Binswanger - Ch. 10 - Free Will - Intro Flashcards
(29 cards)
HB has emphasized the fundamental difference between the perceptual level and the conceptual level:
Perception is automatic, unchosen.
Conceptual activities are volitional — Subject to CHOICE.
But what does choice mean and imply?
Choice operating where?
Caused by what?
Affecting what?
Now is the time to meet those questions head on — ie to take up the topic of free will.
Free will has traditionally been thought of as the ability to choose among alternative physical actions, eg choosing between going to work and going to the corner saloon.
This view is not false, but it is quite superficial.
Physical actions are NOT primaries — one’s body does not unaccountably lurch off in one direction or another.
==> The actions of one’s body are controlled by the actions of one’s mind:
ONE DECIDES WHAT TO DO.
A decision, however, is also NOT a primary:
It is the outcome of a decision-making process, and the input to that process is constituted by one’s beliefs and values, specific and general.
One’s beliefs and values are, in turn, the products of earlier processes:
The process fashions the product.
ALL conceptual products — ALL ideas, values, theories, and convictions —
ARE CAUSED AND SHAPED BY THE PROCESSING THAT ONE EMPLOYS IN REACHING THEM.
THAT process can be performed RATIONALLY or IRRATIONALLY:
One can reach conclusions by a conscientious, fact-centered process of thought, OR
by any irrational substitute, such as emotion-driven leaps in the dark or unthinking absorption of the beliefs and values of others.
HERE we have reached the ACTUAL PRIMARY:
The rationality or irrationality of one’s mental processes.
==> It is this that is under one’s direct, volitional control.
This is the understanding of free will originated by AR.
Hers is the first philosophy to recognize that free will is FUNDAMENTALLY …
AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUE — That it pertains to conceptual cognition as such.
“Man is a being of volitional consciousness.”
Reason does not work automatically — thinking is not a mechanical process — the connections of logic are not made by instinct.
==> The function of your stomach, lungs, or heart is automatic — the function of your mind is not.
==> In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort.
==> But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival — so that for YOU, who are a human being, the question “to be or not to be” is the question “to think or not to think”.
William James, in “The Principles of Psychology”, recognizes that …
Free will is psychological, and his discussion there of will as control of attention is quite similar, though not identical, to AR’s idea of “mental focus”. [James, 1890]
Also, an Aristotelian of the 2nd century A.D., Alexander of Aphrodisias, proposes essentially the same idea [Quaestiones III, 13].
Man’s free will consists in his …
Sovereign control over HOW he uses his own mind.
HOW a man uses his mind determines the rest:
The conclusions he reaches, the goals he sets, the actions-decisions he makes.
But NOTHING, in turn, controls how he uses his mind:
That is his “SOVEREIGNTY”:
==> THE CAUSAL CHAIN BEGINS WITHIN ONE’S OWN MIND.
==> Having the power to initiate a rational process makes man an autonomous, self-regulating being, not a robot programmed by outside forces.
Sovereign control is not omnipotence:
One cannot take actions that would violate the IDENTITY of one’s conceptual faculty.
==> One cannot WILL to be infallible or omniscient.
==> Nor is one immune from the effects on cognition of drugs or a blow to the head.
==> But given a normal, healthy brain, one’s sovereign control means that such factors as genes, upbringing, subculture, and desires do NOT control whether or not one engages in rational thought.
The doctrine that denies this sovereign control is known as …
Determinism.
Determinism is the theory holding that …
Antecedent factors BEYOND MAN’S CONTROL NECESSITATE EVERYTHING HE IS AND DOES, including the nature of every mental process he performs.
Determinists claim that one’s sense of control over one’s own mind is …
ILLUSORY.
According to determinism, every event in one’s consciousness is …
Only a REACTION, NECESSITATED BY PRIOR EVENTS, which were in turn NECESSITATED by still earlier events, and so on, reaching back in time to before one’s birth, before human beings evolved, before Earth was formed.
According to the theory of determinism, whatever happens in consciousness, …
HAD TO HAPPEN (as in the material world), with NO ALTERNATIVE, NO ACTUAL CONTROL, NO FREEDOM, NO GENUINE CHOICE.
But if a man’s mind were in thrall to some factor that forced ideas upon him, …
He could NOT validate his conclusions objectively, and thus he could NOT distinguish knowledge from mistaken belief.
OBJECTIVITY requires guiding one’s thinking by logic — …
The operations of a deterministic mind would be ruled not by logic but by some NECESSITATING factor — genes, social “conditioning”, brain structures, “confirmation bias” etc.
A deterministic mind would only …
EMIT OUTPUTS, LIKE A COMPUTER.
==> It could not make objective judgements, distinguish the logical from the illogical, or separate truth from falsehood.
As I show late in this chapter, if conceptual processes were deterministic, they would be …
Like PERCEPTUAL PROCESSES.
==> Metaphysically given and incapable of error.
==> But denying the existence of error lands one in a contradiction:
“The belief that error exists is an error.”
If men could not think or act OTHERWISE than they do, …
Neither ethics nor epistemology would make sense ==> One cannot evaluate the IMPOSSIBLE.
==> To say that one ought to take some action presupposes that one can CHOOSE to take it.
