The Philosophy of Chatroulette and Freedom: The Impossibility of Free Will

Have you ever been really bored--I mean REALLY bored--and jumped on Chatroulette (link to Wiki)? You know the nights I'm talking about: Facebook Chat is empty, your significant other is asleep and you've gone and drank 6 cups of coffee, thoughtlessly---And, done so just an hour before your obviously optional bedtime? Think about who you chose to spend time chatting with on Chatroulette (link to Chatroulette.com). Did you actually choose them? Did you sit and think: "this is what I want, this is the specific trait I'm looking for in a conversation, and I'll apply all this in the split second before I or the other person hits 'NEXT'"?  I know I don't.

You click "Start", some oddness draws you in, you realize what it is you're looking at---and quickly click "Next". Despite your permanent trauma, you're onto another oddity, and then another and another. Finally, you settle on a lonely girl from China, or some Wiccan  trying to charge his badly drawn sigils. You didn't think about this; It just happend. So consider this moment of ambiguity in your the moment of decision. Did you chose this? 

In some sense, you could say you chose this little moment of Chatroulette-voyeurism/conversation because it was you who acted.  But, where was your Free Will? Did you choose the reasons out of which you chose that specific person? Did you choose your voyeuristic tendencies, your addiction to coffee or your manic need for company? I didn't. I don't. So what's what my point? 

In other situations, any other situation, there is always this constitutive/necessary element of your choice---that thing that determines what you choose and chose---that  you did not choose.  Just like on Chatroulette, you cannot choose the reason out of which you choose. It's just more obvious on Chatroulette. Free will implies a choice of what causes you to choose. It implies that you are conscious of and constantly in control of everything that determines how you choose. This is impossible.

]This is the Chatroulette paradox: you cannot choose the  reasons out of which you choose or it would lead to infinite regress. Either your choice is completely random (which also implies reasons (for another conversation)), or you have something driving the choice. There's always something driving the choice. You need to bottom out in some reason for acting. And, if a reason for acting is the necessary condition for you having chosen anything at all, then you couldn't have chosen those reasons. 

Chatroulette provides an intuitive "bottoming out". (This is a  double entendre (get it, Rock bottom?)). It provides a bottoming out because you didn't choose the reasons you acted: you simply acted. So next time you're on Chatroulette, consider the choices you make. You can't have free will, but realizing that might make you get introspective. 

Resources on Choice and Free Will: 
wikipedia.org Free Will
Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy Free Will
Wikipedia.org Choice

Uniting Care Ethics, Nietzsche and Foucault

Any union of Care ethics and Nietzsche hammers on the senses, leaving the ring of “contradiction” resounding in the mind. However, this may be apparent rather than actual. If we read Nietzsche as speaking in more metaphorical than literal sense, as some have suggested, and Nietzsche himself may have suggested (Montanari, 201; Nietzsche, Ansell-Pearson & Diethe, 2007), then we discover that this is not as certain a contradiction as it feels, and indeed Nietzsche’s supreme affirmation of life might be realized in Care. Together, Nietzsche and Care offer a critique of justice-based ethics, and with the help of Foucault a possible foundation for a more appropriate ethical theory.

There are several problems that need to be resolved before using Nietzsche and Care to create a critique of Justice ethics. Some may interpret Care wrongly which would initiate a damning critique of care using a Nietzschian critique. Nietzsche would disdain a revaluing, or a will to power, that defines itself opposed to something else that is strong and active and revalues a passivity as strength. Also, unlike care, Nietzsche seems to promote the individual more than any kind of relationship. However, as we’ll see this isn’t as much of problem as it seems, and together the two perspectives merge to reveal that justice based ethics are floating around with out content, without the perspective or the individual. 

