Just to preface this, I’m not arguing against the critique of the reactionary position in this meme, but speaking more generally and trying to round out understanding of the whole philosophical argument. We clearly know that the idealist free will position is inaccurate, but the mechanical determinist position doesn’t give us the full picture either.
While our lives are shaped by our material conditions, we should always keep dialectical materialism in mind and not fall into a purely mechanical determinism that becomes a pessimistic or nihilistic fatalism.
We can observe how the determinist, fatalist mechanist element has been an immediate ideological “aroma” of Marxism, a form of religion and of stimulation (but like a drug necessitated and historically justified by the “subordinate” character of certain social strata).
When one does not have the initiative in the struggle and the struggle itself is ultimately identified with a series of defeats, mechanical determinism becomes a formidable power of moral resistance, of patient and obstinate perseverance. “I am defeated for the moment but the nature of things is on my side over a long period,” etc. Real will is disguised as an act of faith, a sure rationality of history, a primitive and empirical form of impassioned finalism which appears as a substitute for the predestination, providence, etc., of the confessional religions. We must insist on the fact that even in such a case there exists in reality a strong active will, a direct influence on the “nature of things,” but it is certainly in an implicit and veiled form, ashamed of itself, and so the consciousness of it is contradictory, lacks critical unity, etc. But when the “subordinate” becomes the leader and is responsible for the economic activity of the mass, mechanicalism appears at a certain moment as an imminent danger, there occurs a revision of the whole mode of thinking because there has taken place a change in the social mode of being.
We should always keep in mind that, despite the limitations imposed on us by material conditions and history, we are parts of the whole and not just passive entities being directed by outside forces. Our actions and choices, especially collective ones, do matter and are what shapes our societies.
As Marx puts it:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
could not agree more
Are not the choices we make highly materially and socially determined? Where does free will come from? My position is scientific determinism coupled with ontological uncertainty. Things are complicated and contradictory as hell, and just because we study the world doesn’t mean we can predict the future.
I’m not saying we have free will, or that our choices aren’t materially and socially determined, I’m saying that we still do make those choices, and I’m cautioning against mechanical materialism that turns into pessimistic or nihilistic fatalism. We are parts of the whole, and we are conscious of it. We are active parts of the historical process and our history happens through our actions. Do you dispute Marx’s framing I quoted above?
I agree, I just don’t think that disproves determinism in any way. In my view communism is probably inevitable, but who knows? So I keep fighting. It’s easy to argue that capitalism must come to an end. I referenced socialism or extinction in my previous post.
The point isn’t to disprove determinism, and definitely isn’t to do so in favor of free will. The point is to achieve a dialectical materialist understanding as opposed to a mechanical one.
In your previous thread you say this about “sentience”:
yeah, but what is it? how does it have free will? isn’t it just regular matter subject to conditions, not able to make decisions.
Firstly, I think there’s some confusion about free will and will. Free will is an idealist notion that essentially our minds can operate above or outside of the laws of physics. That is clearly false. Just will, on the other hand, doesn’t have idealist connotations. I think that’s an error your interlocutor made in that thread, or a general error of not defining the terms discussed. An error I think you’ve made here and in general is opposing the two positions of mechanical determinism and free will in a dichotomy as the only possibilities.
I’m partial to @redtea@lemmygrad.ml’s thought about there being a category error. I think your mistake is in thinking that everything is infinitely reducible into smaller parts, and also without loss of context. In more general terms, I don’t think you’ve fully grasped dialectics.
We know from dialectics that relational properties are very important, and abstracting things doesn’t let us analyze them properly. I think you’re missing a key concept of dialectics when you assume that the parts that make up the whole are ontologically primary and exist separately from the whole while still being the same parts that make it up. I mean this in the sense that different bits of matter make up us, so from their properties you assume it’s clear that no will exists because atoms aren’t sentient. Your mistake is in not recognizing that our sentience is a property of matter. Not of abstract matter in general, but of the specific organization of matter which results in us. You say “regular matter” as if some other kind of matter would need to exist for sentience to exist.
