Manifesto of Free-Will
A Short Treatise
For those of you who have found ways to control and organize your lives, you probably remember what it was like before you had any driving motivations. You probably remember being told by your parents that you could be anything you wanted to be, but as a child you simply let culture tell you what you wanted to be. And this is perfectly normal, for all children must first learn what it means to have a dream before they can decide what their own dreams are to be. Most of my friends dreamed of being astronauts or rockstars, and I was no different. In fact, the mark of childhood is that psychical receptivity (and consequently also naivety) which provides children with the appropriate interpersonal context in which to learn rapidly. Children learn from each other and from adults far more than adults seem to learn from each other, and it is precisely because children are naturally more receptive. Of course, this also makes psychically children dependent upon each other, for without the benefit of a culture which provides for the child a set of possible dreams, children will simply not learn how to invent dreams on their own -- at least not as rapidly.
Nevertheless, we grew out of childhood and began to express ourselves as individuals rather than as children who follow the lead of others. We have made active decisions in all facets of our lives based on our personal motivations backed by human reason. We, as functional adults, have begun to make our own choices, for example: when to lead and when to follow, what to believe, which relationships to keep and how to keep them. These are all things that a functional adult has thought about and come to personal positions concerning. Let us say that an issue is epistemically undetermined if it is not hitherto proven by some standard method of epistemic assessment, such as direct empirical evidence, scientifically predictive accuracy, logic and mathematics. With this definition in mind, then, what it means for you to have an opinion is for you to have given an epistemically undetermined issue significant rational consideration, and for you to have come to a position concerning the issue based on this consideration. Opinions, then, are had by persons who actively cultivate critical thought.
So, you might ask, what sort of beliefs do children have if adults have opinions? Children have dogmas, for the means by which children acquire their beliefs is typically unreflective. Children who have no belief on an issue will simply accept a belief which is given to them until the belief begins to cause obvious trouble for the child. I can provide a good example of this from my own experience. When I was a child, I was raised a devout Catholic by my parents. We went to Mass every Sunday, and there were long periods in my life in during which we went every single day. I went to retreats with the church youth group and I attended to Catholic schools for about 11 years of my life (including my undergraduate career). If ever anyone was, I was raised dogmatically -- at least in regards to religion. This is evident in the fact that neither I nor any of my siblings ever came anywhere near considering being anything but Catholic during our childhood.
So how did I take to being Catholic? Well, my experience with other Catholics proves to me that the religion really works for many people. Catholics are not crazy, on the whole (though they sure can be), and the principles of Catholicism are certainly no necessary impediment to personal enlightenment. In fact, as a philosopher, I found it quite easy to defend the principles of my religion, because most of the difficult work had already been done years ago. Nevertheless, the rituals always got under my skin. And though I had heard the theological arguments about why Catholics go to Confession and why they believe in the Eucharist, it still just rubbed me the wrong way. And it still does -- more so than ever. In my most irreverant moments during the Masses I have attended recently with my family, it sometimes seems like the Mass is a slow moving carnival complete with costumes, events, incense, chants, food and drink. It's not that I dislike rituals out of principle, it's just that I prefer faster, more spontaneous rituals.
Of course this aesthetic preference is not the only reason that I have abandoned the faith of my childhood. I have also abandoned it because I have significant ideological problems with the guilt-based morality which is a central feature of Catholicism. You can imagine how reluctant I always was to go to Confession which represented, for me, a double discomfort: I found myself both aesthetically and ideologically repulsed. But as a an aspiring Good Catholic, I went to Confession anyway and simply wrote the discomfort off by telling myself that I was only uncomfortable because I had sinned too much.
So in my case, I was handed dogmas in a certain issue (my religion). These dogmas I promptly believed, because I had been given no other alternative regarding that issue. But when the dogmas caused obvious problems in my life, I had a choice: either I could continue to live in the misery that my dogmas were causing me or I could revise my beliefs and decide whether the dogmas should be retained. In actual fact, it was my decision to do the latter which I consider to be the moment that I chose to become and adult. And I expect that those of you who also take an active role in the formulation of all of your beliefs (regardless of the issue) have had some experience (maybe similar to mine) which you came out of with an awareness of what it meant to take control of your life.
Though I ended up relinquishing my faith, I did not relinquish it because Catholicism is universally bad. I do not believe this at all -- recall how much time I spent in defending it in my undergraduate career. It is easy to see why a person might be a Catholic, but there are other rational alternatives, and now that I know who I am, I know that I would never have thrived as a Catholic. In fact, this pluralism is a fundamental part of my personal philosophical System (a which has not been explored in much depth yet on this blog), so it is perhaps worth emphasizing that no value judgment can be made about a person's chosen position on any given epistemically undetermined issue, so long as that position is coherent. To put the matter another way, the history of philosophy suggests that we do not have access to the One True Theory, because we do not have enough evidence to whittle our set of candidates down to one. We have sets of theories in competition with each other, each of which is a candidate for the One True Theory, but none of which possesses a proof in any standard method of epistemic assessment.
One might respond to my argument for a rational pluralism by complaining that none of our candidate theories is even completely coherent yet. To this I respond that complete coherence is not a necessary feature for rational doxastic acceptance (viz. belief based on reason); rather, a Candidate One True Theory need only admit the potential for coherence (given sufficient thought) and be deemed the best of the alternatives. In fact, this objection misses the whole point of the argument. Because no Candidate One True Theory can be proven a priori, no Candidate One True Theory could ever be established as the Genuine One True Theory against its future competitors. Thus, we can only ever have Candidate One True Theories. What grants any Candidate Theory rational doxastic acceptance is, in fact, not even part of the theory -- it is in the agent. To be more precise, it is the doxastic acceptance which is the task of the agent. Rationality is what lies in the Candidate Theory proper, though even this rationality has a dependency on the community of theorists who work to determine the Candidate Theory's coherence. For a Candidate Theory's potential for complete coherence is measured by the work which has already been done to render that Theory coherent. There may, for example, be major logical problems in the Candidate Theory which have not yet been discovered by those researching it.
It is this meta-theoretical pluralism which underlies the human task of self-determination. If it were possible in principle for us to come to a Genuine One True Theory -- a perfect theoretical description of existence -- then self-determination would be an absurdity. If we had access to this Genuine One True Theory, then all persons would believe the same things because there would be no need for judgment in our act of learning: we would not need to think critically about what we believe. It appears that epistemic pluralism plays a major role in our experience of free-will.
Now before we consider free-will, I would like those of you who have found inner purpose, who have the ability to control their lives, to consider the poor soul who can not control his life. This is the poor soul who merely floats through life as a paraplegic on a raft in an unpredictable river. In one sense we find ourselves disgusted with such a generally lazy person, but in another sense we find ourselves pitying him. For indeed, we know how miserable a life without motivation and activity can be. I, myself, remember how debilitating and emotionally draining it could be to deal with the guilt that comes from accepting a Catholic Theory that did not fit my personality. What I want to point out about this poor confused fool is that he is entirely unfree. Whenever someone suggests that his actions are his own fault, he finds some external force which made it impossible for him not to be lazy. Such a lazy person is miserable, yet he sees himself as blameless in the face of that misery -- he does not even realize that he has caused his own misery by not growing out of childhood. This is not the only form of human determinism with which we are phenomenologically acquainted. The more familiar examples are children, the insane, and the mentally disable, and the drugged.
Aside from certain drug-induced states, this laziness is the only form of human determinism which is chosen. Thus, it is evident that the very first genuine choice which can ever be made -- if there are any genuine choices -- is the choice to choose. Or, less abstrusely, the choice to become an active and critical determiner of one's beliefs and desires. And what grounds this first genuine choice is the pluralism of rationally and doxastically acceptable Candidate Theories. As William James says, we may only genuinely choose a path which is a live option, i. e. one which we find aesthetically and ideologically appealing. So the means by which we determine which Candidate Theory to accept determines which Candidate Theories are live options. And these must be decided by factors which are wholly subjective. When I actively choose what style my clothes will be, there is no rule I follow in doing so, except the rule of self-expression. If I am an active determiner of my wardrobe (i. e. a free-willer), then my wardrobe is an act of self-expression, and it cannot be taken to mean anything more than this act of expression. Similarly, if I am an active determiner of my spiritual beliefs, then my spirituality itself is an act of self-expression. It is in this way that our beliefs are tied to our choices: belief is subject to choice, not determinate of it. This absolutely must be the case, because without access our Genuine One True Theory, there is a multitude of conflicting yet rational Theories which must be arbitrated -- and how else are we to arbitrate if we cannot rely on reason? And this intense subjectivity to which our beliefs are subjected is the beginning of a concept of free-will.
Passions are not the subject of choice (obviously). And, in fact, it is passions that lie at the root of desires. It is these various passions that must be organized by our beliefs. This organization produces desires, which are nothing more than passions which we allow ourselves to give in to based on the organization which our beliefs have given them. However, desires are not all organized. Unorganized desires have two possible causes: Either the belief system which organized the desires is itself unorganized (i. e. incoherent), or the belief system impedes self-expression and causes us to organize our passions in a manner which is not ideally self-expressive. My desires would be unorganized if I were to believe an ethical theory which entails contradiction, just as they would be unorganized if I were homosexual and accepted a religious ethics which suppresses the needs of a homosexual. In cases of unorganized desires, psychological complexes tend to occur (and I was once one of them). Our desires, then, are a result of the relationship between passions and the beliefs which organize them, and the desires will only express our will if we organize them with a coherent belief system which does not inherently impede self-expression (or expression of will).
