- 19 Jan 2019 02:47
#14981208
Well one point is that Vygotsky expresses that the same basis for reflective thought is the same mechanism as I expressed previously to b0ycey.
The mechanism for knowing oneself (self-awareness) is the same as the mechanism for knowing others. ... the identity between the mechanism of consciousness and the mechanism of social contact and the idea that consciousness is, as it were, social contact with oneself".
Which seems to agree with your statement “It requires consciousness to recognize consciousness in others”. Human consciousness by its nature seems to be social in its origins and developments and ends up nonsensical otherwise, which is a point of those that start out from an individual rather than seeing any individuals development being social in nature.
I take that this sort of self-consciousness in terms of one’s ability to reflect on things is possibly as old as humans are, if not as old as written language perhaps allowing reflection upon an externalized form of thought. But self-consciousness as that which is superior today I will illustrate below in my view where the development of intellect and artefacts is necessary to our own self-determination/regulation (free will).
A source which I will be drawing heavily on in illustrating my view: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2015-06.dir/pdf9UQ7dqv45X.pdf
I’ll also note at the outset that I don’t have a resolution/final solution to the issue of free will, but think that there must be a basis of explaining its existence within natural beings without running away into metaphysics.
What is the free will
Metaphysical free will
What makes it free
What makes it historical in nature
What is the will? A conscious determination to carry out an action, the issue though is what makes it free.
Generally the problem of free will comes from it’s metaphysical conception where it is free if it isn’t subjected to external influences and limitations. Where we as natural beings are assumed to be without free will because we’re determined by something like influences in our environment which are not of our choosing or our biology and so on. The metaphysical free will is some sort of pure will posited above such influences, but it just recreates are cartesian dualism leaving us wondering about how ‘souls’ interact with physical things. Alternatively we see people (eg Searle) try to avoid the determinism of natural laws like the indeterminacy found in physics, but it doesn’t really capture a sense of freedom of the will.
There is also the other point that the metaphysical free will is posited so abstractly that it removes itself from existence in order to be considered uninfluenced. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
So there isn’t a satisfactory answer to freedom of will based on metaphysical conception.
But left here, free will is said to be an illusion, along with consciousness even, we may feel like we’re in control of things but how can it be if we’re still subject to the influence of material/natural processes? Well this is a problem of a mechanical materialism that reduces consciousness typically to processes and is in error in doing so. Consciousness definitely exists in some sense and it mediates between our body/physiology and behaviour.
https://arigiddesignator.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/kripkes-refutation-of-identity-theory/
Marx was critical of this position as such a materialism neglects the active nature of consciousness, which isn’t reducible to physical processes.
The active nature of consciousness was left to idealism, which Marx praised as materialism of his time considered man only passively/in contemplation of sensuous reality. Marx considered man as active in his intervention in nature and thus indirectly changes himself by actively changing nature to meet his needs. This is a crucial point to keep in mind.
Now this is where I draw upon summaries of Spinoza’s sense of free will which is inherently tied to our intellect. Spinoza’s sense of free will/self-determination is that we should be aware of the reasons for our actions in order to be the cause of ourselves (causa sui) rather than external influences. Because we’re unfamiliar with the reasons for our behaviour, then we are subject to the arbitrary control of things which control us rather than us control them and ourselves. As such, understanding/knowledge is necessary here otherwise we will make arbitrary decisions from ignorance and this is where education (developing the intellect) is crucial to enhancing our free will/self-determination.
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2015-06.dir/pdf9UQ7dqv45X.pdf
A very crude example I like to keep in mind is that of a doctor offering you a choice of treatment and the importance of informed consent. If a patient isn’t given adequate knowledge of their options, they can’t be said to be making a free choice, because it is in some degree a matter of chance rather than rational choice. When our choices are arbitrary we aren’t using our free will to decide for ourselves.
Because it becomes quite difficult to understand our actions/behaviour as our own.