A simpler example can be made from the properties of water. A single molecule of water doesn’t have surface tension. Following your mechanical model, we cannot really explain how water, when organized in a larger body, does. This is in general a fault of the Cartesian reductionist model which predominates in science today instead of dialectics. The concept which is usually used here is that of emergent properties, but it doesn’t really explain anything by itself. Dialectics on the other hand doesn’t even see a problem here to explain because a water molecule on its own and a water molecule in a larger body of water are two different things. The parts of the whole don’t exist separately from that whole as its parts.
The properties of the whole and the individual parts of that whole don’t exist separately from their interactions as parts of that whole. These properties only come into existence from the interactions of the parts and the whole. By simply studying individual water molecules, you would never discover surface tension. Parts interact with each other and with the whole, and the whole interacts with all the parts. A common example of this in Marxism are the base-superstructure relations. None of the components of either the base or the superstructure exist on their own, they are parts of the whole that is our society. The economic base tends to have a stronger influence on the superstructure, but the specific relations are constantly changing.
Here’s a quote from Sayers’ critique of mechanical materialism:
This is the dialectical account of history given by Marx, and it differs entirely from Cohen’s mechanical interpretation. The differences are clearly spelled out by Engels in the well known series of letters that he wrote towards the end of his life. In them he insists that the economic system and the superstructure are not simply the immediate and direct products of the prevailing form of production. Although their character is certainly conditioned predominantly by the development of the productive forces, it cannot be reduced to this factor alone. On the contrary, the economic system, for example, acquires its own distinctive character and its own inner dynamic. Through the division of labour, trade and commerce become areas of activity increasingly independent of production. They acquire, in short, a degree of “relative autonomy”.
Where there is division of labour on a social scale, there the different labour processes become independent of each other. In the last instance production is the decisive factor. But as soon as trade in products becomes independent of production proper, it follows a movement of its own, which, while it is governed as a whole by production, still in particular respects and within this general dependence follows laws of its own: this movement has phases of its own and in turn reacts on the movement of production.
The same is true, even more clearly, of political and legal institutions and of art, religion and philosophy. None is purely “functional” to the development of production. Each of these spheres, while in general being determined by the development of production and by economic forces, has its own relatively autonomous process of development, its own relative independence. Each affects the others and the material base.
Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., development is based on economic development. But all of these react upon one another and also upon the economic basis. It is not that the economic condition is the cause and alone active, while everything else is only a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself.
Another way to put this is through the constancy of change in dialectics and the build up of quantitative change into qualitative leaps. You cannot simply “go down a level” of quality and look at the quantitative aspects of the lower level to understand everything in the higher. The surface tension example can again be used here.
Taking from all the points above, we are active parts of the whole, our societies, our history, and we have constant and mutual interactions with each other, with the other parts, and with the whole. Our wills and choices (still far from free) do matter here very much and we do make the choices. Our consciousness is a key part of the process of our history, as is also seen in the notion that freedom is the recognition of necessity. Therefore, to deny our conscious will (not free will, which is idealist) and its effects is a mistake, and akin to saying that water doesn’t have the property of surface tension because an individual water molecule doesn’t, or arguing that social constructs aren’t real.
This doesn’t “disprove determinism” in general, and it doesn’t seek to. It’s just a proper contextualization of phenomena and processes. It does highlight the limitations and mistakes of mechanical determinism. Out of the specific interactions of the organizations of matter that make up us, come the properties of consciousness, thought, will, etc. Our will is simply a property of matter organized in a specific manner. There is no need to assume any metaphysics or idealism to describe our wills.
Another quote form Sayers to hopefully round this out:
Even in the realm of purely inorganic, physical phenomena, the mechanical view is an abstract and metaphysical one. It portrays physical objects in an idealised fashion, as unaffected by their relations.
[…]
Of course, the mechanical outlook has played an extremely important role in the development of the scientific understanding of nature, and it is not my intention to reject such methods and assumptions altogether. The error comes when such methods and assumptions are made into a universal philosophy and emphasised in an exclusive and one-sided fashion. Their abstract character is forgotten and they are employed as though they alone formed an adequate basis for understanding reality. The result is an abstract and metaphysical view of the world.
I totally agree. I did not mean to come across as a mechanical idealist. I didn’t think I needed to give a complex explanation of dialectics to make clear I wasn’t a mechanical idealist. Yes, wills and consciousness exist, my point is that they are illusory in so far as “we” think we have “control.” There is no “self” beyond the material world as the dominant mode of thought assumes.