I expect that the reader might object here that I have defined freedom into existence. While I agree that defining freedom into existence is a standard libertarian move, it is not the move I am making here. This source of subjectivity in our personalities might, itself be determined. Scientists might one day be able to predict exactly what my subjective leanings might be. They might be able to predict that I'd prefer philosophy rather than physics, women as lovers rather than men, creating music rather than pictures. They might be able to predict what sort of women I am attracted to and why. I will not deny biology, psychology or sociology their explanatory power. But the one thing that these three fields cannot explain about our subjective nature is when and why we choose to choose. It is only in this very first choice that we are genuinely free.
Human freedom amounts to nothing more than the ability to decide whether our actions will express our individual natures, determined though these natures might be. The only choice a person ever makes is the choice to become an adult or to remain a child.
But why should this choice be the only choice we make? Well this is because consciousness is dualistic in nature. All human persons have two minds. The first is the active and conscious mind which does all the thinking and is always present, here, now. This active mind is what feels the duration of time and the immediate sensory and emotional sensations. The second mind, however, is the subconscious mind. This passive mind is designed to follow the instructions it is given. It is the collection of habits and default actions that we resort to when our conscious mind is busy elsewhere. As children, we keep our conscious minds occupied on the task of finding material to input into the subconscious mind. But because the conscious mind does not know anything about itself or the world, it is not competent to decide what gets inputted into the unconscious mind. The conscious mind of a child is not adequate to the task of selecting which programs are inputted into its subconscious mind, and it knows that, so it trusts the words of other children and adults. In short, the conscious mind subjects itself to the culture and allows the subconscious mind to be filled with habits until the conscious becomes aware that it is competent to begin to make decisions. Because this subjugation of the conscious mind seems to be present in children from birth, it is reasonable to think that maturity amounts to a series of awakenings to self-consciousness: first the conscious mind becomes aware of the world; second, the conscious mind becomes aware of the subconscious mind and begins to learn about the world; third, the conscious mind becomes aware of other human beings and develops interpersonal relationships with them; fourth, the conscious mind becomes aware of itself. Though there are likely many other awakenings involved in human maturity, these are the only awakenings which are critical to this short treatise.
Human freedom occurs only when the conscious mind becomes aware of its own competence and supplants the prior dominance of the subconscious mind. The act of choosing to choose, then, is an exercize of the conscious mind's power, its authority, over the subconscious mind. As soon as this occurs, the reversal of psychical dominance is already complete, and the conscious mind now needs only to be vigilant that it does not accidentally accept an unexamined habit of the subconscious mind. Freedom is the exercizing of the conscious mind's power over the subconscious mind.
Showing posts with label Phenomenological Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Phenomenological Philosophy. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
On the Conscious Regulation of Emotions
Collingwood on Emotions
R. G. Collingwood's phenomenology of human emotions begins with expression. The often involuntary gestures that I might make make when I experience strong emotions are expressions of my emotions to other people. If I express fear, for example, I may cause onlookers to become frightened simply because they see the fear in me. Though this expression is not necessarily intentional, it is still said to express the emotion because other people not only recognize the emotions I am expressing, they sympathize by expressing their own emotions. Collingwood calls this an emotional contagion: we experience emotions and spread them through the vehicle of expression. The contagion itself, Collingwood refers to as "sympathy," which seems to me an appropriate name. This simple psychical emotional contagion or sympathy can be seen most clearly in the actions of unorganized mobs: terror and riot.
Collingwood comments that animals seem to experience these same psychical emotions and that we sympathize with them because of it. Dogs, for example, chase cats because cats run. Dogs experience aggression in the face of fear, just as cats experience fear in the presence of a perceived strong force (such as a dog). In at least this way, we are akin to animals.
For Collingwood, psychical emotional expression - sympathy- is the ground upon which communication and language are built. But it does not stop there, at least for human beings. Collingwood observes that love, hatred, anger and shame are "conscious" emotions. Consciousness is a prerequisite for these emotions:
"Hatred is a feeling of antagonism; it is an attitude towards something which we regard as thwarting our own desires, or inflicting pain upon us, and this presupposes awareness of ourselves. Love is a feeling toward something with which we feel our own existence to be bound up, so that a benefit or injury to it is a benefit or injury to ourselves. Anger, though unlike hate it does not involve the idea of any particular thing or person that angers us, is like it in being a consciousness of ourselves as baulked or opposed. Shame is the consciousness of our own weakness or ineffectiveness" (The Principles of Art, 232).
Conscious Emotions and Animals
Though these forms of self-awareness are easily seen in human beings, I want to point out that my experience with domestic animals has demonstrated to me the presence of conscious emotions in animals. And I expect that other pet-owners have experienced the same conscious sympathy with animals. I would even be willing to conjecture that anyone who denies these conscious emotions of at least certain animals has probably had very limited experience with animal emotions.
1. Hatred
Dogs, for example, can tell when human beings do not like them or wish harm upon them. This makes the human a source of pain for the dog, and so the dog reacts with hatred. It is also how fighting dogs are trained.
2. Love
When either Sarah or I are sick, our cats will make sure to lay down next to us to comfort us. They want us to feel well because our well-being is bound up with their well-being: they love us.
3. Anger
There was a time when one of our cats, Alex, got into a fight with another cat. Alex had a rather nasty bite on his back and Sarah didn't want to let him outside because he would be likely to reopen the wound and infect it. Alex loves the outdoors, though he sleeps inside, so to have to go for days without going outside changed his mood entirely. He did not respond to any affection and would growl at us for trying to show it, though he never tried to hurt us. He meant no harm, but he did want us to know that things were not as they should be: he was angry at us.
4. Shame
Sarah and I often notice shame in older kittens who love to be daring about jumping, but do not yet have good balance. When they fall, they hide from us, because they know we saw them screw up.
5. Depression
Collingwood does not himself name this conscious emotion. Nevertheless, when we become conscious of a permanent loss in our lives or the absence of something loved, we become depressed. Because depression is parasitic upon love, it is necessarily a conscious emotion, and depression is often noticed in animals whose favorite human has died.
Therefore, in these ways, we are also akin to animals. It is particularly interesting to note that this means that there is at least a relevant sense in which animals are conscious of themselves. The really interesting question is this: How does our consciousness differ from theirs'?
This is a difficult question to address. We can all think of examples of the unmanageability of a frightened wild cat. These generators of superficial skin scratches cannot be calmed or contained; rather, they are to be allowed to escape. While one might say that these cats act on instinct, cats seem to be more rational about their fear when they are tamed: when they are familiar with the beneficence of a human being, they allow themselves to be approached without fear. However, this distinction between a tamed cat and a wild cat is not an entirely faithful one. They are all of the same species: they are all domesticated cats. The difference between the tame cats and the wild cats is that the natural ecosystem of domesticated cats is in human care. The natural habitat of a domestic cat is a human community. Thus, the wild cats are cats that are in permanent survival mode because their habitat is not conducive to their capabilities. One might notice a similarity between such wild cats and human beings driven insane from extreme isolational circumstances. In fact, every animal seems to know how to respond to every other relevant lifeform which occurs in the natural habitat of the animal in question. A whale knows how to respond to the presence of fish, sharks, etc. An ant knows how to respond to the presence of foliage and other small insects. It is when an animal is forced into an environment in which they do not have a place they they become insane and desperate from terror, like the wild cat. They respond to the environment in the ways that they know how to respond, but if there are not enough small birds and rodents for the cats to hunt, then they will soon face the consequences of a misplaced cat population: starvation. It is familiarity with the beneficence of a human being that tames a cat and keeps cat populations healthy.
Animals and Men
This difference between tame and wild domestic cats is an example of the ways in which animals have limited adaptability. All animals have a specified set of tools and skills which apply to certain atmospheres. When fish is dropped on dry land, it is entirely helpless. We often hear that dolphins are the most intelligent animals apart from humans, but their inability to build the structures humans build prevents them from adapting to any atmosphere but an underwater one.
The difference between human beings and animals is not our ability to adapt to an atmosphere, but our ability to adapt an atmosphere to ourselves. Our bodies provide the perfect tools for us to build further tools to enhance our abilities. Intelligence is not the only reason a cat cannot build tools: it also lacks the proper body mechanics to build tools. So even if a cat were intelligent enough to create tools and gear, the cat could never actually do it because it lacks an opposable thumb. Even our teeth reveal that we operate always with gear in mind: we cannot eat food without first preparing it, because our teeth are not adapted to tearing into either raw animals or most raw foliage. We'd be leaf-eaters if we could not use our hands.
