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Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills." I've wrestled with this question from time to time and, to the extent I've found a
by xianshou 4y ago
Schopenhauer: "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills."
I've wrestled with this question from time to time and, to the extent I've found a solution, the key is duration:
In the short term, choices are mutable (but determined by character), and character is fixed.
In the long term, character is mutable, and determined by some inner nature plus the integral of experience, influence, and choice.
There's still a recursive element here, because the investments you make in yourself are strongly influenced by a prior version of that self. (In a limited sense, this resembles coherent extrapolated volition.) Still, I've found it more helpful to think about short-term vs. long-term processes - in the sense of stock vs. flow, intercept vs. slope, or short-term vs. long term elasticity - than about recursion. Adding time conveys an intuitive understanding not only of what you can and can't change, but what you should and shouldn't.
To phrase it a simpler way: willpower is a muscle, as are most other traits. Most people can be strong, but not all at once, and when you see someone lifting a heavy weight it means they've been training for a long time.
- mjburgess 4y agoSo, Action: Act(Environment|Character) Reflection: Act(Character|Environment) An agent has free will iff it engages in action<->reflection cycles. Also: An agent A "could have taken" action X vs Y: ActX(Env|CharA) vs ActY(Env|CharB) in the sense that there is a graph "of some sort" linking their CharA to the CharB which could realise ActY. Eg., Bob can either steal the money or return it. Bob chooses to steal it. Bob is morally responsible for this act because there is a realisable "action<->reflection" path from bob's actual character to the one he should have had. If bob had had this character, he would not have stolen.
- xianshou 4y agoThis is a very interesting definition of "free will" and not one I would expect most philosophers to agree with, but more measurable and useful than most would propose. In this case "free will" reduces to self-modifying action with randomness injected by the environment, which feels more like a stochastic model than genuine self-determination. That said, the existence of a "reflection" function is still the primary determinant of any moral responsibility.
- mjburgess 4y agoIt's really just a restatement of compatibilism, which has been the major position in philosophy for a long time. And I think, in practice, what most people actually think. Only somewhat recently have philosophers intuitions changed a little more to incompatibilism.
- 98codes 4y agoAs someone with a lifetime of fighting with the executive dysfunction end of ADHD, I very much understand what Schopenhauer has saying. I can know what I need to do and have the willpower to do it, but the door to the cupboard where the willpower resides is locked, unlocks randomly, and nobody knows where the key is.
- Shared404 4y ago> I can know what I need to do and have the willpower to do it, but the door to the cupboard where the willpower resides is locked, unlocks randomly, and nobody knows where the key is. Best description of this situation that I have ever seen, many thanks.
- nonbirithm 4y agoI have to wonder how interest can be affected by some conditions. For example, specific interests are frequently described as a trait of autism spectrum disorders. However, the idea that some types of people express interest in different ways could be hard to swallow, especially if genetics are involved.
- 98codes 4y agoI can easily imagine ADHD & Autism being broken out into more specific disorders, because there is very much an overlap. How long that'll take is almost certainly 20 years longer than I think it should.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoA good response to people like Schopenhauer is: "Not everyone has an ordinal complex, Mr Freud, just you." Willpower is absolutely a muscle that needs to be cultivated over the long term, as is every other character trait. I don't think people realize this, but it only takes about 2-3 months of hard, conscious effort to build a habit. On the scale of a lifetime, that is such a short time to make a change in your character. Unfortunately, it can take as little as 2 weeks to break a habit.
- bheadmaster 4y agoWhat is an ordinal complex?
- pclmulqdq 4y agoDamn autocorrect. An *oedipal complex.
- morjom 4y agoI very recently discovered this muscle and I'm in the process of training it. My life was very passive until a year ago when my parents divorced and the amount of responsibilities I had increased. Everything felt so unbearable and I couldn't do anything unless it was a solid requirement for something else, or an official matter.