8 thoughts on “When I Recall My Moral Failures . . .”
Bill,
I recall your other earlier posts on our “strict numerical identity over time,” but I have to say that I found your succinct argument in (a) very persuasive, although, as you point out, rational philosophical objections exist to it.
As to (b), I also agree with your position, but I am struggling at the moment to find a formulation that affirms the ontological freedom of the will and the fact that this freedom is exercised within a domain of potent, often unconscious, constraints that arise from the past and present histories of persons. Such constraints include the early emotional milieus that establish the givens of safety, value, and goodness; the inheritance of familial, often neurotic, patterns of behavior; and all the unconscious defenses– denial, rationalization, and projection (as in the Jungian Shadow) — that filter perception and shape emotion so as to impede the conscious emergence of alternatives ways of thinking and acting.
It was your response to my comment on the May 17th post “Heaven and Hell: The Looming of the Last Things at the End of the Trail,” that stayed with me these past months and sharpened my sense that the traditional concept of moral failure or sin in which each person exists within a field of equally obtainable choices if too simplistic. You wrote: “Yes, we are free, and not merely in the compatibilist ‘freedom of the turnspit’ sense. But the trad doctrine ascribes to us miserable humans a level of freedom and of insight into the consequences of actions that most of us do not possess.” So, yes, the will is free in an absolute ontological sense, but much of the time we make choices under the influence of forces not of our choosing and that are unconscious or misunderstood.
The concluding sentence of the above paragraph may well be too obvious for a philosopher to consider, but I felt the need to share it with you, as I am now, at the “end of the trail,” in the process of conducting a review of the moral ups and downs of my own life and try to understand the degree of freedom that I exercised over time.
Bill, do you really think that establishes (and with how much epistemic probability) those implied claims, by your philosophical standards?
E.g., I like your Sophie’s Choice argument for libertarian free will. I even teach it to my students. Yet I tell them I am far from sure about its crucial premise: literally, I never see clearly that I could have done otherwise than I did. Bc that’s a moot metaphysical claim.
Thanks for reminding me of the Sophie’s Choice argument which is also relevant to what Vito says above. Here is the argument again:
4. Now for an Epistemic Argument. It would be nice if one could ‘switch off’ one’s free agency and go on automatic. Many choices, after all, are painful and we wish we could avoid them. Sophie’s choice was agonizing because she knew that it was up to her which child would remain with her and which would be taken away by the Nazi SS officer. Now which is more certain: that Sophie knows that she is a free agent morally responsible for her choices, or that she knows that she is a wholly deterministic system and that the sense of free agency and moral responsibility are but illusions? The answer ought to be obvious: the former is more certain. One is directly aware of one’s free agency, while it is only by shaky abstract reasoning that one comes to the view that free will is an illusion. Sophie is directly aware that it is ‘up to her’ which child she surrenders to the SS thug. This is the source of her agony.
My Epistemic Argument:
a. We are directly aware of our libertarianly-free agency, our freedom in the unconditional ‘could have done otherwise’ sense.
b. This direct awareness trumps, epistemically speaking, the proposition that all of our mental and physical processes are causally necessitated by events antecedent to our births.
Therefore
c. One is justified is believing that one is libertarianly free despite one’s having no explanation of how this is possible given the (macro) determinism of nature.
That is the argument I gave. What you call the “crucial premise” is (a). You say that it is not clear to you that you could have done otherwise than you did. The reason being that it is a “moot [ debated or disputable] metaphysical claim.” I see your point. You think that I have not established or strictly proven that in reality we agents are L-free. My response is that the reality in this case is not ‘out there’, but ‘in here,’ i,e., ineluctably subjective. We are not objects among objects bu subject for whom there are objects. Which is better known: that we are morally responsible L-free agents, or that we are determininstic systems bereft of moral responsibility? My claim is that the former is better known than the latter which is more a matter of reasonable belief than of knowledge strictly speaking.
Compare: which is better known, the felt pain of a headache, or the existence of certain neuronal goings-on in your brain? The former, which is known with certainty, and cannot be an illusion. We are back to the qualia problem we discussed earlier. I don’t see how epistemic probability come into this at all. If you want to assign a probability value to your FELT headache, the value would be 1 and could not be < 1. It would surely be meaningless to say that the probability of my current headache pain is .573.
In the case of poor Sophie, the subjective reality of her L-free agency is as absolutely certain as her felt agony. In cases like this subjective reality is (identically) objective reality.
I'd like to hear your response to this.
https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/could-free-will-be-an-illusion?utm_source=publication-search
But the libertarian counterfactual and similar claims (say, right now I could do A, or not-A) differ from factuals about pain (right now, I feel this pain). And even if they were more certain than determinism (I am always determined), I don’t see by how much.
To digress a bit, if (libertarian) free will exists (which I doubt but am open to), it might be degreed, across persons and times: some people might be free almost all the time, while others just a minute per day. Genetic predispositions, age, and accumulated virtues and vices would be factors here.
