Never mind, it's what forums are for. One of the things I've learned is to let some things go, though. When I first started posting I used to get involved in a lot of heated polemical arguments; I've tried to become a bit more detached about it, but it's not always easy.

(That is a very interesting quote from Berdyaev, I might take the time to read the rest of that essay.)

Incidentally, this line of reasoning is more or less exactly what drew me towards these kinds of thinkers; the notion of human freedom as guaranteed by some liberal conception of universality always struck me as cartoonish and ridiculous, and it always seemed to me that it'd only be by working through the processes of subjectivization that one could ever, in any coherent manner, speak about freedom.

As I said to Πετροκότσυφας any kind of universal transcendent ground, or basis of our existence need not relegate freedom as absurd or ridiculous. Yes you are correct to identify some human freedoms in subjectivisation, but that's not surprising, because they are culturally derived and subjectification is the means by which they are generated, or rather subjugated, and controlled in the cultural narrative. Unless you are blinkered to any freedoms which might be found outside this subjectification, there are other freedoms to be both found and lived.

There are freedoms to be observed and participated in with other beings(organisms) in the biosphere. There is freedom to be found and enjoyed in the imagination and in creative expression. There may be other freedoms available which are orthogonal to our evolutionary directed experience as organisms.

Why would one choose to ignore other freedoms?

Because to think 'live is lived' is exhausted by our 'thoughts, beliefs, intuitions and experience' is to conceive of life in a horrifyingly narrow and morbidly 'intellectualist' manner. Rather than live life in ones head, life generally is concerned with the things I do, the things I say, the actions I take. And perhaps even more importantly, the things done to me, said of me, that impel me and make claims upon me; life as composed of habits, regularities, flourishes of creative engagement amongst rhythms of time and movement, punctuated with time wasting, routine, imposition, sleep, intensity, and so on.

If one confines freedom to physical actions and the way in which within the society freedoms are bestowed or deprived, it is in itself to relegate freedom to a byproduct of a mechanistic robotic process, presumably deterministic to boot. I wonder if there are any ranks of thought police involved in this narrative.

Woooooowhat! Sweet Jesus!

But being subject to forces beyond our control does not equal being utterly controlled by such forces, and I have never yet heard or read a convincing account of how, if we are immanent material beings and nothing but immanent material beings, the kind of (libertarian) freedom in the sense that I understand to be necessary for moral responsibility could be thought to be possible. — John

But, where I disagree is that I do not see this kind of self-creation as the kind of radical freedom that must be presumed to ground genuine moral responsibility. I would say that freedom only comes to us in the terms in which we think ourselves. If we think ourselves as immanently and exhaustively constituted as individual parts of cultural, social, historical and discursive processes, whether unreflectively and disempoweredly other-constituted or reflectively and empoweredly self-constructed, there can be no radical freedom for us, because we cannot think of ourselves as such. — John

The one universal thing about selves is the fact that they are all truly free. This does not mean that the individual, as a cultural subject is free, it means that the self, insofar as it is spirit, is not restricted to its cultural subjectivity. But if the individual does not believe this ( i'e' has no faith) , then of course the individual cannot be free; irrespective of how brilliantly and ingeniously it manipulates what it understands to be its cultural constitution and 'constructs itself as a work of art'

So freedom cannot ever be an "abstract truth" but rather something that must first be believed (on the basis of our intuitions and lived experience) before it can be fully lived. — John

Emphasis mine.

You've been saying it all through this thread. Not merely that people lack a sense of freedom, but that without belief in it, they lack freedom itself. And every time someone pulls you up on it, you ignore it. You attempt to deflect, suggest you haven't really said it, even though it's basically the key point of your position.

What it means is, according to you (unless these quoted statements are falsehoods), that if someone doesn't think of say: "I am free." or even "I have faith I'm free," then they cannot have radical freedom. The individual with "no faith" cannot be free. That's why you're are so insistent about belief in freedom. You think to be without the belief in freedom amounts to living in enslavement.

I mean you've even said in this latest post where you are steadfastly denying it:

I have tried to disabuse you of this erroneous reading several times but it's not sinking in. Once again, my position is that one can be said to be free in principle regardless of whether one believes it; but one will not live that freedom if one denies it. — ""John

How exactly will I be free if I'm not living it? Is my freedom some abstract, merely conceptual thing?