Consciousness and Adaptability
But what does this new form of adaptability amount to? In short, it amounts to a new form of consciousness. Animals are intelligent enough to adapt and react to an environment. They can change their diet if there is a shift in other animal populations, they can find safe areas to nurse their wounds and their young, etc. But they are not intelligent enough to adapt the atmosphere to themselves, because no matter what effect they have on the atmosphere, it will not be an intended organizational change. A dog does not have the presence of mind devise bridges to cross bodies of water. Instead, it will try to either swim or go around the water. We have what Collingwood calls intellection, which is the creation and manipulation of functional formal structures. It is through this awareness of formal structure that we can construct and sustain changes in an environment. This new consciousness is evolutionary self-consciousness. Human beings understand change and progress, and we have the ability to encourage it. Thus, all of history is the evolution of the human race via cultural development. In a metaphorical sense, we are the product of evolution itself becoming self-aware.
The self-awareness of evolution can even be extrapolated from the story of the dinosaurs. In the course of the evolution of life on Earth, it looks as if at one time dinosaurs were head honcho. Presumably, primates and other smaller creatures were dinosaur food if they did not stay hidden. But when catastrophe struck, the dinosaurs could not handle the task of ruling the world. They systematically died, and the animals which were more clever and adaptable remained. Evidently, evolution took this catastrophe as a lesson that an entire living world cannot be adequately ruled with power and strength alone. A good ruler also needs a plan: enter Mankind.
This aggressive adaptability of which human beings are apparently the sole possessors is, as we said, a result of Man's ability to comprehend and create functional formal structures. The tools and skills that animals have (e. g. the claws and agility of a cat) are the functional formal structure imparted to that animal by evolution, but Mankind has been imparted a special tool: manipulation of functional formal structures. This entails that there is no functional form imposed upon Mankind by evolution. The ability to manipulate a functional formal structure grants Mankind access to an unlimited set of tools and skills. And because the limitations of a species' tools and skills are the limitations of its adaptability, given enough time, it appears that Mankind has no particular limitations in adaptability. Nature has not dictated that man acts and any one particular fashion. In plain English, Mankind has no natural habitat, for Mankind's habitat is artificial.
A Few Consequences
But if Mankind's atmosphere is pure artiface, then there are a few profound consequences.
First: whether or not metaphysicians agree, Mankind possesses a certain freedom. Mankind is free to devise its own functional structures, and He does so. Culture is the pure expression of human freedom. Consciously self-imposed functional structures (othewise known as 'disciplines') are freely chosen and practiced by human beings everywhere.
Second: This freedom is logically dependent upon and a necessary consequence of intelligence. It is because we have the ability to understand formal structures that we have the ability to manipulate them. Thus, intellect is distinctly and inextricably bound to freedom.
Third: Because this freedom implies and is implied by intelligence, Whenever human intelligence is at stake in any philosophical question, freedom is also at stake. This principle suggests to us that a human ethics can be arrived at through reason, but that this ethics will be an ethics of freedom and not an ethics of constraint.
Fourth: Because Mankind is a creator of functional formal structures, we should expect Mankind to invent stories about how He, Himself, came to be. We find these stories, these mythologies, littered throughout history. What is particularly strange about them is that human beings do not seem to recognize that these mythologies were invented by other human beings. It is as if we forget that inventing stories to explain the phenomena is just what Mankind does.
How ironic that the one species which has the freedom to invent His own habitat so often insists that this freedom does not exist and there there really is a single natural habitat for Mankind. Our cultures constantly demand that we conform to them, rather than allowing us to conform the culture to ourselves. Have we forgotten what it is that culture does? Or are we being manipulated by our culture? In this latter case, perhaps it is our culture itself that has become conscious.
Emotion and Manipulation
It is through our emotions that we allow our culture to manipulate us, so we ought to take this as a sign that it is time for us to re-examine our emotions as a Species. In point of fact, each of our conscious emotions teaches us a lesson about life.
1. Hatred teaches us that what causes us great pain and harm should be either avoided or neutralized.
2. Love teaches us that we are dependent upon the world, so the world must be treated with care.
3. Anger teaches us that when a system functions improperly, it must be corrected -- by force if necessary.
4. Shame teaches us that there is always more to learn, which is why humility is a necessary condition for growth.
5. Depression teaches us that even the greatest things in life are still ephemeral, so we must find ways both to limit and to deal with loss and absence.
Animals do not learn these lessons except through direct experience of the conscious emotions involved. Human beings, on the other hand, have the capacity to learn these lessons. Therefore, learn them we must, and once we know the wisdom of conscious emotions, we have the power to regulate which emotions we feel and when. We can organize our emotional lives just as we organize our active lives. Such a master of conscious emotions will choose to feel love more often than any other emotion. He will choose to reject shame as a useless emotion once its lesson is fully learned. He will avoid hatred as an impediment to love, but will prize anger as a useful tool in times when immediate and forceful action is necessary.
So let us be masters of conscious emotions. Let us organize our lives with a rich an complex set of beneficial emotions, just as we ought to organize our diet, our work, our daily habits, etc. We are creators of functional formal structures, and emotions are no exception.
R. G. Collingwood's phenomenology of human emotions begins with expression. The often involuntary gestures that I might make make when I experience strong emotions are expressions of my emotions to other people. If I express fear, for example, I may cause onlookers to become frightened simply because they see the fear in me. Though this expression is not necessarily intentional, it is still said to express the emotion because other people not only recognize the emotions I am expressing, they sympathize by expressing their own emotions. Collingwood calls this an emotional contagion: we experience emotions and spread them through the vehicle of expression. The contagion itself, Collingwood refers to as "sympathy," which seems to me an appropriate name. This simple psychical emotional contagion or sympathy can be seen most clearly in the actions of unorganized mobs: terror and riot.
Collingwood comments that animals seem to experience these same psychical emotions and that we sympathize with them because of it. Dogs, for example, chase cats because cats run. Dogs experience aggression in the face of fear, just as cats experience fear in the presence of a perceived strong force (such as a dog). In at least this way, we are akin to animals.
For Collingwood, psychical emotional expression - sympathy- is the ground upon which communication and language are built. But it does not stop there, at least for human beings. Collingwood observes that love, hatred, anger and shame are "conscious" emotions. Consciousness is a prerequisite for these emotions:
"Hatred is a feeling of antagonism; it is an attitude towards something which we regard as thwarting our own desires, or inflicting pain upon us, and this presupposes awareness of ourselves. Love is a feeling toward something with which we feel our own existence to be bound up, so that a benefit or injury to it is a benefit or injury to ourselves. Anger, though unlike hate it does not involve the idea of any particular thing or person that angers us, is like it in being a consciousness of ourselves as baulked or opposed. Shame is the consciousness of our own weakness or ineffectiveness" (The Principles of Art, 232).
Conscious Emotions and Animals
Though these forms of self-awareness are easily seen in human beings, I want to point out that my experience with domestic animals has demonstrated to me the presence of conscious emotions in animals. And I expect that other pet-owners have experienced the same conscious sympathy with animals. I would even be willing to conjecture that anyone who denies these conscious emotions of at least certain animals has probably had very limited experience with animal emotions.
1. Hatred
Dogs, for example, can tell when human beings do not like them or wish harm upon them. This makes the human a source of pain for the dog, and so the dog reacts with hatred. It is also how fighting dogs are trained.
2. Love
When either Sarah or I are sick, our cats will make sure to lay down next to us to comfort us. They want us to feel well because our well-being is bound up with their well-being: they love us.
3. Anger
There was a time when one of our cats, Alex, got into a fight with another cat. Alex had a rather nasty bite on his back and Sarah didn't want to let him outside because he would be likely to reopen the wound and infect it. Alex loves the outdoors, though he sleeps inside, so to have to go for days without going outside changed his mood entirely. He did not respond to any affection and would growl at us for trying to show it, though he never tried to hurt us. He meant no harm, but he did want us to know that things were not as they should be: he was angry at us.
4. Shame
Sarah and I often notice shame in older kittens who love to be daring about jumping, but do not yet have good balance. When they fall, they hide from us, because they know we saw them screw up.
5. Depression
Collingwood does not himself name this conscious emotion. Nevertheless, when we become conscious of a permanent loss in our lives or the absence of something loved, we become depressed. Because depression is parasitic upon love, it is necessarily a conscious emotion, and depression is often noticed in animals whose favorite human has died.
Therefore, in these ways, we are also akin to animals. It is particularly interesting to note that this means that there is at least a relevant sense in which animals are conscious of themselves. The really interesting question is this: How does our consciousness differ from theirs'?
This is a difficult question to address. We can all think of examples of the unmanageability of a frightened wild cat. These generators of superficial skin scratches cannot be calmed or contained; rather, they are to be allowed to escape. While one might say that these cats act on instinct, cats seem to be more rational about their fear when they are tamed: when they are familiar with the beneficence of a human being, they allow themselves to be approached without fear. However, this distinction between a tamed cat and a wild cat is not an entirely faithful one. They are all of the same species: they are all domesticated cats. The difference between the tame cats and the wild cats is that the natural ecosystem of domesticated cats is in human care. The natural habitat of a domestic cat is a human community. Thus, the wild cats are cats that are in permanent survival mode because their habitat is not conducive to their capabilities. One might notice a similarity between such wild cats and human beings driven insane from extreme isolational circumstances. In fact, every animal seems to know how to respond to every other relevant lifeform which occurs in the natural habitat of the animal in question. A whale knows how to respond to the presence of fish, sharks, etc. An ant knows how to respond to the presence of foliage and other small insects. It is when an animal is forced into an environment in which they do not have a place they they become insane and desperate from terror, like the wild cat. They respond to the environment in the ways that they know how to respond, but if there are not enough small birds and rodents for the cats to hunt, then they will soon face the consequences of a misplaced cat population: starvation. It is familiarity with the beneficence of a human being that tames a cat and keeps cat populations healthy.
