Free will

 Why the concept of “free-will” is nonsense:  A microessay.

Before making the argument alluded to in the title of this piece, it is necessary to distinguish “legalistic” from “metaphysical” free-will.  Legalistic free-will refers to the kind of freedom that a person can be granted by law, or, by virtue of the fact that he/she is not physically confined, restrained, or forced to act under coercion.  There’s little to debate about “free-will” (or “freedom”) in this sense.

  

Metaphysical free-will is the kind that can only be granted by God, or, alternatively, by the act of disobedience exhibited by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which is rather difficult to explain if Adam and Eve did not already possess the freedom to disobey.  There is a great deal that can be debated about “free-will” in this sense, starting with whether or not the concept makes sense.

What is free-will?  That is the problem.  It is impossible to describe what free-will is or how it works, except in supernatural terms.  Why?  Because metaphysical free-will requires that we (human beings) cause actions or events to occur without ourselves having been caused to initiate those actions or events.  In effect, we (human beings) must be uncaused causes or unmoved movers.

Why would anyone want to entertain such a flagrant violation of the second law of thermodynamics?  There are 2 reasons, the first of which pertains to the assignment of responsibility, guilt, or blame.  The underlying assumption is that whatever causes action A is responsible for action A, so, if you caused it, then you are responsible, guilty, or blameworthy for A.  (The reasoning works the same way with regard to moral credit or praiseworthiness, but that is neither here nor there.)  The second reason why people are tempted to disregard the second law of thermodynamics pertains to getting God off the hook for the existence of evil in His creation; however, I shall ignore this metaphysical motivation for the moment.

Suppose that, instead of causing action A freely, you were compelled to cause it by influences outside your knowledge or control; suppose you were caused to cause action A.  Suppose you were caused by your upbringing, your social milieu, a disease, a malfunction within your brain, etc.  In that case, you would NOT be responsible for action A, because you had not caused it.  However, if we are to accept the second law of thermodynamics as true, then ALL actions are like this. Everything you have ever thought, said, felt, or done has been caused by something beyond yourself.

But what, then, becomes of moral responsibility?  There is another way to account for this very important notion, but I have already done this elsewhere (q.v., available upon request).  My purpose here is simply to show why the concept of metaphysical free-will is nonsense, or what philosophers call “incoherent.”  This incoherence can be demonstrated very simply by asking, “How does free-will work?”

Assuming the second law of thermodynamics as true, and that human beings are not uncaused causes or unmoved movers (i.e., we cannot create something from nothing), then there is no possible naturalistic mechanics of such phenomena.  There remains only “the” supernatural explanation; but what is the supernatural explanation?

The supernatural explanation is that, every time a human being performs a voluntary action, God performs a miracle.  So, if you decide to raise your right arm and your arm goes up – it’s a miracle!  There is no other means (or none I can imagine) to account for such supernatural causation.  But, if correct, this explanation has two highly undesirable outcomes:  1) Every time anyone, all throughout past and future history, performs a voluntary action – it’s a miracle!  But it would seem that such miracles are a dime a dozen; so cheap, in fact, that we can probably find better explanations without them.  2) If God performs a miracle with every voluntary action, then God is responsible for every voluntary action which does evil, like premeditated homicide.  The second motivation for disregarding the second law of thermodynamics – to get God off the hook for the existence of evil in His creation – fails, by the way, rather miserably.

Unless, and until, some great thinker can provide us with what we might call “a mechanics of free-will,” then we are well advised to disregard the concept of free-will in its metaphysical sense.  At the same time, I also believe that we should fight to the death to defend free-will in its legalistic sense.

JJ

Resentment and Ressentiment

 Resentment and Ressentiment - Double Whammy

Nietzsche presented the notion of ‘ressentiment’ which means that the past oppression and domination continues emotionally or affectively. The contrasting notion is ‘resentment’ or the desire to punish - the indignation one feels when confronted with injustice inflicted on others or oneself. You can just read "The Genealogy of Morals" but there is more to it today.

Resentment consists of this dual dimension: the sudden anger of ressentiment and the deliberate practices of prevention of injustice and injury, eg policing, prosecuting and the politics of security.

The reactive attitudes on the one hand and the policies on the other constitute this dual dimension.

Nietzsche however labels the hostile reaction aimed at the world as ‘slave morality,’ as ressentiment - waiting, provisionally humble and not forgetting.

The noble man with noble morality forgets and cannot take his enemies seriously for long. 

The slave morality constructs evil, the evil enemy, and then counters herself as good! The noble person conceives the basic concept ‘good’ and then creates an idea of bad.

Values thus emerge from opposite logics: ressentiment transforms good and bad into good and evil - a moral category; the noble ones conceive of bad and good in practical or aesthetic terms. The unsatisfied hatred, the thirst for revenge, in ressentiment is contrasted with resentment: a legitimate response to a wrong committed and lead to a fair punishment of the perpetrator!

Both resentment and ressentiment are negative moral emotions but with a different sense and intensity. Perhaps the worst aspect of ressentiment is the repressed feelings that “legitimizes” the reaction of envy and impotence, like grudges and junk yard dogs!

