Is this what you meant when you referred to the ant scaring the grasshopper? When the problem is perceived as important, this import acts to scare up the nerve, the will power to proceed with restraint. — Metaphysician Undercover
Well, someone might propose that one reason for doing so is that OCD activity cannot be explained rationally. In fact the whole "mental illness is physical illness" brigade presumably will propose this. They might be wrong about that, but they do have reasons. Perhaps one could try motivating the idea thus: any action can be described, at least from a third person perspective, as just so much bodily interaction with the environment. The bodily motions involved in the action can then be described in neurophysiological terms. Any neurophysiological event that occcurs within the body has either another neurophysiological event within the body as its cause, or is caused by some environmental stimuli external to the body. Given all this, repetitive behavioiur must have neurophysiological reasons. Sure, there are assumptions being made here - at some point we all make assumptions of some kind or another - and there is some conflation between what is a reason and what is a cause, but those assumptions and conflations certainly do provide reasons for believing that repetive behaviour (indeed all behaviour) has a neurophysiologial explanation.There is no reason to believe that the reason for the repetitive behaviour is neurophysiological at all.
So unless it can be demonstrated that there is a specific "neurophysiological cause" for the behaviour, to assume that there is, is a mistaken assumption.
That's the problem which I referred to, which creates the need for a division between the intellect and the will. If the will is what motivates the act to begin, and the intellect is what decides the act, we need this separation because even after deciding I will do such and such, I might for some reason or another, proceed in a contrary way. It doesn't matter if the decision concerns next week, tomorrow, next hour, or even the next moment, sometimes we make decisions which we are incapable of following through with.
I was thinking of my own fear of dentists. I go, stressed and fearful, because I have rationalised that the discomfort of wild toothache is far worse that the pain and humiliation the dentist inflicts. Or how health scares can make people give up smoking. But for X, the comfort of ritual has very little cost, so rationally, it is an effective palliative and should be indulged, even though it is a mere placebo. Just as I like to grow flowers, though they have little use. It is not rational, but there is no stronger reason not to. — unenlightened
In fact the whole "mental illness is physical illness" brigade presumably will propose this. — MetaphysicsNow
Please do not misunderstand me, I am certainly not saying that I agree that OCD behaviour has a neurophysiological cause. What I do believe, and what I am trying to work out in this thread, is that if you do believe that, then there are consequences that follow for how we should understand notions such as "will power", "free will", "decisions" and even "action". It may be that the consequences are that those notions are ultimately empty, that there really is no such thing as "will power" or "free will". — MetaphysicsNow
The problem with separating the intellect and the will, though, is that it then becomes a problem to establish how they ever get to work together, other than by mere accident. — MetaphysicsNow
For me, it is important that I have teeth to chew my steaks, so I overcome my fear of the dentist. Notice that the fear is of the dentist, and the fear is overcome by means of the importance. The importance is a rational principle which renders the fear as irrational. — Metaphysician Undercover
To some extent yes - is it in my control to blink when someone throws a dummy punch at my face? Probably not. However, you home in on the point that those kinds of instinctive reactions are things that I want to rule out of the domain of discourse. I get the feeling you might still suspect that there is no non-question begging way to do that.Do you agree with or disagree with these statements?
All this reminds me of the Donald Davidson stance on these issues. His view (if I remember correctly) is that any human action is at root an event that can be described in two sorts of ways - one which subsumes it under the deterministic laws of nature, one which positions it in the rational realm of agency, and he kind of left things at that. I suppose I want to try to push things further, but maybe they cannot be. — MetaphysicsNow
I suppose I'm a little reticent just to accept that someone can consciously decide to do one thing but proceed to do the contrary (short of mundance cases where people simply forget about promises etc). After all, what is it to decide to do something? Sure, I can tell myself "I won't eat any M&Ms tonight" in the morning, and then in the evening I go ahead and eat a whole packet (perhaps telling myself, one more evening on the M&Ms won't hurt, and tomorrow I really will forego the pleasure) but does my simply having told myself that in the morning really consitute a decision not to eat M&Ms, or does the fact that I eat M&Ms in the evening really undermine the very idea that I even made such a decision in the first place? ( I do get the contrary problem as well - i.e. that it looks like I might be saying that nobody makes a decision until they actually act on it ). There is presumably some difference between making a decision and simply saying something to yourself. If that presumption is correct, then what is that difference, and is it compatible with deciding to do X and then proceding to do not-X?When we observe that an individual may consciously decide to do one thing, but actually proceed to do a contrary thing
I get the feeling you might still suspect that there is no non-question begging way to do that. — MetaphysicsNow
2) Giving explanations of type (4) has as a consequence the removal of all agency from all human behaviour. — MetaphysicsNow
2) Giving explanations of type (4) has as a consequence the removal of all agency from all human behaviour. — MetaphysicsNow
This is the main premise I disagree with in your argument.
