The problem is that that particular brand of metaphysics cannot make sense of the particular experience of freedom of choice. — Tobias

Yes, that is the problem, isn't it? What are you going to believe, your own experience of thinking, acting, and living, which demonstrates the reality of free will, or some half baked notion that the world is "naturalistically determined"?

But that's a question for another thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12257/free-will-and-other-popular-delusions-or-not

Yes, that is the problem, isn't it? What are you going to believe, your own experience of thinking, acting, and living, which demonstrates the reality of free will, or some half baked notion that the world is "naturalistically determined"? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well I do not think the second notion is that half baked. I also do not believe that my experience necessarily proves the reality of something, so I do think we are in a genuine philosophical conundrum.

The problem is that that particular brand of metaphysics cannot make sense of the particular experience of freedom of choice. Saying it is an illusion will not help because an illusion tends to disappear when it is punctured. The experience of choice and freedom is irreducible to illusion though. In philosophy the phrase is that the first person is irreducible to the third person perspective. At least that is the take I have on free will. For me it is part of a bigger problem / human condition but those ideas I will hold to myself for now. — Tobias

I don't think will is an illusion, I think self as distinct from will is an illusion. Freedom of choice makes sense within the context of the brain as the source of consciousness, subconsciousness, and all other expressions that characterize the human body, which includes self-perception and executive action. The problem is arising almost entirely from this traditional view point of regarding each of these as somehow distinct, even though they all have the same source and are bound to the same, singular body. The irreducibility of 'from first to third,' is clearly not salient. You know this as someone who sleeps, you know this as someone who understands if the brain is damaged we lose faculties, you know this as someone who's aware of alzheimer's, the list goes on. If your perceptions can be reoriented to recognize that consciousness and will are functions of the brain, just like all of your other functions, then the image of the nature of both will, and freedom becomes a great deal more clear. And just for the record, there is not a single shred of evidence in cognitive neuroscience, that I can find, that does not support this claim. I quite genuinely beseech you to find me anything at all, that is up-to-date, that would give this position reason for pause, or reconfiguration.

Yes and that you are forced to draw that conclusion shows how implausible your definition of freedom is. — Tobias

I actually did not define freedom.

Every political and social philosopher I have read on the subject considers freedom as freedom from something, but also as freedom to reach the goals you have set for yourself. The traffic light example by the way is Charles Taylor's. Those goals are much easier to reach in a society with well planned roads than in societies one just has to fin out everything by oneself. — Tobias

I think the issue is more subtle. Not everything that allows or helps you achieve your goals in a society is freedom. In fact, society imposes non-freedoms on you.

The basic problem is that it is not freedom in every action in a society that you gets you to achieve your goals. You are HELPED to achieve your goals, which involves the curtailing of some of your freedoms. To call everything that helps you along -- such as law, order, morals and peer pressure -- while curtailing your freedom -- from going through red lights, from beating up others, from taking things away from them -- freedom, is a gross misuse of the word.

. Why would it lead to virtue ethics? — Tobias

That we must act is what is certain... So it seems the thing to do is to build the capacity to act well. Hence virtue ethics. — Banno

A line of thought rather than an argument. Both deontology and consequentialism present algorithmic methods for deciding moral cases. There's two things that count against this: firstly that we do not act algorithmically; and secondly that we ought not act algorithmically.

Look at what we actually do when making a decision with a moral dimension and it will quickly become apparent that we do not commonly sit first and go through a process of investigation and deduction in order to reach a decision. Choices usually need to be made far too quickly for such a process of ratiocination. The moral reasoning behind an action is more often than not post hoc.

@god must be atheist's article might give one pause when considering whether we ought follow a rule. But there are considerations that are to do with the nature of rule following, as found in my old mate Wittgenstein: "No course of action can be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to conform to the rule... What this shows is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation but which is exhibited by what we call obeying a rule and going against it". Hence deontology and consequentialism are not of themselves up to the task of telling us what to do; each is to be grasped by our exhibiting what it is to follow the rule.

So, choosing to follow the rules of deontology or consequentialism does not tell us what to do in a particular case; we must also interpret the circumstances of that case and choose how to implement the rule.

All this to say that acting morally is not an algorithmic process, it is not just doing what the rule says.