If I have freedom, I live it. So it is for anyone, including those who deny they have it. The individual with "no faith" lives freedom just as much as anyone with faith.

If one confines freedom to physical actions and the way in which within the society freedoms are bestowed or deprived, it is in itself to relegate freedom to a byproduct of a mechanistic robotic process, presumably deterministic to boot. — Punshhh

No-one suggested that. The call to subjectivity is about recognising it's a subject which expresses freedom. Pretty much the anti-thesis of a mechanistic robotic process. What's the protest action about? Is it a predetermined outcome of mechanistic forces?

No. It's the action of a subject. A choice which needs be made in response to injustice. An expression for freedom of a subject which cannot be exhausted by what other think and say (i.e. "You can't do that." "You can't oppose. It's [the injustice] only natural," etc.,etc. ).

Life concerns the thing I do and think, not what some initial state predetermined. I acted, not forces, not a space dust or the bully holding a stick over me. I live my freedom in being an existing subject.

I would say so too, but John seems to deny that. His point throughout has been this is about more than a lived culture or state of a person. If his concern was only a question of someone feeling better by their belief, it would be the sort of individual and discursive description he is attacking postmodernism for.

I have read the quotes of John's comments in your last post to him. It seems to me that it is the use of the word belief which is problematic. In one passage this belief is alluded to in the phrase "because we cannot think of ourselves as such" - read belief, in another "has no faith" -read lack of belief and in another belief as of "on the basis of our intuitions and lived experience".

Belief is an ambiguous and vague term, personally I have rid my language and thinking of belief, beliefs, I see no value in, requirement for, it.

This made it difficult to understand John's point initially, but now I see it as a use in which belief refers to something known, lived and experienced without question. As much a part of us as our daily bread. I read an ambiguity mixed in with this due to a transcendent spirit or soul being alluded to, in the notion of a "radical freedom". Something which is I think a nonsense to a physicalist or materialism based philosophy, hence Streetlight's cartoon.

In your reply to me, I know it is a subject who expresses, or acts out freedom. But this same subject has been generated, shaped moulded by social and cultural conditioning. The subject has been instructed, groomed in how to behave and where freedoms and a lack of freedoms are and can be accessed, or relinquished. This could all be carried out by a race of philosophical zombies or robots for example. In the example of Rosa Park, it is simply an example of a tipping point being reached in a point of heightened tension within the system. Also the fact that this event was amplified to a national and historally important event was due to it being chosen as a pawn in a larger sociology political process. Again, this could all be carried out by a group of robots.

Let's look at an example of a subject who has so much freedom he is one of the most free subjects in existence(on our planet), Donald Trump, he is free to do most anything he wants, or is inclined to do. What does he do, I don't know, but I expect that he simply indulges his animal desires, while feeling socially isolated, psychologically inadequate, childish, naive, etc etc. Is this freedom? he is confined within the constraints of his conditioned subject, perhaps his fight for the presidency is the only thing he has left as a possibility of braking free of his distorted circus of a life and experiencing for a brief moment some freedom.

Let's look at another example of a subject, Ghandi, someone who was content with his food bowl and the ability to weave his own loin cloth. He lived far more freedom than Trump does, by the freedoms expressed from his mind and enjoying a few genuine friendships and a humble constructive role within his society.

Ghandi exercised his intellect and sculpted, crafted his own mind and psychological life with freedom of imagination and creative intellectual vision. Such freedom emerges in the mind of a subject who is somehow transcendent of their social conditioning.

Is this freedom, he is confined within the constraints of his conditioned subject, perhaps his fight for the presidency is the only thing he has left as a possibility of braking free of his distorted circus of a life and experiencing for a brief moment some freedom. — Punshhh

Well said Punshhh, and hear hear. There was a column recently on a similar theme, Donald Trump's Sad, Lonely Life, David Brooks.

