Yes, that's why I appended the full quotation. I really think it pretty much sums it up.

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

"Therefore, the onus for defining ourselves, and by extension humanity, falls squarely on our shoulders. This lack of pre-defined purpose along with an 'absurd' existence that presents to us infinite choices is what Sartre attributes to the “anguish of freedom”. With nothing to restrict us, we have the choice to take actions to become who we want to be and lead the life we want to live."

You are free to be the kind of person who succumbs to pressure, who compromises his ideals, or not.

"Jean-Paul Sartre decried the idea of living without pursuing freedom. The phenomenon of people accepting that things have to be a certain way, and subsequently refusing to acknowledge or pursue alternate options, was what he termed as "living in bad faith". According to Sartre, people who convince themselves that they have to do one particular kind of work or live in one particular city are living in bad faith."

↪Pantagruel What's the non-sequitur? — tim wood

Everything you said does not apply to Sartre. His notion of freedom is central and pivotal and includes certainly the concept of responsibility - that is the whole point. We are responsible not only for what we do, but for who we are. It is ongoing and omnipresent.

I understand you are reacting to and possibly reinterpreting Sartre in a way that makes more sense to your own beliefs, but that's not Sartre. Authenticity is another of his core concepts, also not one that works with the notion of "compromise" in the negative sense of that term.

"Exempt" is the key word. According to Sartre, we are condemned to be free. Any notion of freedom as shield, or freedom as ground for some particular moral obligation, no. In every sense, then, yielding to what must be yielded to in no wise is connected to freedom. And this is the only way to reconcile that notions that we're free, and that sooner or later the torturer gets what he wants. — tim wood

Sorry, that is all a non-sequitur. We are "condemned" to be free in the sense that we can not escape it. Our freedom is absolute and inescapable.

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

Yep, it was on our theoretically unlimited freedom, and that even under coercion we are technically free to choose. Pretty much sums it up, I can't really say more about that.

You keep in saying people "endure" torture, but it's not clear what that even means or who has done so? Can you be more specific? — Artemis

Now I'm really confused. It was the exact example that we have been discussing? I quoted Sartre. You disputed, then rebutted based on an interpretation from his later writings from an third party online source. I reviewed and clarified, what part of all that was unclear?

We have already shown that even the red-hot pincers
of the torturer do not exempt us from being free.
— Pantagruel

I think that's an exaggeration. Clearly the torturer has already, de facto, limited our choices and thus our freedom. — Artemis

In any case, I'm ok with leaving it there. I think what I wrote expresses my personal position pretty clearly. I'll definitely be reviewing the later works of Sartre on "material freedom" (thanks for that!).

Cheers!

exempt — Artemis

But exempt from what?

People choose to endure something because and when it is meaningful to do so. And when people do, historically, it often is meaningful.

Well, Sartre evolved and refined his thinking eventually, and I suspect so will you :wink: — Artemis

From what I see, he became even more committed to freedom as an intellectual ideal. And so, during the forty years since I first read Being and Nothingness, have I.

edit: and I think "material freedom" refers to particular context while "formal freedom" remains an intellectual ideal.

Later, especially in Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre shifts to the view that humans are only free if their basic needs as practical organisms are met (p. 327)." — Artemis

I've never read the Critique of Dialectical Reason, but I'm starting now, and the preface sure seems consistent with the views I've cited"

"This is the moment to remember the profound resonance
of this theme of treason and the traitor throughout all of Sartre: as the
'objective treason' of the intellectual, never fully or ontologically
committed to any cause; as the jouissance of treason in the rebel
(particularly in Genet), or of the homme de ressentiment ( particularly
in the collaborators); the great test of my authenticity as well"

I think it is the furthest thing from an exaggeration, and I'll tell you why.

Nothing constrains our free choice more than our own pre-existing (cognitive) habits. Evidence of this is the fact that many people will walk the road to ruin before addressing issues which are clearly within their own control, substance addiction, gamboling addiction, etc. This kind of "constraint" is even more severe than external constraint, because it is self-imposed. And it is far more significant. What someone does or doesn't do under threat of bodily harm is, let's face it, begging the question. It is self-evident that anyone "could" refuse to submit to the torture and, point of fact, lots of people have died rather than submit.

But, to the point, we do possess the power of being so free that we can, at any time, actually choose to do something, even if that thing is completely uncharacteristic of any choice we have previously made. I ascribe to this view of radical freedom, because I know it to be true in my own life. Moreover, what is most interesting, once you have tried and learned that you possess this ability, it gets continually easier to make "radically new" choices. And this can definitely be a great power to have.

edit: I think Sartre explicitly discusses this example in "Psychology of the Imagination". Not completely certain on that source, but I wouldn't want to take credit.

