Hi all,A quick comment regarding the relationship between Sartre and Freud (as it may shed further light on the problem of freedom).Alexander writes that Sartre "never understood the Freudian revolution to begin with."Sartre agrees:
- "I have to say that I was incapable of understanding him because I was a Frenchman with a good Cartesian tradition behind me, imbued with a certain rationalism, and I was therefore deeply shocked by the idea of the unconscious."
Still, the mature Sartre's resistance to Freud is considerably more nuanced than much of the secondary literature might lead us to believe:
- "I would reproach psychoanalytic theory with being a syncretic and not a dialectical thought. The word 'complex', indeed, indicates this very evidently: interpenetration without contradiction."
- "The results of syncretism...can be seen in the Oedipus complex, for instance:"
- "[The] fact is that analysis manage to find everything in it, equally well the fixation on the mother, love of the mother, or hatred of the mother, as Melanie Klein argues....The consequence is that an analyst can say one thing and then the contrary immediately afterwards, without in anyway worrying about lack of logic, since after all 'opposites interpenetrate'...Psychoanalytic theory is thus a 'soft' thought. It has no dialectical logic to it."
- Of course, "the fixation of a girl on an older man may will come from her father, or the fixation of a young man on a girl may derive from a profusion of original relationships. But what is missing in conventional psychoanalytic accounts is the idea of dialectical irreducibility."
- "In a truly dialectical theory, such as historical materialism, phenomena derive from each other dialectically: there are difference configurations of dialectical reality, and each of these configurations Is rigorously conditioned by the previous one, while preserving and superseding it at the same time. This supersession is, however, precisely irreducible. While one configuration may preserve another, it can never simply be reduced to its predecessor."
- "It is the idea of this autonomy that is lacking in psychoanalytic theory. A sentiment or passion between two persons is certainly highly conditioned by their relationship to the 'primal object', and one can locate this object within it and explain the new relationship by it; but the relationship itself remains irreducible."
Sartre is clearly over-schematizing here. There are certainly strands of psychoanalytic thought (e.g., the Eriksonian tradition) that can be characterized as authentically "dialectical", as Sartre understands the term. For my part, I read the mature Sartre as a psychoanalytic thinker interested in exploring the "dialectical intelligibility" of human behavior (in a manner quite compatible with the ToK framework):
- "The concept of 'lived experience' marks my change since Being and Nothingness. My early work was a rationalist philosophy of consciousness. It was all very well for me to dabble in apparently non-rational processes in the individual, [but] the fact that remains that Being and Nothingness is a monument of rationality....Today, the notion of 'lived experience' represents an effort to preserve that presence to itself which seems to me indispensable for the existence of any psychic fact, while at the same time this presence is so opaque and blind before itself that it is also an absence from itself....In developing this notion, I have tried to suppress the traditional psychoanalytic ambiguity of psychic facts which are both teleological and mechanical, by showing that every psychic fact involves an intentionality which aims at something, while among them a certain number can only exist if they are comprehended, but neither named nor known. The latter include what I call the 'stress' of a neurosis."
- "A neurosis is in the first instance a specific wound, a defective structure which is a certain way of living a childhood. But this is only an initial wound: it is then patched up and bandaged by a system which covers and soothe the wound, and which then, like anti-bodies in certain cases, suddenly does something abominable to the organism. The unity of this system is the neurosis."
The above quotations are taken from a 1969 interview published in an anthology entitled Between Existentalism and Marxism (Sartre, 1974).~ Steve Q.Dear Peter and TOK, thank you for the collegial discussion. I would like to address your comment "The cosmos are just a bit of collateral damage in also determined so that human determinism can make sense." I beg to differ. Based on the Endosymbiogenesis Theory, that life derives from the endogenization of physical properties like oxygen, heavy metals, ions and bacteria, our physiology is literally founded on the same Laws of Physics when facilitated by compartmentalization to integrate these factors in an organic context. So the deterministic and probabilistic properties are shared by both the animate and inanimate....but that's my perspective. I welcome rebuttal. IMHO, John########################################################Dear Europe, Alexander, and TOK,Between Sartre and Merleau-Ponty I do not know which is winning the popularity contest in the USA, and am amused that Europe doesn’t make much of Sartre these days. I wish I did know because then I maybe wouldn’t have to finish or present this stupid paper that I’m writing.As to free will not being a philosophy proper, I have not taken on the task of mending all of the errors of philosophy. I think that I mentioned somewhere above (below?) that John Locke pointed out in the 17th century that the term “free will” is problematic.Your comment, "The future is open. And that is what scares the shit out of most of us.” is very Sartrean: we aguish in the face of our freedom. As rarely-quoted Sartre wrote, the possibilities of our choices are vertiginous.Thank you for your thought,Best,PeterPeter Lloyd Jones