I suppose you disagree with that argument, but it's not clear to me on what grounds you do not believe it to be sound.If opening and closing a door 10 times, qua bodily motion, has its ultimate explanation in terms of (4) when the rationalization in (3) is initially given, why not also in cases (1) and (2)? After all, in all three cases precisely the same bodily motions are occuring, and if those bodily motions have their ultimate explanation in terms of neural/muscular occurences for case (3), then the same neural/muscular occurences will also be available for explaining the bodily motions in (2) and (1).
Sorry to interrupt here, — jkg20
I suppose you disagree with that argument, but it's not clear to me on what grounds you do not believe it to be sound. — jkg20
That's why I asked if we were in agreement on whether or not some things are in our control and some not. It seemed to me that was the crux of our disagreement. If one were to believe that either one of these propositions is true of the mind tout court, rather than both being true contingently, then what @MetaphysicsNow says makes sense to me. But I'd say that they are both contingently true -- and as such not only do we have the ability to vary which kind of explanation we might give for human action depending on the action and the person and the time, but we should do so because these things vary with action, person, and time.
Making a conscious decision and acting on a decision are not the same thing. This is evident from the fact that we decide all sorts of future actions, often thinking ahead. Action only sometimes follows immediately from a conscious decision, it doesn't necessarily follow from a decision, because much of conscious thought concerns things other than one's current activity.
Agreed, and here is a curious thing: an action which is intentional and conscious (such as walking to the bank to cash a check) can, when broken down into parts in the way sketched in your comment, look like it has parts all of which are entirely non-intentional/non-conscious. I think perhaps that this kind of breaking things down into parts is to give an action a description in non-rational terms, whereas human actions are - by definition - things that also have descriptions that locate them in the rational realm of reasons/decisions/intentions and so on. The difficulty (for me at least) is to account for the connection between these descriptions without falling into the position that the rational description is illusion (eliminative materialism) or just some kind of "stance" (cf Dennett).Human beings can proceed with actions without having to consciously decide to make that action. This is evident in habitual, instinctual, and reflex actions. If you are walking, for example, you do not need to consciously decide to lift one foot and move it ahead of the next.
I suppose my position is that all or our actions are within our control, although I do agree that in some cases bringing them under control can be immensely challenging and benefit from support and encouragement. — MetaphysicsNow
Perhaps there is a way of placing OCD ritualistic behaviour out of the control of the sufferers of mental illness, without falling back onto type-4 explanations, e.g. an explanation that operates within the context of concepts such as agency and action? But I'm not sure how one would go about that. — MetaphysicsNow
Yes, I should have been more precise. I mean that I'm trying to work with the idea that actions are such that they are in principle things within the rational control of the agent. At the same time I obviously need to allow that the practice of aligning actions with that principle (i.e. bringing them under control) can be more or less difficult - perhaps very difficult in extreme cases. However, what I want to insist on is that it is never impossible. Those who would fall back to type-4 explanations seem to me to be driving at the idea that there are actions which are in principle beyond rational control, but - if my arguments concerning consistency of reasoning in giving explanations are sound - that comes at the cost of putting all actions as in principle beyond rational control (which means that there are no such things as actions at all).Do you just mean that all actions are potentially within our control?
