifteen ultra-marathons. I went into my first fifty-mile with a serious ankle injury, rolled it again near the start, and still finished. None of which was easy, quite the opposite. I feel I am well-qualified to evaluate the nature of will.

I am familiar with psychologistic approaches. Have you heard of Joseph Sirgy? He wrote an excellent book called Self-Congruity. His self-congruity theory explains peoples' actions and behaviour in terms of three motive forces: self-knowledge, self-esteem, and self-consistency. We want to know, we want to feel good about ourselves, and we want to maintain self-sameness or identity. But what is it that tips the balance of self-knowledge, for example, to override the other factors in some cases? As mechanical systems, we are subject to the law of entropy. We take the easiest path wherever possible. But some people don't. They consciously choose to do what is difficult, change themselves, change the world, evolve. That is will.

My point is that what you are calling will might well be a conflation of complex psychological processes. Worth considering. — Tom Storm

I'd say it represents a fundamentally different approach to the psyche, which I don't share. However upon reflection, I would further characterize will as the psychic analog of negentropy. Similarly, the will is better understood through effect rather than cause, perhaps. It is no mystery that water flows downhill. But when it flows uphill, spawns creatures that grow limbs and write symphonies, the underlying cause does seem mysterious. However the effects are not.

So what is will and can you articulate its elements in dot points? — Tom Storm

I thought I characterized it pretty well in my opening post. I'm not interested in disputing its existence with a will-denier, if that's where your going. More in figuring out its role in relation to doing versus not doing, persistence in solving problems and learning, self-control, etc. Its existence isn't something that I doubt or want to debate.

I don't know...it seems pretty self evident that you can give up easily or you can keep trying. Effort. I've spent a lifetime doing difficult things. My personal experience, will is real.

But people want easy answers like that - ethics is about norms enforced by a will to control - and will is both the means and the end. — ToothyMaw

I think this last observation is great. The will is both a means and an end; we must utilize our will in order to strengthen it. :up:

Insofar as ethics is concerned, the role of will would be relatively controversial, I think. However, I can say my own desire to seek some sort of higher moral truth is an act of will, as it certainly involves obstacles to my biased, although admittedly developed, primate brain. Thus, according to it as so defined, it is different from the mere intention of intending to do what is right or wrong. There is an impetus to discover, even if it takes me to some unpleasant or weird places. — ToothyMaw

Often I find myself ethically offended when I encounter selfish uses of the systems I manage by people who are exploiting their position and authority. My instinct is to challenge them and I do; and this has often created considerable conflict. Now, many people in my position would simply ignore such happenings, safeguarding their own jobs. On the other hand, it would be harder for me to do that. But am I right to act in ethical outrage? Maybe there are better ways. Is ethics always about what you think is right? Or is it about not doing what is easy? I just don't know.

:up:

In my experience, most of our actions are unwilled. Not that they are inadvertent, but that they arise without conscious or rational thought. — T Clark

I agree, this I would say is the operation of habits. As mentioned though, will can also be internalized towards the modification of our own habits. Which can also be more or less difficult.

First a question - how is will different from intention? — T Clark

That is what I was trying to catch in my intro - intending to do something is a choice, but there can be obstacles to enacting a choice. To what extent one is or isn't prevented by obstacles is where it becomes a question of will.

I'm not sure that it follows that will is subjective, but rather that people have different attributes, capabilities, potencies of addictions, etc. It is much harder for an alcoholic to refuse a drink than for someone who just has a beer every now and then - even if the alcoholic might have significant willpower. I would say that the extent to which someone can accomplish something they will to or will not to do is instead relative based on their attributes and extraneous factors. — ToothyMaw

Hmm. And I tend to think the opposite. Two people can have the exact same physical abilities, but one person is able to push further - past the pain barrier, per your second point. I do agree that some things are easier for some people and some things harder. But I also feel that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and, ceteris paribus, each person will find opportunity to use (or not use) his or her will, regardless of relative strength or weakness in whatever capacity is required.

Ordinary language is essentially a kind of socio-cultural baseline. If you believe (as I do) that one aspect of philosophy is that it re-integrate specialized insights as cultural verities (which is both an ideal and a prerequisite for its most comprehensive self-perpetuation), then ordinary language is integral, although not, I would say, exclusive of more technical languages.