Maybe it’s just a matter of language and not an actual philosophical difference, but I think there is still a philosophical difference.
There is no “self” beyond the material world as the dominant mode of thought assumes.
I agree, but I still think you’re making the mistake I’m trying to caution against in the sentence prior:
Yes, wills and consciousness exist, my point is that they are illusory in so far as “we” think we have “control.”
They are not illusory, they are material. And while the dominant mode of thought might assume we have more control than we actually do, it doesn’t mean we don’t have any control. We or our “self”, that is entirely part of the material world, does have a certain amount of control because it is a part of that same material world. This control isn’t separated from the material world, but a part of it. Your sentence here still sounds like only the material world has “control” and it exerts it upon us from outside, which would imply that we are different from the rest of matter, but in the opposite direction of the idealist free will notion.
I think that in your correct impulse to combat the idealist narratives prevalent today, you go too far in the opposite direction. Similar to how Plekhanov describes here:
No amount of patching was of any use, and one after another thinking people began to reject subjectivism as an obviously and utterly unsound doctrine. As always happens in such cases, however, the reaction against this doctrine caused some of its opponents to go to the opposite extreme. While some subjectivists, striving to ascribe the widest possible role to the “individual” in history, refused to recognise the historical progress of mankind as a process expressing laws, some of their later opponents, striving to bring out more sharply the coherent character of this progress, were evidently prepared to forget that men make history, and therefore, the activities of individuals cannot help being important in history. They have declared the individual to be a quantité négligeable. In theory, this extreme is as impermissible as the one reached by the more ardent subjectivists. It is as unsound to sacrifice the thesis to the antithesis as to forget the antithesis for the sake of the thesis. The correct point of view will be found only when we succeed in uniting the points of truth contained in them into a synthesis.
E: Also, apologies for neutral pronouns, but Voyager does not show pronouns.
They are not illusory, they are material. And while the dominant mode of thought might assume we have more control than we actually do, it doesn’t mean we don’t have any control.
I imagine they mean illusory as a matter of experience. In that we feel like we have free will, when we do not.
We or our “self”, that is entirely part of the material world, does have a certain amount of control because it is a part of that same material world. This control isn’t separated from the material world, but a part of it.
It is specifically because we are not separate from the material that we do not have control. Control implies volition/intent, which matter does not possess. It is precisely ascribing control to us that would set us apart from it.
To say that an individual could have acted differently given identical circumstances (i.e. rewinding to the time of decision) is, frankly, absurd. And this is the sense in which the other person is using the word “control”.
The only thing that Plekhanovs paragrah seems to convey (at least how I read it) is that individual actions have consequence. And while an individual has control in this sense, I do not see how it implies an individual has control in the sense that the other commenter is using the word.
I think it’s still a language thing. We are the universe and the hegemonic view seems to be that we are outside acting in it. By “illusory” I do not mean that the phenomenon is not real, but that the (socially constructed) perception of it is not true to reality. I mean it from the Buddhist perspective that if you meditate on it enough there is not individual thing you can call what is socially conceived to be a self.
how does determinism explain development? i feel like it should be viewed, as many things, as a spectrum and not something binary. For me development is the anti-thesis to determinism.
edit: while most things are already determined by our existing material conditions, i think we definitely have a bit of leeway, otherwise we wouldn’t be at this stage of development.
Contradictions are not precluded from determinism. All things are composed of unities of opposites constantly in change. Just because a mechanical materialist may not expect what did happen doesn’t invalidate determinism. The world is absurd, but that doesn’t bring wills into the question.
Noooooo but quantum mechanics affecting brainero means we are freeeeeee
Our individual senses/perception has its limits as well yet we also surpass these limits through social interactions, there is no concept-idea of free will in a vaccuum.
I agree, things are complex. I just think free will implies humans are above the material world in some way. That a porcupine will simply react to it’s senses in accordance with how it evolved and the current conditions, while humans have some sort of metaphysical “control.”
Expand on the so called material and the so called metaphysical as used here
Material is that which is real. Metaphysical Can mean a lot of things, but I intend it as beyond physical reality. I am suggesting that even secularized “free will” believers believe in a “soul” of sorts.
Free will is a human’s subjective experience making choices.
