[Wittrs] "free will" versus "willing to be free"
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 01:37:24 -0700
From: Kirby Urner <kurner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 1:32 AM
Subject: Re: wittgenstein stuff
To: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
.... ongoing discussions with SWM and others re freedom of the will.
Tags: WSC / media campaigns, Richard Stallman, AFSC, Reed College, PSU
On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:31 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<< SNIP >>
> > I take Wittgenstein's methods to give strong encouragement to *not*
> > carving the turkey so carefully, but deliberately reconnecting these
> > concepts ("freedom" "will" "liberty") to their roots in real life.
> >
>
> If we don't carve carefully, we end up with a sloppy plate come Thanksgiving.
>
'Philosophical Investigations' is full of "back to rough ground" exhibits,
where he'll take a philosophical conundrum, such as "other minds",
and transport us to some actual vista. Like Scrooge with some
ghost of Xmas past, present or future, LW grabs his philosopher by
the arm and escorts him to a Real World where people still use
Ordinary Language....
"Am I free?"
That's a real question with real meaning, and thoughts of prison, chains,
freedoms from search and seizure, all have a role. We could really
use some philosophy, nay even some wisdom, in this consequential
domain. People suffer a lot of frustration when their wills are ignored.
Perhaps they're just spoiled brats with an overblown sense of
entitlement? That's something to investigate -- at least now we're
getting somewhere.
"Do I have Free Will?"
That tends to be an insipid not-question entertained by nerds with
too much free time on their hands, thinkers of no consequence
who had enough money and privilege to stay out of harm's way
in some cloistered environment (Wittgenstein very purposely gave
up this kind of shielding for himself, as a matter of personal
integrity).
I think this latter question is more for immature, larval stage thinkers
to bat about, till the cows come home and then some. It's a sport,
it's fun, and it's of little consequence. I'll engage myself, when
taking a break from more serious philosophy. It's like a videogame,
an excuse to talk about quantum stuff, maybe throw in a little
dynamical systems (butterfly effects, indeterminisms).
> > In the practical world, the juries care very much about intention, and
> > if she drugged him first, well that matters, as some may empathize
> > with that sense of having "no volition" when "brainwashed" or, worse,
> > put under tortuous conditions (e.g. with the lives of loved ones
> > threatened -- or simply their jobs (livelihoods)).
> >
>
> Questions of coercion, which are relevant in cases before the law or where
> moral
> judgment is applied, do not abrogate questions of causality and supposed
> determinism. As long as we have a choice, to be coerced or to resist
> coerscion,
They don't abrogate these questions, but they may eclipse them when
it comes to dealing with substantive philosophical problems. Two
million people in prisons in North America is a way deeper problem
than some silly ethnicity's concerns about "free will" in some
abstract / esoteric Ivory Tower debate no one else much cares about.
I'd like a poster campaign showing a 13 year old boy behind bars,
tried in Georgia State as an adult (name: Little B), with the caption:
"Free Will? Not if You're Him". (c) Americans for the Advancement
of Philosophy (sounds like astroturf -- the domain names appear
free).
Then we might have some other posters, like these perhaps:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5193527381/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5194125962/in/photostream/
Remember, I'm the guy who applies Wittgenstein's PI to
advertising. I never really appreciated what 'Pepsi' could
mean until I plumbed the depths of the PI.
Richard Stallman was drinking one (a Pepsi), very overtly,
in his appearance at the tribal center the other day. RS
is one of our greatest living philosophers, up there with
Bertie Russell and Frege, in terms of getting symbolic
logic out there to the masses (GNU / LISP / C / C++ etc.)
Free software has proved a real game changer.
http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2011/04/richard-stallman-at-psu.html
> then free will is implied. The question of whether free will exists at all or
> is
> real goes beyond such issues however (or perhaps, as Sean suggests,
> really goes nowhere at all).
Yeah, nowhere. So let's rescue "Free Will" from the larvae
(the nerds) and restore it to adult use.
We want to fight for real freedom, not on-paper freedom, and we
can't afford to let our language get dumbed down by these
Ivory Towerites of such limited tunnel vision and ability, just
because they call themselves "philosophers". Sure, let them
prattle, but don't lets surrender the word "philosophy" to
them exclusively. We have ethics to think about and issues
of our own.