See Fassin, D 2013 “On Resentment and Ressentiment”

I like Fassin’s take because he contextualized Nietzsche’s motif in terms of the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide (which occurred around the same time as the Serbian genocide/ethnic cleansing and both followed ongoing civil wars), the problem of AIDS "non-intervention" - the rejection of distribution of antiretrovirals in Africa, and the crisis of policing in the French banlieus, and by extension in certain other cities in the US and East Asia!

From Jeremy Engels 2015 "The Politics of Resentment - A Genealogy"

"In times of suffering, it is human to point fingers and cast

stones. Blame gives meaning to suffering, and for this reason civic resentment is intimately related to the problem of scapegoating. It is an economic system that is to blame for much of the pain that Americans feel today—yet it is difficult for us, as rhetorical actors, to condemn a system. It is easier to blame individuals. While Rawls might be correct, and resentment at times might be associated with a desire for justice, Friedrich Nietzsche demonstrates how easily those who are willing to name a scapegoat, and who promise redemption through victimage, can dupe the resentful soul. To be resentful is necessarily to be vulnerable to manipulation." p18

There are many books out with the title "Politics of Resentment,"

Betz 1991

Engels 2015

Resnick 2001

Kramer 2016

Fukuyama 2018

Metzl 2019

not to mention books with 'resentment' or 'ressentiment' in the title, nor articles, like Fassin's.

Truth and Goodness

 Truth and Goodness

Horkheimer’s critique of Kant was over the assumption that the good brought happiness!

‘Good or happiness’ - many philosophers believe that “good” means happiness, which is not always clear cut. Good is too often a non-cognitive term. And, good does not necessarily lead to happiness.

Truth also is somewhat vague. Truth as truth-telling is different from truth as factual. One can be telling the truth in terms of their (emotional) state of mind or consciously while being completely erroneous about the facts. But, many philosophers equate truth and rightness, that in being “right” they articulate the truth which is not appropriate. 

The standard for truth is rationality which means that the truth or rightness claim is rationally motivated by a justified, warranted and grounded consensus which includes the perspectives of all. In other words, evidence is necessary.

There are unpreventable preventions of nature’s wrath. Humans are part of nature, can understand nature and rationally control it. Humans can prevent catastrophes.

Truth in your description adds to 'facts' both values and metaphysics, i.e. "beyond factuality" you said!

 Truth addresses the accuracy, or adequacy of descriptions about facts. Truth includes several dilemmas beyond the fact-value difference. For example, to explain an event or a happening - why it emerged and how to formulate it, truth must address both teleology or goal-directedness - how certain goals or aims determined or influenced the event, and causality, the causes, reasons and intentions that led to the effects and consequences. 

Formulating the truth about events, or changes, involves interpretation and reinterpretations, like attributing properly the teleological and causative elements of the event, and the dilemmas of fragility between impulses and morality, and between rules and meanings.

Ilusion or Delusion

 Illusion or Delusion

First, let's define illusion. Some consider illusion either perceptual distortion or a cognitive misjudgment, distinct from language. The intervening issue is delusion, or false belief, with origins at many points, eg socialization, conditioning, ideology, misinformed, etc.

Reality as in foundational metaphysics is a complex set of structures which must be inferred or performed, not exactly visible or legible.  Reality is a set of structures, a material reality! The illusions are distortions of perceptions, like illusions of distance, of background, of intensity. 

Illusion and delusion is the confused pair. Reality may be misperceived or misjudged due to either illusion or delusion, but delusion is by far the more serious issue in psychoanalysis!

Delusion means false, illusion means distortion. Freud has a discussion on this distinction.

The problem of epistemology, how we know, and metaphysics, what we know as reality,  is that each person has a different ontology, what or whether something exists, based on experience, however there are various limits that constitute reality in terms of economics, biology, law, social relations, etc. Reality surely has a foundational metaphysics in terms of nutrition, safety, shelter/housing, financial security/jobs, etc. 

To assert that ontology is merely political rhetoric, deniable, irrelevant to ecological and evolutionary requirements for human life, then you are not dealing with illusions, but with delusions!

One question concerns whether an hallucination is an illusion or a delusion!

One definition of “hallucination” is that it is a construction, a personal subjective determination of the existence or value of a sensation/image/emotion/experience, etc. Hallucination, however, is often considered to be a illusion because the person cannot determine the source or origin of the sender, it is 'anonymous!'  

Constructionism is somewhat disingenuous because most people learn the theories, or by experience, that regulate risk taking and thus improve evolutionary fitness. However, the notion that fitness is an individual determination or construction is not really accurate. How does that explain polygamy, altruism, and mate competition with its incidences of jealousy, rape, murder and violence generally?

Perception is not necessarily caused by maximizing fitness - there are limits. Firstly, organisms must survive before fitness is “maximized!” Secondly, fitness involves offspring also reproducing, therefore surviving, thus the perceptual “adaptations” at issue are more than fitness concerns. In fact, the issues and concerns are so complex that fitness like survival becomes a probability (which might be why some people revert to Quantum Physics instead of focusing on causality). Thirdly, if perception is adapted for anything, it is adapted to detect danger. Perception that is illusory or constructed or hallucinated will be unlikely to pass this test. If danger is constructed and not objectively perceived, why should fitness work - it is possible that failure is more probable than success, however!