When Carol Gilligan introduced what she thought was a poverty in modern ethics, she labeled the sides Justice and care, where justice was the current paradigm and understanding of ethics and Care represented a feminine perspective that might be able to revalue ethics. I will use the terms Care and Justice ethics broadly—encompassing many different ethical disciplines, much as she does—but I will define them in a way that is informed by other Care thinkers. Justice will be defined as that which starts from a universal, independent, atomist, separate conception of a self and forms general rules from that self, and then applies those general rules to specific cases, and that values rational control over emotion, where emotions can only get in the way of ethical action. Care on the other hand, I will define as an ethic that focuses on the specific, highly contextual elements of a person in relationship. Care mbraces emotion as providing a partial basis for morality and moral understanding, where there is an appreciation and focus on attention, context and narrative, as well as, a focus on communication in moral deliberation, where specific trumps the general.

At first, it feels apparent that Nietzsche would be apposed to a Care ethics because it promotes, well: care. However, you can read Nietzsche two ways. You can read him literally, where the strong should have recourse to whatever makes them great. Or, you can read him more metaphorically as some think he should be read, and he himself implies (Montanari, 2011; Nietzsche et al.), and a different picture emerges. In this construal, or interpretive lens, Nietzsche is only saying we should be letting man be free to be great in activity, without the burden of feeling self hate (Nietzsche et al.). Nietzsche wants continually forming exemplars, something that affirms life, life that is only actualized in activity (Montanari, 2011). Care ethics might be a development of this activity. There is more to say about Neitzsche that affirms Care ethics, but we must deal with the fact that Nietzsche would see anything as vile that redefines itself against the strong and revalues activity as weakness and inactivity as strength and some might see care ethics as affirming weakness.

 This seems like a problem for Care ethics, as it seems to be attempting to revalue something that has been considered inherently weak, and even less human, as something strong (Held 1990). However, there are two ways, broadly construed that an ethic of Care can be conceived. The first may fall impotent prey to this critique. This perspective on Care can be conceived of as a response to masculine domination, and an effort to revalue the world, making the weakness of promotional inactivity inherent in femininity to be considered strong. In this view, proponents of care would be defining themselves against masculinities activity. This aspect or version of Care would say masculinity devalues a woman’s place and makes her creature who has less ethical potential than man, as a gender, and so it must be changed so that it does not have this bias (Jaggar, 1995). However, to argue that that Care is simply saying that it’s an unjust practice, so we need to revalue it would be would be in error. It is certain that some of the motivation that facilitated the perspective of care was a concern that women’s concerns were devalued. However, that being as it may, there is a second stronger concern that predominates in care and this is the Care that I refer to in the rest of the paper.

 This version or aspect of Care doesn’t define itself in antithesis to male domination; but, instead, it seeks to develop a positive theory that can possibly replace Justice ethics and account for its many flaws. This theory perceives a serious poverty in ethics that results from certain historical assumptions that define the rules of the game that justice ethicists are playing. They attempt to replace, or at very least inform, a justice ethic that has been male dominated (Held, 1990). The Care ethicist, here, attacks a conception of ethics that predominantly men formed from overly narrow, a priori assumptions (Held, 1990; Jaggar, 1995). There’s good reason to believe the second perspective is true, or at least more frequently true, of care ethics. Most of the literature—like writings of Walker, Jaggar and Held—focus on the narrow historical assumptions and impoverished concepts that they believe are empty of any real meaning. In the formerly mentioned care perspective, the perspective results from concerns about how women are valued; in the later, care is a positive theory that results from a privileged perspective.

Virginia Held (1990) reveals that the feminist or care ethicists are focused on the issue of reality. She believes there is something about justice ethics that doesn’t account for our lived in the world experience, where we are creatures in social-emotional context. In addition, She holds that woman have a special moral access because of their cultural role as caregivers to children. This role makes them sensitive to the emotional, interpersonal elements of ethics. It makes them sensitive to the emotional and self-constituting element of relationships in ethical decisions. Men may not be as sensitive to this, according to Held. And possibly as a result of Justice ethic’s lack of perspectival privilege.