Animals and Men
This difference between tame and wild domestic cats is an example of the ways in which animals have limited adaptability. All animals have a specified set of tools and skills which apply to certain atmospheres. When fish is dropped on dry land, it is entirely helpless. We often hear that dolphins are the most intelligent animals apart from humans, but their inability to build the structures humans build prevents them from adapting to any atmosphere but an underwater one.
The difference between human beings and animals is not our ability to adapt to an atmosphere, but our ability to adapt an atmosphere to ourselves. Our bodies provide the perfect tools for us to build further tools to enhance our abilities. Intelligence is not the only reason a cat cannot build tools: it also lacks the proper body mechanics to build tools. So even if a cat were intelligent enough to create tools and gear, the cat could never actually do it because it lacks an opposable thumb. Even our teeth reveal that we operate always with gear in mind: we cannot eat food without first preparing it, because our teeth are not adapted to tearing into either raw animals or most raw foliage. We'd be leaf-eaters if we could not use our hands.
Consciousness and Adaptability
But what does this new form of adaptability amount to? In short, it amounts to a new form of consciousness. Animals are intelligent enough to adapt and react to an environment. They can change their diet if there is a shift in other animal populations, they can find safe areas to nurse their wounds and their young, etc. But they are not intelligent enough to adapt the atmosphere to themselves, because no matter what effect they have on the atmosphere, it will not be an intended organizational change. A dog does not have the presence of mind devise bridges to cross bodies of water. Instead, it will try to either swim or go around the water. We have what Collingwood calls intellection, which is the creation and manipulation of functional formal structures. It is through this awareness of formal structure that we can construct and sustain changes in an environment. This new consciousness is evolutionary self-consciousness. Human beings understand change and progress, and we have the ability to encourage it. Thus, all of history is the evolution of the human race via cultural development. In a metaphorical sense, we are the product of evolution itself becoming self-aware.
The self-awareness of evolution can even be extrapolated from the story of the dinosaurs. In the course of the evolution of life on Earth, it looks as if at one time dinosaurs were head honcho. Presumably, primates and other smaller creatures were dinosaur food if they did not stay hidden. But when catastrophe struck, the dinosaurs could not handle the task of ruling the world. They systematically died, and the animals which were more clever and adaptable remained. Evidently, evolution took this catastrophe as a lesson that an entire living world cannot be adequately ruled with power and strength alone. A good ruler also needs a plan: enter Mankind.
This aggressive adaptability of which human beings are apparently the sole possessors is, as we said, a result of Man's ability to comprehend and create functional formal structures. The tools and skills that animals have (e. g. the claws and agility of a cat) are the functional formal structure imparted to that animal by evolution, but Mankind has been imparted a special tool: manipulation of functional formal structures. This entails that there is no functional form imposed upon Mankind by evolution. The ability to manipulate a functional formal structure grants Mankind access to an unlimited set of tools and skills. And because the limitations of a species' tools and skills are the limitations of its adaptability, given enough time, it appears that Mankind has no particular limitations in adaptability. Nature has not dictated that man acts and any one particular fashion. In plain English, Mankind has no natural habitat, for Mankind's habitat is artificial.
A Few Consequences
But if Mankind's atmosphere is pure artiface, then there are a few profound consequences.
First: whether or not metaphysicians agree, Mankind possesses a certain freedom. Mankind is free to devise its own functional structures, and He does so. Culture is the pure expression of human freedom. Consciously self-imposed functional structures (othewise known as 'disciplines') are freely chosen and practiced by human beings everywhere.
Second: This freedom is logically dependent upon and a necessary consequence of intelligence. It is because we have the ability to understand formal structures that we have the ability to manipulate them. Thus, intellect is distinctly and inextricably bound to freedom.
Third: Because this freedom implies and is implied by intelligence, Whenever human intelligence is at stake in any philosophical question, freedom is also at stake. This principle suggests to us that a human ethics can be arrived at through reason, but that this ethics will be an ethics of freedom and not an ethics of constraint.
Fourth: Because Mankind is a creator of functional formal structures, we should expect Mankind to invent stories about how He, Himself, came to be. We find these stories, these mythologies, littered throughout history. What is particularly strange about them is that human beings do not seem to recognize that these mythologies were invented by other human beings. It is as if we forget that inventing stories to explain the phenomena is just what Mankind does.
How ironic that the one species which has the freedom to invent His own habitat so often insists that this freedom does not exist and there there really is a single natural habitat for Mankind. Our cultures constantly demand that we conform to them, rather than allowing us to conform the culture to ourselves. Have we forgotten what it is that culture does? Or are we being manipulated by our culture? In this latter case, perhaps it is our culture itself that has become conscious.
Emotion and Manipulation
It is through our emotions that we allow our culture to manipulate us, so we ought to take this as a sign that it is time for us to re-examine our emotions as a Species. In point of fact, each of our conscious emotions teaches us a lesson about life.
1. Hatred teaches us that what causes us great pain and harm should be either avoided or neutralized.
2. Love teaches us that we are dependent upon the world, so the world must be treated with care.
3. Anger teaches us that when a system functions improperly, it must be corrected -- by force if necessary.
4. Shame teaches us that there is always more to learn, which is why humility is a necessary condition for growth.
5. Depression teaches us that even the greatest things in life are still ephemeral, so we must find ways both to limit and to deal with loss and absence.
Animals do not learn these lessons except through direct experience of the conscious emotions involved. Human beings, on the other hand, have the capacity to learn these lessons. Therefore, learn them we must, and once we know the wisdom of conscious emotions, we have the power to regulate which emotions we feel and when. We can organize our emotional lives just as we organize our active lives. Such a master of conscious emotions will choose to feel love more often than any other emotion. He will choose to reject shame as a useless emotion once its lesson is fully learned. He will avoid hatred as an impediment to love, but will prize anger as a useful tool in times when immediate and forceful action is necessary.
So let us be masters of conscious emotions. Let us organize our lives with a rich an complex set of beneficial emotions, just as we ought to organize our diet, our work, our daily habits, etc. We are creators of functional formal structures, and emotions are no exception.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
On Aesthetics: the Emotion of Wonder
Recently, I was washing dishes and had a small philosophical moment. The small whirlpool created when I let the water out of the sink caught my eye, and I couldn't help but wonder at the sheer beauty of the physics involved: The air bubbles through the bottom of the falling water and into the middle of the drain pipe, where it rises out of the sink to make way for the heavier water. At the same time, the water moves in a circular pattern down the drain pipe, creating the the inertial effect called centrifugal force. This circular motion pulls the water out of the middle of the spout, making way for the air.
After marveling at the beauty of the event, it occurred to me that I couldn't quantify what I was experiencing at that moment as anything but an emotion. Somehow I had never before realized that wonder is the philosopher's emotion, not just her attitude. Understanding wonder as a passion has made Plato's description of eros much more intuitive for me.
Anyhow, as any good emotion does, this emotion admitted to at least partial explanation. When I tried to figure out why the little whirlpool had made me wonder, the best I could come up with is that it was the simplicity and geometry of the event at which I was marveling, because I could not produce that sort of motion on my own. But it seemed strange to me that I would wonder at a simple geometric motion, because the most difficult motions to achieve are the complex ones -- ones the human body is good at creating. How does the whirlpool deserve wonder in the face of the violinist or the dancer?
There is a poem by W. B. Yeats which I am partial to, called "The Sorrow of Love". It is short, so I can just include it here:
The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;
Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.
First, I should note that this is a revised edition of the poem. The original is similar in structure, but much different in its ultimate content. The first stanza of the poem is a description of nature and an observation that "all that famous harmony of leaves had blotted out man's image and his cry." The second stanza of the poem is an expression of human sorrow, a sorrow epic in its content (indeed, Priam is a character very extreme in sorrow). For Yeats, this expression of sorrow is much greater than anything found in nature without human beings. Thus, the final stanza of the poem is a description of nature and an observation that "all that lamentation of the leaves could but compose man's image and his cry." Yeats, in his first act of wonder, has observed the world around him, amazed that there could be something so beautiful and sorrowful. But as soon as this observation has been made, the motion of his lover has turned his mind onto the beauty of humanity.
What I want to point out is that Yeats' prioritization of his emotion of wonder (that the human is more wondrous than the world) was appropriate for reasons that Yeats did not mention. In fact, the human mind and the human body alike have an architecture whose specific task is to do all those complex things that the world, by itself, cannot do. Indeed, it is we who do all the doing. Our sheer physical versatility allows us to create spectacular events and works of art, beings whose beauty lies not in a pure expression of geometric simplicity. Works of art are beautiful for their complexity. In nature, the beautiful panorama and the sunrise are events that occurs with ease, because the natural path is the path of least resistance. Conversely, works of art are events that require work. The human hand must force nature out of its normal course and into the course designed by that very hand. But this is only an a posteriori piece of evidence that human beings are more wondrous than their world.
