To what extent, and why, is 'freedom' a 'problem'?

[littlebabyjesus]

Language: An external resource (set of public rules) that permits much greater complexity in thought. In particular, it gives us the means to think about thinking (reflexivity). That we identify ourselves as subjects is only possible due to language.

Language most certainly permits much greater complexity in thought. It permits much more creativity in thought too. If you think of thought in a non-linguistic animal as essentially a function of memory, shifting different concepts around to make better sense of your past, language adds a whole new set of internal possibilities. Now, with these tools in your memory and so available to your thought, the range of things you can think about is endless, things that you yourself have not experienced. Thought is a search for meaning – an improvement on the story of your life contained in your memory – but we can extend that search far beyond ourselves with language.

You have to be careful not to overstate that, though – I have thought of concepts for which I could not find a satisfactory word: concepts can exist without language, and complex ones at that. Also there is the possibility that non-linguistic animals think in pictures, and manipulate those pictures in a manner at least analogous to language.

I do not agree that we identify ourselves as subjects because of language. We construct a model within us – the contents of our consciousness – and use that model to look at ourselves in the world. Many other animals do the same, and fill their constructions of themselves in the world with meanings, as we do. That, combined with feedback, particularly from memory, provides the sense of self, that strange feeling of duality. Non-linguistic animals may have very different – and compared to us, impoverished – senses of self, but I do not doubt that it is right to talk of many animals as possessing some measure of subjectivity. Some more than others, of course: elephants are probably the likeliest of all, imo.

I'm not sure what you mean by language being an external resource. We develop our linguistic skills within ourselves. We require stimulus from the environment, of course. We need to have language spoken to us. But language acquisition is far from passive – we generate grammars ourselves, tweaking the rules of our grammars where they don't quite match the 'external' grammar. It is collaborative, I suppose, but then language developed to allow us to communicate with each other better – I'm guessing that was its primary selective advantage, and that improved thought was an 'accidental' by-product. If Gould is to be believed, such evolution is common – traits appearing as by-products of other developments, and only later finding any adaptive advantage (or never – if our nakedness is a by-product of the neoteny that has given us our ability for lifelong learning, for instance).




As an aside, and I know this isn't where you're coming from...

It is dangerous to draw conclusions from the impoverished nature of humans who are not taught language as children. We have developed to develop language, so it is no surprise that we cannot function at all well without it. If a child was not taught language, there will also be loads of other cognitive deficiencies due to their neglect. To compare that with, let us say, an elephant that has grown up in a secure family group, and learned everything that a baby elephant should learn, in its restricted way that elephant may have wisdom about certain things – even to us – may have worked out a particular way to use its trunk, for instance, or may just know exactly the right thing to do to comfort its own baby; it may well know that it will one day die, and perhaps faces that fact with equanimity. I have always found arguments for the crucial role of language in self-awareness unconvincing – it is very hard for us to imagine what it is like to be an elephant, but we shouldn't dismiss it as qualitatively inferior to what it is like to be us too quickly.


Damasio's model of a 'core' and 'extended' consciousness is useful here. We share the core consciousness with many animals – the model of 'now' that we experience. With our working memory able to place this now in a past and future, we have an extended consciousness that gives us a strong sense of self. I think at least some other animals also display evidence of an extended consciousness. As far as I've been able to find out, not enough work has been done on the anatomy of non-human brains to work out how their extended consciousness may work – ours works primarily with the prefrontal cortex providing space for a working memory, but I'd reserve judgement about whether this is the only way evolution has found to do it.

 

[Caecilian]

Language most certainly permits much greater complexity in thought.
...
I do not agree that we identify ourselves as subjects because of language. We construct a model within us – the contents of our consciousness – and use that model to look at ourselves in the world. Many other animals do the same, and fill their constructions of themselves in the world with meanings, as we do. That, combined with feedback, particularly from memory, provides the sense of self, that strange feeling of duality. Non-linguistic animals may have very different – and compared to us, impoverished – senses of self, but I do not doubt that it is right to talk of many animals as possessing some measure of subjectivity. Some more than others, of course: elephants are probably the likeliest of all, imo.