>
> > What means "Free Will" when the airplane monitor screens the
> > list of "not welcome countries" (rough translation) and they say it's
> > OK to sniff you with dogs, look at you through a clothes-penetrating
> > spy glass?
> >
>
> Coercion vs. free will again. Being free to choose doesn't mean having all
> possible choices we can imagine at our disposal. It only means being able to
> make the best choice (or what seems to us to be the best) given the options
> before us.
>
Or perhaps it's a random choice or we have no time to ponder what's
best, in light of other more pressing matters.
It's complicated, this game of life. Lots of constraints, as you've said,
way more than just death and taxes.
But to what degree are we constrained artificially, by bogus expectations
for example?
What if there's a special test of citizenship, or a poll tax or... so many
ways to inhibit freedoms.
One could build an entire philosophy studying the design patterns, how
it's done. Wouldn't that be useful?
This *could* be a valid philosophical concern could it not? Even if it
uses "free" and "will" in a somewhat different way, divorced from tired
debates between so-called "determinists" and their droopy foes?
> > You never signed anything explicitly surrendering your freedoms, yet
> > this, you are told, is the price of admission. How is it that these costs
> > were affixed, and by whom?
> >
>
> Does it matter? One can always choose not to seek admission.
>
Lets say it matters.
>
> > You have a USA passport. Doesn't that count for something, even
> > in your "own" (?) country.
> >
>
> As with everything else, the world and all that's in it are full of
> constraints.
>
The devil is in the details.
> > The phrase "the case would have to be made" suggests some higher court
> > of appeal,
>
>
> Any discussion, such as this one, implies a court of appeal, i.e., the
> opinions
> of the interlocutors, the audience, etc. Nothing "higher" than these are
> needed.
>
Is "playing chess" a discussion? It's certainly an interaction.
Sometimes it's not about debate, it's about winning by secret ballot
and appointing your own people to key positions. Or one company
takes over another and makes changes in management. Countless
scenarios. These things happen in philosophy too, not just in
the sciences.
Like in Thomas Kuhn's book, Structure of Scientific Revolutions,
it's not always that the old school and the new school retreat to
some Camp David and bicker, hammer out an agreement.
No, it's more that the two schools talk past one another, fail
to have meaningful conversation, because the world views
are too different. Yet a new paradigm emerges. Even scholars
who detest "dialectical materialism" have a lot of space for
Kuhn, as it's hard to deny: revolutions *do* occur, even in the
"settled disciplines". So lets investigate the mechanisms.
As a member of the AFSC corporation, my bringing up Little B,
might be construed as a wave to Elaine Brown (Black Panther,
Ret.), recent speaker here at Reed College, and to others in
my study circle. I'm continuing to mount my media campaign
and these are more "orders in battle" (or signals intelligence).
That's "language at work" for ya (AFSC, for those who don't
know, is the Machiavellian arm of the Quakers, aka Friends).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5508341543/in/photostream
>
> > when the premise is the likely abrogation of the social contract
> > and the growth of a core Unfree State in the heart of North America.
> >
>
> That strikes me as an ideological claim which is separate from the
> philosophical
> issue of what "free" means in its different uses.
>
Compartmentalizing the word "free" per its many meanings may
be an interesting game that helps clear the air.
Richard Stallman is always making that all-important distinction
between "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer".
The free software movement has little to do with price and everything
to do with not surrendering intellectual property rights to
non-engineers who think theirs is to own and control by dint of
pedigree or family connections. This is about workers retaining
control over the means of production, while recruiting new workers
to the field on the basis of having these new freedoms.
Sean was asking what it would mean to read in the paper that
Free Will had been proved. Indeed, it's hard to think what
it would mean, for us to have "victors" in such a narrow and
esoteric discussion.
Stallman's four freedoms, on the other hand, are pretty concrete.
When one or more has been abrogated, by an Apple or IBM, it's
easy to spot that and talk about it. He asserts his positions are
primarily ethical, not technical in nature. He knows he's a
philosopher and enjoys being more relevant than Quine and the
grand scheme of things.
That got me thinking though: Free Will could be conceived more
as a relative term and indeed that's where the concept of "will"
got its legs. It's intimately and irreducibly tied up with concepts
of volition, self-determination, acting with purpose, acting with
intent, acting according to a plan, pre-meditation, under-the-influence,
coerced-by, commanded to, and so on.