How then to proceed? By becoming the sort of person who makes choices with which one can agree; by building on one's capacity to act with virtue. If one works on one's honesty, integrity, courage, charity, and so on, one is in a better position to act well. Choose deontology or consequentialism or whatever, one will be better placed to implement such rules if one builds on virtue.

In much the same way that a judge who simply, algorithmically, applies the law will eventually act unjustly, one who chooses to apply deontology or consequentialism algorithmically will fins themselves acting against their duty or the greater happiness. Virtue provides the humanising feedback that allows us to ask if duty or happiness are the right thing to do in a particular circumstance.

If one were to be so bold as to try to derive an argument from the morass of Arendt's writing, what might it be?

One might do well to set aside the historical deconstruction informative and thought provoking as it might be.

There is an ethical problem with freedom as construed in liberal thought. If freedom is founded on sovereignty, then my freedom can only be won at the cost of your sovereignty. This is an approach that sets each individual against all the others. We see the result in the dissolution of the common wealth in those nations that claim a liberal heritage.

Better, then to see freedom as a building of the capacity to achieve, to become more than one already is, both individually and as part of that common wealth. We achieve freedom so considered by building the capacity of those around us to be free.

What I think you arrive at though is not that teh definition of freedom is contextual, the actual assessment of who is free and who is not is contextual, determined by the facts of the case. — Tobias

Right, though I haven't said the definition of freedom simpliciter is contextual; I meant that who is defined as being free, and how we might be defined as being free on one perspective and not on another is where the contextuality comes into play.

The American concept of freedom is rooted in the need for unity in the face of diversity. The Bill of Rights provides a government divided against itself. A citizen can appeal to the government to be protected from the government. This is civil rights.

You need to think of societies as being made up of opposing forces. Peace and stability are the balancing of forces rather than executing some ideal principle.

This is not out of line with the notion of the sovereignty of the individual, though; if this sovereignty is considered as belonging to all individuals, in which case the bounding condition on one's sovereignty would be the performative contradiction involved in one's own sovereignty restricting the sovereignty of others.

I agree; I think ethics is basically a sense, a matter of conscience, not a set of rules.

You need to think of societies as being made up of opposing forces. — frank

Hmm. The article is an invitation to notice, in contrast, that society is overwhelmingly about cooperation.

↪Banno This is not out of line with the notion of the sovereignty of the individual, though; if this sovereignty is considered as belonging to all individuals, in which case the bounding condition on one's sovereignty would be the performative contradiction involved in one's own sovereignty restricting the sovereignty of others. — Janus

Pretty much. But see 's post, positing that society is constituted by opposing forces. Does society stand on conflict, or on cooperation? Whence the growth of inequity and the problems ensuing therefrom?

The difference is between a picture of society as you against everyone else, or a picture of society as collective growth.

↪Banno I agree; I think ethics is basically a sense, a matter of conscience, not a set of rules. — Janus

Cheers.

We need to take care not to downplay the rules. They are in a way the sense, the conscience, made explicit so that it is part of the public space.

Hmm. The article is an invitation to notice, in contrast, that society is overwhelmingly about cooperation. — Banno

Just as you can't have freedom without a context of constraints, you can't have cooperation without a context of opposing interests.

What I'm advocating is second nature for the determinist: put away your condemnations and see the ways that every citizen is compelled by circumstances, culture, and history.

If you can't do that, shut up about free will because it's one of your hinge propositions.

Cheers, Frank. It was an invitation to reconsider the way freedom is framed in your culture. The rest is up to you.

Did you read the article?

I did.

Good.

The difference is between a picture of society as you against everyone else, or a picture of society as collective growth. — Banno

Hobbes would say that your first option is not a society but a war. The agreement to not have a war is to accept a binding force. The argument of Thomas Paine was that such a binding could happen without cancelling the natural ambition of individuals to gain their own advantage. In that sense, the instruments of cooperation are forms of rearranging the components that lead Hobbes to justify monarchy as the best polity. The war could be avoided by other means than establishing an absolute source of authority.

Yes.

It occurs to me that these chaps thought well, but in a linear fashion, so the power structures tended to be hierarchical.