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On May 21, 2019, at 6:22 PM, Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Dear PeterThen here is a little update from Europe: We don't make much out of Sartre these days. Even Merleau-Ponty is far more quoted these days than good old Sartre (who never understood the Freudian revolution to begin with).Rather we have arrived at a struggle between Hegel and Nietzsche today represented by Zizek and Deleuze. Like the new generation of philosophers, like Manuel DeLanda and Aaron Schuster, I'm in both camps in my work. The synthesis of Hegel and Nietzsche is simply where it's at. And there is no determinism in any of these camps. And certainly no talk of any "free will" since that is just Christian theology and not philosophy proper.Determinism requires that all things are determined in a closed loop of cause and effect with no chance involved.All that is required is one single incident during the Universe's existence that can be attributed to chance and determinism is dead.I would argue even that the big bang itself is such a chance. Also if for example biology was not pre-programmed into the big bang, then determinism is dead.Probabilism only looks deterministic when studying a full field. But when fields are broken, that determinism is also broken. That is essentially what "chance" is. Whether our own minds then are determinist or not is beside the point. If our surrounding reality is not determinist then neither are our lives. The future is open. And that is what scares the shit out of most of us. Freud, again.Best intentionsAlexander############################Alexander, John, et.al.,############################I was wrong to infer that the determinism debate is between only those from the field of philosophy, though I am pursuing it as a philosophical question. Some today are using interpretations of scientific evidence as their argument.Maybe John is one who (partially) is a proponent of determinism, as per his last note?Sam Harris, famously, though painfully unscholarly he is.Galen Strawson says he isn’t a determinist but argues that we cannot escape the causes that have made us who we are, which is basically a type of determinism since for him it means that human autonomy is an impossibility because we can never step out from under past causes to be autonomous.John Searle, though he seems in the last decade to be hedging on determinism and starting to embrace quantum indeterminism as justification for free willJerry Coyne,BF Skinner, who in his philosophy of behaviorism was a determinist.Dan Barker doesn’t see free will as a scientific truth or philosophical truth, but as a social truth. But I think he is still dealing with ghosts of his preacher past.It could be that I’m am wasting time on popular opponents of free will that would be best to leave behind.Please know that I am addressing this issue from the context of a 70-year-old tome of existential philosophy, comparing Sartre’s metaphysics to what some claim today about proofs of physics concerning the concept of human autonomy. And I have to do it in 3,000 words.Also, I use the word consciousness as does Sartre, who did not acknowledge subconscious states. He refers to behavior as being reflective or non-reflective, asserting that most of our behavior is non-reflective. Much of his writing about non-reflective behavior lines up with is being compatibly the subconscious. Sartre has plenty to say about motives and passions and desires, and it would be revealing to suss that out against the background of today’s advances in neuroscience.Thank you for your thoughtful questions that bolster my self-doubt. I do not say that in sarcasm but truly thrive on self-doubt. It makes me work harder.Best to all,PeterPeter Lloyd Jones
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On May 21, 2019, at 6:45 AM, JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:Peter, In the name of shameless self promotion, I have proposed that life is both deterministic and probabilistic based on experimental evidence for both cell physiology and its relationship to Quantum Mechanics (see attached). Perhaps you could comment? Best, John############################John, Alexander, Gregg, and TOK,############################It seems that we agree also that choice is better than free will because the freedom we are taking about when using the rems “free will" is a doing, not something to have. It is a verb, as John just said, and as Sartre has said. Sartre of course worked this out deeply on the ontological level, saying that freedom, choice, consciousness are all one and the same. His thought is that the only practical way to look at consciousness is how we are discussing looking at choice, that it is an action, not a container of things, that we are temporal beings evolving minute by minute. Consciousness is the life-long pursuit of being that is a doing and never an inert thing to label.A few years ago I read an article by a doctor of medicine who proposed that consciousness is change, a physical change within our brains, and that using AI or computing metaphors only drives us away from understanding consciousness. I wrote him asking if his paper was based on research he might be able to share and he responded that it was just a hypothesis he was pondering. Dang it. But another start.I am, so far, in agreement with Sartre, that we act within “a network of determinants.” That though does not mean that our acts are determined and unfree. So evolution, like conscious choice, is free to go in novel directions in evolving novel environments, within the context of its history.I am pondering whether determinism might not be a problem for determinism. What I mean is, there are countless determinants competing to influence our every choices, or our evolution, and how can it be comprehensibly possible that it is already decided for all time which determinant is going to be the alfa determinant in all events? Further, this has to be taken on faith as it is unrepeatable and untestable. That alone should put it outside the boundaries of science and philosophy.Alexander, I do think it is a waste of time to be arguing against determinism, but, in philosophy, there is a whole movement right now promoting determinism. My hope is to shoot it dead.I do like syndeterminism...Thank you all for your contributions here,PeterPeter Lloyd Jones
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On May 20, 2019, at 4:55 PM, Alexander Bard <[log in to unmask]> wrote:############################Dear PeterI agree. Strongly. But why even pretend that determinism has a case any longer? Why not go straight to the point and cut the chase and ask in what way determinism predicted the big bang itself?Now, if the big bang is an emergence proper, as the birth of physics itself, we can then rethink history as emergences that create their own vectors. This means there is fundamentally no difference between parallel universes and the development of physics and later chemistry and later biology and later mind and later culture. They are all vectors of emergences in a fundamentally indeterminist metaverse.Actually a human life can then be seen as vector of an emergence called birth itself. Now that's what I call an emergence theory worthy of proper complexity science.The question is rather whether indeterminism is the appropriate term? Perhaps syndeterminism is even better? Especially since we do not even need chance or dices then either.Best intentionsAlexanderTo unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1
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