Which, let us note, is (maybe) a choice, and if a choice, the choice of a moment and nothing more. (By "submit" I assume you mean break, or something like.) But I suspect Sartre himself is not quite so ambiguous: do you have a citation? — tim wood

Sure, I scraped these from the online version of BN.

In fact no matter what pressure is exerted on the victim,
the abjuration remains free;

We have already shown that even the red-hot pincers
of the torturer do not exempt us from being free.

In a preceding chapter we
observed that even torture does not dispossess us of our free-
dom;

That particular book was the first philosophy text I ever read, and I've read it maybe seven or eight times, so it isn't likely I would misinterpret something as clear as his stance on freedom.

Sartre views our freedom as essentially unlimited. To the point that he characterizes "vertigo" as the sensation, not that we are going to fall off a high place, but the fear that we might throw ourselves off....

It is when I think 2 + 2 equals 4. — Arne

I was initially thinking this too. But by this reasoning, when I am looking at an apple, is my thought therefore "coloured"?

If I hold a gun to your head and threaten to shot you if you do not hand over your cash, whose choice is being exercised when you hand it over? Whose brain makes your hand move?

Mine or yours?

Yours.

It is my threat, but you chose to live instead of die and have your hand give your cash.

It is never my choice as I cannot make your hand move. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Per Sartre, even under torture, the victim determines the exact moment at which he chooses to submit to the torture....

Free will is a phenomenon, like gravity. So it isn't any more circular or tautological to describe free will in terms of its own evident operations than it is to describe gravity in terms of (in our environment) falling objects.

The notion that free will is problematic is one that gained credence mostly with modern science (particularly Newton) in the form of the Laplacian demon. This type of determinism has serious flaws, the uncertainty principle, being the most obvious. Karl Popper wrote a whole book on it (The Open Universe).

In any case, free will seems pretty self-evident to me, and not in the least bit complicated. Granted, it is possible to act in such a way that you abrogate your own free will (this is what Plato thought, evil actions by definition are not free, since they are inherently self-harmful). But for the most part, if you are paying attention and using your inherent powers of self-control instead of letting the universe provoke you into action, I think you probably are free. In my opinion, some people embrace the idea of free will as being problematic as an excuse for evading responsibility....

FB systems theory group I belong to just posted a link to what looks like a fascinating short article on self-organizing systems.
"I shall now prove the non-existence of self-organizing systems by reductio ad absurdum of the assumption that there is such a thing as a self-organizing system"

Nineteen pages, looks like a fun read. Sharing if anyone else is interested.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2384/d37ee804cfed6b56cc286d407ffec3bcc3b3.pdf?_ga=2.225389854.548608583.1579960117-2042921225.1568038417

I was looking for some interesting conversation on the conundrum rather than disdain for the idea itself — schopenhauer1

Well, speaking only from personal experience here, I have entertained this question seriously at several points in my life. At those time it was certainly what I would call an existential crisis of the highest degree...that's putting it mildly. So I don't really think it is fair for you to characterize my response as disdainful. Speaking as someone who has lived through it, that is my answer.

My experience further, is that the answers you like least are often the ones you need to think about most.

I do believe that there is an actual sense of "legitimacy" of authority, relating to the fact that every action we do ultimately results in an overall set of feedbacks from the universse (cybernetics). So if one is acting with corrupt authority, then those feedbacks will be corrective in nature, either destabilizing the system that enables corrupt authority or directly impacting the corrupt agent, undermining the extent to which his intentions are accurately accomplished.

The kind of "authority" you are talking about seems to me no more than the radical freedom to do whatever one wishes. Sure, we do have that freedom, but of what use is it? The scope and scale of our abilities ultimately depends on our embracing and adopting external systems, which are rule-governed. In so doing, we necessarily accept the laws of those systems, or suffer the negative effects of attempting to "bend the rules".

Insisting on being one's own highest authority is not the same as accepting responsibility for all one does. The world is full of the highest authority rejecting responsibility for the negative consequences of exercising authority. For many, the more authority they claim, the quicker they are to blame. — Arne

I would have to argue that what you are describing is an abuse of, rather than legitimate authority. Insofar as authority is legitimate, in my view it embraces full responsibility.

So barring cliched suicide responses and an appeal to therapy, is there any philosophical insights for people who simply dont like the premises of life? — schopenhauer1

I have found this attitude generally boils down to wanting things to be different than they are. And when it comes to changing the universe, versus changing yourself, the latter is far easier and more effective.

I am my highest authority, judge and guide. Who is yours? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I am ultimately responsible for everything I say and do and think. So I find myself pragmatically in the same category as you I think.