There is, on the other hand, a priori evidence that humans are more wondrous than their world. For the emotion of wonder is an emotion that expresses an explicitly human attitude. I contend that wonder is the most human emotion there is. There can be argument that animals feel at least most of the emotions we feel when love, and it is clear that fear and anger are emotions that we share with animals. In any case, there is at least one thing that there is absolutely no evidence that animals do: recognize and adore beauty. Now those who think that I am making philosophy into the greatest career path ought to remember that wonder is not only the emotion of the philosopher. It is also the emotion of the poet, the musician, the dancer, in short -- the artist. It should not, then, be surprising if the most uniquely human emotion were expressed in its strongest forms as a reaction to the most uniquely human happenings. That is, it should not surprise us if our concept of beauty turned out to be an anthropocentric concept.
Obviously, this is just a suggestion, but I never claimed proof. The only a priori force behind this explanation of the phenomenon of wonder is the anti-Realist suggestion that all experience is inextricably tinged by the human mind that experiences it. Clearly, this suggestion rests on the primary metaphysical claim that we have no knowledge of a world beyond our minds and bodies. But, then, all personal positions rest upon a metaphysical claim of some sort.
As a side note, I should observe that an agnostic or atheistic metaphysical Realist would probably claim that the natural world is the most appropriate subject for the expression of wonder. A theist metaphysical Realist, on the other hand, would probably claim that something like God is the most appropriate subject. But, at least for me, my own experience disqualifies these possibilities. So, at the end of the day, it is the incompatible a priori positions that provide the alternatives for the possible subjects of wonder, and it is the a posteriori evidence that will determine which of these three alternatives obtains.
-Priam's Pride
After marveling at the beauty of the event, it occurred to me that I couldn't quantify what I was experiencing at that moment as anything but an emotion. Somehow I had never before realized that wonder is the philosopher's emotion, not just her attitude. Understanding wonder as a passion has made Plato's description of eros much more intuitive for me.
Anyhow, as any good emotion does, this emotion admitted to at least partial explanation. When I tried to figure out why the little whirlpool had made me wonder, the best I could come up with is that it was the simplicity and geometry of the event at which I was marveling, because I could not produce that sort of motion on my own. But it seemed strange to me that I would wonder at a simple geometric motion, because the most difficult motions to achieve are the complex ones -- ones the human body is good at creating. How does the whirlpool deserve wonder in the face of the violinist or the dancer?
There is a poem by W. B. Yeats which I am partial to, called "The Sorrow of Love". It is short, so I can just include it here:
The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;
Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.
First, I should note that this is a revised edition of the poem. The original is similar in structure, but much different in its ultimate content. The first stanza of the poem is a description of nature and an observation that "all that famous harmony of leaves had blotted out man's image and his cry." The second stanza of the poem is an expression of human sorrow, a sorrow epic in its content (indeed, Priam is a character very extreme in sorrow). For Yeats, this expression of sorrow is much greater than anything found in nature without human beings. Thus, the final stanza of the poem is a description of nature and an observation that "all that lamentation of the leaves could but compose man's image and his cry." Yeats, in his first act of wonder, has observed the world around him, amazed that there could be something so beautiful and sorrowful. But as soon as this observation has been made, the motion of his lover has turned his mind onto the beauty of humanity.
What I want to point out is that Yeats' prioritization of his emotion of wonder (that the human is more wondrous than the world) was appropriate for reasons that Yeats did not mention. In fact, the human mind and the human body alike have an architecture whose specific task is to do all those complex things that the world, by itself, cannot do. Indeed, it is we who do all the doing. Our sheer physical versatility allows us to create spectacular events and works of art, beings whose beauty lies not in a pure expression of geometric simplicity. Works of art are beautiful for their complexity. In nature, the beautiful panorama and the sunrise are events that occurs with ease, because the natural path is the path of least resistance. Conversely, works of art are events that require work. The human hand must force nature out of its normal course and into the course designed by that very hand. But this is only an a posteriori piece of evidence that human beings are more wondrous than their world.
There is, on the other hand, a priori evidence that humans are more wondrous than their world. For the emotion of wonder is an emotion that expresses an explicitly human attitude. I contend that wonder is the most human emotion there is. There can be argument that animals feel at least most of the emotions we feel when love, and it is clear that fear and anger are emotions that we share with animals. In any case, there is at least one thing that there is absolutely no evidence that animals do: recognize and adore beauty. Now those who think that I am making philosophy into the greatest career path ought to remember that wonder is not only the emotion of the philosopher. It is also the emotion of the poet, the musician, the dancer, in short -- the artist. It should not, then, be surprising if the most uniquely human emotion were expressed in its strongest forms as a reaction to the most uniquely human happenings. That is, it should not surprise us if our concept of beauty turned out to be an anthropocentric concept.
Obviously, this is just a suggestion, but I never claimed proof. The only a priori force behind this explanation of the phenomenon of wonder is the anti-Realist suggestion that all experience is inextricably tinged by the human mind that experiences it. Clearly, this suggestion rests on the primary metaphysical claim that we have no knowledge of a world beyond our minds and bodies. But, then, all personal positions rest upon a metaphysical claim of some sort.
As a side note, I should observe that an agnostic or atheistic metaphysical Realist would probably claim that the natural world is the most appropriate subject for the expression of wonder. A theist metaphysical Realist, on the other hand, would probably claim that something like God is the most appropriate subject. But, at least for me, my own experience disqualifies these possibilities. So, at the end of the day, it is the incompatible a priori positions that provide the alternatives for the possible subjects of wonder, and it is the a posteriori evidence that will determine which of these three alternatives obtains.
-Priam's Pride
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Do Dogs Have Spatial Logic?
Dr. Cogburn has mentioned in his metaphysics class that dogs have been shown to have spatial reasoning. The evidence of this claim, for Cogburn, is this: When a dog comes to a two-way fork in a path, while chasing a rabbit, he will only sniff one path before he decides which path to take. This means that if the dog sniffs in the direction that the rabbit did not go, it would know to go the other direction, because it is the only alternative left. Of course, such an explanation boils down to a logical deduction:
Let A = the path the dog sniffs
Let B = the path the dog does not sniff
Let C = the path the dog came from
Where did the rabbit go?
(1). A v (B v C)
(three-way split).
(2). ~A
(because the dog just sniffed there).
(3). B v C
(by 1 & 2).
(4). ~C
(because the dog was just there).
(5). B
(by 3 & 4).
Now, this is a very simple deduction, but had the dog sniffed both paths, then it would have gone more like this
(1). ~A
(because the dog just sniffed there).
(2). B
(Because the dog just sniffed there).
The first deduction is clearly more impressive than this one. So if this were, in fact, the dog's thought process, then I would agree that the dog exhibited spatial reasoning. What I contend is that there is a more likely explanation of the appearance of spatial reasoning, which reduces the phenomenon to a simple decision based on description of the sensory data rather than logical deduction.
I suggest to the reader to observe your spatial sensory data. However it happens, the mind interprets the sensory data and constructs for itself a vision of an environment. That is, a space is delimited to the mind. Now imagine that you are chasing some object in this visual environment without either the use of the other senses or the use of reasoning. Indeed under these conditions, one can only chase an object that remains in view. For as soon as the object escapes view, one could only guess where it is if vision is the only tool used.
With this imaginary artifice in mind, consider the dog. Dogs have very poor vision, and rely heavily on their senses of smell. Where the eyes, for us, delimit an environment more clearly than any other sense, it is reasonable to think that the nose, for the dog, delimits an environment at least as clearly as the eyes do. In other words, the dog, by smelling different areas in an environment, probably constructs these bits of sensory data into an entire olfactory environment. The rabbit, in passing through the environment left its scent swirling in the air. The dog is probably able to detect these fine-grain differences in direction, velocity and intensity of smell in the same way that we are able to detect fine-grain differences in direction, velocity and intensity of a sound. I think it is plausible to suspect that a dog's sense of smell functions in a very similar way to our sense of sound.
Should this description of a dog's sense of smell obtain (and I believe that it does), the dog in our example actually did smell the rabbit when it sniffed the side where the rabbit did not go. But it smelled the presence of the rabbit as a thing that was moving in a particular direction based on the scent left behind, and the dog simply followed this scent. So, given this broad description of the canine sense of smell, it is apparent that the dog need not do a logical deduction if the motion of the rabbit remains within the dog's sense of smell the entire time. The dog is still doing nothing more than following an object, which clearly requires no reasoning.
This is not meant to suggest that dogs or other animals do not ever exhibit rational behavior. Rather, it is meant to show that this one particular example does not provide evidence of rational behavior in dogs.
-Priam's Pride
Let A = the path the dog sniffs
Let B = the path the dog does not sniff
Let C = the path the dog came from
Where did the rabbit go?
(1). A v (B v C)
(three-way split).
(2). ~A
(because the dog just sniffed there).
(3). B v C
(by 1 & 2).
(4). ~C
(because the dog was just there).
(5). B
(by 3 & 4).
Now, this is a very simple deduction, but had the dog sniffed both paths, then it would have gone more like this
(1). ~A
(because the dog just sniffed there).