That got me thinking of a Free Will Index that could be graphed
by nation or group or company. Perhaps we could have a survey
or set of surveys asking, in many different ways: how free is
your will?
You may remember that Kierkegaard said that to will freely
was to will the good, as otherwise one suffers from a divided
will and suffers ambivalence, perhaps even self loathing.
A strong will was an undivided will and only "the good" could
be willed without reservation. So we could perhaps measure
how divided a nation appears against itself as a measure of
its lack of freedom. Obviously, a high ratio of incarcerated,
perhaps in part because of policies towards the "undocumented",
would be empirically indicative of an Unfree State.
Now that I've given this back story, I'm seeing how "Free Will"
*could* mean something in newspaper terms (there'd be
this index, akin to Bhutan's happiness index). So in a way
I'm simply responding the Sean's challenge: yes, there's
Free Will, and no, there's not as much of it in the USA these
days, given USans live in war time, and everyone knows that
during war time, patriots must curtail their freedoms and bite
the bullet, postponing liposuction and cosmetic surgery
until Terror is beaten back.
>
> > Instead of making some case, one might instead form fringe political
> > party that sounds the SOS,
>
> Every party or faction thinks it is sounding the alarm as it were. Some may be
> right. Others wrong. Just being such a group, however, does not imply
> rightness
> and so forming one is not an answer to the question of what is correct and
> what
> isn't.
>
Agreed. I'm just saying that philosophical movements, like
movements in music, art, religion, aren't always about "discussing".
Sometimes you need poster art, TV commercials, a look and
feel, in order to develop the position you wish to defend. I'm
not closing the door on discussion, but when it comes to
getting ahead with one's philosophy, sometimes the thing to
do is to finish that play and/or music album and/or documentary.
Like, with all these resources and volunteers flooding in (new
recruits) who has the time to just sit around and talk turkey?
I remember Wittgenstein saying the freedom his philosophy
offers is the freedom to just walk away from philosophy (which
in turn leaves everything as it is). That's because his philosophy
is about seeing the machinery clearly, and you take that with
you, even when you stop investigating this or that piece of it.
>
> > asks national guard units to return from
> > overseas pronto and start protecting Americans (yes, we're all friends).
> >
>
> Protecting Americans from what? From their government? Themselves? The
> factions
> or parties that don't think as we do?
>
Well, like from Katrina or other natural disasters. If you watch
Guard commercials in theaters (where they're recruiting), you'll
see lots of heroics against what look to be floods, storms,
earthquakes. Since the earthquake in Japan, people think a
lot about disasters and disaster preparedness. Having the
Guard overseas under NATO is hardly what the States
envisioned. It's like the USA has been conquered and
commandeered by some Unfree State, some prison-industrial
complex (a psychological complex, the focus of many a
Jungian these days).
It's clear to Oregonians, in the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami,
that we're *not* prepared. Disaster relief is something of a
niche industry around here (Mercy Corps, Northwest Medical
Teams etc.) and yet budget for training and equipment, planning,
has taken a distant back seat to prisons and expensive killing
fields in Arabia (more of a sport than a war, like a videogame,
in the case of Afghanistan -- why they call it "the great game"
I guess).
> > Another part of the campaign platform: a free open source suite of
> > voting machines (including back office counters) in every public high
> > school, for civics class dissection and examination, not to mention
> > frequent use (kids like to get polled).
> >
>
> Fascinating. Imagine the mess if everyone (and every faction) could meddle
> with
> the voting machines! And you thought we had trouble now!
>
Having the source code transparent doesn't mean everyone messing
with the moving parts right when a vote is happening.
One saves the data from the election run (poll, survey), along with
a snapshot of the version of the code. Future scholars can basically
recreate the election in quite a bit of detail.
Including the voting machine code in the postmortem archive is not
possible today, though under FOIA I'm pretty sure the USG is going
to release whatever voting software it may have, just as it did through
the VA when it came to Vista (M-language medical records stuff,
competes with OpenEMR etc.).
Having attended GOSCON recently (government + open source
conference), it seems pretty clear that electronic voting, if it exists,
will soon be open source and transparent (even if ballots are cast
in secret). That's how it's moving in other advanced countries, and
the USA can't afford to continue being seen as the laughing stock
dunce-cap-wearer in the corner, when it comes to "doing democracy" .