I'm not sure what you mean by language being an external resource. We develop our linguistic skills within ourselves. We require stimulus from the environment, of course. We need to have language spoken to us. But language acquisition is far from passive – we generate grammars ourselves, tweaking the rules of our grammars where they don't quite match the 'external' grammar. It is collaborative, I suppose, but then language developed to allow us to communicate with each other better – I'm guessing that was its primary selective advantage, and that improved thought was an 'accidental' by-product. If Gould is to be believed, such evolution is common – traits appearing as by-products of other developments, and only later finding any adaptive advantage (or never – if our nakedness is a by-product of the neoteny that has given us our ability for lifelong learning, for instance).

Sorry for the delay in replying. I haven't been very well.

I suspect that a lot of the apparent disagreements here are a matter of semantics, especially the issue around 'sense of self'. I'd tend to view this as reflexive self-awareness, which as far as I'm aware is only possessed by humans and (very arguably) the other great apes. You clearly have a more inclusive definition of the term in mind.

Similarly with the matter of 'concepts'. I'd view these as pretty much definitionally linguistic. I'd therefore say that non-human animals have cognitive states with non-conceptual content, but not actual concepts. And yes, their nonconceptual content is definitely structured.

As far as language being external goes, the argument is basically this:

A concept can be correctly or incorrectly applied; without this there can be no reference. But how can you know whether or not you're using a concept correctly? The only way is through public rules; linguistic behaviour is therefore a form of rule following, and a 'private language' is impossible (see Wittgenstein's Investigations).

It follows from this that linguistic meaning is in an important sense 'out there'- it exists in a social or linguistic domain, rather than in the head. Language is thus imo best seen as an external phenomenon. Our internal neurological states 'access' this external phenomenon, allowing us to use language both for communication and private speech. So language is an odd sort of socially-constructed 'tool' or more accurately 'set of tools'.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

With regards to the sense of self, I would agree that our apparent disagreement is probably mostly semantic. And I can see the sense in considering language to be a socially constructed tool, although I still don't see it quite as an external phenomenon. A group of kids only exposed to pidgin will construct a creole amongst themselves – that it is a property of the group doesn't quite make it external, imo, simply shared.

As for viewing concepts as a purely linguistic phenomenon, I do not agree. Language represents concepts symbolically in a very powerful way that allows us to manipulate them and form other, more complex concepts. But the word or phrase is not the concept itself, and concepts can and do exist independently of language. I think it is hard to explain the problem-solving skills of a crow, for instance, without recourse to the idea that they form concepts about the world around them. Ultimately, a concept is no more than a cognitive state, is it not? There is no contradiction there, and it is unnecessary to come up with an extra level of concept to explain the thinking it is possible to do with language – when concepts are represented symbolically.

Here, as ever, I would advise you to read Temple Grandin to see how she forms new concepts by making associations between mental images. You test it out in the world, of course, to see whether it works, but again, language does not have to be the only way to do this.

Hope you're feeling better.

 

[deke t lefel]

We experience the possibility of choice, and we make choices.

But why is this question important? It is practically useless. What is in its indeterminability that gives us the basis of the question? *Why* is it important?

wholly subjective freedom implies a freedom from the controlling influence of space and time, so the question seems to be whether the subject can be infinite and eternal
is it wise for the subject to give over free will to another's will in order to possibly achieve one or both of those objectives?

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

wholly subjective freedom implies a freedom from the controlling influence of space and time, so the question seems to be whether the subject can be infinite and eternal
is it wise for the subject to give over free will to another's will in order to possibly achieve one or both of those objectives?

The mountains are eternal but they don't have freedom. (They rejected freedom, and Man chose it before he was born as Adam [Qu'ran].)

Spatiality and causality are psychologically constructed, so we're not subject to them, they're our experience of whatever we're subject to. With this distinction in mind, they only represent limitations to our exercise of freedom, 'external' limits.

It's all about the vantage point we take and there's only one, IMO, which is that of subjectivity.

 

[deke t lefel]

The mountains are eternal but they don't have freedom. (They rejected freedom, and Man chose it before he was born as Adam [Qu'ran].)