The perception of her humanity. We're done here. — Mongrel

Hey Mongrel, I'm with you in spirit :) I confess, I'm not with either protagonist in this thread. But I'm off tomorrow to practice with my choir. We still sing the South African song 'Freedom is coming'. 'Amandla Awethu' as it is in Zulu (Power to us!)...although not so many like to sing 'Viva COSATU!' which is the pro-union verse. Freedom is coming!

I was just listening to the news quiz (BBC radio4) and Trump was described as a St Bernard dog shaved and put in a suit. Chuckle chuckle.

Let's look at another example of a subject, Ghandi, someone who was content with his food bowl and the ability to weave his own loin cloth. He lived far more freedom than Trump does, by the freedoms expressed from his mind and enjoying a few genuine friendships and a humble constructive role within his society.

Ghandi exercised his intellect and sculpted, crafted his own mind and psychological life with freedom of imagination and creative intellectual vision. Such freedom emerges in the mind of a subject who is somehow transcendent of their social conditioning. — Punshhh

Yes, Ghandi is another exemplar of the subject of freedom par excellence; Ghandi, who unlike any other two bit hermit who could starve himself for ideals, actually walked down to the sea to break the salt laws in an act of civil disobedience; Ghandi, who refused to move from the first-class carriage in South Africa when asked to do so in defiance of law; Ghandi, who actively engaged in hard fought political negotiations with South African, Indian and British governments, with tangible, society-changing results; Ghandi, who used his considerable charismatic and organizational skills to leads massive protests by his countrymen; Ghandi, who all too readily gave up his liberty, time and time again, for the sake of non-violence; Ghandi, who lead, with incredible political acumen, the Indian National Congress party (and Ghandi, who slept naked with little girls to test his commitment to chastity...; and Ghandi, who considered blacks in Africa savages, and for whom the 'white race' ought to predominate in South Africa; and Ghandi, whose attitude toward the caste system remains an inextinguishable black mark against his legacy).

But by all means, romanticise his 'food bowl' and his 'loin cloth', along with his 'psychological life' and 'freedom expressed in the mind'. By all means, recall everything about him that resides on the low, rusty rungs of his actual practices of freedom. Perhaps this rosy, spiritualist, beautiful-soul swill is why Zizek polemically issued the reminder that Ghandi was far more violent than Hitler, with respect to his cutting against the grain of his time (that is, unlike Hitler, who capitalized upon - and horrifyingly radicalized - the murderous currents already at work in the Europe of his time). There's probably something to be said too about Walter Benjamin's (a 'post-modernist' avant la lettre) thesis that the aestheticization of politics - no doubt commensurate with a vapid and bathetic concern with foodbowls and loincloths - is the logical outcome of fascist ideologizing, but that's probably neither here nor there.

Yes I know that there is precious little input into subjectification which could be claimed to be unique, or farsighted. This doesn't mean that it doesn't occur, or that folk who seek idealised systems of thought, or who develop intuition, aren't modelling, or able to tear down and rebuild, their own subject.

I accept that a transcendence is not required to understand and explain the narrative, I know this, but it doesn't mean that there isn't such a thing, or something unknown/undetected involved in our lives.

Would make a great headline, though: POSTMODERNIST PHILOSOPHER SAYS GANDHI MORE VIOLENT THAN HITLER.

I don't have time today for a more extensive reply. By "pre-reflective" i mean something like Heidegger's 'being-in-the-world'; the condition we find ourselves in where we feel we can simply do whatever we want within the general constraints of nature.

This character of this 'native' condition is challenged only when we reflect on whether we really could have done something different yesterday, when we begin to consider that we are nothing but a physical process like the rest of nature. In this connection, think of Spinoza's analogy with the stone that is rolling down hill:

“Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.”

Our native condition is like that of the stone; we naturally just find ourselves to be radically free. In general, PM, like Spinoza is one of the philosophies that posits this is an illusion. Of course, I don't agree with Spinoza or PM about the source of our feeling of freedom being in innocence or ignorance, and really that has been the point of this thread.

So we don't have to reflectively (explicitly) think of ourselves as radically free in order to be radically free; but our experience of that radical freedom will be curtailed if we come to think of ourselves as being, by whatever external forces, through and through determined. I believe that even the arch-determinist Dennett warned Sam Harris that he should not tell people they have no free will because research suggests that if people think that they have no free will they will begin to behave as though they have no free will.