I’ll try to lay this out in a separate post since IMHO it is one the deepest and most difficult questions in philosophy involving as it does the tension between the first- and third-person points of view, both of which are legitimate.
Thanks for your interest. I’ll see what I can do. Day-to-day practical shit consumes a lot of time.
Hi, gentlemen.
I’m a little late to the party, but this is a very interesting topic.
I’m fascinated by the power of our souls to reason and to reflect on our actions—what is sometimes called the “diachronic unity of consciousness.”
There’s an old post in which Bill uses the example of working through a syllogism and points out that, without diachronic unity, that would be impossible. I think even comparing the differences between a banana and an apple would be impossible without it, but I digress.
The deeper point is this: without a self that functions like a substance, repentance—and even regret over moral failure—would be impossible. No one could ever grow up, flourish, or develop as a human being if any version of an anti-self theory (bundle theory, eliminativism, Buddhism, and so on) were true. None of these theories can accommodate the distinct capacities of human beings such as reasoning, deducing, analyzing, comparing, choosing, and the like.
For example, when I consider different propositions (or ideas, as I prefer to call them)—“Every man is mortal” and “Socrates is a man”—there is no way these two can be the same thought or mental item. They are delimited and differentiated by their concepts and meanings. If they were present in the same mental item, the result would be a Parmenidean (meaningless) mess.
For thinking—or any other meaningful human experience—to be possible, there must be something capable of performing that Bewegung (for lack of a better word) from one idea to another. These are distinct acts, and whatever does the work must also survive the change from one distinct act to the next. Moral growth is no different. I remember the time I was a spoiled brat; I think of all the suffering and effort my mother endured so that I could have a better life; and I then move on to actions that honor her effort and show her a little of the immense appreciation and love she gave me. In a sense, remembering our failings is not a bad thing but a useful tool for avoiding the same mistakes and the same misery.
I do not think a thought or mental item could reflect on itself and judge itself, because that would require a kind of perspective or worldview that it would have to exercise on its own. I also fail to see how any relation of any kind (whether causality, contiguity, co-presence, or whatever) could perform that Bewegung without itself being a self in disguise. I would even say that any mental item lacks that Bewegung and could not even “read through itself” and interpret its own content the way we do when reading or thinking. (For instance, the thought “Socrates is a man” could not even move from “Socrates” to “is” without a self behind it.) I confess I am not smart enough, or well-read enough, to demonstrate to myself with full confidence why this is impossible. Even so, although I am not a trained philosopher and not especially clever, I remain quite confident that no anti-self theory could ever replicate this genuine power that our souls possess.
Bill,
I recall your other earlier posts on our “strict numerical identity over time,” but I have to say that I found your succinct argument in (a) very persuasive, although, as you point out, rational philosophical objections exist to it.
As to (b), I also agree with your position, but I am struggling at the moment to find a formulation that affirms the ontological freedom of the will and the fact that this freedom is exercised within a domain of potent, often unconscious, constraints that arise from the past and present histories of persons. Such constraints include the early emotional milieus that establish the givens of safety, value, and goodness; the inheritance of familial, often neurotic, patterns of behavior; and all the unconscious defenses– denial, rationalization, and projection (as in the Jungian Shadow) — that filter perception and shape emotion so as to impede the conscious emergence of alternatives ways of thinking and acting.
It was your response to my comment on the May 17th post “Heaven and Hell: The Looming of the Last Things at the End of the Trail,” that stayed with me these past months and sharpened my sense that the traditional concept of moral failure or sin in which each person exists within a field of equally obtainable choices if too simplistic. You wrote: “Yes, we are free, and not merely in the compatibilist ‘freedom of the turnspit’ sense. But the trad doctrine ascribes to us miserable humans a level of freedom and of insight into the consequences of actions that most of us do not possess.” So, yes, the will is free in an absolute ontological sense, but much of the time we make choices under the influence of forces not of our choosing and that are unconscious or misunderstood.
The concluding sentence of the above paragraph may well be too obvious for a philosopher to consider, but I felt the need to share it with you, as I am now, at the “end of the trail,” in the process of conducting a review of the moral ups and downs of my own life and try to understand the degree of freedom that I exercised over time.
Bill, do you really think that establishes (and with how much epistemic probability) those implied claims, by your philosophical standards?
E.g., I like your Sophie’s Choice argument for libertarian free will. I even teach it to my students. Yet I tell them I am far from sure about its crucial premise: literally, I never see clearly that I could have done otherwise than I did. Bc that’s a moot metaphysical claim.
Thanks for reminding me of the Sophie’s Choice argument which is also relevant to what Vito says above. Here is the argument again:
4. Now for an Epistemic Argument. It would be nice if one could ‘switch off’ one’s free agency and go on automatic. Many choices, after all, are painful and we wish we could avoid them. Sophie’s choice was agonizing because she knew that it was up to her which child would remain with her and which would be taken away by the Nazi SS officer. Now which is more certain: that Sophie knows that she is a free agent morally responsible for her choices, or that she knows that she is a wholly deterministic system and that the sense of free agency and moral responsibility are but illusions? The answer ought to be obvious: the former is more certain. One is directly aware of one’s free agency, while it is only by shaky abstract reasoning that one comes to the view that free will is an illusion. Sophie is directly aware that it is ‘up to her’ which child she surrenders to the SS thug. This is the source of her agony.