 Due to the male domination of ethics, they’ve created this unrealistic decontextualized, neutral “person”. The Justice ethicist attempt to make sense of man socially (ethically) by postulating an unrealistic, misleading fiction of man born and raised outside of culture (Held, 1990). So they’ve conceived of a general “person” and out of that created ethical principles to apply to very specific, complex and situations. The theoretical man without context isn’t a person at all because an actual person is formed behaviorally and ethically within a family, with father, a mother and all the inculcations that culture offers through practices and relationships.

Nietzsche adds to this, in full agreement that this general man of justice is a fiction, and an foolish place to start an ethic. Whereas for Care, Justice ethics doesn’t account for the feeling person in context and through time; Nietzsche shows that Justice ethicist can never know the agent they postulate because a person is only ever known historically, after the fact, even the individual only recognizes himself historically by remembering his actions (Montanari, 2011; Nietzsche et al.). Because we are only ever looking at our actions in hindsight, and from that evaluating who we are in the moment, we can only catch glimpses of who we are (Montanari, 2011; Nietzsche et al.). Additionally, through genealogy, looking at humans through history, we can only ever see the contingency in what we have perceived to be necessary (Murdchadha, 2005), so to postulate a fixed ideal would be gross a mistake and terrible assumption.

Both Care and Nietzsche give a provocative attack on justice ethics but they also do more: they may offer a replacement. They reveal that the foundations of justice ethics, namely rationality, doesn’t provide complete access while claiming to do so, and indeed it starts drawing conclusions from an assumption riddled foundation of what it means to be a human agent. They show the oddness of making inferences from a stripped down, de-contextualized, de-relationshiped person to persons who are each individually born and raised in the highly variable context of deep emotional social connections. Nietzsche complete this because he revealed that you can only know yourself in part because you only know yourself as an agent by looking back on a past action. But, now Foucault provides a way to unify both perspectives. He exposes that the agent can only be realized historically within relationship.

Foucault sensitizes us to the fact that we are constitutively social creatures. We don’t simply grow up as individuals in society; instead, our very individual identity form from within our social relations, and as Held (1990) points out the content of own law is “comprehensible” only in reference to norms, values and concepts. All of these are constitutively social. Foucault elucidates how we as agents are self-defining but only with the precondition of already presents ideas, rule and practices that we didn’t invent ourselves. The practices we find ourselves within define what counts as truth, and these are indeed not just limitations for truth but the preconditions for any truth at all, including any self knowledge, as culture defines how you are able to value yourself by defining what counts as value. Foucault shows how we are the Nietzschian  ideal of the active agent, but the precondition for those actions to be counted as anything are that they are counted as something by others, that what you do makes sense only within a social context.

Here we get the active agent, but who can only do so with the preconditions of certain rules and values present and embodied in his the social practices. Since this agent is active and changing, but socially valued and forming from with that system of values, the best ethic would be one that creates an environment that allows diverse action to arise out of the social. Care provides such an ethic because it focuses on the specifics of situation and the specific needs of each individual. It at once allows for diversity and fosters the community out of which it grows. Because the social, emotional context provides the preconditions for a self in history, fostering those relationships of care  provides a greater ability for diverse action. It focuses on the specific instead of the general, where the general forces the agent in preformed and unrealistic conceptual boxes. The ethic of Care allows for the agent to act spontaneously, see his self historically, and to promote the conditions for his own historical reflections.

Care ethics and Nietzsche together reveal the insufficient moral theories of justice ethics and the flimsy foundations out of which Justice ethics forms. They also, with the help of Foucault possibly provide the first conceptual blocks for an ethical ideology that takes advantage of realistic agents within a context of realistic agents all creating a context of care out of which creative, spontaneous and diverse actions can arise and be recognized as such by both the agent and those around him.

References:

Foucault (Assigned Reading). The ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of freedom. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 281-301.

Held, V. (1990). Feminist transformations of moral theory, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 321-344.