This also entails a point of us controlling ourselves rationally rather than being subjected to whims influences from the world.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#PassActi
Here instead of freedom being about not being restrained, it entails some restraint/limitations in order for us to be rational rather than driven merely by emotions and instincts like animals.
And this is also where I emphasize that our knowledge is the basis of the will.
I say as much in response to your stated “The increase in knowledge is not the same as consciousness or self consciousness”.
For Spinoza, adequate ideas give a different quality to our actions as active rather than passive.
The above captures the sense of the person who because they don’t understand things, goes with the flow as opposed to a person with a definite view of their situation and acts with conscious knowledge.
But then the question is how does our knowledge help us control the world around us as well as ourselves instead of being controlled by the external world and its effect on us? This is where Vygotsky is useful in emphasizing the mediation of all human actions by artefacts as allowing us an ability for free will.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/chat/index.htm#action
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/chat/index.htm#artefact
Do remember the earlier point from Marx about the active intervention of man upon nature, to appropriate it to his needs. Because man doesn’t simply will his body to do things purely, rather our actions are mediated by artefacts/objects and it is in our active intervention into nature having created such objects there exists as space allows us to direct ourselves rather than be strictly determined by our environment. In this way freedom is sort of indirect, man indirectly shapes himself by shaping the world around him and appropriating it to his own ends. Rather than merely being subjected to its influence, we shape that influence, particularly so the more we understand it and can consciously intervene to our intended ends.
The significance here is that thinking isn’t something that simply goes on within the head, but is tied to human activity which is mediated by artefacts that have both a material and ideal character to them.
And also note that it is through artefacts and our social relations we actually come to control/regulate ourselves as individuals.
To emphasize the historical nature of this would have to outline the development of consciousness.
Where I have yet to make a study of it but I think Andy Blunden has interesting summaries on the subject.
Of particular interest for me has been the origins and modern process in which we come to sense/feel ourselves as distinct from the external reality, thus constitution the subject-object relation.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Hegel%20on%20action.pdf
With some speculation as to the development of the earliest humans, where here cites a similar point of view with you from Vygotsky about something having to pre-exist in some rudimentary form before it can be present in ourselves.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/evolution-language.htm
I strongly advise you take gander at the previous link above for a sense of origins/development of the process I’m asserting as the basis for self-determination/control and thus free will.
Although such a conscious control of our will doesn’t in itself finally solve the matter of free will as it may well not be ‘free’ still. But this is the best sense at which I can imagine free will practically existing for humans.
I kind of rushed this and didn't tighten up on some points and give further details but I think this outline gives an impression of what I'm aiming at.
I'm hoping to get onto organizing my response to VS and have been detracted from my response to you in order to study somethings for it.
Hopefully this is interesting at least.
One Degree wrote:I guess my point is they can’t emerge through social contact without already existing in the individual, at least in a rudimentary or dormant state. You can’t create something without the components already being there.
If I understand you correctly, that we are ‘more conscious’ than our ancestors or other groups based upon our interactions, then I don’t buy it. If it ‘emerged’ then it was when we became Homo sapiens. The increase in knowledge is not the same as consciousness or self consciousness. Our ability to string nice sounding words together is more proof of our arrogance than it is increased understanding. We have no way at present of knowing if what we think we know means anything at all. We have what man has always had, a quest for understanding. You can run a very long way and still find out you were on the wrong road.
Apologies, if I misunderstood, but I felt the concept was being expanded beyond what it really means and being used to justify our current ‘superiority’.
Well one point is that Vygotsky expresses that the same basis for reflective thought is the same mechanism as I expressed previously to b0ycey.
The mechanism for knowing oneself (self-awareness) is the same as the mechanism for knowing others. ... the identity between the mechanism of consciousness and the mechanism of social contact and the idea that consciousness is, as it were, social contact with oneself".
Which seems to agree with your statement “It requires consciousness to recognize consciousness in others”. Human consciousness by its nature seems to be social in its origins and developments and ends up nonsensical otherwise, which is a point of those that start out from an individual rather than seeing any individuals development being social in nature.