My Epistemic Argument:
a. We are directly aware of our libertarianly-free agency, our freedom in the unconditional ‘could have done otherwise’ sense.
b. This direct awareness trumps, epistemically speaking, the proposition that all of our mental and physical processes are causally necessitated by events antecedent to our births.
Therefore
c. One is justified is believing that one is libertarianly free despite one’s having no explanation of how this is possible given the (macro) determinism of nature.
That is the argument I gave. What you call the “crucial premise” is (a). You say that it is not clear to you that you could have done otherwise than you did. The reason being that it is a “moot [ debated or disputable] metaphysical claim.” I see your point. You think that I have not established or strictly proven that in reality we agents are L-free. My response is that the reality in this case is not ‘out there’, but ‘in here,’ i,e., ineluctably subjective. We are not objects among objects bu subject for whom there are objects. Which is better known: that we are morally responsible L-free agents, or that we are determininstic systems bereft of moral responsibility? My claim is that the former is better known than the latter which is more a matter of reasonable belief than of knowledge strictly speaking.
Compare: which is better known, the felt pain of a headache, or the existence of certain neuronal goings-on in your brain? The former, which is known with certainty, and cannot be an illusion. We are back to the qualia problem we discussed earlier. I don’t see how epistemic probability come into this at all. If you want to assign a probability value to your FELT headache, the value would be 1 and could not be < 1. It would surely be meaningless to say that the probability of my current headache pain is .573. In the case of poor Sophie, the subjective reality of her L-free agency is as absolutely certain as her felt agony. In cases like this subjective reality is (identically) objective reality. I'd like to hear your response to this. https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/could-free-will-be-an-illusion?utm_source=publication-search
I see your point, too, Bill.
But the libertarian counterfactual and similar claims (say, right now I could do A, or not-A) differ from factuals about pain (right now, I feel this pain). And even if they were more certain than determinism (I am always determined), I don’t see by how much.
To digress a bit, if (libertarian) free will exists (which I doubt but am open to), it might be degreed, across persons and times: some people might be free almost all the time, while others just a minute per day. Genetic predispositions, age, and accumulated virtues and vices would be factors here.
Vlastimil,
I’ll try to lay this out in a separate post since IMHO it is one the deepest and most difficult questions in philosophy involving as it does the tension between the first- and third-person points of view, both of which are legitimate.
Bill, still waiting for it.
Vlastimil,
Thanks for your interest. I’ll see what I can do. Day-to-day practical shit consumes a lot of time.
Hi, gentlemen.
I’m a little late to the party, but this is a very interesting topic.
I’m fascinated by the power of our souls to reason and to reflect on our actions—what is sometimes called the “diachronic unity of consciousness.”
There’s an old post in which Bill uses the example of working through a syllogism and points out that, without diachronic unity, that would be impossible. I think even comparing the differences between a banana and an apple would be impossible without it, but I digress.
The deeper point is this: without a self that functions like a substance, repentance—and even regret over moral failure—would be impossible. No one could ever grow up, flourish, or develop as a human being if any version of an anti-self theory (bundle theory, eliminativism, Buddhism, and so on) were true. None of these theories can accommodate the distinct capacities of human beings such as reasoning, deducing, analyzing, comparing, choosing, and the like.
For example, when I consider different propositions (or ideas, as I prefer to call them)—“Every man is mortal” and “Socrates is a man”—there is no way these two can be the same thought or mental item. They are delimited and differentiated by their concepts and meanings. If they were present in the same mental item, the result would be a Parmenidean (meaningless) mess.
For thinking—or any other meaningful human experience—to be possible, there must be something capable of performing that Bewegung (for lack of a better word) from one idea to another. These are distinct acts, and whatever does the work must also survive the change from one distinct act to the next. Moral growth is no different. I remember the time I was a spoiled brat; I think of all the suffering and effort my mother endured so that I could have a better life; and I then move on to actions that honor her effort and show her a little of the immense appreciation and love she gave me. In a sense, remembering our failings is not a bad thing but a useful tool for avoiding the same mistakes and the same misery.
I do not think a thought or mental item could reflect on itself and judge itself, because that would require a kind of perspective or worldview that it would have to exercise on its own. I also fail to see how any relation of any kind (whether causality, contiguity, co-presence, or whatever) could perform that Bewegung without itself being a self in disguise. I would even say that any mental item lacks that Bewegung and could not even “read through itself” and interpret its own content the way we do when reading or thinking. (For instance, the thought “Socrates is a man” could not even move from “Socrates” to “is” without a self behind it.) I confess I am not smart enough, or well-read enough, to demonstrate to myself with full confidence why this is impossible. Even so, although I am not a trained philosopher and not especially clever, I remain quite confident that no anti-self theory could ever replicate this genuine power that our souls possess.