(2). B
(Because the dog just sniffed there).
The first deduction is clearly more impressive than this one. So if this were, in fact, the dog's thought process, then I would agree that the dog exhibited spatial reasoning. What I contend is that there is a more likely explanation of the appearance of spatial reasoning, which reduces the phenomenon to a simple decision based on description of the sensory data rather than logical deduction.
I suggest to the reader to observe your spatial sensory data. However it happens, the mind interprets the sensory data and constructs for itself a vision of an environment. That is, a space is delimited to the mind. Now imagine that you are chasing some object in this visual environment without either the use of the other senses or the use of reasoning. Indeed under these conditions, one can only chase an object that remains in view. For as soon as the object escapes view, one could only guess where it is if vision is the only tool used.
With this imaginary artifice in mind, consider the dog. Dogs have very poor vision, and rely heavily on their senses of smell. Where the eyes, for us, delimit an environment more clearly than any other sense, it is reasonable to think that the nose, for the dog, delimits an environment at least as clearly as the eyes do. In other words, the dog, by smelling different areas in an environment, probably constructs these bits of sensory data into an entire olfactory environment. The rabbit, in passing through the environment left its scent swirling in the air. The dog is probably able to detect these fine-grain differences in direction, velocity and intensity of smell in the same way that we are able to detect fine-grain differences in direction, velocity and intensity of a sound. I think it is plausible to suspect that a dog's sense of smell functions in a very similar way to our sense of sound.
Should this description of a dog's sense of smell obtain (and I believe that it does), the dog in our example actually did smell the rabbit when it sniffed the side where the rabbit did not go. But it smelled the presence of the rabbit as a thing that was moving in a particular direction based on the scent left behind, and the dog simply followed this scent. So, given this broad description of the canine sense of smell, it is apparent that the dog need not do a logical deduction if the motion of the rabbit remains within the dog's sense of smell the entire time. The dog is still doing nothing more than following an object, which clearly requires no reasoning.
This is not meant to suggest that dogs or other animals do not ever exhibit rational behavior. Rather, it is meant to show that this one particular example does not provide evidence of rational behavior in dogs.
-Priam's Pride
Friday, October 10, 2008
Experiencing Aural Intercourse
I noticed today that among the music that I consider to be genuinely good, there are only certain albums that I find myself returning to over and over. Of course, there are albums that I listen to for weeks at a time after I first hear them, but this phase usually passes, and I may return to the album only rarely. For example, I think all four Coheed and Cambria albums are excellent, but whenever I scroll through my music to find something to listen to, the only Coheed albums that I really consider are the second and third (In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth, and Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One).
So how can I consider the other two albums to be genuinely good music if I almost never have any desire to listen to them? Clearly, we have at least two different processes at work. There are the set of albums that I consider to be good music and the set of albums that I desire to listen to. These two sets are distinct, but have some overlap. It then occurred to me that I don't seem to rewatch movies in the same way that I relisten to music. Why do I not have the same desire to simply watch some work of film art?
It is at this point that I had to introduce a distinction in order to make this strange situation make sense. On the one hand, the albums that I think are genuinely good are the albums that I think are good works of art. By "good work of art" I mean that the work accurately describes something about the world in a way that can only be described in the particular way that the work describes it. This means that a good work of art cannot be summarized without losing some content, and that there is no superfluity. Thus, each good work of art is indispensible to the entire canon of art, because it describes the world in a way that nothing else does.
On the other hand the albums that I desire to hear are aesthetically pleasing to me. What does this mean, though? Clearly, this description must exclude a concept of art, because then aesthetical pleasure would reduce to art, and we would lose our distinction. What is important about these albums that I desire to listen to is that when I listen I am actually captivated by the beauty of the music. These particular albums change my mood, they make me happier. In short, there is a kind of love at work. It is not exactly, love, though. It is eros. I don't mean eros in the sexual sense, but in the broader, Platonic sense. In his dialogue, Symposium, Plato's only female character describes eros as the love of beauty. And it is true, we don't just find these things beautiful, we desire them in a way that can only be compared to sexual desire. Any reader who has experienced the sheer pleasure that such an album can provide will know what I am talking about. But even if music does not produce this feeling, there are many people for whom other sensory inputs do produce this feeling. I imagine that painters find themselves in an awed state of ecstacy when they view certain paintings or certain other visual arts. Many people find the sunrise erotic in this way. The list goes on.
Returning to the subject of film: if my distinction between good art and aesthetic pleasure is accurate, then I must not find film, in general, aesthetically pleasing. And this is fine; I still have great appreciation for the artform (it is my third-favorite art-form, afterall), I just don't have an erotic desire for it. I then realized that I don't have any real erotic desire for any visual experience, save one. The only visual experience that I give me aesthetic pleasure is the female body. Now this seems like a trivial thing to say: I'm a heterosexual male, of course I find the female form erotic. But there is more going on here; another distinction needs to be made.
Sexual desire is not sensory. It is a deeper eros than that of sensory aesthetic pleasure. I do believe that it is aesthetic in just the same way that musical eros is aesthetic, but there is an important difference. Based on my experience, it seems to me that sexual desire is actually entity-oriented rather than experience oriented. This means that the intellect is involved. When I am having sexual intercourse, it is both the act and the partner that I desire; it is not simply the visual or kinesthetic experiences involved in sexual intercouse. The reason that many people believe that sexual intercouse is all about vision and touch is that visual and kinesthetic pleasure almost always accompany sexual pleasure. I do believe that there are many heterosexual males who do not find the female body to be visually erotic (when they see the figure, they imagine themselves having sex with the woman, which appeals to the sexual eros, not the visual eros). I, on the other hand, absolutely adore the sight of all beautiful women -- it is captivating.
Let us take this line of thought even further. If the albums for which I have an erotic desire simultaneously captivate me and bring me great pleasure, then it is not inappropriate to describe listening to them as a sort of aural intercourse. Similarly, allowing myself to be captivated by a female figure can be described as visual intercourse. This explains why so many people want to listen to their favorite albums during sexual intercourse: if one's partner is beautiful, then sexual intercourse becomes both sensory and sexual intercourse. How erotic!
-Priam's Pride
So how can I consider the other two albums to be genuinely good music if I almost never have any desire to listen to them? Clearly, we have at least two different processes at work. There are the set of albums that I consider to be good music and the set of albums that I desire to listen to. These two sets are distinct, but have some overlap. It then occurred to me that I don't seem to rewatch movies in the same way that I relisten to music. Why do I not have the same desire to simply watch some work of film art?
It is at this point that I had to introduce a distinction in order to make this strange situation make sense. On the one hand, the albums that I think are genuinely good are the albums that I think are good works of art. By "good work of art" I mean that the work accurately describes something about the world in a way that can only be described in the particular way that the work describes it. This means that a good work of art cannot be summarized without losing some content, and that there is no superfluity. Thus, each good work of art is indispensible to the entire canon of art, because it describes the world in a way that nothing else does.
On the other hand the albums that I desire to hear are aesthetically pleasing to me. What does this mean, though? Clearly, this description must exclude a concept of art, because then aesthetical pleasure would reduce to art, and we would lose our distinction. What is important about these albums that I desire to listen to is that when I listen I am actually captivated by the beauty of the music. These particular albums change my mood, they make me happier. In short, there is a kind of love at work. It is not exactly, love, though. It is eros. I don't mean eros in the sexual sense, but in the broader, Platonic sense. In his dialogue, Symposium, Plato's only female character describes eros as the love of beauty. And it is true, we don't just find these things beautiful, we desire them in a way that can only be compared to sexual desire. Any reader who has experienced the sheer pleasure that such an album can provide will know what I am talking about. But even if music does not produce this feeling, there are many people for whom other sensory inputs do produce this feeling. I imagine that painters find themselves in an awed state of ecstacy when they view certain paintings or certain other visual arts. Many people find the sunrise erotic in this way. The list goes on.
Returning to the subject of film: if my distinction between good art and aesthetic pleasure is accurate, then I must not find film, in general, aesthetically pleasing. And this is fine; I still have great appreciation for the artform (it is my third-favorite art-form, afterall), I just don't have an erotic desire for it. I then realized that I don't have any real erotic desire for any visual experience, save one. The only visual experience that I give me aesthetic pleasure is the female body. Now this seems like a trivial thing to say: I'm a heterosexual male, of course I find the female form erotic. But there is more going on here; another distinction needs to be made.
Sexual desire is not sensory. It is a deeper eros than that of sensory aesthetic pleasure. I do believe that it is aesthetic in just the same way that musical eros is aesthetic, but there is an important difference. Based on my experience, it seems to me that sexual desire is actually entity-oriented rather than experience oriented. This means that the intellect is involved. When I am having sexual intercourse, it is both the act and the partner that I desire; it is not simply the visual or kinesthetic experiences involved in sexual intercouse. The reason that many people believe that sexual intercouse is all about vision and touch is that visual and kinesthetic pleasure almost always accompany sexual pleasure. I do believe that there are many heterosexual males who do not find the female body to be visually erotic (when they see the figure, they imagine themselves having sex with the woman, which appeals to the sexual eros, not the visual eros). I, on the other hand, absolutely adore the sight of all beautiful women -- it is captivating.
