[Wittrs] Re: On Discussions about Free WIll
- From: "SWM" <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:38:36 -0000
Kirby, at the risk of opening another can of worms (which I probably won't
pursue anyway because it promises to be unproductive), aren't your claims below
to engage in certain dubiously justified word games (i.e, about what counts as
"will", "American", "free", and so forth), based on a claim of Wittgensteinian
authority which, in fact, has little relevance to such a move? Can Wittgenstein
be invoked to justify our politics or ideology?
There's value to applying Wittgenstein's insights to the philosophical
questions that present themselves in our discourse. But is there real value in
using such a strategy to justify making political points about who, say, is an
American when we already recognize that "American" has various meanings in
different contexts, and no one is disputing it or claiming otherwise? And
what's the value in claiming that the American prison system violates
Constitutional provisions based on such word play which, in fact, has nothing
to do with the text of the Constitution itself but, rather, with manipulating
the usage of terms like "free", "servitude" and so forth in our ordinary
discourse?
Questions of Constitutional jurisprudence hinge on what THAT document actually
says, on how it is to be read and on the context in which the Constitutional
text was written (and so historically understood). Relevant to this last, of
course, is the chain of interpretation that has come down to us by those who
have used and interpreted the Constitution over time (e.g., from the get-go the
users of the Constitution, and accompanying jurisprudence, have accepted that
the Constitutional provision that gives Congress the power to declare war is
less about formal declarations than about Congress having the power to prevent
presidents from going to war, or of lining up with presidents in support of
wars via legislative votes that are not explicit declarations of war per se).
You cannot resolve such questions by importing Wittgensteinian linguistic
analysis into the discourse.
SWM
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> 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@...> 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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