I just started Popper's "Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics" last night. His introduction concerning the relationship between the direction and characterization of physics research and physical concepts, and the historic and prevailing ontological and epistemological "trends", vis a vis. subjectivism in physics is just brilliant. A very clear read.

nd to date, every Cartesian answer is ultimately reducible to some form of parallelism, magic (transcendence) or “They just do. Isn’t it wonderful?” — Arne

Yes. It kind of reminds me how physics can be accused of introducing "occult forces" when it discovers counter-intuitive phenomena, such as action at a distance, in its now many forms (gravity, spooky action, quantum entanglement, etc.)

What is the sense of "self-sufficient" I know Plato considers the soul to be independent of the body, so in that sense, it is "self-sufficient". How is the physical body not self-sufficient for Plato? Also, his approach is that the soul must somehow free itself from the body's influences. Doesn't this imply they are distinct, and that the body is not merely an illusion?

Right, in that book on Fichte, the comment was specifically about the ancient greek concept of the nous...

If you are interested, the essay I am highly recommending, Indeterminism is not enough, may be found here.

There is a history of pre-Cartesian dualism here which talks about Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas.

In a book on Fichte (one of my all time favourite philosophers) Scott Scribner writes that "the mind/body split is the legacy of nous, the intellectualization of spirit". If you are interested, the evolution of the concept of "nous" and all the related descendant terms would be a fascinating project I'm sure.

Shelved the Systemic Thinking book as it is basically a short handbook for experimental design and methodology. Interesting, but just too tedious - I like to read about the experimental results but designing them is a ways off. lol.

So Popper's Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, volume three of his Postscript. They've been getting progressively more engaging....

edit: added The Portable Karl Marx into the mix. Ever since reading the thread suggesting a group read of Das Kapital I have been keen to really dig into Marx. This edition has an excellent preface/biography/chronology, so important to contextualize someone like Marx, I think.

So, I'll just reiterate, you are hijacking the thread, and not in a nice way. I've studied lots of information theory, neurocomputation, neural networks, cybernetics, I've worked as a systems engineer, am quite familiar with data mining, data cubes, and I'm pretty clear on what AI is and what it isn't. So forgive me if I don't accede to your stubborn, if myopic, fixation.

Saying that no serious discussion of the mind-body problem can begin without discussing AI is inane. I'm sorry to be blunt, but it is. Frankly, AI has no bearing at all on the mind-body question. Mind-body is about the interaction of thought and matter. AI is about simulating thought. You can "make" it about that if you want, but you're just shoving an ancient issue into a modern procrustean bed.

The mind-body problem is a feature of the universe and has been debated since time immemorial. Why, because man is suddenly capable of computational mimicry, does that suddenly become inseparable from the mind-body question? Simulacra have likewise been around for a long time. Do you also require that we must discuss the automata and simulacra of the ancient and medieval worlds?

that way also applies to current, man-made AI systems, — Sir Philo Sophia

Nonsense. Neural nets, for example are architected at a conceptual level, whereas neurons actually fire based on chemical potentials. You can model neural nets using chemical potentials which then code for concepts, but it is far more inefficient. In any case, talking about a natural phenomenon most certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that human beings also happen to create a model for that phenomenon. You are begging your own question.

What you said is a complete non-sequitur to the content of the post. Nothing whatsoever to do with simulations, or AI. It was a reading recommendation for people interested in the mind-body problem, in general, and this novel approach to it.

Is the world/cosmos/all absolutely whole and always moving towards wholeness/fullness? If it is, would it need to be infinite, because infinity is more complete than the finite? — DanielP

Actually current cosmology points to the various regions of the universe retreating out of causal contact with each other (cosmological horizon).

No argument from me. All I am pointing out is that the extension of the concept of the ego-cogito is far more complex now than it was in the 17th century.

Prove me wrong. — Wallows

If the claim "This is the best of all possible worlds" were true, then you would not be questioning it. i.e. No one disputes the claim "Liquid water is wet". So the fact that you have raised the possibility itself indicates the dubitability of the claim.

Descartes' Cogito Ergo Sum is the product of his approach of methodological skepticism which, in my opinion, is the more important piece. Rene's conclusions about the status of the Cogito are the product of a mind limited to a seventeenth-century perspective. As such, it is hardly fair to criticize him from our standpoint of much deeper understanding of psychophysical processes (Popper would be more of a fair fight). I suggest recreating his approach of metaphysical doubt yourself and see where that leads you.

"Systemic Thinking - Vol. 1: Aspects of the Philosophy of Mario Bunge"
I wanted to read Bunge himself, but his books are way too pricey.

You have nothing to say on that point?! — TheMadFool

Well I'm not a solipsist. In fact, I believe that mind is a community phenomenon, and being an adherent of Systems Philosophy I embrace the maxim, unity through diversity. It seems evident to me that consciousness functions through concepts that are fundamentally inter-subjective. The ends or objectives of thought become trivial unless they involve a community of minds I think.

What's the difference between the I and the thinker? — TheMadFool

Well, yes, that is the question.