Jaggar, A.M. (1995). Caring as a Feminist Practice of Moral Reason, 179-202.

Montanari, D.J. (2011). Nietzsche and “getting it wrong”. Philosophy and Literature, 35, ­190-198.

Murchadha, F.O. (2005). Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger: thinking freedom and philosophy, British Journal of the History of Philosophy, 13, 361-373. doi: 10.1080/09608780500093319.

Nietzsche, F. W., Ansell-Pearson, K., & Diethe, C. (2007).On the genealogy of morality. Cambridge Univ Pr.

Understanding Consciousness: The Distinction Between Mind and Brain

In my last article, Psychiatry, Mind-body Dualism and Sensation, I went through allot of content in a very short writing. In this one, want to be a little more concise and deal less with the whole of consciousness and thought and more with the parts. 

I said that for the relationship to exist between practitioner and client to exist in psychiatry, there are only 3 options that can exist for thought: Matter causes consciousness; matter is in lockstep with consciousness and matter and consciousness are both separate from each other; or matter and consciousness are exactly the same thing from different perspectives. I argue that it is the last option that is the truth. 

The reason for this is that matter (causal aspect of world) and consciousness (perspectival aspect of world) have nothing in common. They are two fundamentally different kinds of qualities. One is 3rd person observable and the other is necessarily first person. 

I should say something about the necessity of first person in consciousness. In order to feel as a person, you must experience as if you were that person. The only way to experience something as that other person or conscious being, you must become that person. And, obviously, you are not observing them any longer; instead you are them. The causal aspects (matter and energy) are observable in some way. They effect the world around them in way that affects us in a sensory way.

Consider the brain stripped of all its sense organs and stripped of thought only allowing it consciousness. It is obvious at this point that the only thing that the brain is conscious of is itself. And, now, remember that there is the necessary distinction between consciousness and matter, a distinction of internal perspective and external perspective, first person and third person. 

So, the first 2 options---mind and body in lockstep and body causing mind---cannot work and only the last option works: mind (consciousness) and body (Material, causal world) are the same thing from different perspectives. Because consciousness and matter are so fundamentally different, one can not cause the other. Because matter can cause a change experience, there is some relationship between consciousness and matter. Because it is not a causal relationship, and because the degree of difference is one of perspective, and because consciousness changes in the form (thought) because of changes in material,  consciousness must be the material's perspective of itself---the same things from different views.  

If as I say in the last post, that possibly everything---at least certain kinds of material---have two perspectives, material and mental, and it is the material the changes the mental, then we shouldn't be looking for consciousness in the brain. We should be looking for the memory of consciousness instead. We should be looking for a place in the brain where change and stability create the memory of consciousness. When we find that point where the changes from new associations and sensation, meet stability, we have found the place where we get the memory of consciousness. 

Psychiatry, Mind-body Dualism and Sensation.

One of the greatest obstacles facing psychology is there isn't a single paradigm. You can't unite treatment and research into a single cohesive, exponentially building theoretical structure without a single paradigm. Too much information is lost between differing theoretical groups. This quandary stems from one major problem: There isn't an adequate distinction between mind and body.

This has been a thorn in the side of philosophy for thousands of years. It seems to have no solution. However, psychologist, psychiatrist and other mental health professionals need not struggle in the frame work and discipline of philosophy. They've worked themselves into a rut. We can apply philosophical style reasoning without burdening ourselves with a philosopher's baggage.

We can do this by stripping psychiatry down to it's core conceptual features, by narrowing our scope of inquiry to what we must assume to do valid and reliable scientific work. There is a point where even our methodological assumptions demand metaphysical assumptions. Psychiatric work demands one major assumption: the physical changes the mental.

In every case, a counselor, psychology or psychiatrist, is using the material/causal world to change the mental world. A counselor speaks to the client, and the client's ears pick up sound waves that impact chemical and neuronal brain structures; and a psychiatrist provides the obvious physical influence of chemicals in a readily tangible pill.  Though this may seem obvious, it's not insignificant.