Determinism is describing that the more information about a system, the more the result can be predicted accurately. With perfect knowledge, one gets perfect predictions. (nobody will get perfect knowledge)
Both of these statements can be true without negating each others premise.
But why do people think there is some sort of contradiction?
Perhaps we should look at this dialecticaly.
A human body has desires and needs to sustain itself and also will do behavior to produce happy chemicals for the brain. The brain creates a model of reality based on its experiences in order to optimize the best experiences. People can calculate less optimal choices because of the incompleteness of their mental models of the universe. There will always be a contradiction between any brain’s model of the universe and the actual universe. A mental model can be reinforced to make that mental model give feel good hormones to the body. When the universe demonstrates to the mental model that it is false in some manner it gives bad feeling hormones.
Most conservatives in KKKrackerland I have met seem to insist on free will because of the central point of their model is that the world that benefits them and they want to feel that they made the right choices. They tie their sense of self to their nation. When evidence presents itself that the nation is less than good they cling to the ambiguity to justify their “truth” about the goodness of the nation. Those that suffer are merely making choices that are wrong. If the impoverished and criminalized made the right choice, they wouldn’t be poor or criminal. When they do criminal acts to hurt others, sometimes it is for the joy of hurting others. Other times it is because they know that they can get away with it and indifferent to the suffering of those they hurt.
Most liberals I have met cling to the model of determinism because they get pleasure from being correct more than identifying with victory. Some liberals of persecuted minority groups often identify with that failure and develop a sense of learned helplessness. If one does not believe in choice, one can not see themselves improving themselves or the world. When they do crimes its often because they lack the imagination to meet their needs in a legal manner.
As a communist I want to improve myself to give myself the power to help others, and in return, I need to have faith that those others will help me improve this wretched capitalist hellscape. I’m a highly empathetic person and I see the needs of all as my own needs. My research seems to indicate that socialism is the optimal means to stop others from harming me and harming themselves, for that reason I support socialism. I don’t need to have 100 percent knowledge to choose socialism in a deterministic material world.
But why do people think there is some sort of contradiction?
There are different definitions of “free will”, but the common one is purely idealist in a sense that our thoughts aren’t guided by our material conditions. It’s also often a religious position that god gave humans a soul and therefore only we have “free will”. If you drill down to the fundamentals of that position you reach a position that says our thoughts don’t (need to) obey the laws of physics and similar universal laws. It’s a position of idealist dualism that states our “mind” is not material and is separated from the material reality we exist in. It very often follows that material reality itself doesn’t really exist, except in our “mind” and then you reach a purely solipsistic position. That’s why there is a contradiction. If the definition you’re using for “free will” is basically just our material will, our thoughts, then the contradiction disappears, but I wouldn’t call that “free will”, as it will cause more confusion due to the definitions.
Here’s Lenin from ‘Materialism and Empirio-criticism’:
The materialist elimination of the “dualism of mind and body” (i.e., materialist monism) consists in the assertion that the mind does not exist independently of the body, that mind is secondary, a function of the brain, a reflection of the external world. The idealist elimination of the “dualism of mind and body” (i.e., idealist monism) consists in the assertion that mind is not a function of the body, that, consequently, mind is primary, that the “environment” and the “self” exist only in an inseparable connection of one and the same “complexes of elements.” Apart from these two diametrically opposed methods of eliminating “the dualism of mind and body,” there can be no third method, unless it be eclecticism, which is a senseless jumble of materialism and idealism.
Note that the “complexes of elements” used here basically mean our sensations of reality, but it’s a confusing term introduced by empirio-criticists to “smuggle in” idealism into materialist philosophy which is what Lenin is critiquing.
This. It is also worth noting on that excerpt that there is certainly contradiction there. The thing is, it’s not an intractable contradiction and it doesn’t make our Marxist minds explode. Liberals see a contradiction and think “that can’t exist then, there must be a correct non-contradictory answer.” Only with a dialectical mode of reference does one become at ease with contradictions.
You are correct that there are still contradictions. What I meant was that the intractable contradictions specific to idealist thought disappear when we fully embrace materialist dialectics. Like you said, we can easily deal with contradictions, but liberals can’t.
I am in complete agreement. It’s just annoying how the colloquial use of free will implies that choices are made at some level beyond restraint, whereas it’s in fact a part of the functioning of a material brain. Thanks for the effort post.
