Steve Taylor says of determinism: “I refute it thus!”
https://philosophynow.org/issues/112/Reclaiming_Freedom
Reclaiming Freedom
Re: Reclaiming Freedom
“What is the root of these assaults on our autonomy? Why do intellectuals and scientists feel such a strong impulse to show us that we are powerless, controlled by forces beyond our own control?” –From Steve Taylor’s Reclaiming Freedom
From the perspective of one who has gotten as deep into continental philosophy as I have (and I mean it: damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway! (I would argue that it is primarily a reaction to Capitalism and the Free Will alibi of FreeMarketFundamentalism as expressed through libertarianism in its political/social form.
A lot of it comes out of the materialist approaches of the likes of Deleuze and Foucault, as well as the American Pragmatism of Rorty: that which has the agenda of opening up the discourse by undermining the old platonic hierarchies based on transcendent principles. The idea is, as Deleuze and Guattarri point out, to engage in a communal creative act based on ourselves as nodal points in a vast system of exchanged energies.
In that sense, we are perfectly free to take it in a conditional way. All we have to do is hypothetically accept the materialist perspective for the sake of a kind of democratic creative discourse that works outside of the perimeters of the Capitalist language game, that defined by the hardcore materialist’s emphasis on a language game defined by the criterion of the scientific method.
That said, I want to return to a point made by Boyd:
“The first question to be answered is: Who or what is running the show? In Part 1 I will attempt to explain human decision-making without the need for a hidden homunculus. Part 2 will then go on to look at how the brain can operate within this environment to generate the impression of an individual being driven by a highly conscious self.”
I ran into a similar problem with Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. He, like Boyd, offered an alternative explanation to the Cartesian Theater with the multiple drafts theory. And like Boyd’s, it did provide a reasonable alternative to the homunculus. But the problem with this can be seen in Dennett’s failure to dismiss the Cartesian Theater as much as just make the actors the spectators as well.
They, in their analytic zeal, assume, because one of their kind managed to hit a nerve with it, that the possibility of Free Will is somehow dependent on the homunculus dynamic, that their dismissal of it is somehow the final word on the subject. But why would we need it when all we really need is the perceiving thing projecting out of the body participating in the environment it is engaging with and adapting to? Why would the actors working in the Cartesian Theater be any less valid perceiving things than an audience?
From the perspective of one who has gotten as deep into continental philosophy as I have (and I mean it: damn the French and their weird obscure philosophies anyway! (I would argue that it is primarily a reaction to Capitalism and the Free Will alibi of FreeMarketFundamentalism as expressed through libertarianism in its political/social form.
A lot of it comes out of the materialist approaches of the likes of Deleuze and Foucault, as well as the American Pragmatism of Rorty: that which has the agenda of opening up the discourse by undermining the old platonic hierarchies based on transcendent principles. The idea is, as Deleuze and Guattarri point out, to engage in a communal creative act based on ourselves as nodal points in a vast system of exchanged energies.
In that sense, we are perfectly free to take it in a conditional way. All we have to do is hypothetically accept the materialist perspective for the sake of a kind of democratic creative discourse that works outside of the perimeters of the Capitalist language game, that defined by the hardcore materialist’s emphasis on a language game defined by the criterion of the scientific method.
That said, I want to return to a point made by Boyd:
“The first question to be answered is: Who or what is running the show? In Part 1 I will attempt to explain human decision-making without the need for a hidden homunculus. Part 2 will then go on to look at how the brain can operate within this environment to generate the impression of an individual being driven by a highly conscious self.”
I ran into a similar problem with Dennett’s Consciousness Explained. He, like Boyd, offered an alternative explanation to the Cartesian Theater with the multiple drafts theory. And like Boyd’s, it did provide a reasonable alternative to the homunculus. But the problem with this can be seen in Dennett’s failure to dismiss the Cartesian Theater as much as just make the actors the spectators as well.
They, in their analytic zeal, assume, because one of their kind managed to hit a nerve with it, that the possibility of Free Will is somehow dependent on the homunculus dynamic, that their dismissal of it is somehow the final word on the subject. But why would we need it when all we really need is the perceiving thing projecting out of the body participating in the environment it is engaging with and adapting to? Why would the actors working in the Cartesian Theater be any less valid perceiving things than an audience?
Re: Reclaiming Freedom
Dear editor: On the issue of Free Will covered in issue 112, I tend to stand with Steve Taylor and his article Reclaiming Freedom (with a few revisions) in that, while a lot of the data provided by neuroscience is compelling, I have a hard time accepting that what I experience daily as consciousness and choice is little more than the determined grunts and silences in the meat of the brain. Plus that, I too often find the dismissals of hardcore materialists a little obtuse and arrogant given that they’re moving from individual observations concerning correlations between mental states and brain activity (which they can easily demonstrate) to general assertions about the nature of consciousness and the existence of Free Will (which they can’t demonstrate directly). It’s a little like saying: 1+1=2; Free Will and consciousness are illusions created by the determined activities of the brain. But even here, we have to ask: illusions to what? The idea, of course, is that we are to be so impressed by the fact that they got the 1+1 part right, we should immediately accept the un-demonstrated assertions about Free Will and consciousness simply because it all sounds more scientific. Take, for instance, Graham W. Boyd’s, in The Brain’s Risk/Reward System Makes Our Choices, Not Us, citing of Libet’s experiment which only establishes that we tend to work our way to decisions (not produce them in a vacuum) and that there are subconscious processes at work in them.
That said, I find myself a little surprised at Chaotics not being applied to the topic in not just this issue, but the general discourse as well. I would start by pointing out that, given the compelling data from neuroscience, we might serve our purposes better by talking about a participating self or, even better, Participation as that leaves open the issue of the self’s relation to it. Then, in the context of evolution, I would argue that if there is a possibility for Participation, it would lie in the non-linear feedback loop between the body, its brain, and the environment it is working to negotiate. In this context (that of evolution and chaotics), we can now see that if there is a possibility for Participation, it lies in that subtle point at which the determined transitions into the random and the random transitions into the determined.
That said, I find myself a little surprised at Chaotics not being applied to the topic in not just this issue, but the general discourse as well. I would start by pointing out that, given the compelling data from neuroscience, we might serve our purposes better by talking about a participating self or, even better, Participation as that leaves open the issue of the self’s relation to it. Then, in the context of evolution, I would argue that if there is a possibility for Participation, it would lie in the non-linear feedback loop between the body, its brain, and the environment it is working to negotiate. In this context (that of evolution and chaotics), we can now see that if there is a possibility for Participation, it lies in that subtle point at which the determined transitions into the random and the random transitions into the determined.