Regardless of if it’s practical to live that way in daily life, the world seems pretty determined. Everything happens because a vast amount of interactions between infinite factors causes it to. You can’t really say you choose between things as many influences have been taken in by you and many things have affected your psychological state. Has everything been practically decided by the big bang? Now, this is not to say we can know everything or predict the future, but we know what’s likely. Socialism or extinction may be inevitable, but we don’t know yet. Socialism can only happen if people keep fighting, regardless. People will be convinced or principled or not. Science seems to agree with this, and only few, like the wrong Sartre would propose we have ultimate free will. So are there any arguments against determinism? I know there is a saying that you’re freer when you recognize how your freedom is restricted, and that recognition may make your actions better, but isn’t there ultimately no freedom?
I agree with most of this. My view is that the universe is knowable, but not to a great extent as we are finite beings and everything is constantly changing and affecting other things. Thus, I don’t think we should live as if the universe is simple and easily understood as in the hard (vulgar materialist) determinist view. As someone who hasn’t read from the source, I think Spinoza’s view of god and Jenner’s view of nature (as described in Half Earth Socialism) are appealing.
On the topic of thoughts, It seems like the mind is a process that propels itself with influence from many things. It is largely out of one’s (even subjective) control if control exists. The self and control are illusions somehow brought about by matter. I think this is about the buddhist view, if a bit more materialist. Just think about it, do you decide things or are you influenced by uncontrolled and contradictory desires? When you move do you decide those movements or is it mostly automatic? when you think are you actually directing your thoughts or do they simply arise spontaneously?
I agree. While we are finite individually, we can acknowledge the transgenerational flow of ideas and thus treat our knowledge-making enterprises as also constantly developing, so what is knowable can flexibly grow. For me there is little purpose in conjuring up a demon with perfect knowledge or complete systems of knowledge as that is very rigid and undialectical.
The following is rambling so feel free to ignore if it doesn’t cohere, I need to do more thinking and reading about these related ideas to build up my understanding further.
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As for the second point, I take my experience and train of thought to be real. But it is simultaneously an “illusion” as what is left of my identity and decisions are a result of the sum of lived experience and interactions.
I think I do subscribe to an emergent mental faculty based upon material relations and contexts but this only restrict its form and does not take away its meaning at the emergence level.
Thermodynamics being macro level explanations for lower level statisical mechanics does not render the former meaningless. Its language game and concepts function at its own level, not out of convention but out of an epistemological need as we turn our attention from well-understood equilibrium ideal regimes to less well-understood real life nonequilibrium regimes.
Similarly, the free-will concept might have material grounds but its emergence level is what is experienced, of life events unfolding where one is the subject.
Once I grasp the self, “I”, it ceases to be homogenous and monolothic, but rather becoming a mental explosion of colours and memories and constant reflections of these things. Everything in my past, I can reinterpret (relevant as someone who lived through traumatic events), and this is consciously done, as far it comes to me through active recollection to reframe my trauma and reclaim my youth.
Hence, I reinterpet the freedom of my will not as a moment of “choice”. Life is not merely a series of choices for me personally, but a series of events interpreted and reinterpreted as actions and beliefs immersed in the context at the time. The context influenced me as much as I have interpreted the context to be as such. I am the subject understanding and unveiling my will through my past events as the object of analysis, with full “objective” context included. The concept of a choice as part of decision-making fades away.
Rather I act at any moment with some degree of awareness and through later reflection and metareflection interpret rational “will” from it. I cringe at weird things I did, but at those moments they were fully real and consciously intended. Through these reflections come negations of things I did, but which I don’t want to do no longer. Thus, I elevate my understanding and have developed as a person.
That’s where you might have said it’s more of an observed process, rather than a conscious choice, made there and then. In this respect, I do admit that’s how I have decided to interpret free-will, which is more empowering than a religious or scientific interpretation. I don’t already believe in one-to-one causation in society, so my passage through time being caused by this or that is trivial as nothing I do exists in a vacuum. And I am simultaneously aware of my influences and also that I can be influenced by things I might not grasp through a deeper reinterpretation until many moments (or years) later. The mind at any moment in time is dragged by the flow of time and the material forces pressuring it to keep going, forcing it to move along. Certain things take a long time to be understood well. For this reason, I reject the strong notion of free-will that needs conscious choice at every minor crossroad in life, however these words and definitions might look like in vacuo.
Deconstructing this strong notion free-will will show that it is not a closed concept, ready to be embraced or desired: we need to understand personal ability (this goes hand in hand with philosophy of illness), personal identity, personal responsibility, etc. Come up with rigid, static frameworks for each of the above and you’ve lost the sense of my experience as a human who felt I have steered my life in certain ways, but also have allowed myself to be steered in other ways.
My rambling is not intended for self-validation that I somehow possess a made up free-will; in a revolutionary context I need to want to constantly look after my actions and reinterpret it so that my desire for a better world is not in full cognitive dissonance with my own current state of affairs. It makes sense in my head to want to navigate life as a subject wanting to project myself forward through interpretation of possibilities (either after or before said action) and as an object of nature; as the totalities of things around me and as a physical embodiment in sociocultural contexts. I find there is a balance to be achieved, or made aware of.
Thanks for the responses, I agree. Human consciousness is a beautiful and absurd process of development.