It might be better to think of power distribution in terms of a series of loops. The separation of the powers prevents any individual achieving hegemony, democratic institutions dragging the whole towards a moderately equitable outcome. On this account what is missing is a loop that redistributes wealth caught by corporate entities, resulting in monopolistic practices.

So, choosing to follow the rules of deontology or consequentialism does not tell us what to do in a particular case; we must also interpret the circumstances of that case and choose how to implement the rule.

All this to say that acting morally is not an algorithmic process, it is not just doing what the rule says. — Banno

Thanks for finally replying to me.

I don't think I ever said that moral acts are algorithmic processes, but now that you say that, I believe they are. It's just that the algorithms are complex, and our cognitive examinations can't fathom them.

Maybe you are referring to the argument in which I said moral acts are evolution-based? I think you may still be hung up on those.

Yes, I maintain the same stance as before, but I think I miscommunicated my meaning. Moral acts indeed are manifold, and no rule can be found that applies to the details of every particular case. Long words like deontology and consequentialism aside, that is true. However, the mechanics of moral judgment are so, that a basic biologically ingrained set of rules (basically to preserve the safety and surety one's DNA's future derivatives) that are present in mammals and birds as well, has been developed in humans to other areas of life, such as to accept socially ingrained morality.

This is new, and I appreciate that you may have a natural aversion to this idea, because this has not been in your readings, particularly because it is (or may be) my own original idea.

In my opinion moral behaviour that society imposes on us would not have any effect on anyone, should a mutation to alter our functioning not have happened. We do internalize some social ethics, and reject some others. In every culture, if I may assert. And every culture may have different moral codes. But the basic evolutionary step was to make individuals accept that they have to conform to some ethical behaviour that society attempts to make them to accept.

Thus, it is not some sort of moral ethical decision tree or moral ethical algorithm that I invoked that would be developed to guide man in every different ethical dilemma or challenge; I invoked this pivotal mutation that had made humans ethical beings that respond to internalizing social ethics.

Your dissatisfaction with these chaps may or may not match up with that expressed by Arendt.

She finds Paine to be insufficient while Rousseau is dismissed as just being nuts. Perhaps that has something do with Paine being pragmatic. At the end of Common Sense, he says that groups of individuals have three ways of influencing outcomes: They can develop forms of representation, join a military, or participate in a mob. The singularity of being a king compared to the singularity of being an individual does not fill in the big blank in between. In any case, Arendt's general dissatisfaction with the chaps, as a group, goes back to this observation in the essay:

Since all acting contains an element of virtuosity, and because virtuosity is the excellence we ascribe to the performing arts, politics has often been defined as an art. This, of course, is not a definition but a metaphor, and the metaphor becomes completely false if one falls into the common error of regarding the state or government as a work of art, as a kind of collective masterpiece.

So if we want to be free it's precisely sovereignty we must give up? Is sovereignty a synonym for freedom then? Merriam-Webster tells the opposite...

So if we want to be free it's precisely sovereignty we must give up? — Frankly

No. You misunderstand. You don't have to give up sovereignty. You can be free and sovereign at the same time. But only if you isolate yourself from each and everyone. Freedom and sovereignty can't be achieved in company of other people though. To let the others have freedom and sovereignty you have to give up your own to some extent. Which means no one has true freedom and sovereignty, unless forced with power. To find the right balance, so everyone has at least a feeling of having enough freedom and sovereignty, be it individual or groupswise, is the true challenge.

This is new, and I appreciate that you may have a natural aversion to this idea, because this has not been in your readings, particularly because it is (or may be) my own original idea. — god must be atheist

It's not, Rand highlighted it in her epistemology decades ago. But, consider this. From a cognitivie perspective, the process of concept generation takes place as the brain becomes familiarized with a domain of interest that has been engaged with for long enough across time. Concept generation is itself a reformulation of what we think constitutes either proper behavior or thought appropriate within that domain, as a means to achieve what ethics was fundamentally laid down to do. That being to produce the best behavior. Concept generation is an ethical process by nature, it is the ethical process. So, it isn't just that we have biological imperatives that constitute self-preservation from an instinctual level, we have a system of concept generation built into us to make up for where instinct fails, to serve the exact same purpose.