It could be, yes. Is that the relevant question though? Many things could be. Hitler could be a humanitarian leader and champion of the oppressed. I could be president of the US. A cure for cancer could be.

What does this tell us about our world though? Nothing. To say any of these things could be says nothing about what is. So yes, all the events of the world could be played out by philosophical zombies, but are they? Is it true? Or are we concious subjects?

So worried about "guaranteeing" the presence of concious subjects, about finding the idea or force which means we can say that we're not just robots, whole sections of philosophy completely forget we are concious subjects.

In response to people talking about concious subjects, these philosophy only miss the point, to respond to awareness of ourselves as concious subjects with: "Ah ha, you could be a robot, so we couldn't possibly say you are a concious subject." It's to entirely miss the point and ignore living people.

We see this in your analysis of Trump. In the sense we are talking here, Trump is no more or less free than anyone else. Just like anyone else, he is a free subject who makes choices.The presidency is not the only possible way he could break free from an unfulfillinging life (if he's even unfulfilled at all).

He could act to choose differently right now. He could give away wealth and go help the poor. He could dedicate himself to becoming an artist and leave behind his exploitative and abusive business and social practices. He could dedicate himself to caring for others, becoming liked and respected by a wide circle if friends.

Freedom, as talked about here, is not about overcoming a particular social force. It about being a subject who chooses, who emerges in the world, rather than being pre-determined by an initial force. Becoming president is not the only possible way Trump could overcome his demons.

To say otherwise is just greed and irresponsiblity talking-- "but I can't possibly be ethical or valuable unless you make me president." The statement of a spoiled narcissist.

Nor does any one transcend the social forces around them. In existing, one is given, by definition, with there environment. Any influence present, by definition, affects them. Breaking away from damaging influence is not a question of transcending the world. It's about living differently, about being s person who is no longer driven by negative forces. The solution is the subject in the world, not escaping the world. Negative influences end, not become undone.

Gahndi no less crafted his mind or was impacted by social forces than Trump. He just chose and had different influencescthan Trump. Any influence which might have given him personal relationships like Trump, he either broke away from through his action or never encountered. He didn't break outside social influence. The forces which influenced him were different to Trump.

I can't make much sense of this or how it connects to what is the issue here. Wasn't Heidegger a historicist and wasn't Foucault actually pretty close to him? — Πετροκότσυφας

Heidegger and Foucault were indeed historicists, but I think your confusion here comes from the assumption that because I appropriate one of Heidegger's notions ( authenticity) for the purpose of my own argument, that I therefore must agree with his whole standpoint. I don't. I see much that is good in Heidegger's philosophy; but I don't agree with him about the radical finitude (which is really to say again in a different way, immanence, to return to an initial point of departure in this thread) of human being.

To be determined (caused) as beings who desire is not to say we do not have free will or freedom. It only says forces outside ourselves makes us, cause our existence as beings who desire (and choose). We are caused to be those who desire (and choose).

Spinoza isn't taking out free will there. He's taking out idealism. The problem is the idea our existence is made out of our present concious, such that we are free to be anything we think, defined only by what we believe.

Cool!

The closest I ever get to that stuff:

Spinoza definitely denies free will, saying that belief in it is based on ignorance. Carefully read the last sentence of the quoted passage again.

If how we feel is where freedom resides, then one needs to have the concept of freedom in order for freedom to have any meaning for them. — Πετροκότσυφας

But we certainly don't need to specifically conceptualize ourselves as being free in order to feel free; so I remain unconvinced that your criticism is valid.

Of course in order to self-consciously exercise that felt freedom requires that we consciously reflect on and continue to believe in our condition of freedom; but that is a different matter.

I am also not convinced by anything my interlocutors have offered up that it is not the case that if I self-consciously think of myself as, and genuinely believe that I am, a being that is exhaustively determined by necessary or even random physical processes, that I will be unable to experience my freedom.

Quick! Another Berdyaev quote!

