[Wittrs] Re: On Discussions about Free WIll
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:13:06 -0700
Interesting to see this correspondence Sean.
Dawning my Wittgensteinian hat, I immediately wish to investigate what
the concept of "will" means in its home turf, independently of philosophy
(yes, phrasing it that way may inspire some insecurity among the
"special competence" crowd, who argue that philosophers have
"special competencies" ergo "special rights" as opinion-makers).
The USans, as some know them (USAers), incarcerate more people
per capita than most and so are known around the world to have a
lower Free Will Index than most other places. Sounds like science
fiction maybe? Imagine a tribe...
I was recently attending a conference on this aspect of North American
ethnicities, which felt to me like an offshoot of NARMIC, an old (retired)
AFSC program (I'm a member of said committee). The "prison-industrial
complex" as it's now called, offers highly lucrative lifestyles, employs
a vast army, and yet many of its core practices are aimed at restricting
the wills of its wards, keeping them incommunicado and without recourse
to redress.
The question arose (posed by Elaine Brown on Friday night at Reed
College) regarding the 13th Amendment, which basically abolishes slavery
under the heading of "involuntary servitude" (back to "free will" again,
versus "unfree will"). If you're paying your debt to society on a chain
gang, building a railroad, the might be construed as within the bounds,
but to be committed to prison, perhaps with no practical chance at
parole, *and* to be saddled with involuntary servitude... where is that
in the Constitution?
The trend in anthropology is to look at the prison network as a kind of
gulag that has already willingly seceded from the United States, in terms
of being above the latter's laws (outside its jurisdiction), in cahoots with
a military caste that's somewhat the same way (abides by its own laws).
The USA today actually has a vanishingly small citizenship by some
accounts, given the number who've sold out to the Unfree State that
has grown up in its midst. Anthropologists are moving this way with
their analysis thanks in part to the "freak out factor" associated with
such gulag programs as HTS (Human Terrain Systems), which has
recently sought to commandeer the university system as a source
of lipstick for its pig. British Aerospace and Engineering has a guiding
role in the background, as one might expect given the recent history
of Anglophone empires.
More in this blog for context:
http://zeroanthropology.net/all-posts/the-leavenworth-diary-double-agent-anthropologist-inside-the-human-terrain-system/
In sum, I think if there is such a thing as Free Will, then we should
acknowledge, perhaps in some legal code, that the USA has less
Free Will than many "states" (a term in need of further definition)
and/or the prison system is being recast more on the model of the
NavAm Reservations, a network of quasi-sovereignties that operate
by different laws.
In the case of the prison-industrial complex / campus, characterized
by forced labor camps (aka concentration camps), stop-loss holding
queues, other hallmarks of forced conscription (e.g. mandatory ROTC
is in violation of various UN resolutions against military molestation of
youth, human trafficking etc.), it's pretty clear it should have it's own
(relatively low) number.
Just as Bhutan has gone with Gross Happiness Index over
Gross Domestic Product (as the latter inanely factors WMDs per
capita under the same heading as ice cream, namely as
"product"), so should the Free Will Index be a published number,
that might go up and down.
The USA's FWI ticked up when, shortly after the abolition of slavery
(Lincoln's move to break the back of the insurgents), the rights of
women were partially and unequally enacted (or restored, from
some perspectives). More Free Will came into the picture then.
However, more recently, the FWI has been plummeting, owing to
the growth industry of forced labor camps (in direct violation of the
13th Amendment), as dramatized by the Georgia State uprising
(part of the unfolding history of the gulag, an alien network of
concentration camps and other extra-legal institutions, sprawling
across our land).
On the other hand, if Free Will is known to not exist, then hey,
lets just get on with it, like what choice do we have?
Kirby
Abbreviations:
NARMIC
AFSC
WMD
FWI
USA
On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> May I ask what are the stakes of this discussion? Not so much the
> discussion of
> what the etymology of "free will" might be, but of the need to take a
> position
> on "free will" generally. What are the stakes of such a thing? It seems to
> me
> that this is the same issue for philosophy as it is science. Imagine a
> study
> that proclaimed: "there is no 'free will.'" Or one that said: "we've
> proved
> that 'free will' exists." What on earth would one even do with such a
> thing?
>
> It seems that if I grant or deny any of these claims, nothing actually
> changes
> in the world except the arrangement of my lexicon. I have no choice but to
> behave as I do no matter how the language game about it changes. It's like
> those discussions about whether consciousness is "physical" or whether the
> world
>
> exists independent of my mind. All of these things essentially amount to a
> kind
> of ideology or theology about something for which how I go about it has
> only
> become decorated by the faiths I prefer.
>
> Or if, in fact, the things I believe about it are "real things," all it
> seems to
>
> change is the way I have to language about it. It doesn't seem to change
> anything "on the ground," so to speak. No matter what, I still must
> participate
> the way I must in the form of life.
>
> And so I am just not clear on what the stakes of any discussion about "free
> will" could ever be.
>
> (P.S. Sorry if I have missed the thrust of the discussion. I confess not to
> have
>
> read every mail. Also, please note that I have forwarded this to Wittrs.
> Don't
> hit "reply all" if you don't want the mail to go there. If there is a
> policy
> against a cross-post, please let me know.)
>
>
> Regards and thanks.
>
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> Assistant Professor
> Wright State University
> Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
> SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
> Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs
>
>
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