Spatiality and causality are psychologically constructed, so we're not subject to them, they're our experience of whatever we're subject to. With this distinction in mind, they only represent limitations to our exercise of freedom, 'external' limits.

It's all about the vantage point we take and there's only one, IMO, which is that of subjectivity.

nice to see that the mountains had a choice

is the body psychologically constructed? if so, then from what vantage point?

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Unlike space and time, which are, in and of themselves, mere concepts, there clearly is a body which is not just 'psychologically constructed'. OTOH, although we can't choose whether we're hungry, we can choose what to eat, or whether to eat at all.

 

[deke t lefel]

if space and time are psychologically constructed and the body is not, where is the boundary and how is the body constructed?

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

if space and time are psychologically constructed and the body is not, where is the boundary and how is the body constructed?

The body is first and foremost experienced directly.

It's like comparing apples and oranges. I could take a box and pull out a severed arm, but not something called 'space' or something called 'time', since they are abstractions from relations between things with no reality of their own. Although we have ideas about our bodies that are psychological and encultured and my experience of, say, pain, or warmth is something to which I can attach different meanings, there are discreetly identifiable processes such as the reactions of nerves and neurons and the secretion of certain hormones.

 

[Jonti]

The mountains are eternal but they don't have freedom. (They rejected freedom, and Man chose it before he was born as Adam [Qu'ran].)

Spatiality and causality are psychologically constructed, so we're not subject to them, they're our experience of whatever we're subject to. With this distinction in mind, they only represent limitations to our exercise of freedom, 'external' limits.

It's all about the vantage point we take and there's only one, IMO, which is that of subjectivity.

It's a truism that it's the only vantage point we can take, but it's not subjective that the mountains are eternal, that's an outright contracition. We're deep into deepity (heh!) territory here.

Better: subjectivity relates the relative world to the absolute

 

[Jonti]

Just because the meanings of language are shared meanings, that doesn't make them external – rather, the internal meanings are arrived at with reference to the meanings others seem to have, as communicated by language.

A great deal of philosophy involves sorting out the semantic dissonance between people whose internal meanings for a word or phrase are different. This process doesn't require any kind of external repository for 'absolute' meanings – merely the accurate communication of an internal meaning to another.

I don't think the source of subjectivity is to be found in language. Thought and reasoning are perfectly possible without language. The feeling of subjectivity is rather to be found in systems of internal feedback.

I take your point that we're a language using species. If language development is denied, there'll likely be all sorts of other developmental impairment.

But, as you put it above "Language represents concepts symbolically in a very powerful way that allows us to manipulate them and form other, more complex concepts". I don't think the impact of language on our sense of self can be doubted.

I'd agree it's essential to have some systems of internal feedback, in order to notice one has subjectivity. But feedback alone is insufficient for subjectivity. What's also necessary are processes that are creating meaning for the conscious body.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

It's a truism that it's the only vantage point we can take, but it's not subjective that the mountains are eternal, that's an outright contracition. We're deep into deepity (heh!) territory here.

Better: subjectivity relates the relative world to the absolute

Sorry, my argument was a bit condensed. By subjectivity I meant with regard to freedom/choice (determinism being 'objective').

The mountains bit comes from the Quran, but I was replying the assumption being free subject = eternal.

 

[Jonti]

Unlike space and time, which are, in and of themselves, mere concepts, there clearly is a body which is not just 'psychologically constructed'. OTOH, although we can't choose whether we're hungry, we can choose what to eat, or whether to eat at all.

This is where the argument begins to spin on the point of a pin!

I experience my body as spatial and temporal. When we talk about the brain and nervous impulses and physical processes we are making assumptions about space and time. That's fair enough, for at least one such set of assumptions is likely to prove true enough

But when I retreat into deep meditation, there is no sensation of space. So space seems not essential to consciousness. It's like being lost in music; ordinary 3D space has no part, and it is replaced by a musical space of duration, possibility and expectation.

Time, on the other hand, is always with us. We cannot have our being, except in time. The lived, mundane time of trains and planes may be 'psychologically constructed' but it relates to something absolute in the nature of existence itself.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

How does the feedback of the environment give us internality? [It's in some way singular.] Environmental states don't explain consciousness or subjectivity.

