Free Will, Fundamental Agency, & Personal Responsibility | Existential Basics ep.4
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READ THIS ARTICLE @ https://themodernexistentialist.substack.com/p/free-will-agency-and-personal-responsibility FOLLOW US @ https://twitter.com/marcell_hise JOIN & DISCUSS @ https://discord.gg/7rQgwGH7jh ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ A deeper dive into the nature of AGENCY, and a brief exploration of the debate surrounding "Free Will" and "Determinism" and of the concept of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY.
"Free Will" is the idea that human beings have the ability to make any meaningful choices of their own—in other words, that you and I actually do choose to do the things that we choose to do.
"Determinism", on the other hand, is the idea that every decision that human beings make has already been determined for them—that you and I can never make choices of our own free will because everything that we choose to do, we choose because of either a base, biological drive, or because we're compelled by some kind of divine, cosmic will.
Our concept of AGENCY, however, has no stake in this argument, because it is, in reality, just a metaphysical debate waged between two different camps of DOGMATISTS. As Existentialists, we can see that any logic or theory which stems from this debate can only ever possibly be a claim to absolute, OBJECTIVE knowledge—knowledge which we know that we can't know for certain. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ #ExistentialBasics is a series exploring the basics and fundamentals of #ExistentialPhilosophy.
#Existentialism is, at its core, a fundamentally empirical discipline. What this means is that it can be easily broken down into simple, straightforward concepts which can be taught, learned, and understood by anyone, just like any other field of study.
This is our goal: to communicate the core concepts of Existential Philosophy in a way which can be understood and appreciated by anyone. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 0:00 - Introduction 0:17 - 1: Fundamental Subjectivity; Fundamental Agency 2:19 - 2: Free Will & Agency; a Dogmatic Conflation 6:37 - 3: Condemned to be Free 10:31 - 4: Conclusions ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ Music from Bensound @ https://www.bensound.com/
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Existentialists ground human freedom and responsibility not in metaphysical claims about free will versus determinism, but in the empirical fact that we experience ourselves as agents who must always choose within our circumstances, making us responsible for our choices regardless of external constraints.
- The free will vs. determinism debate is metaphysical and unanswerable, so existentialists sidestep it by focusing on empirical agency—how we actually experience and exercise choice
- Agency means we always have a choice in how we respond to circumstances, even when we cannot choose the circumstances themselves (the Fred example: quadriplegia removes choice of condition but not choice of response)
- Responsibility is empirical, not moral—we are responsible for what we have done through our agency, not beholden to abstract ethical theories about what we should do
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Fundamental subjectivity is the idea that we can and do only experience the world through the subjective lens of our perception, meaning everything we can know is empirical knowledge and anything that isn't empirical knowledge is something we can't know.
“Fundamental subjectivity is the idea that we can and do only experience the world through the subjective lens of our perception in other words it's just to say that everything that we can know is empirical knowledge and anything that isn't empirical knowledge is something that we can't know”
The traditional free will versus determinism debate has been ongoing for thousands of years with self-described intellectuals arguing back and forth, yet nobody has ever been able to make any progress at all because the debate is fundamentally metaphysical rather than empirical.
“thousands of years of heated debate have been dedicated to the idea of free will self-described intellectuals have been arguing back and forth for what's basically forever about whether or not people actually have the ability and responsibility to make their own choices and yet even in all that time nobody seems to ever have been able to make any progress at all this debate is framed as a conflict between the ideas of free will and determinism”
Sartre's principle states that agents must always choose, because even if you choose not to make a choice, you have still made a choice—the choice to not choose—making choice and responsibility inescapable.
“in the end sartre says this as agents we must always choose after all even if you were to choose not to make a choice you'd still have just made one anyway the choice to not choose”
Sartre calls agency 'freedom' and famously says that 'man is condemned to be free', meaning there is only one thing in the world humans have no choice in—and that is that we must always choose; we are always an agent, always in control, always responsible for our choices and actions.