I think here we might have some disagreement, since whilst I agree that making a decision and acting on one are not one and the same thing, I'm inclined to think that the connection between them is logical and not just causal. — MetaphysicsNow
Perhaps I'm thinking of a decision as something extended over time, with a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning may well be something along the lines of saying something to yourself, with the end being the corresponding action. My worry is that in disconnecting decision making from action in principle is that it would then make sense to say something like: John decided to vote "Yes" but John voted "No", but without giving some story in which in becomes clear that John changed his mind. — MetaphysicsNow
Agreed, and here is a curious thing: an action which is intentional and conscious (such as walking to the bank to cash a check) can, when broken down into parts in the way sketched in your comment, look like it has parts all of which are entirely non-intentional/non-conscious. I think perhaps that this kind of breaking things down into parts is to give an action a description in non-rational terms, whereas human actions are - by definition - things that also have descriptions that locate them in the rational realm of reasons/decisions/intentions and so on. The difficulty (for me at least) is to account for the connection between these descriptions without falling into the position that the rational description is illusion (eliminative materialism) or just some kind of "stance" (cf Dennett). — MetaphysicsNow
Even if you are correct about the connection between decision and action not being logical, I don't see how freedom of the will follows. But in any case I'm still not convinced that the connection is not a logical one. Obviously, one can decide to do something and then when the time comes to do it, you do not, but where that happens there must be a reason why, it cannot simply be that the will did not "get in on the act". That is to say that the following kind of statement is something I regard as necessarily true:therefore the will is free.
Yes, having reread some of what I was saying, it could seem as if I was suggesting that the mentally ill can just "snap out of it". But I'm not that hard of heart :wink: Point taken, also, about the need to say more about what counts as rational. As for the analogy with diabetes, provided that it is recognised that the analogy gives way at an important point, I can see that it could be useful. For many with OCD, the OCD itself is just a symptom of depression, and the OCD rituals can be helpful in keeping the depression from manifesting in more harmful ways. Getting the rituals under control may always be possible (as I am suggesting) but it clearly might not always be the best thing to do - it's complicated, and just dealing with the symptoms without concern for the underlying reasons for their existence does not make sense.What I had in mind was the sort of responses you hear from people unsympathetic to the mentally ill -- a sort of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" which often people with mental illnesses will adopt, as well, to their detriment.
Even if you are correct about the connection between decision and action not being logical, I don't see how freedom of the will follows. — MetaphysicsNow
Obviously, one can decide to do something and then when the time comes to do it, you do not, but where that happens there must be a reason why, it cannot simply be that the will did not "get in on the act". That is to say that the following kind of statement is something I regard as necessarily true:
If X decided to do A at time t and if at t there are no intervening factors preventing X from doing A, then X will do A. — MetaphysicsNow
If I understand you correctly you, on the other hand, are inclined to think that that this kind of proposition is always going to be contingent, no matter how broadly "intervening factors" is filled out, since at time t the will, as some kind of separate faculty, has to "muscle in" and initiate the act, and since the will is free, that needn't happen. (Of course, even if the will did initiate the act, there is probably still room for clumsiness and perhaps other factors to intervene and prevent the act from happening.) Is that a fair summary of our principal disagreement, or am I riding roughshod over some more subtle difference? — MetaphysicsNow
Here you are going against the grain of all empiricist philosophy. Rationalists like Spinoza certainly believed that the relation between cause and effect is a logical one, and he may have been right. On the other hand, that kind of position needs to be argued for, since the general presumption in the empirical tradition of philosophy at least is that the causal relation is very definitely not a logical relation.The relation between cause and effect is a logical relation.
Here you are going against the grain of all empiricist philosophy. — MetaphysicsNow
So, for what kind of reason does the will do one or the other in any given case? Is it itself caused to do so? — MetaphysicsNow
Then you come bang up against the principle of sufficient reason, and leave a gaping explanatory hole in accounting for any kind of intentional action. Maybe there is a third way to respond? — MetaphysicsNow
Absolutely, but where there are mysteries we usually have the wherewithal to formulate ways of going about trying to find an explanation. How are we to do that with this thing you are calling "will" which, if you are correct, is ubiquitous in all human action? Your hypothesis is that (i) there is a thing called the will, (ii) the will is not subject to causal laws (iii) the will causes human action. This is a substantive hypothesis, it is not an apriori truth by any way shape or form. The question, then, is in any given case what leads up to the will causing a given human action or prevention of human action (nb, there is also the question how the causal mechanism between will and action works, but that is a different question). You are saying that there is no causal account for that, and given your hypothesis there cannot be since then the will would not be free (in the sense, "not subject to causal laws"). You also seem to be implying that there is no rational account for that either. That seems to rule out any kind of research program into how the will is supposed to get in on the act.There are mysteries of life which have not yet been solved.
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