I take that this sort of self-consciousness in terms of one’s ability to reflect on things is possibly as old as humans are, if not as old as written language perhaps allowing reflection upon an externalized form of thought. But self-consciousness as that which is superior today I will illustrate below in my view where the development of intellect and artefacts is necessary to our own self-determination/regulation (free will).
A source which I will be drawing heavily on in illustrating my view: http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2015-06.dir/pdf9UQ7dqv45X.pdf
I’ll also note at the outset that I don’t have a resolution/final solution to the issue of free will, but think that there must be a basis of explaining its existence within natural beings without running away into metaphysics.
What is the free will
Metaphysical free will
What makes it free
What makes it historical in nature
What is the will? A conscious determination to carry out an action, the issue though is what makes it free.
Generally the problem of free will comes from it’s metaphysical conception where it is free if it isn’t subjected to external influences and limitations. Where we as natural beings are assumed to be without free will because we’re determined by something like influences in our environment which are not of our choosing or our biology and so on. The metaphysical free will is some sort of pure will posited above such influences, but it just recreates are cartesian dualism leaving us wondering about how ‘souls’ interact with physical things. Alternatively we see people (eg Searle) try to avoid the determinism of natural laws like the indeterminacy found in physics, but it doesn’t really capture a sense of freedom of the will.
There is also the other point that the metaphysical free will is posited so abstractly that it removes itself from existence in order to be considered uninfluenced. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10867/1/VWills_ETD_2011.pdf
Abstract unqualified objects cannot exist because they cannot affect matter, and thereby cannot bring about the expression of their essences. It is for this reason that Marx says “abstract individuality is freedom from being, not freedom in being” (Doctoral Dissertation on Epicurus, MECW 1:62). Moreover, Marx argued, reasoning based on contemplation of such abstract objects will necessarily lapse into methodological idealism, eschewing material determinations as mere appearances that distract from a proper appreciation of the nature of reality, rather than being the absolute starting place for a proper understanding of reality.
So there isn’t a satisfactory answer to freedom of will based on metaphysical conception.
But left here, free will is said to be an illusion, along with consciousness even, we may feel like we’re in control of things but how can it be if we’re still subject to the influence of material/natural processes? Well this is a problem of a mechanical materialism that reduces consciousness typically to processes and is in error in doing so. Consciousness definitely exists in some sense and it mediates between our body/physiology and behaviour.
https://arigiddesignator.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/kripkes-refutation-of-identity-theory/
Kripke’s argument simply establishes that mental states are not identical to brain states. It still is possible that they be correlated, maybe even concomitant phenomena. Materialists do not like this because they want to explain the mind with only reference to physical facts. As Searle points out, “[this argument] is essentially the commonsense objection in a sophisticated guise” (39, Rediscovery). The commonsense objection is that pains and brain processes are simply two different kinds of things.
Marx was critical of this position as such a materialism neglects the active nature of consciousness, which isn’t reducible to physical processes.
The active nature of consciousness was left to idealism, which Marx praised as materialism of his time considered man only passively/in contemplation of sensuous reality. Marx considered man as active in his intervention in nature and thus indirectly changes himself by actively changing nature to meet his needs. This is a crucial point to keep in mind.
Spoiler: show
Now this is where I draw upon summaries of Spinoza’s sense of free will which is inherently tied to our intellect. Spinoza’s sense of free will/self-determination is that we should be aware of the reasons for our actions in order to be the cause of ourselves (causa sui) rather than external influences. Because we’re unfamiliar with the reasons for our behaviour, then we are subject to the arbitrary control of things which control us rather than us control them and ourselves. As such, understanding/knowledge is necessary here otherwise we will make arbitrary decisions from ignorance and this is where education (developing the intellect) is crucial to enhancing our free will/self-determination.
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2015-06.dir/pdf9UQ7dqv45X.pdf
To be educated is also a process of which becoming free is intrinsically a part, for to be educated is not to ‘know’ a range of positions and perspectives but to understand the reasons for holding particular beliefs and rejecting others.