“sartre calls it well agency or freedom and famously says that man is condemned to be free to be condemned to be free means that there's only one thing in this world that we have no choice in no power to choose or decide and that isn't that we must always choose that we always have to decide you are an agent you're always an agent and therefore always in control always responsible for the choices that you make”
Nietzsche calls the drive to express our power and use it to shape the world into what we want it to be 'the will to power', representing the existentialist concept of human agency.
“so nietzsche calls it the will to power literally our drive to express our power and to use it to shape the world into what we want it to be”
Fundamental agency is the idea that because our experience can only ever be subjective because we live a personal fiction, we're therefore in turn always fundamentally responsible for the things that we think and do—we as agents are always in control of ourselves and always responsible for the choices that we make and the actions that we take.
“Fundamental agency on the other hand is the idea that because our experience can only ever be subjective because we live a personal fiction we're therefore in turn always fundamentally responsible for the things that we think and do it's the idea that we as agents are always in control of ourselves always responsible for the choices that we make and the actions that we take”
As existentialists, we can understand that at least to the best of our knowledge we can't know for certain whether or not man is truly objectively metaphysically free, but the best we can know is that we think and feel as though we're free inside our minds and we act as though we are free in the world, so we can feel confident in our empirical assumption that we are free.
“so as existentialists we can understand that at least to the best of our knowledge we can't know for certain whether or not man is truly objectively metaphysically free the best we can know is that in the end we think and feel as though we're free inside of our minds and that we act as though we are free as we live our lives out in the world and so we as existentialists can feel confident in our assumption our empirical assumption that we are free within our means”
Responsibility has two different senses: the first is a moral sense (used by dogmatists and nihilists/absurdists) where responsibility is forward-looking as a declaration of what individuals should do, while the second is an empirical sense (used by existentialists) where responsibility is backward-looking as a claim that we are responsible for what we have done.
“the word responsibility has two senses two ways that it can be defined the first is a moral one the way in which dogmatists and nihilist absurdists both see it they think of responsibility as forward looking a declaration of what individuals should do in the second sense however the sense in which we as existentialists think of it is an empirical one we see responsibility as backward looking just simply a claim that we as agents are each responsible for having done the things that we have done”
A popular counter-argument to existentialist agency claims that we can't always be free to choose because we don't have a choice in our circumstances, and we can't choose what situations we're put in, therefore we're not always free—but this argument misses the point that agency is about choice within circumstances, not choice of circumstances.
“one of the most popular counter arguments that people will tend to try and make at this point is this we can't possibly always be free to choose because sometimes we just don't have a choice after all there's no way that we can possibly choose what our circumstances are we can't choose the situations that we're put in therefore we're not always free to choose so while it is true that we're not able to determine our own situation not able to choose or control objectivity that's really completely beside the point there's no claim being made here as to whether or not we have the ability to choose our circumstances instead what sart says here is that within every given circumstance we still always must make a choice regardless of the context of any situation an agent is always agentive”
Even when Fred's illness becomes so severe that he is completely paralyzed as a quadriplegic, he still has choices to make—whether to surrender to despair, hold onto hope for a cure, or accept his condition and learn to live with it—showing that agency persists even in extreme constraint.
“let's say that one day fred sickness takes a turn for the worse that it's way more serious than he imagined at first it infects his brain sending him to the hospital where the doctors tell him that because of his sickness he's now a quadriplegic completely paralyzed and unable to move his body in this matter he obviously didn't have a choice he didn't get to choose or decide how bad his sickness would become but still even when he's trapped in the prison that his body's become there are still choices that he must make he could choose to give up to surrender to his sickness and lay their wallowing in misery and self-pity as he watches himself waste away he could also choose to hold on to hope hope that one day some doctor or scientist somewhere out there might figure out a way to save him or he could choose to accept his condition and learn how to live with his new life”
The case of Fred illustrates that even when someone has a chronic illness they didn't choose (circumstance), they always have the choice in how they respond to their situation—through their choices about hygiene, medication, or attitude—and thus always have agency even when circumstances are unchosen.