From a purely pragmatic perspective, I'm fairly certain that our minds operate through habits. Even your "style" of thinking is a habit which can be changed with concerted effort. Maybe even your ego. But there the question of will creeps in again. But I do want to expand that to encompass all the dimensions I touched on. How do you quantify 'cognitive effort'? Why is it 'difficult" (or not) to do the 'right' thing? Etc.

And what constitutes language? There are many kinds of non-linguistic communication. Even very simple organisms share information.

I would suggest that linguistic communication exemplifies consciousness, more than I would say language is a prerequisite, if that makes sense.

Oneself as Another
by Paul Ricœur

Keen to read this as it is relates to my own 'core hypothesis': as individual thinkers we are critically limited by our (in)ability to project absolute freedom on others, the ultimate cognitive bias, thus are prevented from realizing that power ourselves, through the inexorable logic of reciprocity.

My favourite fantasy series, alongside the Deathgate Cycle.

Lord Foul's Bane
by Stephen R. Donaldson

Yes, and I agree completely with the interactionist (embodied or enacted) approacth. However Luhmann is reconceptualizing the system in such a way that it is by definition insular. There are other interesting aspects to his approach, structure is not fundamental, events are. It emphasizes the extent to which our perceptions are just co-ordinations with our own representations of reality (which can still be mapped interactively/experimentally. I don't agree with him on operational closure, but I think there is probably of a spectrum of closure, and he may be highlighting features at one end of it. It is all about differentiating inner from outer. That occurs at different places for different systems, even for the human body. The boundaries of the tactile system are not the same as the boundaries of the immune system or the endocrine system or the visual system.

:up: On Gutenberg too.

It's a great read, everything that is good about Dewey, insightful, direct, beautifully written.

↪180 Proof So...like I say, no one understands it. I just hammer this point because a lot of people on this thread and the other one seem to have "figured it out." If, like me, you believe there's a solution that isn't woo woo, then it'll be neuroscientists - if anyone - that find it. I simply acknowledge that this is my unproven belief. — GLEN willows

Neuroscience is illustrative, however it may not be fully explicative either. Luhmann has an interesting take, based on an innovative brand of systems theory:

In consciousness, we imagine that all we perceive is somewhere outside, whereas the purely neurophysiological operations do not provide any such clues. They are entirely closed off and internal. Insofar as it is coupled with self-reference, consciousness is also internal, and it knows that it is. And that is a good thing, too, for it would be terrible if someone could enter someone else's consciousness and inject a few thoughts or a few perceptions of his own into it. Consciousness, too, is a closed system. But its peculiarity seems to lie - if we choose a very formal mode of description - in the transition from the purely operational closure of the electrophysical language of the neurophysiological apparatus to the difference between self-reference and hetero-reference. Only this central difference constitutes consciousness, of course on the basis of neurophysiological correlates. I do not intend to claim that consciousness is no longer in need of a brain. However, it is of great interest to ask whether we are dealing not just with a new level of reflection, as is often said - a learning of learning or a coupling of coupling - but with the introduction of a critical difference. (Introduction to Systems Theory, 2013)

Since "critical difference" is fundamental to Luhmann's definition of a system, this does seem to beg the question of where the boundaries of consciousness lie, vis a vis internality/exterality and self and other.

Formal logic applies to propositions. Other forms of rationality don't necessarily. Still, as javra and I discussed previously in this thread, what we call rationality often seems to lead to reductionist results that don't take into account broader perspectives and indirect effects, e.g. environmental damage. — T Clark

Yes, logic can be overrated. Dewey differentiates between two fundamental original orientations in philosophy, the "lower" practical-technical and the "higher" governing form whose province was the determination of what was best and desirable. Aligning itself with tradition, in order to consolidate and justify its governing role, this is where we can see reason give way to rationality (rationalization).

Dewey paints a beautiful picture of rationality as an exaggerated and over-logicized form of thinking:

And this brings us to a second trait of philosophy springing from its origin. Since it aimed at a rational justification of things that had been previously accepted because of their emotional congeniality and social prestige, it had to make much of the apparatus of reason and proof. Because of the lack of intrinsic rationality in the matters with which it dealt, it leaned over backward, so to speak, in parade of logical form. In dealing with matters of fact, simpler and rougher ways of demonstration may be resorted to. It is enough, so to say, to produce the fact in question and point to it—the fundamental form of all demonstration. But when it comes to convincing men of the truth of doctrines which are no longer to be accepted upon the say-so of custom and social authority, but which also are not capable of empirical verification, there is no recourse save to magnify the signs of rigorous thought and rigid demonstration. Thus arises that appearance of abstract definition and ultra-scientific argumentation which repels so many from philosophy but which has been one of its chief attractions to its devotees.