A very crude example I like to keep in mind is that of a doctor offering you a choice of treatment and the importance of informed consent. If a patient isn’t given adequate knowledge of their options, they can’t be said to be making a free choice, because it is in some degree a matter of chance rather than rational choice. When our choices are arbitrary we aren’t using our free will to decide for ourselves.
Because it becomes quite difficult to understand our actions/behaviour as our own.
One way of understanding the possibility of a free life - "your own life" - is to consider which of your past decisions you could truly be said to be able to "stand behind," where that means being able to defend or justify them when challenged, or even which you could claim to understand. "Having reasons" in this sense for what you did, having something to say about "why," is a general condition for some event being considered an action of yours at all, and not having any reasons means it is very hard to understand any link between you and what conduct you engage in. (Pippin, 2000)
This also entails a point of us controlling ourselves rationally rather than being subjected to whims influences from the world.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#PassActi
Our hopes and fears fluctuate depending on whether we regard the objects of our desires or aversions as remote, near, necessary, possible or unlikely. But the objects of our passions, being external to us, are completely beyond our control. Thus, the more we allow ourselves to be controlled by them, the more we are subject to passions and the less active and free we are. The upshot is a fairly pathetic picture of a life mired in the passions and pursuing and fleeing the changeable and fleeting objects that occasion them: “We are driven about in many ways by external causes, and … like waves on the sea, driven by contrary winds, we toss about, not knowing our outcome and fate” (IIIp59s). The title for Part Four of the Ethics reveals with perfect clarity Spinoza’s evaluation of such a life for a human being: “On Human Bondage, or the Powers of the Affects”. He explains that the human being’s “lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects I call Bondage. For the man who is subject to affects is under the control, not of himself, but of fortune, in whose power he so greatly is that often, though he sees the better for himself, he is still forced to follow the worse”.
Here instead of freedom being about not being restrained, it entails some restraint/limitations in order for us to be rational rather than driven merely by emotions and instincts like animals.
And this is also where I emphasize that our knowledge is the basis of the will.
I say as much in response to your stated “The increase in knowledge is not the same as consciousness or self consciousness”.
For Spinoza, adequate ideas give a different quality to our actions as active rather than passive.
Free will for Spinoza is not separated from his idea of truth (adequate ideas).
…
Free will only arises when humans are active rather than passive. In turn, actions which are active in Spinoza’s terms (i.e. self-determined) are only possible when such actions coincide with adequate rather than inadequate ideas. Vygotsky notes approvingly inextricable connection which Spinoza drew from affects, thought and quality of action: ‘Spinoza…defined affect as that which increases or decreases our body’s ability to act, and that which forces thought to move in a particular direction’ (Vygotsky, 1993, p.234). This is a deeper, more ontologically embedded notion than the simplistic idea that the possibility of free-action depends upon sufficient knowledge. That is to say adequate ideas, understanding and self-determination are party and parcel of each other.
…
Spinoza explains the relationship of will and conscious awareness as characteristic of concepts located in relation to one another, i.e. systemically. The more our actions are formed by adequate ideas (i.e. ideas where the genetic connections are understood explicitly) the more we are determinate of our own actions and, as such, active. The more we act according to inadequate ideas (ones whose relations are unexpressed) we are said to be passive and as such our actions are not free...
The above captures the sense of the person who because they don’t understand things, goes with the flow as opposed to a person with a definite view of their situation and acts with conscious knowledge.
