Frayn on freedom

Novelist Michael Frayn has published The Human Touch, a book of straight-up philosophy.  In review, Simon Blackburn (TLS, Oct. 20) writes:

Quotation is irresistible, so here he is on agency, or the will, starting from the idea that I am in control of my actions, the monarch of my fate:

a sovereign of the old school I had always felt myself to be, benevolent but absolute, the source of all the edicts that constitute the fabric of the court and its business, the master of my own revels.  Now that it has pleased me to command this inquiry into my own authority, however, I discover that I am not an absolute ruler after all.  I am a mere constitutional fiction, a face on the postage stamps, a signature at the bottom of decrees written by unidentified powers behind the throne over which I have no control....even my private entertainments are devised for me by invisible courtiers working in parts of the palace that I have never entered, and could never find may way to go.

Surely this is a passage to put alongside Schopenhauer's image of the still water in the pond thinking how it could leap and splash if it wished, or Wittgenstein's image of the leaves in autumn, saying "Now I shall go this way, now I shall go that way," as a classic expression of the thoughts that lead to the disappearance of the notion of free will.

It is good on its own and stands up well to the competition.  It is also more subversive.  Rather than jibing at the silliness of anthropomorphic projection, it puts homunculi to work dismantling the presumption from within.

Comments

[Kip Werking]

I've always loved that passage from Schopenhauer. Here it is in full:

"In order to elucidate especially and most clearly the origination of this error, so important for our topic, and so to complete the investigation of the self-consciousness undertaken in the preceding section, let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: "It is six o'clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to the see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world, and never return. All of this is strictly up to me, in this I have complete freedom. But still I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife." This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: "I can make high wave (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond."
Schopenhauer, Prize Essay

I mention this because it reminds me of John Fischer's interesting example of non-realists (or eliminativists) wanting to control the sun. The temperature, like the sun, is part of the environment. Fischer's comments are interesting to me because they seem so strange only a compatibilist (at least, compatibilist about determinism and moral responsibility) could write them. Free will or autonomy, in the philosophical sense, would seem to me to require "Total Control" but *not* over the environment. Instead, such a power requires total control over one's self, including one's values and pro-attitudes. Whether the sun rises or sets, whether the temperature rises or falls, matters not; rather, it is whether the agent values the sun rising or setting, whether the agent wants the temperature to rise or fall that matters. In one sense, Total Control over the self is just as preposterous and just as impossible. But in another sense, it is a weaker claim to demand control over the self than control over the universe (including the self?). I think it is important to remember that.

Of course, I could be wrong. I would be interesting to know what others think about Fischer's argument, and his critique of views like G. Strawson's and Smilansky's.

[Neil]

Wittgenstein's leaf? Surely it is Ambrose Bierce:

DECIDE, v.i.

To succumb to the preponderance of one set of influences over another set.

A leaf was riven from a tree,
"I mean to fall to earth," said he.

The west wind, rising, made him veer.
"Eastward," said he, "I now shall steer."

The east wind rose with greater force.
Said he: "'Twere wise to change my course."

With equal power they contend.
He said: "My judgment I suspend."

Down died the winds; the leaf, elate,
Cried: "I've decided to fall straight."

"First thoughts are best?" That's not the moral;
Just choose your own and we'll not quarrel.

Howe'er your choice may chance to fall,
You'll have no hand in it at all.

Fodor has a much less kind review - indeed, a demolition - of Frayn's book in the LRB. He does not object to Frayn on free will, but to his epistemology, which does indeed seem sophomoric.

[Tamler Sommers]

Two more related quotations--

Spinoza in a letter writes:

"A stone receives from the impulsion of an external cause a fixed quantity of motion whereby it will continue necessarily to move when the impulsion of the external cause has ceased. What here applies to the stone must be understood of every individual thing, however complex its structure and varied its functions."

[He then asks us to imagine that the stone is endowed with consciousness]

"Now since this stone, since it is conscious only of its endeavor...will think it is completely free, and that it continues in motion for no other reason that that it so wishes. This, then is that human freedom which all men boast of possessing."

And Darwin in his notebooks:

"The general delusion about free will [is] obvious—because man has power of action, & he can seldom analyze his motives (originally mostly INSTINCTIVE, & therefore now great effort of reason to discover them: this is important explanation) he thinks they have none."

[Bill Edmundson]

I wonder what the Wittgenstein source is.

[tnadelhoffer]

I am pretty sure the Wittgenstein references are to his Lectures on Freedom of the Will as they were recorded by Yorick Smythies. The second of these lecturez begins with the thought experiment involving the floating piece of paper.

[silencio bouche]

That the sense of willing does cause action seems just as plausible as that willing is just correlated with action but is irrelevant to it. Free will is only ruled out by a deterministic universe--a la science-especially quantum physics, wherein all is "entangled"--infinite causal chain etc.
But, an alternate line of thought:
Suppose that the universe creates everything spontaneously and not deterministically (does the universe follow rules or just make things up as it goes along? If it follows rules, what made the rules?)-since we are part and parcel of the universe, we act ultimately in a spontaneous way and therefore determinism in human behavior is a falsity. Determinism is not the reality-- The reality is spontaneity.

--but surely this does not mean that the opposite--free will, necessarily obtains.

But how to tell the difference between rules and no rules, free and not free?
What if the universe produces rules spontaneously and spontaneously follows them?
or.....
What if the rules the universe makes establish spontaneity?
The law induced spontaneity or the spontaneous production of strictly followed rules----so what is the difference?
If spontaneity is a way of being--you could call that a rule and if rules can be established spontaneously, is that a rule or is that spontaneous?

Really folks, it just seems a charming quagmire, free will.

How about this scenario: What if the correct scenario for the whole of things is quite simple---what if the correct scenario is just that there are events happening, no more no less than just that broad description---and free will or no free will are just one among many idea/events within the happening--the reality. In other words the true scenario is simply that events happen---and all is subsumed within that and so free will or no free will are events within the reality, but neither the former nor the latter are scenarios which correspond to the real. In other words
no scenario corresponds to actuality except the idea of the overall happening of events--

In other words, events happening is the only truth--the only true description---the details of the events are just part of those events subsumed under this truth.

So what are the details of events--sort of event and outcome and so on.?I guess they
would be relatively true---or some such.

Of course, the real vs unreal distinction is
itself a mess--so, no easy proof here--but
still, it is one way to place free and unfree will in a less serious perspective.