Monthly Archives: December 2023

Random Reflections on the Will: A Response (AKA what Joe does on part of his Saturday evening)

I appreciate your thoughts, but I think this characterization of free will is a bit of a straw man, and you’ve left out important references to phenomenological and existentialist philosophers that provide a much better account of free will, which is not just about the notion of freedom, which you emphasize but about the notion of having a will, a thing that is about doing and creating and acting in the world. You, for example, willed yourself to speak and act to create a video. You brought something into being that did not exist before, and would not have existed without you, and even if there are biological or social or financial or casual explanations, that does not address or eliminate the fact that you acted, you willed to do something, which you may have been inspired to do or forced to do, but you still did it (and could have not done it) and brought something new into being which previously was not part of the world, you birthed it in a sense. Action is still action, even if we explain it. No man made thing would exist without man’s capacity for action, labor and work. Hannah Arendt had a lot to say about this and might say that what makes humans special is our ability to bring things into being which did not exist before and which subsequently changes the environment of possibility of things that might occur after. And in this sense, the most defensible position in my opinion is really one of a conditioned free will or a conditioned will. Certainly, we are born into the world, thrown into the world, as Heidegger might say, but we still change and learn and grow and act with it. And to say that we’re able to finely look at the way the world is and say that is was always to be this way, because it was determined, is to say that humans aren’t really acting at all, just responding, which you could argue, but then it just becomes a matter of semantics, substituting one term for another, because if we are all acting or all responding, we are still doing and living and creating. The future is not yet certain, but it is conditioned, and I think conditioned is a better term here. Hannah Arendt again addresses this in Between Past and Future. She talks about the present as a shared space of uncertainty in which we are co-creating a shared future. I think this explanation is helpful. And while it is human-focused, it also addresses the questions of why the social world is as it is: because the past has a claim on the present, even if it may not have as strong a claim on the future. Things could end up being one way or another depending on how things are done in the present. And later on, we can reflect on the past and say it was always to be that way, but it just wasn’t: that is a reflection on reality, not reality itself. Reality itself involves co-willing, co-creating, interaction and change. And it’s only the retrospection that seems to leave us with this idea of determinism, which I think is a lot less helpful than the motion of *being-conditioned-to-be*.

“Life is Suffering”

Easily one of my favorite seasons in all of Fargo, and so many good lines by Ray Wise (Paul Murrane) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Nicki Swango). Just a brief pause amidst all the gory Season 3 Fargo action that waxed philosophical and meditates on the very nature of existence and the world.

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“Mister, it’s been a long day”

“They are all long. That is the nature of existence. Life is suffering. I think you are beginning to understand that”

…

“We all end up here eventually to be weighed and judged”

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Hands Down

Aside from helping people with impairments find care, helping people in tough situations get by and helping people who need work find people who need help, one of the things I have to admit I enjoy about my job is telling people they have to follow the rules…what does that say about me 🤪?

Pay It Forward

Helped a Spanish speaker jumpstart their car in the rain at the Sprouts. I remember being in that same position when I first got my Volvo. Always good to pay it forward when you can.