As I observed before, we're all citizens of free societies and in that sense free in economic, social and political terms. What other kind of freedom is there to discuss? As Punshh pointed out before, take Trump as an example - he presents himself as the epitome of success and power. But he seems crippled by emotional inadequacies which manifest as mendacity, narcissism and other unpleasant traits. So that is in a real sense being bound, being conditioned and determined by various compulsions and emotional lacks. So in one way, such a personality is as free as the next person, but in another sense, until there is insight into the causes of those issues then he will continue to suffer (and many others along with him in this case). Such a personality is not free insofar as they act out emotional compulsions. So that is another sense in which the discussion of what might constitute freedom is meaningful - and one near to the idea of freedom in the tradition of philosophy. (That said, there is nothing preventing a discussion of that subject from the perspective of post-modern philosophy.)

Nonsense, you're simply ignoring the distinction I have made between unselfconsciously felt freedom and selfconsciously conceived freedom and erroneously claiming that what I have said applies to one must apply to the other. You'll need to do better than offering a little conflationary sleight of hand if you want to convince me to revise my thoughts on this.

I agree with Kant that moral responsibility presupposes freedom, and that thinking of people as, for example, physical processes makes such freedom and responsibility seem impossible.

I believe the PM philosophers generally reject Kant's notion of freedom and responsibility. I'm not sure what you are talking about here, but that's basically all I've been talking about all along.

Not a lot of what most people have said in this thread has seemed to me to be very relevant to that. That's fine too as long as there is no misunderstanding to the effect that we are speaking of the same issues when we are not.

The feeling of being free unaccompanied by the concept of being free. I didn't claim it relates directly to moral responsibility. There is no unselfconscious moral responsibility; that's why children are only held to be morally responsible for the acts to the extent that they can consciously understand themselves to be morally responsible.

The conscious understanding of one's moral responsibility presupposes the conscious understanding that one is free. If one thinks that all ones acts are determined by unknown forces or forces outside the ambit of one's control (neural activity for example) then it cannot follow logically that one is responsible for one's acts, any more than the tiger, which simply acts according to the dictates of its nature, could be thought to be morally responsible for savaging a child.

What does this tell us about our world though? Nothing. To say any of these things could be says nothing about what is. So yes, all the events of the world could be played out by philosophical zombies, but are they? Is it true? Or are we concious subjects?

My point here is not about if we are robots, but about the philosophical idea of Post modernism(I admit that I am not well read in PM, so this is just speculation), that it could apply equally to a notional world of unconscious robots, with no "freedom". Or there could be world identical to this world inhabited by philosophical zombies, without consciousness. In this world the Post modern philosophy would apply equally. This is because in this philosophy there is only material, energetic forces and computation. Sentient self consciousness as we experience it is an irrelevance in this view.

Yes I know what you mean about ignoring living people. Also I agree with most of what
PM appears to be saying about freedom, there is some freedom in the autonomous choices we as living people make every day. While most of the structure in our lived lives is conditioned through the social narrative, along with the physical bodies and environment we find ourselves to exist in. However I still think there is a valid point in what I was trying to say about Trump and Ghandi. I can illustrate this with an example in my own life. Something which is real and the results of it are real.

Throughout my youth and younger adulthood, I became negative about money, my father was very frugal and stopped my pocket money and would never buy me anything, even though he had lots of money. I also picked up on a stressful worry about money in him which made him the way he was. When I became an adult I became a parent without adequate planning at a young age and struggled with money, this also lead to some resentment and envy to people who had money. This became an acute fear and stress for me and in a sense I think I also became instrumental in making the situation worse. It became a pervasive stress and worry in my life leading to a kind of negative depression.

But then a change occurred. For (primarily) other reasons, my relationship broke down and I split from my partner and young children, it was an even greater financial struggle at the time, but due to my interest in philosophy, spirituality, self help etc. I took a radical course, which most people in my position would not have taken. I lived hand to mouth on the minimum money required to survive, I saved every penny and then a few months later I took a flight to India and travelled to the Himalayas. I was on a spiritual quest, but equally I was seeking a way out of my problems. I had an insight about money, that provided I could put a bit of food in my mouth every day and put a roof over my head somehow it really didn't matter. This realisation was far more involved than this, but essentially the same. Also due to a postal strike in India at the same time, some of my money which was being posted to me by my mother didn't arrive and I had to survive for a month on 50 Rupees. I was meditating 3 or 4 hours a day and eating a bowl of rice and dalh each day and it became obvious to me to distance myself from my conditioned life back home, including my entire psychology around money. I experienced a great feeling of freedom, all that conditioning had been lifted from me. I had numerous epiphany's and in a very real sense rebuilt my life following simple spiritual values.