Let us take this line of thought even further. If the albums for which I have an erotic desire simultaneously captivate me and bring me great pleasure, then it is not inappropriate to describe listening to them as a sort of aural intercourse. Similarly, allowing myself to be captivated by a female figure can be described as visual intercourse. This explains why so many people want to listen to their favorite albums during sexual intercourse: if one's partner is beautiful, then sexual intercourse becomes both sensory and sexual intercourse. How erotic!
-Priam's Pride
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
A Metaphysical Materialism
I was entertaining the thought of being an atheist metaphysician, and this is how it went. It occurred to me how complex the physical world has proven to be. Both common sense and science seem to have proven to us all our lives that the universe, before our impact, is absurdly complex, yet equally structured. It is this structured complexity that interests me. The entirety of physics, especially through the efforts of Newton, Einstein, Bohr and others, has revealed itself to us as infinitely impressive in both size and structure. Scientists have no choice but to marvel at the beauty of the thing they study. “How beautiful,” they might say, “this thing with which we humans have no choice but to be in contact!” But is the scientist’s exclamation of “Behold!” not also a testament to the beauty of the human reason which uncovers the physical world to itself. Where theologians of old have proclaimed the necessity of a “perfect reason” which would hold a perfect relationship to all that which can be known by such a reason (i.e. an omniscient God), it seems to me sufficient to observe that the very human reasoning which beholds the depth of the physical world itself is equally complex. For if it is necessary to posit a knower of the world, then it is necessary to posit a knower only equal in ‘perfection’ to the physical world. If perfection is measured by complexity, then it seems as if human reason by itself is sufficient for the claim of such a metaphysical realist. With no need of a God to posit, perhaps we may get away with positing merely this equality in ‘perfection’ between the physical world and human reason.
We assume, as stated previously, that to prove this equality in perfection between two systems is to prove the equality of the complexity of the two systems. There is at least one piece of evidence for the equality of complexity between human knower and physical world. The complexity of the world only reveals itself to us at the maximum complexity with which we can observe it. In other words, the scientists can only theorize about a world as complex as their faculty of reasoning allows them to. The bounds of this power of reason provide the boundary of the world that we observe. But there is a problem with this simple equation of complexity. The world that we observe is more complex than the science that describes it. If it were not, then one would think that we would be able to predict all events that admit the possibility of prediction. Science has certainly not achieved this goal yet. But the “yet” is important. There seems to be a potential in science to at least come close to such a complexity.
However, even if this potential, epistemic form of complexity is not as great as that of the universe itself (or at least the physical, experiential data we have of it), we would still have one other form of complexity to add to the total complexity of human reason: the very act of reasoning is complex. Epistemologists and AI programmers will all admit that the more we study the very act of reasoning, the more complex it seems to be. Here we find that our reason does seem to have a depth equal to the physical world in both complexity and mystery. Kant himself, according to myth, wanted his gravestone to read only “The starry skies above and the moral law within,” because these were the only things by which he found himself awed. If Kant is right, then we need not posit any being besides the world and the thinker (I and my peers). But then, I thought, why stop there? Why should we even posit anything besides the world?
So why is it that metaphysicians seem to believe that we must posit such metaphysical entities as ourselves (souls, as some people call them)? We have already seen how human reason is similar to the physical world; if human reason really does describe a separate entity from the physical world, then we must look for the difference between human reason and the physical world. The easiest way to do this is to attempt to recreate human reason. Let us say that we build a computer which is recognizably intelligent. This computer would have to have a set of algorithms which describe its reasoning processes, and it is likely that these algorithms would approach infinite complexity (so, for the sake of the thought experiment, we will leave aside whether building such a computer is possible at all). It is easy to imagine that a computer could perfectly replicate the actions of a house-fly, for example, because a house-fly clearly has no reasoning, and we would say that its actions are determined by its instincts (similarly to the way a computer's actions are determined by the way it is programmed). The question of whether a computer could imitate a human being perfectly comes down to whether our actions are determined or not. If they are completely determined by whatever it is about human beings that determines us, then the difference between us and the house-fly is trivial. And if we can imagine ourselves programming a computer to be a house-fly, then we can imagine ourselves programming a computer to be a person. Therefore, either there exists only a physical world, and the complexity of human reason really just comes down to the complexity of the human brain; or there exists both a physical world and a set of beings whose actions are not determined within this physical world. In other words, either there is the world alone, or there is the world and the knower of the world. Thus, we see that the question of whether human beings are metaphysical entities comes down to the question of whether human beings are free (physically undetermined) or unfree (physically determined). Unfortunately, the facts given to us by the world do not seem to determine an answer to this question: arguments can be constructed which make human freedom just as likely to be true as complete determinism. Kant had a thought similar to this one also: he thought that the free-will/determinism debate was an antinomy of pure reason, or an unsolvable puzzle. He presented what he thought to be irrefutable arguments supporting both sides, thereby concluding that reason cannot answer the question. We do not have the space to argue this point here, however, so, for the time being, we will assume determinism to be a thesis equal in epistemological strength to human freedom.
So which thesis do we posit? Let us first posit determinism. If the universe is completely determined (ourselves included), but there is no evidence to determine whether we believe ourselves to be determined or free, then we must make a choice as to whether we believe ourselves determined or free. Because this belief is insufficiently supported by fact, it must either be irresponsible or undetermined. Assuming that there exist epistemologically responsible persons who have an opinion on this thesis, a free choice must be made. Therefore, we are free. This is contradiction, so let us see what happens when we posit freedom. If we are free, then in any decision we make, we are determined to make a decision, as Jean-Paul Sartre observed in Being and Nothingness. We are not free to be free. If our freedom is determined, then it becomes difficult to locate that freedom in the first place. Freedom begins to look arbitrary, and arbitrarity is a form of determinism. Thus, we are not free. We have, then, an apparent paradox on our hands: if we are free, then we are not free; if we are not free, then we are free. Though this problem of freedom has some features of a paradox, the arguments above are sketchy and loose, so it may not be a paradox afterall. In any case, though, the problem of freedom can be seen as an unsolvable problem (and this will have to remain an assumption).
Metaphysically speaking, what is at stake in the question of human freedom is the question of whether we form a separate class of entities from the physical world. We have also seen how the structure of human freedom (viz. human reason) is similar in complexity to the structure of the physical world. These two notions taken together would entail that there are two classes of beings: beings of the physical world, and beings which make rational choices within the physical world. But must we call this second class of beings (human beings) a metaphysical class? The only reason we would have to do this is if we cannot classify them as material. So if I want to be a materialist, I can either prove that everything in the world adheres to my definition of materialism, or I can define “material” as everything in the world. Such a redefinition would only make sense if there is real similarity between one’s designated classes of material. If we claim, then, that the act of human reasoning is itself a material (similar to, say, Leibnizian monads), then the similarity is easy to show. Let us use B-matter (short for Being-matter) to describe physical matter, and F-matter (short for Freedom-matter) to describe “rational” matter. B-matter consists of all the protons, electrons, bodies, houses, mountains, planets and stars; while F-matter consists of all different types of rational processes exclusive to free rational beings. The F-matter that exists is, precisely, all the human beings who exist and all the choices that these human beings actually make. Similarly, the B-matter that exists is all the stars and planets that have actually come into existence, rather than the set of possible objects. The B-matter that exists is, literally, the matter that our experience tells us exists. One can imagine, then, a whole dimension of “free-willers” which can be measured based on what choices were made and what choices were not made. What I am trying to set up, here, is a parallel between being/non-being and free/un-free. The act of being which any physical object does points to its existence as B-matter, just as the act of choosing which any person does points to that person’s existence as F-matter. Just as a physical entity is comprised of the various electrons, protons, quarks, etc. from which it is built, so a rational entity is comprised of the various choices made in time, and the ways that these choices fit together in the system of human reasoning to form a whole person. Thus, when we say that everything is matter, but that there are two classes of matter, the claim is non-trivial. Pending the solution of the problem of freedom/determinism, it looks as if we can dissolve the divide between realists and non-realists about the human self.
Proponents of theism would note, here, that where there are at least two classes which bear a similarity to each other, these two classes themselves form a new class. Indeed, we have already named this class “matter” (and its constituents are B-matter and F-matter). It is quite apparent that the relationship between the two types of matter is what will inform our concept of the general class “material”. As a materialist, such a theist would have to observe that there exists nothing over and above the material itself, so the relationship between the two types of matter becomes terribly important. This relationship (vague as our description of it has been) is the only appropriate subject for the term “God”, should a materialist have any desire to posit a God. I do not claim to have proven God to exist, for I do not believe such a thing to be possible; rather, I have only provided the material space within which such a God can be named. But this concept is still too vague to be useful to any serious metaphysical thinker. What is important for the reader to take away from these metaphysical reflections is the notion that metaphysicians have been so interested in distinguishing the physical from the metaphysical that they have forgotten just how similar the two seem to be. The real question is, I think, if we can develop a science of human reason, do we acquire a science of metaphysics thereby? If the answer is “yes”, then we have been thinking about metaphysics in the wrong terms for a long time.
