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The Illusion of Freedom and Thought
Inevitably if we start to talk about social conditioning the topic of human freewill comes into play. When you begin to recognize, as John Dewey did, that so much – if not all – of the ways that we act and think and feel are really an outpouring of socially acquired habits, you begin to wonder – am I doing anything independently? The question of freewill vs. determinism is perennial in philosophy, and a favorite topic of mine on this blog. It is unlikely that we are going to solve the mystery of causality here, but it still seems valuable to gather opinions from different sides of the issue.
Dewey saw human activity resulting from impulses that emerge spontaneously within us in response to changes in circumstances. These impulses initiate a process of activity, either physical in the form of actions, or mental in the form of thinking. If the circumstances that we encounter are familiar enough to us then actions will spontaneously occur in response. This is how we end up getting up out of bed, showering, brushing our teeth, and getting dressed without ever having to think about it. It is all just the unfolding of habitual behaviors. If the circumstances are unfamiliar, or if something goes wrong in a familiar circumstance, the habit of thinking will initiate.
According to Dewey, when we deliberate over which course of action to take in an unfamiliar circumstance what we are actually doing is mentally rehearsing possible responses and imagining the result of each. Eventually one of the responses we imagine will initiate a physical response in the form of an action. The question is, did we “choose” this course of action or did it just happen? I am not sure how Dewey saw this, but I believe that he might have believed it just happened, that we didn’t choose anything. In essence then when we enter into deliberation over a choice what happens is that a process of thinking is initiated. That process will generate all of the possible options for response and calculate which will give us the ends we desire.
Human freedom then revolves around the range of imagined possible responses that our mind is able to generate in a given circumstance. Obviously if you can only imagine two possible ways to respond in a given situation you have much less freedom than if you can imagine fifty possible ways that you could respond. And if you can only imagine one possible response then you have no freedom at all. For this reason Dewey saw a direct connection between education and freedom. Education increases our ability to generate possible responses to circumstance and therefore increases our freedom. Notice, however, that none of this requires that there be any human will in the sense of any entity which “causes” an action. Action just happens as a natural consequence of the interaction between circumstance, impulse, habit and intelligence.
FOOTNOTE (for Libertarians like me): For those of us who do not give up the notion of freewill so easily there may be a way to look at this that will ease our minds. The contemporary philosopher John Searle dispenses of the dilemma this way. Freewill may or may not exist – and he believes it probably doesn’t, but either way we will always experience freewill because of the time gap that exists between the recognition of multiple courses of action and the final action itself. During this time we experience ourselves as deliberating, as choosing between possible actions. It is possible; perhaps likely, that we are not choosing at all, that we are just watching the mind act out the habit of thinking through imagined possible responses. Still, it feels like we are deliberating and choosing and so we essentially have to act as if we are.
So…John Dewey is nothing near what I expected. Thank you for the blogs.
At the moment I am reading a book about Jung. The writer connects his archetypes with Platonic Ideas; they are there – independent of the individual. Archetypes are just like instincts (for biology) an a priory knowing that influences behavior. Archetypical motives would be an a priory knowing ‘ how to behave in primal situations of life. Both instincts and archetypes are unconscious factors that have a regulating, modifying and motivating function. They give patterns of behavior. On a more mental level, archetypes are just like the Platonic Ideas, mental (spiritual) models, with deeper meaning, with autonomous dynamic.
According to the writer (A. Jaff’e), Jung’s central archetype is the ‘self, the human total’ which is both relative and transcendental reality. The meaning of life is found when life is placed in service of fulfilling Self-realization. Connecting pre-existing inner images with objects outside and their behavior. This really does connect to Plato, interesting, isn’t it.
Great! I love this topic too. It is a mystery, but at the same time very helpful if we could get closer to it.
I agree that we have to use the word “will” or “choice” in our daily life. If we start to look at the semantics of it, philosophers like Wittgenstein would perhaps say that it is all constructed words that we ourselves fill with meaning, and that meaning is what we have to define to agree, instead of letting it confuse us. In other words: We must define what we mean with “will”. And this can be difficult when we start to think deeply about it. Maybe we can get help in the latest science of the brain, that I know is something that many philosophers are studying now. It is discovered that there are different parts of the brain that comes from different ages of humanity, and those are all parts we act out of. We can act out of instincts if the situation needs a very quick action. And we still need that part for some reactions.
In the newest part of the brain we are most conscious, it is also place of rational thinking. This could be where we act from when talk about “will”?
Another thing that I would like to know more about is the idea that we can somehow get in contact with the “whole” or “god” or “the body that we are only cells in”. That could be where we act out of a greater meaning than we actually understand ourselves, or where we are free of personal habits. But that could not be called a “personal will” either.
I just read an extremely interesting example of behavior caused by archetypical images. Young birds where taken away directly from any bird influenced, but at the time all birds where flying got very active in their cages..they tried out all kind of influenced that might have influenced this behavior and found that it was caused by the constellation of the stars, which means their must have been some kind of archetypical image of that. Then they pointed out to physicians that made early mathematical systems describing stars that actually only could have been done with a same kind of archetypical idea somewhere in consciousness. It is so nice to read again such a fascinating book which is extra interesting because it gives new clues to look at what is written here…
This might be of interest to you Liesbeth (The Piper who is referred to was an American psychic that James befriended and he alwasy beleived that her abilities were real.)