> > So yes, the case would have to be made, but before what court of
> > appeal? Obviously the good people of Cyberspace will be invited to
> > attend.
> >
>
> I suspect you imagine a different "court of appeal" here than I do. And also,
> perhaps, a different case to be made. You seem to be arguing for a particular
> ideological position while I am only addressing the question of whether it's
> wise or effective to mix different terms containing the word "free" together
> on
> the grounds that they have that word in common.
I'm into bypassing the "court of appeals" and continuing with maneuvers,
consolidating, tipping scales, tilting odds in our favor. I'm not required
to "drop everything" and while away the hours in idle discussion with
the Free Willers (either the yay or the nay sayers). As a Wittgensteinian,
I like to think I have a more mature outlook than that. Philosophy is not
just the toy of the country club set.
> > I think I have resolved the issue to a satisfactory conclusion: create
> > a campaign platform and various media events. I see a lot of people
> > already doing that, so I understand this might sound annoying, as
> > "telling people to do what they're already doing" is a recipe for inspiring
> > push back.
> >
> > Kirby
> >
>
> Yes, I think this bears out my point, that we are talking to different issues
> here. You are arguing for a political position, based on something or some
> things you believe about this country and its principles, whereas I am only
> raising the issue of whether questions of free will are reducible to, or
> interchangeable with, questions of freedom in a social/political context.
I'm more saying questions of free will *could* be made relevant if we
allowed meanings to shift back into gear, such that our focus became
more engaged, had some real traction ("back to rough ground!").
Do people have the *option* to segregate and compartmentalize their
thinking such that "free will" becomes an essentially meaningless
theological debate? Sure they do. We see them exercising that
option every day. Doesn't mean we need to follow their sorry example
though.
> My answer to that is they aren't and that mixing them, as you seem to be
> doing,
> amounts to a kind of confusion, even if intentionally and rationally deployed
> in
> support of a political viewpoint. That is, the support provided by this move
> is
> mainly rhetorical rather than logical, useful in the game of propagandizing
> (as
> you once put it) but not in the game of producing reasons we should logically
> choose one course of action over another. Thus, if free will is invoked as
> part
On the contrary, I think empty wheezing about "free will versus determinism"
in the abstract is what gets us nowhere in terms of choosing one course of
action over the other.
If it's mature televised policy discussions you want to hear, with people of
vast experience talking about their preferred futures, which might likely
include reducing the incarceration rate, then I'd think you'd want to join
me in rescuing "freedom of will", as a topic, from those who'd dumb
it down so severely.
Acknowledging that tools of rhetoric and propaganda are involved is
to say no more than that Cicero made some good points. Yes, here's
a way of seeing philosophy as a kind of "meme war" with the various
parties putting a spin on their memes, adding meaning. One may
either own up to that fact (the fact of spin doctoring), or pretend
those kinds of manipulations are just "cheap and dirty tricks" done
by others. I prefer to work among grownups, who don't get bent
out of shape when they see others using the same tricks and tools
they are.
> of the game of choosing, your move which aims to turn "free will" into
> "freedom", actually subverts the free will issue as it masks rather than
> clarifies the choices before us. In this way, one's actions are determined by
> factors like emotional resonance rather than reasoned selection.
>
You say it "subverts the free will issue" yet you seemed to tentatively
agree with Sean above that, in its technical esoteric sense, this
scholastic debate may well lead precisely nowhere.
If so (if it's a dead end), then I think I'm more heroic in my role,
stepping in to say: look, here's a way you could take all that
brain power and actually put it to work, versus spinning your
wheels in the philosophers' version of Donkey Island (that
place in Pinocchio, where people just bray all day).
> Is not freedom undermined as much by such appeals (whether subliminally
> delivered or otherwise cunningly injected into the discourse) as by the
> coercive
> factors you decry?
>
> SWM
The choice to waste one's time, to fiddle while Rome burns,
is certainly challenged. We should examine our respective
consciences and see how we want to be remembered. Did
we burn the midnight oil trying to prove that Man has Free
Will? Or were we up late trying to get more people like
Little B out of prison? I'd say this is not "philosophy versus
politics" debate but "philosophy versus philosophy". So
what else is new, right?
Kirby
Notes to Wittgenstein Study Group (met today):
(re Foundations of Mathematics, alternative gestalts):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5436257199/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5436299169/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/5436168749/in/photostream/
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