But then the question is how does our knowledge help us control the world around us as well as ourselves instead of being controlled by the external world and its effect on us? This is where Vygotsky is useful in emphasizing the mediation of all human actions by artefacts as allowing us an ability for free will.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/chat/index.htm#action
All actions are mediated by the use of artefacts, and we take an action to be inclusive of the artefact with which it is mediated. Actions are simply inconceivable apart from the use of artefacts (which could be a spoken word, a piece of land, a tool or machine, even a human hand, etc.), and it is by means of artefacts, which are products of the broader Culture which frames the activity of which the action is a part, that the broader societal context of an action places its stamp upon how an action is carried out. We learn how to use artefacts by using them jointly with other people.
https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/chat/index.htm#artefact
Artefacts are material objects or processes which are products of human activity and/or are used by and incorporated in human actions (but not the actions or activities themselves). Artefacts are therefore both material and ideal, in that they are obedient to the laws of physics, etc., but serve human social means and human ends.
Do remember the earlier point from Marx about the active intervention of man upon nature, to appropriate it to his needs. Because man doesn’t simply will his body to do things purely, rather our actions are mediated by artefacts/objects and it is in our active intervention into nature having created such objects there exists as space allows us to direct ourselves rather than be strictly determined by our environment. In this way freedom is sort of indirect, man indirectly shapes himself by shaping the world around him and appropriating it to his own ends. Rather than merely being subjected to its influence, we shape that influence, particularly so the more we understand it and can consciously intervene to our intended ends.
Spoiler: show
The significance here is that thinking isn’t something that simply goes on within the head, but is tied to human activity which is mediated by artefacts that have both a material and ideal character to them.
And also note that it is through artefacts and our social relations we actually come to control/regulate ourselves as individuals.
To emphasize the historical nature of this would have to outline the development of consciousness.
Where I have yet to make a study of it but I think Andy Blunden has interesting summaries on the subject.
Of particular interest for me has been the origins and modern process in which we come to sense/feel ourselves as distinct from the external reality, thus constitution the subject-object relation.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Hegel%20on%20action.pdf
The soul of a creature has no reference to another, no subject/object distinction. It is the regulative function of a finite organism, but it does so naturally, without distinguishing itself from other centers of activity. It just feels. The mental life of the psyche is the registration of a single neurophysiological system of activity embracing the entire organism. Its feeling is the totality of the processes of mediation between sentience and the organism’s activity. The first step towards independence of the psyche from immediate concern with its feelings is habit, which enables the psyche to gain a distance from its own activity.
Through habituation, the organism becomes inured to feelings encountered in the normal course of life, and only those unexpected feelings coming from ‘outside’ gain attention. These feelings take on the significance of a signal of something originating from another centre of activity, something else. This feeling is Sensation and constitutes the basic unit of consciousness.
Consciousness makes the transition to ‘free mind’, i.e., human intelligence, by producing artefacts for use in controlling its own activity and incorporating these artefacts, which stand out as meaningful from the natural background, into its psychic processes.
“The principle of free mind is to make the merely given element in consciousness into something mental, and conversely to make what is mental into an objectivity” (Phil/Spirit. §440 remark)
By mastering the control of its own consciousness by the use of external objects, human beings learn to distance themselves from their own desires, thus freeing themselves of domination by their own nature.
With some speculation as to the development of the earliest humans, where here cites a similar point of view with you from Vygotsky about something having to pre-exist in some rudimentary form before it can be present in ourselves.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/evolution-language.htm
As Vygotsky (1930) pointed out, a behaviour which provides the motive force for the formation of a new species, must be present in rudimentary form in the predecessor species. If a given behaviour is entirely absent in a species, its development cannot be what drives the transition to a new species. Either the relevant behaviour existed in rudimentary form or the capacity for the rudimentary behaviour arises by exaptation as a result of adaptation from the behaviour which is driving the transition.
I strongly advise you take gander at the previous link above for a sense of origins/development of the process I’m asserting as the basis for self-determination/control and thus free will.
Although such a conscious control of our will doesn’t in itself finally solve the matter of free will as it may well not be ‘free’ still. But this is the best sense at which I can imagine free will practically existing for humans.
I kind of rushed this and didn't tighten up on some points and give further details but I think this outline gives an impression of what I'm aiming at.
I'm hoping to get onto organizing my response to VS and have been detracted from my response to you in order to study somethings for it.
Hopefully this is interesting at least.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
-For Ethical Politics