E2A: what appears in brackets, more appropriately and correctly.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

This is where the argument begins to spin on the point of a pin!

I experience my body as spatial and temporal. When we talk about the brain and nervous impulses and physical processes we are making assumptions about space and time. That's fair enough, for at least one such set of assumptions is likely to prove true enough

But when I retreat into deep meditation, there is no sensation of space. So space seems not essential to consciousness.

It's like being lost in music; ordinary 3D space has no part, and it is replaced by a musical space of duration, possibility and expectation.

Time, on the other hand, is always with us. We cannot have our being, except in time. The lived, mundane time of trains and planes may be 'psychologically constructed' but it relates to something absolute in the nature of existence itself.

But, with music, doesn't the same also go for time? Music has the time of tension and release, expectation and anticipation.

What is the relation between space and time, such as they can be described together as 'space- time'? I would consider that, as Aristotle did, to be motion. And motion is relations of things, things existing in relation to each other. To stop things moving would be to stop time.

Probing even further away from mundanity are such things as dreams, drug-induced/psychotic states where time or causality has no relation to objectivity, but in the subconscious, to significance.

Although, it refers to something, I agree. But I am thinking that thing is not equivalent. That's why, bringing it back to choice, it can simply be said we act in reality rather than merely pushed along by it.

 

[Jonti]

But, with music, doesn't the same also go for time? Music has the time of tension and release, expectation and anticipation.

What is the relation between space and time, such as they can be described together as 'space- time'? I would consider that, as Aristotle did, to be motion. And motion is relations of things, things existing in relation to each other. To stop things moving would be to stop time.

Probing even further away from mundanity are such things as dreams, drug-induced/psychotic states where time or causality has no relation to objectivity, but in the subconscious, to significance.

Although, it refers to something, I agree. But I am thinking that thing is not equivalent. That's why, bringing it back to choice, it can simply be said we act in reality rather than merely pushed along by it.

I agree we act in reality. It seems to me the difference between a conscious body and other bodies is exactly that the former can act, the latter only react.

If a conscious body were mindlessly pushed along by events like any other body, then its consciousness would have no role or purpose, but would be only a pointless and meaningless epiphenomena blowing along in the wake of events. There would be, in principle, no basis for any reason to accept that any other body apart from one's own may also be conscious. As with many ludicrous assertions, that may be a defensible position. However, I'd suggest it's not a useful perspective.

I find Aristotle's take on time interesting. Certainly, to stop things moving would be to stop time, for one cannot imagine time without change. But to my mind this does not go far enough. It's not mindless mechanical movement that impels time forward, for such an impetus adds nothing to the future that is not already implicit in the present. That kind of "change" leaves the conscious body as no different than any other body, except that it is for some reason condemned ever to be a helpless witness to events, aware it is never to have a hand in shaping its own future.

So I'd suggest that the change that is an essential part of the notion of time is not the "change" of mechanical progression. It is rather an irruption of the novel and new into the world. We know what Aristotle did not know; we know the future is underdetermined by the present. There are many futures that can flow from this "now". Conscious bodies in particular are able to choose one future rather than another; I suggest it is this disjunction itself that is the stuff of consciousness.

 

[bhamgeezer]

Lol so we are taking the notion that space and time are pure intuitions seriously then

 

[bhamgeezer]

The body is first and foremost experienced directly.

It's like comparing apples and oranges. I could take a box and pull out a severed arm, but not something called 'space' or something called 'time', since they are abstractions from relations between things with no reality of their own.

Flipping heck I can't decide if your being all Kantian or Leibnizian

 

[deke t lefel]

But, with music, doesn't the same also go for time? Music has the time of tension and release, expectation and anticipation.

What is the relation between space and time, such as they can be described together as 'space- time'? I would consider that, as Aristotle did, to be motion. And motion is relations of things, things existing in relation to each other. To stop things moving would be to stop time.

Probing even further away from mundanity are such things as dreams, drug-induced/psychotic states where time or causality has no relation to objectivity, but in the subconscious, to significance.