Letter July 23, 1949 from Carl Jung to Virginia Payne:
Two personalities I met at the Clark Conference made a profound and lasting impression on me. One was Stanley Hall, the President, and the other was William James whom I met for the first time then. I remember particularly an evening at President Hall’s house. After dinner William James appeared and I was particularly interested in the personal relation between Stanley Hall and William James, since I gathered from some remarks of President Hall that William James was not taken quite seriously on account of his interest in Mrs. Piper and her extra-sensory perceptions. Stanley Hall had prepared us that he had asked James to discuss some of his results with Mrs. Piper and to bring some of his material. So when James came (there was Stanley Hall, Professor Freud, one or two other men and myself) he said to Hall: “I’ve brought you some papers in which you might be interested.” And he put his hand to his breastpocket and drew out a parcel which to our delight proved to be a wad of dollar bills. Considering Stanley Hall’s great services for the increase and welfare of Clark University and his rather critical remarks as to James’s pursuits, it looked to us a particularly happy rejoinder. James excused himself profusely. Then he produced the real papers from the other pocket.
I spent two delightful evenings with James alone and I was tremendously impressed by the clearness of his mind and the complete absence of intellectual prejudices. Stanley Hall was an equally clear-headed man, but decidedly of an academic brand.
The Conference was noteworthy on account of the fact that it was the first time that Professor Freud had an immediate contact with America. It was the first official recognition of the existence of psychoanalysis and it meant a great deal to him, because recognition in Europe for him was regrettably scarce. I was a young man then. I lectured about association tests and a case of child psychology. I was also interested in parapsychology and my discussions with William James were chiefly about this subject and about the psychology of religious experience.
I used to be a great fan of Freud, it is such an amazing idea to imagine all these great guys together! For your information, I have both parts of ‘the principles of psychology’ of James waiting to be read, so maybe now finally my interest in Jung gets alive..I had no more time to read this afternoon, but I had to think about the ‘deep structures’ that Andrew is talking about; it is not that a physician has ‘a picture of the constellation of the stars’ as I wrote, but somehow both matter and mind are influenced by the same structures or archetypes..a while ago someone advised the book ‘mysterium Coniunctionis’, I could not make much sense of it than, but now I see that it is all about this, including the synthesis of opposites that connects to this all..it is so funny, I had very different plans for the hollidays, but what can be more interesting than diving into this all?? I appreciate very much your response and I wish all of you great days and a fantastic new year!
Some lines from Mysterium Coniunctions p.96-97: ..The philosophers maintained that the father of the gold and silver is the animating principle of earth and water…the idea at the back of this is that primitive conception of a universal power of growth…which is to be found as much in the sun as in men and plants..so that not only the sun but man too, and especially the enlightened man, can generate the gold of virtue of this universal power.
..It was clear to alchemists that the gold was not made by chemical procedures, the miracle was performed by a hidden nature, a metaphysical entity, perceived not with the outward eyes, but solely by the mind. It was ‘infused from heaven, provided that the adept had approached as closely as possible to things divine and at the same time had extracted from the substances the subtlest powers ‘fit for the miraculous act’.
‘There is in the human body a certain aethereal substance, which preserves its other elemental parts and causes them to continue. This substance or virtue is hindered in its operations by the ‘ corruption of the body’ , but ‘the philosophers, through a kind of divine inspiration knew that this virtue and heavenly vigor can be freed from its fetters…The spark of divine fire implanted in man becomes what Goethe in Faust called Faust’s ‘entelechy’ (Wiki=potentiality – >actuality)…This was the real source of illumination in alchemy..it has to do with growth of modern consciousness.
Mercurius signifies by his very nature the unconscious, where nothing can be differentiated, but as a living spirit, he is an active principle and so must always appear in reality in differentiated form. He is therefore fittingly called duplex, both active and passive. The ‘ascending’ active part of him is called Sol, and it is only through this that the passive part can be perceived. The passive part bears the name of Luna, because she borrows her light from the sun.
Mercurius demonstrably corresponds tot he cosmic Nous of the classical philosophers (Wiki= to initiate the process of cosmic development). The human mind is a derivative of this..Consciousness requires as its necessary counterpart a dark, latent non-manifest side, the unconscious, whose presence can be known only by the light of consciousness. This duality of our psychic life is the prototype and archetype of the Sol-Luna symbolism.
The antinomian thinking in alchemy counters every position with a negation and vise-versa.
Reading William James, he is so actual, I understand your admiration. Entering the third chapter it gets interesting: Habits. Specific to humans is that we have a ‘long and painful road to learn things’ (like playing the piano, but also ‘act and dress like a gentleman, something that cannot be learned fully after being an adult..) real learning happens when growing up, then the groves that create habits can be stretched easily. Once an act is turned into a habit, it doesn’t take (much) consciousness anymore. Learning new structures takes a lot of consciousness and James stresses that when learning something new, every time we quit weakens the new grove so much, that we never should do that.
‘ A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain ‘ grows’ to their use’ .
..There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed…or the weeping of a Russian lady over the fictious personage in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside. The remedy would be, never to suffer one’s self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterwards in SOME active way. Let the expression be the least thing in the world – speaking genially to one’s aunt, or giving up one’s seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers -but let it not fail to take place. These acts are habits of will and should be practiced every day, for no other reason that that we would rather not do it..’
It is wonderful to have you back in town doing what you love snriahg your awesome gourmet culinary skills! My lunch was fantastic today!!! A spinach salad which was the BEST I have ever had. It is so good to have you back. Not only was the food outstanding, you made me feel like a rock star visiting my table (on your knees ) to fill me in on your brief time away from Route 140. Welcome back, James and Coryn!! A Hidden Jewel is correct!!!! Cannot wait to see you soon!!