Surreal conjecture about a science of metaphysics aside, one may reasonably ask whether the inference I've made concerning materialism is philosophically trivial. It is important to keep in mind that I have only made a plausible inference based on inconclusive evidence. Essentially, our evidence is that there are at least two entities in human knowledge that we can be certain exist: the known and the knower. These two entities seem to bear a similar complexity to each other, which makes each adequate to the other, and does not necessitate a third entity. The inference is this: if there is a similarity in complexity such each is exactly the appropriate subject of the other, then there may also be a similarity in the nature of the two entities. Thus, our inference is non-trivial in one sense and trivial in another. It is non-trivial because thinking of human freedom as a fifth dimension and human knowers as material entities changes the ways we think about the self (e.g. that freedom no longer needs to be infinite and that it can be measured). It is trivial because one must still posit another realm of entities to augment the physical world. At the end of the day, most would still consider this metaphysical realm, but it seems to me a less abstruse (and thus, more plausible) metaphysics than is usually found.
-Priam's Pride
We assume, as stated previously, that to prove this equality in perfection between two systems is to prove the equality of the complexity of the two systems. There is at least one piece of evidence for the equality of complexity between human knower and physical world. The complexity of the world only reveals itself to us at the maximum complexity with which we can observe it. In other words, the scientists can only theorize about a world as complex as their faculty of reasoning allows them to. The bounds of this power of reason provide the boundary of the world that we observe. But there is a problem with this simple equation of complexity. The world that we observe is more complex than the science that describes it. If it were not, then one would think that we would be able to predict all events that admit the possibility of prediction. Science has certainly not achieved this goal yet. But the “yet” is important. There seems to be a potential in science to at least come close to such a complexity.
However, even if this potential, epistemic form of complexity is not as great as that of the universe itself (or at least the physical, experiential data we have of it), we would still have one other form of complexity to add to the total complexity of human reason: the very act of reasoning is complex. Epistemologists and AI programmers will all admit that the more we study the very act of reasoning, the more complex it seems to be. Here we find that our reason does seem to have a depth equal to the physical world in both complexity and mystery. Kant himself, according to myth, wanted his gravestone to read only “The starry skies above and the moral law within,” because these were the only things by which he found himself awed. If Kant is right, then we need not posit any being besides the world and the thinker (I and my peers). But then, I thought, why stop there? Why should we even posit anything besides the world?
So why is it that metaphysicians seem to believe that we must posit such metaphysical entities as ourselves (souls, as some people call them)? We have already seen how human reason is similar to the physical world; if human reason really does describe a separate entity from the physical world, then we must look for the difference between human reason and the physical world. The easiest way to do this is to attempt to recreate human reason. Let us say that we build a computer which is recognizably intelligent. This computer would have to have a set of algorithms which describe its reasoning processes, and it is likely that these algorithms would approach infinite complexity (so, for the sake of the thought experiment, we will leave aside whether building such a computer is possible at all). It is easy to imagine that a computer could perfectly replicate the actions of a house-fly, for example, because a house-fly clearly has no reasoning, and we would say that its actions are determined by its instincts (similarly to the way a computer's actions are determined by the way it is programmed). The question of whether a computer could imitate a human being perfectly comes down to whether our actions are determined or not. If they are completely determined by whatever it is about human beings that determines us, then the difference between us and the house-fly is trivial. And if we can imagine ourselves programming a computer to be a house-fly, then we can imagine ourselves programming a computer to be a person. Therefore, either there exists only a physical world, and the complexity of human reason really just comes down to the complexity of the human brain; or there exists both a physical world and a set of beings whose actions are not determined within this physical world. In other words, either there is the world alone, or there is the world and the knower of the world. Thus, we see that the question of whether human beings are metaphysical entities comes down to the question of whether human beings are free (physically undetermined) or unfree (physically determined). Unfortunately, the facts given to us by the world do not seem to determine an answer to this question: arguments can be constructed which make human freedom just as likely to be true as complete determinism. Kant had a thought similar to this one also: he thought that the free-will/determinism debate was an antinomy of pure reason, or an unsolvable puzzle. He presented what he thought to be irrefutable arguments supporting both sides, thereby concluding that reason cannot answer the question. We do not have the space to argue this point here, however, so, for the time being, we will assume determinism to be a thesis equal in epistemological strength to human freedom.
So which thesis do we posit? Let us first posit determinism. If the universe is completely determined (ourselves included), but there is no evidence to determine whether we believe ourselves to be determined or free, then we must make a choice as to whether we believe ourselves determined or free. Because this belief is insufficiently supported by fact, it must either be irresponsible or undetermined. Assuming that there exist epistemologically responsible persons who have an opinion on this thesis, a free choice must be made. Therefore, we are free. This is contradiction, so let us see what happens when we posit freedom. If we are free, then in any decision we make, we are determined to make a decision, as Jean-Paul Sartre observed in Being and Nothingness. We are not free to be free. If our freedom is determined, then it becomes difficult to locate that freedom in the first place. Freedom begins to look arbitrary, and arbitrarity is a form of determinism. Thus, we are not free. We have, then, an apparent paradox on our hands: if we are free, then we are not free; if we are not free, then we are free. Though this problem of freedom has some features of a paradox, the arguments above are sketchy and loose, so it may not be a paradox afterall. In any case, though, the problem of freedom can be seen as an unsolvable problem (and this will have to remain an assumption).
Metaphysically speaking, what is at stake in the question of human freedom is the question of whether we form a separate class of entities from the physical world. We have also seen how the structure of human freedom (viz. human reason) is similar in complexity to the structure of the physical world. These two notions taken together would entail that there are two classes of beings: beings of the physical world, and beings which make rational choices within the physical world. But must we call this second class of beings (human beings) a metaphysical class? The only reason we would have to do this is if we cannot classify them as material. So if I want to be a materialist, I can either prove that everything in the world adheres to my definition of materialism, or I can define “material” as everything in the world. Such a redefinition would only make sense if there is real similarity between one’s designated classes of material. If we claim, then, that the act of human reasoning is itself a material (similar to, say, Leibnizian monads), then the similarity is easy to show. Let us use B-matter (short for Being-matter) to describe physical matter, and F-matter (short for Freedom-matter) to describe “rational” matter. B-matter consists of all the protons, electrons, bodies, houses, mountains, planets and stars; while F-matter consists of all different types of rational processes exclusive to free rational beings. The F-matter that exists is, precisely, all the human beings who exist and all the choices that these human beings actually make. Similarly, the B-matter that exists is all the stars and planets that have actually come into existence, rather than the set of possible objects. The B-matter that exists is, literally, the matter that our experience tells us exists. One can imagine, then, a whole dimension of “free-willers” which can be measured based on what choices were made and what choices were not made. What I am trying to set up, here, is a parallel between being/non-being and free/un-free. The act of being which any physical object does points to its existence as B-matter, just as the act of choosing which any person does points to that person’s existence as F-matter. Just as a physical entity is comprised of the various electrons, protons, quarks, etc. from which it is built, so a rational entity is comprised of the various choices made in time, and the ways that these choices fit together in the system of human reasoning to form a whole person. Thus, when we say that everything is matter, but that there are two classes of matter, the claim is non-trivial. Pending the solution of the problem of freedom/determinism, it looks as if we can dissolve the divide between realists and non-realists about the human self.
Proponents of theism would note, here, that where there are at least two classes which bear a similarity to each other, these two classes themselves form a new class. Indeed, we have already named this class “matter” (and its constituents are B-matter and F-matter). It is quite apparent that the relationship between the two types of matter is what will inform our concept of the general class “material”. As a materialist, such a theist would have to observe that there exists nothing over and above the material itself, so the relationship between the two types of matter becomes terribly important. This relationship (vague as our description of it has been) is the only appropriate subject for the term “God”, should a materialist have any desire to posit a God. I do not claim to have proven God to exist, for I do not believe such a thing to be possible; rather, I have only provided the material space within which such a God can be named. But this concept is still too vague to be useful to any serious metaphysical thinker. What is important for the reader to take away from these metaphysical reflections is the notion that metaphysicians have been so interested in distinguishing the physical from the metaphysical that they have forgotten just how similar the two seem to be. The real question is, I think, if we can develop a science of human reason, do we acquire a science of metaphysics thereby? If the answer is “yes”, then we have been thinking about metaphysics in the wrong terms for a long time.
Surreal conjecture about a science of metaphysics aside, one may reasonably ask whether the inference I've made concerning materialism is philosophically trivial. It is important to keep in mind that I have only made a plausible inference based on inconclusive evidence. Essentially, our evidence is that there are at least two entities in human knowledge that we can be certain exist: the known and the knower. These two entities seem to bear a similar complexity to each other, which makes each adequate to the other, and does not necessitate a third entity. The inference is this: if there is a similarity in complexity such each is exactly the appropriate subject of the other, then there may also be a similarity in the nature of the two entities. Thus, our inference is non-trivial in one sense and trivial in another. It is non-trivial because thinking of human freedom as a fifth dimension and human knowers as material entities changes the ways we think about the self (e.g. that freedom no longer needs to be infinite and that it can be measured). It is trivial because one must still posit another realm of entities to augment the physical world. At the end of the day, most would still consider this metaphysical realm, but it seems to me a less abstruse (and thus, more plausible) metaphysics than is usually found.
-Priam's Pride
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