Although, it refers to something, I agree. But I am thinking that thing is not equivalent. That's why, bringing it back to choice, it can simply be said we act in reality rather than merely pushed along by it.

the body is aware of space in the growing process and time in the ageing process - the mind is aware of space and time through the body

maybe the mountains are eternal by virtue of their matter being subject to the assumption that E=Mc^2, they will always exist as mass or energy (space and time are described together in this equation as the speed of light)

the body and mind possibly act together from the same vantage point, that of the observer (even if in variable relative states of time and space within differing levels of consciousness)......elsewhere to the subject, time and space are relative

 

[deke t lefel]

This is where the argument begins to spin on the point of a pin!

I experience my body as spatial and temporal. When we talk about the brain and nervous impulses and physical processes we are making assumptions about space and time. That's fair enough, for at least one such set of assumptions is likely to prove true enough

But when I retreat into deep meditation, there is no sensation of space. So space seems not essential to consciousness. It's like being lost in music; ordinary 3D space has no part, and it is replaced by a musical space of duration, possibility and expectation.

Time, on the other hand, is always with us. We cannot have our being, except in time. The lived, mundane time of trains and planes may be 'psychologically constructed' but it relates to something absolute in the nature of existence itself.

does 'no sensation of space' also mean no sensation of the body's 3D space?
in deep meditation, is the sense of time altered in any way?

 

[Jonti]

Yes to the first. We perceive change, it's a signal fact that our eyeballs quiver, for if the image fell always on the same retinal cells, they would cease to respond. So, hold the body in an unchanging posture (this may be comfortably abed, the eastern asceticism is optional) for long enough, and with the right mental focus, and one's extension in space ceases to impinge on the awareness.

One's sense of time is enormously elastic in mundane life, and bears little relation to what the clocks say. There is a sense in which time only passes when one notices.

 

[deke t lefel]

Lol so we are taking the notion that space and time are pure intuitions seriously then

as a concept, it's an interesting one, because it gives the possibility of the existence of a monotheistic god, without the dichotomy of that god being transcendental and immanent

 

[Jonti]

That's an interesting comment, but I'm not at all sure what you're getting at. Can you pad it out a little please?

I've also heard the claim that the view of space as a kind of Kantian intuition is the only metaphysic that allows for a non-local universe.

The act of observation, which collapses the wave function, is conformable to the Kantian act of synthesis, by which phenomenal objects are introduced into consciousness and subjected to the categories of the understanding.

more

 

[deke t lefel]

if a transcendental god is taken to be something other than time and space
and if time and space are psychological constructs of a subject,
then the subject may also be something other than time and space
both immanent and transcendent in a singular being

 

[butchersapron]

if not?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

if a transcendental god is taken to be something other than time and space
and if time and space are psychological constructs of a subject,
then the subject may also be something other than time and space
both immanent and transcendent in a singular being

Is this a poem? It has no capitals or punctuation, like something out of ee cumming.

 

[Jonti]

Almost poety, I think! And certainly it's evocative prose. But mainly it answers my query!

Thanks, deke

 

[Jonti]

The trouble with regarding space and time as intuitions in the Kantian manner, is that it leaves us floundering trying to imagine what is going on and where, that enables the constructive intuitions to happen.

That's why I find it unsatisfactory to say that we cannot know things-in-themselves but can only have experience via by the synthesising intuition of the phenomenal arising out of things-in-themselves. Like, where the fuck is this shit happening?

But it's not an unscientific position to take, for we find pretty much the same stance in some interpretations of QM. Those interpretations assert that we cannot know the (evolving wave-function of the) universe itself, but can only take measurements on it, and that stuff happens only when an act of measurement is made.

So, the underlying reality is unknowable and contains all possibilities. The mundane world in which we live is just one of many possibilities, the one that happens to exist for us because it is conjured from things-in-themselves by what we, as conscious bodies, do.

It is this conjuring itself which is consciousness, and through which matter can have subjectivity.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The so-called Kantian intuition isn't an intuition at all. 3D space plus a marking of events with time are both hard-wired into us. They are a means of making sense of our perceptions that has evolved over millions of years. But they are no more 'out there' than, say, the colour red is 'out there'.

 

[Jonti]

That makes sense.

But this hard-wired kit ~ if it's not in 3D space, then where is it? What is it? What sort of thing is going on when it does its stuff?