We do internalize some social ethics, and reject some others. In every culture, if I may assert. And every culture may have different moral codes. But the basic evolutionary step was to make individuals accept that they have to conform to some ethical behaviour that society attempts to make them to accept. — god must be atheist

Yes, this is kind of the issue with ethics as a whole. The human reaches the developmental capacity to generate concepts between 12-17 ish, dependeing on the individual. Meaning, before the human is even able to develop his/her own concepts on ethics, the people around him/her have already foisted a good deal of info on them that has been categorized into domains of predisposition in accordance with the feelings associated with the info. Meaning, because of our ignorance of human nature, we've historically disrupted the process of allowing the natural emergence of concepts, and instead have manipulated the vulnerable human mind into adopting our own. Depending on who the "our" is in that equation. In other words, your last sentence there is fundamentally the root of all evil. It is the action taken on the part of the strong against the vulnerable to stifle the natural operation of the mechanisms in our minds that naturally produce concepts for informing better behavior that the individual human being can use to provide greater results for him/herself, and by proxy those who benefit from such behavior.

Thus, it is not some sort of moral ethical decision tree or moral ethical algorithm — god must be atheist

Except it is very algorithmic, and does require a tree of considerations. The ability to generate concepts that inform behavior requires a high enough resolution of understanding of whatever domain that concept is exploring behavior or thought within. All of which forms a feedback loop of information within the mind that has been prioritzed by emotional valence and objective correspondence that all coheres in the mind as a concatenation of info exchange, arranged by differing value. It is as "tree" as tree gets. Those who do not, or choose not to understand this, simply are not informed of the neural processes that give rise to ethical exploration, full stop.

No. You misunderstand. You don't have to give up sovereignty. You can be free and sovereign at the same time. — Schootz1

It's not that he misunderstands, or that I do for that matter. He's simply talking about a different conception of sovereignty than what Arendt is on about. Historically speaking, she's as correct as correct gets. For Man to be free, he must relinquish the idea of the sovereign state. That authority fundamentally destroyes freedom. But, what Frankly is talking about is self-ownership, individual sovereignty. For some reason the concept slips everyone's mind in this thread. Self-ownership, which is the state of being you exist in as determined by nature, such being recognized is the pre-requisite of freedom. There is no freedom if the human will is not permitted to emerge, uninhibited, as an expression of itself, to itself, by itself, and for no other reason if so chosen. And there's no ethical justifiaction for such force to be applied. Either each individual is entitled to his own body and consciousness, or freedom is a pipe dream that is just waiting on the next lout with a gun to come take away because he can't bear the same responsibility of owning himself.

So in line with the idea that stability is not a static state of perfection, but rather the equilibrium of opposing forces (like with Henry's Law), we can hypothesize the character of a culture by noting the obvious and looking for its opposite.

So @Banno notes a society that strikes him as "every man for himself". The opposite of that is selflessness; a sheep like tendency to fall quietly in line (per folklore this is a British trait, and the US culture is an extrapolation of parts of the British culture.)

So a hypervigilance about freedom is not the poor outcome of Augustinianism (who on earth thinks that's how anthropology works?) but rather it comes from fears in the present, in this case fear of one's own tendency to accept tyranny without protest.

@Banno I think you should read this post about five times, because it's very insightful. :grin:

Hi, Garret, just to let you know: I have stopped reading your posts some time ago. I think (without proof) that you are a simple naysayer, without enough depth or insight, and you engage people relentlessly. I don't want to be part of that.

This is a friendly and polite notification that if you reply to my posts, others may pick up on it, but I won't.

I simply don't read your posts. That's about the size of it.

you are a simple naysayer, without enough depth or insight — god must be atheist

And

This is a friendly and polite notification — god must be atheist

Are mutually exclusive statements.

I was responding to the article you posted elsewhere rather than your comments here. I haven't, again, been able to make sense of your post. You disavow evolutionary approaches in the first part of your post only to reclaim then in the last. You say moral acts are algorithmic at the start of your post only to say at the end that there is no such algorithm.

The basic reason for rejecting a place for sociobiology in ethics remains: even if our genes demand that we act in a certain way, it remains open for us to do otherwise.

I think you should read this post about five times, because it's very insightful. — frank

I did. It isn't.