It reveals a relationship between consciousness and matter, mind and body.  For this relationship to exist, between mind and body, there are 3 choices: Matter causes consciousness; matter is in lockstep with consciousness and matter and consciousness are both separate from each other; or matter and consciousness are exactly the same thing from different perspectives.

In order to know which of the three is the correct answer, consider what happens when we have a visual experience. When we see something, we don't see that something; instead it strikes our retinas and a cascading reaction begins. Instead we have an experience. The brain changes because of that pattern of stimulation, and it causes a patterned experience. Neurons fire, they release transmitters and the physical structures of the brain changes. That pattern of change that specific experience.

The brain's experience is of the pattern. However, consider that the consciousness qua consciousness--consciousness without pattern and simply as presence---is completely different. It is purely perspectival, receptive and necessarily first person.

Matter and Consciousness would be incapable of creating one another. They have nothing in common. However, consciousness always has shape and quality. It is either red or blue, happy or sad, square or circle---it is always something. Consciousness isn't caused matter (causal things), it is the form of consciousness that is caused by the shape of matter. So thought, the form of consciousness, has something in common with matter---namely its shape.

So the shape of matter changes the shape of consciousness. And, we are still left with the same problem. How does consciousness interact. They don't. They are two aspects of the same thing. Consciousness is matters perspective of itself. However, saying this seems to make no sense because there is allot of my body, and only a little of it is conscious. This problem can be solved by considering sleep research.

When a person shaken awake, they remember what they were dreaming about, but if they weren't, then they may consider themselves unconscious all night. The reason they think they were unconscious is because they don't remember.  Memory is inhibited in sleep states. They were feeling and thinking, but long term potentiation (memory) was suspended. Everything may be consciousness, like us during sleep, but  not everything has memory.

Memory of other states is necessary for considering one's own consciousness. You must remember consciousness in the past to consider it.

But, it's more than memory because the brain is the same shape. Its shape should be conscious of itself. However, what its not remembering is its change. Change is required for cognition and memory. There is a constant change of brain states. We're always in one state, that one moment of consciousness, but that one moment contains traces of the past. It has sensory echoes. Like an after image in the eye, we always have the past connected with our present, one vivid experience overlaying a weaker impression of the last one---but still leaving trace recognition of it. Our past experience is in our present experience.

To further this point, consider habituation. If you look at the same image for long enough, you no longer see it. Your nerves become habituated and no longer "see" that stimuli. What cognition provides that is different from other bits of matter is that it is in the right ratio of change and stability. Neurons, physical units, remain mostly the same---in the same position or shape---but have a electrical charge change it slightly. It retains a shape, only slightly changing. While, at the same time, it is rapidly changing.

This doesn't just happen on the micro aspect of the brain---where neurons change and do not change---it occurs on the macro level. Different parts of the brain change at different rates. Many parts of the brain change far faster  than others. The faster changing parts of the brain, like the hippocampus, access the slower changing parts of the brain where it indexes information.

There is a constant flux of change and stability. There is contrast. It is in this contrast between memory, fading experience and brighter fresh experience that is causes us to remember our own consciousness. Consciousness is matter's perspective of itself. Memory and change allow us to remember our previous consciousness through a delicate balance of change and stability.

It is in reconciling this change and stability with modern theory, that we will discover how to unite our psychiatric theories.  This is a start. In order to build a cohesive paradigm, you must start with a firm foundation. Psychiatric theories must build from the smallest units, piece by piece, so that the rest of a staggering large network of theoretical information can find unity. The beginning piece is reconciling Mind and Matter. Matter and Mind do not interact. They are two of the smallest aspects of our universe that are only conceptually distinct. All matter is probably "conscious," but it doesn't have the right ratio of change to stability that allows it to recognize its own consciousness. We do. It is in our highly associative, interconnected brains that this ratio is found in its perfection. Change and stability are united in some golden ratio.