“imagine a man let's call him fred who's chronically sick all the time he has no choice in his situation after all it's not like it was ever up to him to choose whether or not he'd get sick that simply wasn't his choice to make it was never a function of his agency he does however in another sense always have a choice because he always gets to choose how he reacts to his situation his choice comes in his subjectivity in how he chooses to express his agency and how he'll choose to deal with his sickness”
Agency and free will are often confused but differ in context: free will implies a dogmatic context (metaphysical), whereas agency refers strictly to an empirical context (how we actually experience choice), avoiding the metaphysical debate entirely.
“our idea of agency will sometimes get confused for the concept of free will after all they're at least kind of similar in the sense that they deal with the same kind of subject matter the way they differ though is in the context that they're used namely in that free will implies a dogmatic context whereas our idea of agency refers strictly to an empirical one”
The concept of existentialist agency has no stake in the free will versus determinism debate because this entire debate is actually metaphysical in nature—it deals only in absolute objective claims to metaphysical knowledge about ideas we can't know for certain.
“our concept of agency however has no stake in this argument no horse in this race because this entire debate is actually in reality just a metaphysical one in other words this argument deals only in absolute objective claims to metaphysical knowledge to ideas that we can't know that we know for certain”
As subjects and agents we create the world that we experience through the exercise of our agency—we act upon the world and are therefore empirically responsible for having imparted subjective meaning onto the world, making truth something we assign value to rather than discover objectively.
“as subjects and as agents we create the world that we experience we act upon it and are therefore empirically responsible for having imparted subjective meaning onto the world through the exercise of our agency in other words truth is value that we assign”
Personal responsibility according to existentialists doesn't mean anything special—it's not a claim to some grand metaphysical theory of ethics or knowledge of what's right or wrong with absolute certainty, but simply that we will always have become responsible for the things we choose to do because we do things in the world.
“we however as existentialists know that personal responsibility doesn't mean anything so special that it's not any kind of claim to some grand metaphysical theory of ethics not a claim to know what's right or wrong with absolute certainty personal responsibility just simply means that we will always have become responsible for the things that we choose to do because we do things in the world we are therefore responsible for having done them”
Free will is the idea that human beings have the ability to make meaningful or any choices of their own, while determinism is the idea that every decision a human being makes is just a function of either their base biological drives and imperatives or of some kind of divine cosmic will that decides fate without knowledge or consent.
“free will is the idea that human beings have the ability to make meaningful or any choices of their own determinism on the other hand is the idea that every decision that a human being makes is just a function of either their base biological drives and imperatives or of some kind of divine cosmic will which decides our fate without our knowledge or consent”
Biological determinism is the position that every decision humans make is a function of their base biological drives and imperatives, a position taken by nihilists and absurdists, while predestination is the position that cosmic will decides our fate, commonly taken by dogmatists.
“the former is called biological determinism the position that's taken by our nihilists and absurdists the latter is called predestination a position that's commonly taken by dogmatists”
The dogmatist defines personal responsibility as being moral, doing what's right and not wrong for the sake of a better future, while nihilists and absurdists claim personal responsibility is fake and doesn't exist, that hope for a better future is a lie told to cope with absurdity.
“if asked the dogmatist will tell us that personal responsibility means to be moral to do what's right and not what's wrong for the sake of a better future the nihilist and the absurdist both on the other hand would be quick to say that personal responsibility is fake and doesn't exist that the hope for a better tomorrow is a lie that we tell ourselves in order to try and cope with the sheer absurdity of existence”
The previous episode of Existential Basics covered the distinction between rejection of inheritance versus rejection of meaning and explored the existentialist deconstruction of nihilist and absurdist philosophy.
“last time we covered the idea of the rejection of inheritance as opposed to the rejection of meaning and we explored the existentialists deconstruction of nihilist absurdist philosophy if you haven't seen that episode i'd recommend you go back and watch that before coming back to join us for this one”