"Every semester I meet lovely, intelligent young people who tell me that free will is an illusion, and that humans are “meat machines.” Sam Harris makes an argument that there is no free will. I don't buy the entire concept but his points are compelling enough to warrant that we don't have as much free will as we think we do.
We are a bit of a meat robot with very little control over the vast majority of our biological processes. We go to great length to stimulate the Vagus Nerve to reset functions from time to time but that's about all we can do.... control our breathing.... to a point.
We can control our thinking more but the difficulty in that is well captured by millenia of religion and philosophy desperatly trying to manage that.
So what do we really have free will to do? I think this is where it comes down to accepting that even with all these 'meat machine' mechanisms, we do have a degree of control that we can exersise. Also, recognizing, as you pointed out with society, how we are externally controlled, also helps.
The harmony and peace of WEIRD designers and engineers breaks down fast. Its subjects either go through some form of depression and rise from it or die. The WEIRD mentality becomes angry, fearful and contemptuous. Do you sense the desperation of the WEIRD today as they double down?
I guess I should point out that if you can read this, the WEIRD isn’t a “them,” it’s an “us,” because literacy is one of the fundamental “WEIRD”-nesses — one that physically alters our brains, according to Henrich, sacrificing some of our ability to read faces in exchange for the ability to read words. :)
Whenever I write something succinct and press send, I am quicky aware of things left out, left behind. We WEIRDs can usually read words and faces too, it's just that we are good at ignoring the faces when in our systematic organizing style. Our managerial mode.
I have to wonder if BF ever read ERB. The Tharks of Barsoom (the Green Martians of Mars) mixed all their eggs into incubators and raised them anonymously, for just this purpose, at a smaller tribal scale. John Carter of Earth found this monstrous.
Great essay and a great foundation for analysis.
"Every semester I meet lovely, intelligent young people who tell me that free will is an illusion, and that humans are “meat machines.” Sam Harris makes an argument that there is no free will. I don't buy the entire concept but his points are compelling enough to warrant that we don't have as much free will as we think we do.
We are a bit of a meat robot with very little control over the vast majority of our biological processes. We go to great length to stimulate the Vagus Nerve to reset functions from time to time but that's about all we can do.... control our breathing.... to a point.
We can control our thinking more but the difficulty in that is well captured by millenia of religion and philosophy desperatly trying to manage that.
So what do we really have free will to do? I think this is where it comes down to accepting that even with all these 'meat machine' mechanisms, we do have a degree of control that we can exersise. Also, recognizing, as you pointed out with society, how we are externally controlled, also helps.
The harmony and peace of WEIRD designers and engineers breaks down fast. Its subjects either go through some form of depression and rise from it or die. The WEIRD mentality becomes angry, fearful and contemptuous. Do you sense the desperation of the WEIRD today as they double down?
I guess I should point out that if you can read this, the WEIRD isn’t a “them,” it’s an “us,” because literacy is one of the fundamental “WEIRD”-nesses — one that physically alters our brains, according to Henrich, sacrificing some of our ability to read faces in exchange for the ability to read words. :)
For a speculative but fascinating further exploration of that idea . . .
https://www.alphabetvsgoddess.com/
Whenever I write something succinct and press send, I am quicky aware of things left out, left behind. We WEIRDs can usually read words and faces too, it's just that we are good at ignoring the faces when in our systematic organizing style. Our managerial mode.
We fit ourselves to bloodless abstractions and universalisms and then try to fix the world of flesh and blood, much to our frustration and tedium.
Well said.
I have to wonder if BF ever read ERB. The Tharks of Barsoom (the Green Martians of Mars) mixed all their eggs into incubators and raised them anonymously, for just this purpose, at a smaller tribal scale. John Carter of Earth found this monstrous.
It always comes back to Demolition Man.