"Knowing who you are means you have a good idea what you're going to do next. Perfect self-knowledge means you can predict precisely what you'll do in response to any situation. But that's equivalent to knowing your future. And knowing your future means giving up free will, because you can see every choice you're going to make."
~Elizabeth Marston (via Facebook)Free Will versus Meaning
Self-knowledge thus negatively correlates with phenomenological free will. This holds true for and deterministic vector, including purpose in life. If there is an intrinsic purpose in life, then it functions as a goal for your actions – that is if you are aware of it. If you were to know your purpose in life (if there is one), you would have a fantastic amount of self-knowledge. You would have, in effect, a blueprint for every nontrivial action (which would also incidentally solve most – if not all – issues of personal ethics). The downside of this is that this blueprint reduces you to a slave to your purpose. You becomes an automaton, devoid of [the experience of] free will.On the other end of the spectrum, having zero self-knowledge causes the problem of being a wild animal, slave to your most base drives, with no way of self-checking. Ethics –personal or otherwise – are not even on your radar. At this hypothetical extreme, memory isn't possible as it is a form of self-knowledge. You are again a mere automaton. Furthermore, you gain an intrinsic purpose: to follow your drives. Les extrémités se touchent, as the French say.
While free will may be a de facto illusion, clearly we do experience free will within the limits of a mixed strategy. The question of where we achieve the optimum output of free will I do not think can ever be definitively answered, and certainly not within the scope of this blog.
Free and Meaningful Tug-of-War
Is free will an important thing? As roughly meaning autonomy and agency, we certainly do seem to value it culturally, though this was not always so. It is not an imperative, though purpose (meaning) is. It could be said that meaning is a prerequisite to free will, as without it you are unable to act (you are without direction, without the ability to evaluate), hence a mixed strategy being optimal as far as free will is concerned. The only way for this to happen requires imperfect or incomplete ("flawed") purposes, meanings or models.
So here we are, stuck between two extremes. Finding optimization of whatever ratio of free will and meaning that we feel is right, though no one solution will ever satisfy the problem completely. This is another facet of the human condition. By our very nature, we cannot ever completely win. But perhaps that isn't either here nor there. Perhaps this need is what keeps us going, searching, thinking, acting. We have an action potential that cannot ever be fully discharged until death takes us. We could still achieve all that we do without this, as machines and computers, but – I think – this is the difference of what makes us human.
"He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool."
Outline~Albert Camus
- Complete free will requires the absence of intrinsic purpose, and vice versa
- Purpose is approximately equal to meaning, and thus value
- We need values in order to evaluate
- We need to be able to evaluate against some model in order to act
- Purpose is a prerequisite to action, and this free will
- A mixed strategy is required in order for free will to operate
- We are thinking creatures, and experience "the gears turning" as free will
- We cannot escape free will or the need for meaning
I believe "free will" is intrinsically an oxymoronic concept, since in the popular, intuitive understanding it supposes a mixture of determinancy and indeterminancy. It seems to refer to being able to "choose" what to do in a situation, and is somehow indivisible and unconnected with the material world. In short, free will is correct as a phenomenal experience, but not at all coherent as a concept. I think it's horrible that it still has cachet in philosophical circles, especially as all attempts to make it coherent that I know of fall flat on their faces.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that an entity having perfect knowledge of itself would lead to a loss of feeling of free will; feeling and knowledge are two entirely different cognitive processes, and it does not follow that because one knows that their feelings of free will are an illusion that they will stop feeling free. The mind, methinks, does not work that way. Also, what if an entity is a stochastic decider/thinker? If they somehow could have complete knowledge of their probabilities, this would not entail that they have complete knowledge of their future actions. My intuition is that this latter situation is more akin to complex systems such as humans.
I concur with you that we cannot escape the feeling of free will or the need for meaning. I do believe that with insight into our cognitive functions we can harmonize the two better.
But I am just a silly white crow.
I haven't handled this material in a few months, so without actually re-reading my post, I'll split a few hairs:
ReplyDelete1) if you want someone to try to defend free will, talk to Beth (she's definitely not a determinist). Most people with such beliefs argue that this immaterial "free will" consciousness is either a) able to interface with mater (similar to a "spirit atom"), or b) is a property of all mater, like extension.
2) True, knowledge and feeling (or phenomenological experience) are ontologically distinct, but most reasonable people both i) inform their experience with their knowledge of a situation, and ii) experience the world primarily through a mental model that they have built (disclaimer: I'm assuming emotion here to be exactly a cognate component of thought). Thus, perfect self-knowledge would necessitate a particular model of the self, their identity, their being-in-the-world, and the world-in-itself.. which is most likely quite different from most people's model of those things. It may even be a special model that is otherwise inaccessible, but I'm not willing to prove this claim.
(All of point #2 is really just a slight alteration from the argument for the benevolence of god from omniscience).
3) Perfect self-knowledge would strip free will (at the upper limit at least), as every decision made is made weighing options... if you know ahead of time what the options are (ie: the situation), and how you would react to each, you can determine the outcome. And yes, this includes doing something "random", as the need for doing something unexpected is precluded by certain thoughts and stimuli.
4) There is a pure strategy possible, which is to assume some "true purpose", and not think of these philosophical questions, effectively limiting your freedom (under this paradigm) to become automaton.
5) "I do believe that with insight into our cognitive functions we can harmonize the two better." Yes, that's the idea :)