I was cured and on my return back home all my problems had evaporated, I still had to earn money to pay the bills and child support, but it was all an easy task of sensible money management, even taking on some debt and working to pay it off. Money was an insignificant tool in living now and I exercised my freedom from it, to this day.

So my point is that through a seeking for some deeper meaning, farsighted principles and ideals. I found a freedom from my conditioned life and have gone on to repeat the process in numerous parts of my life and the lives of my friends, family and associates. I dismantled and creatively rebuilt myself by what amounted to transcendent inspiration, intuition.

There are other freedoms than simply having immediate choices in ones day to day life.

Again I think you are missing the point by suggesting that a spiritual person is seeking to escape the living in the world. For me spirituality is more a focus on my being and living in the world, thoughts about transcendent concepts, heaven, nirvana etc, are simply ideals considered in contemplation regarding universals and how they may intersect with this world etc. I am as I said before content here and now and don't need to go anywhere from here.

Thanks Πετροκότσυφας, I thought you were a good interlocutor; better and more polite than I sometimes am. I am working on it.
:-#

I apologise for not grasping your position through your use of the word belief. Now I understand, I think.

So following the analogy of the stone, we are as the stone rolling, but perhaps with the choice to change our course, a little, by changing our shape(by analogy) at will. Presumably our ability to change shape has been programmed in to us by the nature of our constituents and processes of our formation. So we are not doing anything radical in any shape change we are capable of.

I can see how a determinist would point always to a prior process of formation of our constituents and that all notion of freedom is illusory. That there is some freedom in a subject due to the presence of an awareness of an individual self and a process of thinking allowing a choice through an awareness of alternative strategies and directions of travel. However that freedom is entirely within the conditioned constraints of a social narrative. Hence no radical freedom, only a little opportunity for constrained autonomy. But the narrative generates the impression within the subject of freedoms.

If we concede these constraints and allow our perceived freedoms to fall under this explanation. What other freedoms are you suggesting, or what is missed in this or these kind of explanation?

(Edit in bold)

Such a personality is not free insofar as they act out emotional compulsions. So that is another sense in which the discussion of what might constitute freedom is meaningful - and one near to the idea of freedom in the tradition of philosophy. (That said, there is nothing preventing a discussion of that subject from the perspective of post-modern philosophy.)

Yes and from my perspective there are numerous freedoms available to the being and that the evolution of the soul is a revealing in stages of these freedoms.

So we have;
1, the freedom of movement, a body.
2, the freedom of individuation, a self.
3, the freedom of the self aware, a creative agency.
4, the freedom of imagination, access to a transcendent facet in agency.
5, the freedom from incarnation, self actualisation of the soul.
6, the freedom of the transcendent, nirvana, or the equivalent, such as heaven.
7, the freedom from the manifest, para nirvana, or free of all finite constraints.
8, the freedom from existence, something not even worth trying to understand.

These are just a few freedoms that come to mind.

My trajectory was rather different to what I think you are suggesting here. The Spinoza 'stone' analogy is not something I agree with at all. I do not believe that our sense of freedom originates from our ignorance of the causes determining our every action. This would mean that the sense of freedom is a sense of something illusory.

So, I don't believe that any discursive account or conceptual analysis of freedom can achieve anything other than making it appear to be impossible; which will lead to the dissolution of the sense and of the idea of freedom.

What I have been trying to convey (without much success, apparently) is that I think freedom is of the spirit and the spirit cannot be analyzed in either objective or subjective terms. So when you ask:

what is missed in this or these kind of explanation? — Punshhh

, my answer would be "Apparently nothing, and yet everything" or "Nothing that we can plainly talk about and everything that we cannot plainly talk about".

What I am saying is quite close to Kant's idea that it is the noumenal or the 'in itself' (an unfortunate term if there ever was one) that sets the limits of knowledge and makes room for faith in God, Freedom and Immortality.