As pointed out in previous posts (see links at bottom), philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's core concept, in his book Being and Nothingness:
was "bad faith" and he emphasized it in his Loyola debate with Christian Existentialist Gabriel Marcel. The most serious transgression an authentic being or person could make, according to Sarte, was to succumb or surrender to bad faith. By "bad faith" Sartre meant going against your own interior barometer to find an authentic Self. In other words, taking the easy or conformist path, to "go along to get along".
Above all, Sartre promoted his conviction that the central principle of existential philosophy was the individual's choice of being. Or as he repeated in various forums (not just his Loyola University debate) : "I am my choices." This, obviously, presumes a measure of free will - given we exert choices - and with them concomitant individual responsibility for them..
This topic came up earlier this year when the editor of Integra - the journal of Intertel - asked for member inputs on the topic of free will. My contribution is shown below, after which I will tie it into Sartre's concept of free will:
In my book Dialectical Atheism, I wanted to probe
more deeply into loose ends related to atheistic ontology. So I read Alex
Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide to Reality. The
book, predicated on an ultra-atheist perspective, sought to show why a
meaningful conscious experience of reality couldn’t work and why there is no
genuine free will.
Rosenberg based his claim on documented experiments, such as
those by Lüder Deecke and Hans Helmut Kornhuber in 1964, showing that all human
actions precede conscious decisions to perform them.
For example, Rosenberg argues, in his discussion concerning
neural time delays, that a simple action like flexing a wrist can’t be done at
the instant one consciously thinks of doing so[1].
Instead, there’s an inevitable time delay of about 200 milliseconds from
conscious willing to wrist flexing and finger pressing[2].
He adds that the cortical processes responsible commence 500 ms before
that! The obvious implication: Consciously deciding to do
something is not the cause of doing it.
By extension - according to Rosenberg- if there is no real
will, there can be no willpower. Rosenberg adopts this as a grounding for his
notion that we are beings entirely governed by blind sight[3].
In other words, all our sensory outputs are based on ex post facto- conducted
neural process corrections to much earlier sensory inputs.
A more radical concept of free will - as well as consciousness
- has been defined by quantum physicist Evan Harris Walker (The Physics
Of Consciousness), W the "will
channel" - measures "the channel capacity that can affect things and
events. directly and globally, through space and through time." Adding (p.
266):
"Both stem from the same kinds of things, quantum
mechanical events going on at the synapses."
He estimates a transfer (data) rate for the will stream:
W = 2.35 x 10 3 Bits/
sec
And for the consciousness stream:
C, = 4.75 x 10 6 Bits/
sec
So that the ratio: W/ C, =
0.00124
According to Walker W / C is always too small to effect alteration of reality. The signal is small compared to the noise of our everyday consciousness, influenced as it is buffeted by a multitude of competing distractions. As he describes the effect:
"Our will images are so dim compared to those of our daily conscious existence that they are almost always lost in the daily consciousness stream."
Hence, we may entertain a desire to influence one event or
another, but generally that desire perishes in an ocean of 'noise' from the
distractions bombarding us. Thus while the will image may enter or
consciousness it ultimately has little or no effect there.
----------
The truth in the end is we know very little - in an exact
sense - of how our will operates, including the extent it is free. But I
suspect Evan Harris Walker comes closest to referencing that extent from a
physics point of view. At the same time, I will take Sartre's philosophical
interpretation over Rosenberg's any day. Why?
Rosenberg’s conjectures can be invalidated using a reductio
ad absurdum approach. Basically, following his logic, all our fine cogitating, ruminating and
writing translates to a torrent of meaningless effluent or gibberish. All our
millions and billions of volumes of books, e-books and scientific or other
journals amount to culminations of massive forest destruction or wasted bytes.
With no introspection, the products of human thought have no interpretative
dimensions. They’re merely elaborate chemical-physical automatons operating
under the illusion of genuine choices.
But if this were true, how would the brain be able to work out a multi-body framework, i.e. using the Delaunay variables, to compute perturbations affecting celestial bodies, i.e.
So if equations such as in celestial mechanics have no interpretative (or synergistic) origins, dimensions, how did we manage to use them to send spacecraft to Mars, Mercury, Venus? This is a question I reckon Mr. Rosenberg. can't answer The point, of course, is that working through multi-body interactions in celestial mechanics requires serious choices and a skill beyond use of automatic processes.
A less radical interpretation (than Rosenberg’s) appeared 12 years ago in the excellent Mensa Bulletin article ‘Will Power’ ( July, 2013 p. 24) by member Mark Chmielewski. According to Mark, our belief that we’re actually determining our actions in real time is an illusion generated by recourse to a set of pre-programmed algorithms in the prefrontal cortex. He observes:
“The main functions of the prefrontal cortex involve planning
responses to complex and difficult problems. It takes past events stored in
those billions of neurons and present experiences, runs them through
brain-created algorithms and sends a response to the body – which acts
accordingly.”
In other words, no individual is capable of just randomly
making a decision. The bottom line:
”every living human being’s decision is based on past information
assimilated by the brain. The responses come from the brain based on the
perceived situation.”
The Mensan author then finally arrives at the only acceptable definition of free will,
which is one with which I can tacitly concur: “Free will is decision making
absent past brain input”.
Again, true, but these limits of past brain dynamics, say overlaid on current brain patterns and behaviors, do not eliminate fundamental choices in the sense Sartre uses the term, nor do those limits majorly impact our fundamental capacity for choices. As Sartre would respond, based on notes from his Loyola debate in 1965:
"The fact that the ultimate term of existential inquiry must be a choice renounces the supposition that prior mechanical causation acts on the subject under consideration."
Further:
"Existential inquiry is a method destined to bring to light - in a strictly objective form - the subjective choice by which each living person makes himself a person. That is, makes known to himself what he is. Since what the method seeks is a choice of being at the same time as being, it must reduce particular behavior patterns to fundamental relations - not of will to power -but of being expressed in this behavior. It is then guided from the start toward a comprehension of being and must not assign itself any other goal than to discover its being and the mode of being confronting this being. It is forbidden to stop before attaining this goal."
But that attainment of said goal, individual personhood different from all others ('being for itself), can be parlous. Two quotes from Sartre's April, 1965 Playboy interview are germane here:
The gist of what he's about is that the very nature of being truly human is to accept peril in making our own choices. That in essence is freedom. What it means is that a measure of will is required to make such perilous choices that may not redound to our benefit or self -esteem. "Perilous" because they're often in divergence from how others perceive us. And hence these choices to be a certain kind of person can be inimical to our status or security. This is via defining us outside the bounds of what others will accept or support.
[1] Rosenberg: The
Atheist’s Guide to Reality- Enjoying Life Without Illusions, 152
[2] Ibid..
See Also:
How The Loyola U. Visit Of Existentialist Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre Propelled My Path To Atheism
And:
And:
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