[lit-ideas] Re: Malevolence (Was: The Evil That We Do)
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2011 14:11:42 +0100 (BST)
There is another, non-definitional, way to look at this - and which says we
have here a problem of substantive metaphysics [and not a merely verbal
problem].
Start with two terms (1) a 'will' (and surrogates/synonyms like 'intention',
'willing', 'volition','conscious aim' etc.); (2) movement (and
surrogates/synonymslike 'bodily movement', movement of muscle etc.)
The so-called 'philosophy of action' (while perhaps a pleasant way to while
away an afternoon) supposedly examines the relation between these: a mere
movement of my facial muscles is not my action if the movement is caused not by
my 'will' but by some stranger poking me with some device carrying an
electrical charge, nor is it my action if I have some kind of involuntary
spasm. In the normal order of things, for me to act my 'will' must cause the
movement, and to do this we might assume that the 'will' must precede the
movement it causes. Conversely, experiments where the subject reports having
'willed' a certain movement, but we know that the cause [say, an electrical
stimulus] preceded their 'willing', are cases where we may interpret the
subject as being duped or deceived as to the causal efficacy of their 'willing'.
It seems clear to me that what is of interest here is not defining action as
consisting in a movement caused by some act of 'willing' but in understanding
the relation between these volitional states and dispositions and bodily
movements - in other words, what we have here is a version of the mind-body
problem and how mental and physical processes relate or interact. This raises
substantive and not merely verbal problems - which, insofar as the questions
cannot be decided by observation, are metaphysical problems.
Seen this way, the formulation of the 'philosophy of action' in terms of some
putative, simple 'will' and some simple 'movement' is arguably far too
simplistic: the 'will' in this sense is something of a will-o'-the-wisp. We
should understand what we take to be an act of 'willing' to be constituted by a
complex 'mental state' or disposition, and its perhaps complex relation to
certain physical processes [in the brain for example]. Further, we need not
assume a 'willing' is even fully or mostly or even partly a conscious mental
state: we might leave open whether unconscious mental states cause us to move
and behave in ways that might constitute 'action' - for example, the action of
breathing - 'actions' whose regulation by unconscious mental processes may be
altered if we attend to them consciously, for example by deciding to breathe
more deeply or slowly. And we may differentiate breathing, insofar as this can
be brought under conscious control, from
other bodily movements [like the growth of cells or digestion] that cannot.
The mind-body problem is of course multi-faceted and whatever answers we canvas
all seem problematic in different ways: but this general problem is the right
context in which to try to understand what is involved in human action, what
makes 'action' something voluntary rather than involuntary. To approach the
problem in the simplistic, tendentious and superficial terms of 'will +
movement = action' is unlikely to produce worthwhile philosophical
understanding, nor is some attempt to make analytical hay here with these terms
and their relations by some specious, 'conceptual' argument.
Donal
Negating the anti-Popperian point
Europe
________________________________
From: "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, 6 October 2011, 16:43
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Malevolence (Was: The Evil That We Do)
In a message dated 10/6/2011 11:17:53 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Doesn't will (thought) precede action? What am I missing here?
Julie Krueger
I hope others will help me with Julie's conundrum and jump in with help.
I guess I was trying to be polemic, and challenge Helm's point, which I
think was, that
thought----action
proves indeed a dichotomy. If Julie is right that will precedes action, the
point can be made anti-Popperian, as McEvoy may agree:
I.e.
if we take 'action' to be DEFINED in terms of 'willed' manifestation (i.e.
a manifestation of the will), then indeed,
'thought (will)' precedes action
is tautological.
The point about precedence is subtle. Are we talking 'chronological'.
I wanted to do A.
I did A.
---- When I am doing A, am I not WILLING to be DOING A?
---- The functionalist point is to argue that all the evidence that we have
for an agent DOING action A is our evidence that that agent indeed wills
to do A. But upon WHAT BASE do we judge that an agent WILLS to do an action,
if it's not other than A's actually DOING it?
("He willed to do it, but never did it").
----- R. Paul may argue that when it comes to HIS willings and doings, it's
all subjective, rather than functionalist. I.e. a willing may be said to
be a first-order, first-person phenomenon. Thus, R. Paul may claim that he
WILLS to do A, while he does not manifest (to anybody else, including
himself, or his self) about this willing. This would be anathema for the
functionalists and behaviourists. It would be part of Wundt's project that
Watson
meant to refute. And so on.
------ The point about the will in ethics (deontology, teleology) and what
defines an 'ill will' are thus central concerns that perhaps Helm was
presupposing in his first recent post on the book he was reading.
If action and will (or thought) ARE independent (as perhaps they are not)
then the topic of ethics, unlike the Greeks desired, is not the study of the
ethos or the social custom (moralia) but the Kantian idea of a free will,
which can be good, or bad (i.e. evil -- the Greeks failed to distinguish
these rather otiose lexemes).
Cheers,
J. L.
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