At the worst, this has reduced philosophy to a show of elaborate terminology, a hair-splitting logic, and a fictitious devotion to the mere external forms of comprehensive and minute demonstration. Even at the best, it has tended to produce an overdeveloped attachment to system for its own sake, and an over-pretentious claim to certainty. (from Reconstruction in Philosophy)

(bolded by me)

Reconstruction in Philosophy
by John Dewey

I'd suggest reviewing Laszlo, focusing on bisperpectivism. You need a good overview of systems theory to move beyond the highlights I offered. See if the problem presents itself differently.

Well, more specifically, reality can be viewed as consisting of complex-adaptive systems across any theoretical domain, and these share properties ilke autopoeisis, homeostasis, and are amenable to analysis using non-linear methods. So mind and matter are not viewed as severed but as operational components of systems in which they mutually operate. Ervin Laszlo's Introduction to Systems Philosophy is a great read.

edit: you can borrow it here if you create an account https://archive.org/details/introductiontosy0000lasz

— GLEN willows

Embedded cognition is systems theoretic in nature. Many people view systems theory as offering a new paradigm of reality in which some traditional problems - such as the mind-body - are not so problematic. Laszlo calls his version bi-perspectivism. It definitely can be viewed as a variety of pan-psychism, although one solidly rooted in empirical science.

interesting. So you don’t feel there’s a question of how thoughts and persecution’s can cause material substances to move? — GLEN willows

I think the fact is that is happening, is a basic feature of the mind-matter system, so isn't really mysterious.

I'm not saying he was a metaphysician, but Nietzsche endures, in part, because he was a good storyteller. — ucarr

For me it is his only redeeming quality! lol.

Possibly what I was getting at when I said that reason can be better understood in the context of situational exigencies. — Tom Storm

Similarly Apel talks about the "rational determination of situational boundary conditions" - I like the phrase situational awareness.

It’s the job of the metaphysician to stand upon the practical foundation of scientific truth and spin a cognitive narrative of a cerebrally inhabitable world that imparts logical-conceptual coherence to physical things. — ucarr

I read something about 2 years ago that noted that the best metaphysics tells the best story. I'm still trying to dig it up, it was told particularly well. I totally agree.

When I contemplate the theories and experiments of embedded and embodied cognition they seem not so much as to invoke the mind-body problem as to blur the boundaries between the concepts and defuse the question.

Quite by accident I came across this bit in Dewey (Reconstruction in Philosophy) that nicely contrasts reason in its practical versus its rationalistic guises. It seems to fit with some of the themes that have been emerging. I think I may reread this next. (bolded by me)

"Reason" as a faculty separate from experience, introducing us to a superior region of universal truths begins now to strike us as remote, uninteresting and unimportant. Reason, as a Kantian faculty that introduces generality and regularity into experience, strikes us more and more as superfluous—the unnecessary creation of men addicted to traditional formalism and to elaborate terminology....

...reason is experimental intelligence, conceived after the pattern of science, and used in the creation of social arts; it has something to do. It liberates man from the bondage of the past, due to ignorance and accident hardened into custom. It projects a better future and assists man in its realization. And its operation is always subject to test in experience. The plans which are formed, the principles which man projects as guides of reconstructive action, are not dogmas. They are hypotheses to be worked out in practice, and to be rejected, corrected and expanded as they fail or succeed in giving our present experience the guidance it requires....

In contrast with this experimental and re-adjusting intelligence, it must be said that Reason as employed by historic rationalism has tended to carelessness, conceit, irresponsibility, and rigidity—in short absolutism.

edit: the notion of the bridging of the nomothetic-scientific and the social-hermeutic (which is how Dewey characterizes reason here) is central to Understanding and Explanation by Apel, which I'm currently reading.

Just a final question to consider. In cultures existing prior to, or unaffected by, our current conception of empiric and propositional logic-based reasoning, would you say there was no distinction between rational and irrational thinking, or reasonableness and unreasonableness? — Janus

Great question. A history of reason would make an interesting read. :chin: