[Wittrs] Re: "free will" versus "willing to be free"
- From: kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:40:23 -0700
--- In WittrsAMR@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <wittrsamr@> wrote:
> >
> > From: Kirby Urner <kurner@>
> > Date: Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 1:32 AM
> > Subject: Re: wittgenstein stuff
> > To: kirby urner <kirby.urner@>
> >
> >
> > .... ongoing discussions with SWM and others re freedom of the will.
> <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....
> >
>
> This isn't in dispute though.
>
> > "Am I free?"
> >
>
> Precisely and there we have to investigate the various ways we use a word
> like "free" -- and recognize that merely because we apply the same word in
> different cases doesn't mean that we have in mind the same thing. That
> "freedom" and "free-will" both contain "free" doesn't mean that we are
> talking about the same sense of free in both cases. Yet we are often led
> astray by the recurrence of such a term and may think that its recurrence is
> evidence of some underlying single notion. THAT is what Wittgenstein taught
> us to attend to -- and avoid.
>
I guess the gist of it here is you're seeing some rigid compartmental
structure walling off this meaning of "free" from that meaning of
"free" whereas I see more of a swirl, and think it's more than just
happenstance that language, a glue, happens to have this topology.
It's no accident that lawyers (rule followers, ley men) file and
follow (execute) the wills of the deceased. They're best in a
position to know ("gnosticism") and are closer to that ancestral
"center of authority" where the judges confer and render their
opinions (which seem to count for more, if you're 33rd degree or
whatever religion -- the idea of a "weighty Friend" (a Friend with
gravitas)).
Indeed, historically and etymologically, the "free will" debate has
rarely been engaged in outside a discussion of "God's will" in
contrast, at least not since St. Augustine. In any hierarchy, you
have this sense of concentric circles with authority concentrated
towards its center. Yes, I'm painting with broad brush strokes, but
my point is those with the most authority have often claimed their
"will" is not theirs alone, but that of some overarching spirit
(monarchs are known for giving voice to this view).
Even individualized egos with their independent degrees of freedom
have been known to talk about doing the will of God in a business
meeting setting, with something like consensus ("unity") an abiding
goal (what one steers for). That's what our recent AFSC corporation
meeting was like, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
> > "Free Will? Not if You're Him".
> > (c) Americans for the Advancement of Philosophy
> > 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.
> >
>
> That seems pretty strange to me. I am familiar with your advertising meme (as
> with your propagandizing meme) from our past discussions. As you may recall,
> I think that's mistaken. Not, that is, that one cannot approach philosophy in
> a way that applies that analogy but in the sense that one cannot simply
> replace philosophy with either propaganda or advertisements.
>
I like that this seems pretty strange to you, as in alien, weird.
Make Portland Weirder is one of our bumper stickers, an advance on
Keep Portland Weird (Austin TX has a similar campaign).
Wieden+Kennedy is here, and we once had a Museum of Advertising (maybe
just a website nowadays?).
You should maybe think of me as a "mad man" (like from Madison Avenue,
HQS of Mad Magazine) crafting messages for TV. I have Wittgenstein
open on my desk, as here's a tool box from doing detective work,
investigating a campaign to see what makes it tick. "Wow, those guys
were pretty good at PR" I think, remembering what Artificial
Intelligence was in vogue (less so nowadays, though perhaps finding a
new niche in "smart house" and "smart grid" design).
So *of course* I have this twisted view of philosophy, given my
profession. I'm some kind of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) for this
philosophy business involving coffee shops and charitable giving by
games of gambling and skill. Our CIO actually works in a NavAm casino
and we plan to practice our philosophy on "Indian" reservations. Girl
scout math and all that -- picture disaster relief training for triage
medics and para-medics. A lot of the teachers are tribal members
(AFSC / Friends and native tribes go way back).
>
> > 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
> >
>
> I count great philosophers a bit differently. I think the concept has nothing
> (or at least very little) to do with reaching the masses and almost
> everything to do with producing new and powerful ways of understanding
> things, new insights. On that score I think Wittgenstein qualifies as one of
> the great ones. Bertrand Russell? Not so much.
>
Yeah, in our WSC (Wittgenstein Study Circle), Frege was getting the
most credit for advancing the logic, which I see as mostly
prototypical of what would come next: the computer languages.
That's where all the boolean logic and propositional operators, such
as found in the Tractatus, finally found their real home. In the rear
view mirror, it's easy to see the lineage, through Turing, Babbage,
Ada, Godel, Escher, Bach, Martin Gardner... not that we call all of
these people philosophers, just that there's an arc, a storyline, and
philosophers do occur along it.
Richard Stallman helped develop gcc and emacs, premier tools in
machine executable logic, the precise workaday stuff that working
coders use for real. Without gcc, there'd have been no Linux and no
explosion in computer literacy in places like South Africa.
University philosophers have tended to cut themselves off from
computer science, much to their disadvantage going forward.
Anyway I agree with Walter Kaufmann that a "university philosopher" is
mostly an oxymoron anyway, until we get to the Global University idea
(a synonym for Spaceship Earth), at which point we get philosophers in
all walks of life (as it should be).
The quaint / archaic usage of "Doctor of Philosophy" for the PhD
degree has continued to legitimate a lot of westernized "salary men",
a kind of suited wage slave of an unfree sort, a kind of drone.
Given worlds in collision (many cultures, diversity), we're
encountering other ranking systems (other hierarchies) which run
counter to the western degree system.
This is not really a new development of course, as you've always have
these bossy people in military uniform insisting on their rights to
recruit from the same student body.
That's kind of what I was talking about a few posts back, where this
PhD anthropologist was getting $100K a year to be lipstick on a pig,
and he quit for philosophical (ethical) reasons.
I posted a link to his blog and I think mentioned the panel
discussion, and the fact that anthropologists, more than academic
philosophers, were showing some backbone. STEM + Anthropology = STEAM
(as in full steam ahead!).
I bring up anthropology advisedly. In our latest meeting of the Study
Circle, we talked about Nietzsche opening the space for psychoanalysis
by allowing for a genealogy of morals that helped one "second guess"
(or otherwise "counter") some of the theological hierarchies of the
day. Psychoanalysis blended with Marxism in some circles, in that
both were encouraging "reading between the lines" to find "secret"
power relations, class relations.
More generally, Wittgenstein's philosophy has a strongly
anthropological flavor in that we're encouraged to put distance
between ourselves and our own language games, that we might
investigate them clearly. This new kind of self-awareness is
characteristic of the linguistic turn. Some conflate that with
postmodernism and Derrida but I'm more of the school that we went
towards transcendentalism (Wittgenstein, Norman O. Brown, Bucky
Fuller, Richard Stallman, Werner Erhard... (the latter traces his
lineage to Heidegger in some ways)).
Alex is amazed how little material we have regarding LW's views
regarding Hitler, Marxism or any number of ideologies sweeping the
globe during his lifetime. William Bartley III seemed to hint at
having more sources than the usual Wittgenstein scholar, when making
some allegations about his social life in Vienna. Is there still a
corpus of papers we don't know about?
http://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-William-Warren-III-Bartley/dp/B000MBTZ5S/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302804607&sr=1-5
> > Yeah, nowhere. So let's rescue "Free Will" from the larvae
> > (the nerds) and restore it to adult use.
> >
>
> It's a different concept from "freedom" and if we want to say "free-will" is
> a false idea or a misleading one or a nonsensical one, we cannot do it by
> collapsing it into a term that it isn't.
>
I'm saying it's a nonsensical one, so lets stop beating on that very
dead horse and rescue "free will" from it's existence as a mere
carcass, crawling with flies and maggots.
Lets restore some healthy level of respect for philosophy and stop
allowing it to be run into the ground by people who don't know enough
computer science (i.e. have little grasp of contemporary logic).
> I happen to agree with Sean's assessment. It seems to me that questions about
> "free-will" are finally pseudo questions.
>
<< snip >>
>
> Might be useful as long as the distinction between free societies, free beer
> and free will can be maintained. If it fails to keep these notions adequately
> separate, then confusion will push out whatever clarity is to be hoped for.
>
If "free will" is already down the drain, then I think it's ready for
recycling. Let's have it mean something again! <-- more an
exhortation than a command in battle
> Not my position, of course. But here the question of "free" slides into the
> moral/ethical sphere, an area I no longer think philosophy can contribute
> much to.
>
This is where we differ I think. The medical profession is paying MDs
to be "medical ethicists" these days, which I think is a good thing
(my friend Deb is one of these).
Philosophy, if its to be a profession, will need to concern itself
with ethics, I think, or else lets just let them all go, hand 'em a
shopping cart and say "go find your way" (these pensions are
expensive). Would that be ethical? No, of course not. Many
philosophers would be helpless if we didn't feed them and pay their
electric bills. They're not in any shape to help with disaster relief
and probably won't be teaching girl scout math any time soon. They
don't even know computer languages, yet pose as "logicians" (chuckle).
> So you still haven't given up your decision to mix "free will" with "freedom"
> after all this?
>
After all what?
I'm helping rescue philosophy from an intellectually squalid, even
sordid chapter. Yay me.
Students will be getting a better education, as many will spend more
time reading Stallman than Quine, thereby getting a stronger grasp on
logic.
> > Sometimes you need poster art, TV commercials, a look and
> > feel, in order to develop the position you wish to defend.
>
> Yes, your propaganda meme again. I agree that it is a factor in human
> discourse and, therefore, in philosophical discourse, too. But I don't agree
> that it has a legitimate role to play in philosophical discourse. Just being
> a factor doesn't mean it belongs in the mix.
>
Remember when, in the history of philosophy, the introduce the
Skeptics, the Stoics, the Hedonists... etc?
It'd be fun to distill each to a 5 minute recruiting commercial, a
synopsis for that school.
I'd say philosophies that don't know how to advertise, to participate
in the marketplace of ideas, are hardly worthy of the name
"philosophy".
Is Zen a philosophy or a religion by the way?
Can a philosophy have a business as a part of its self expression?
I'd think opportunities to walk one's talk, to show what one means,
would be integral, so yes, of course.
> > 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).
> >
>
> I don't see this connection at all. I suppose it's a function of your
> particular political thinking but it doesn't seem to be an issue to me.
>
I see young idealists volunteering to serve their country and being
shipped away from their loved ones to murder strangers.
If the big one hits, mom and dad will be washed away or will starve
while junior is stuck holding a gun in some desert, a fool of the
Unfree State.
> > I'm into bypassing the "court of appeals" and continuing with maneuvers,
> > consolidating, tipping scales, tilting odds in our favor.
>
>
> Sounds like a recipe for endless argument to me! How can a society hope to
> get anything done in that kind of environment?
>
Seems to me it's the environment we're in.
>
> No one is required to enter into any discussion that doesn't interest them as
> far as I can tell.
>
Like in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', if you don't participate in
the discussion, and take your meds, you might get points off in the
hierarchy.
Many discussions (meetings) have this coercive flavor. The drones
want to interrogate, to be in charge, to at least be consulted.
> You're probably right on that. I tend to agree that "free-will" is something
> of meaningless notion. The only thing that matters is that it looks to us
> like we are capable of acting autonomously according to our own dictates
> (within certain recognizable parameters). So why should it matter whether at
> some superduper theoretical level the universe is all predictable (or not)
> down to the itty-bittiest little particle or wave fluctuation? What's that to
> us? Unless one can discover the causal laws that may exist at that level and
> use them to unerringly predict occurrences on the level of human choice, then
> whether it's all just a matter of incredible complexity or indeterminateness
> hardly matters. And there seems to be no reason to ever expect such
> discoveries or predictions, short of achieving God like status!
>
> He was a good rhetoritician and Roman intellectual but he was a second rate
> philosopher at best.
>
Like Marcus Aurelius?
> I don't view philosophy as a game of tricks ("cheap and dirty" or otherwise).
> Therefore a move that intentionally conflates meanings to redirect a
> discussion to one's preferred path or conclusion strikes me as stepping
> outside the bounds of philosophical rectitude. If you meant to do that, I
> would have to say we are on very different wavelengths. If you did it without
> intending to redirect (because, say, you didn't notice the conflation) then I
> should think that calling it to your attention should be enough.
>
I think it includes rhetoric. Watching my daughter climb the ranks in
debating (Lincoln Douglas style) to become the best high school
debater in Oregon (one of two or three) has been instructive. She's
always consulting the philosophers. She appreciates how they control
the argument (the narrative).
>
> I think we see philosophy somewhat differently -- as we always have, even
> back on the Wittgenstein-dialognet list.
>
Yes. I enjoy how these threads help us chisel away at our own busts
as it were, sharpening the features.
Kirby
> SWM
>
Other related posts:
