Mental illness, physical illness, self-control
Patient X has the following background:
Male, early middle-aged, intelligent, well educated in the public system, works in education, is a home owner, is married with two young children.
Patient X has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) which manifests in a number of different repetitive behaviours, some of which cause him physical discomfort.
Patient X's rationalization of his repetitive behaviour is that if he did not carry out the repetitive task some unspecified catastrophe would occur affecting those he cares about.
Patient X accepts that this rationalisation is irrational, and that there are no empirical or a priori grounds which connect his repetetive behaviour to any kind of catastrophic event.
When challenged as to why he continues to carry out the behaviour given this acceptance, patient X claims that his mental illness is just like diabetes and just as diabetes cannot be cured by reason, neither can his OCD.
Could patient X be right about that?
Male, early middle-aged, intelligent, well educated in the public system, works in education, is a home owner, is married with two young children.
Patient X has obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) which manifests in a number of different repetitive behaviours, some of which cause him physical discomfort.
Patient X's rationalization of his repetitive behaviour is that if he did not carry out the repetitive task some unspecified catastrophe would occur affecting those he cares about.
Patient X accepts that this rationalisation is irrational, and that there are no empirical or a priori grounds which connect his repetetive behaviour to any kind of catastrophic event.
When challenged as to why he continues to carry out the behaviour given this acceptance, patient X claims that his mental illness is just like diabetes and just as diabetes cannot be cured by reason, neither can his OCD.
Could patient X be right about that?
Comments (134)
You just described the situation that heis right about that, so why do you ask - it seems irrational of you. It is very similar to a phobia, X is frightened of not repeating the way one might be frightened of spiders, and the cure is not rational argument but facing the fear and desensitising it through actual contact. Reason is the slave of passion, not the master.
Mental illness is a sub-category of illness. And insofar that reason can help in curing ills that is how far reason can help curing mental illness.
So at one point someone died of diabetes. And then some time later we figured out some of the mechanisms for diabetes and developed medicines which allow a person to cope. Diabetes is actually pretty similar to mental illness in that there is no cure in the sense that a broken leg has a cure -- there are medicines, there is something you need to know, and then there's the part of attempting to build better habits to help manage the disease.
X's habit is to allay his fears with ritual, and it has the effect of strengthening the fear in the long term as it allays it in the short. Perhaps he does not fully understand this, and then reason can clarify, but as he has (I presume) put himself in the position of patient, it seems that his reason has already set him on the road of looking for some other support for the resolution of the conflict he is in. He needs the therapist to hold his hand and lend him some strength, not tell him he is being unreasonable. Because, as he says, he already knows that and it doesn't help.
I'm interested that you say you are not patient X. I think most of us are all patient X in one way or another.
There was some success in management of the symptoms, roughly half of the rituals were no longer engaged in, including some which could not - for contextual reasons - themselves be subjected to aversion therapy during sessions. So, X was clearly capable of applying the techniques used during the sessions outside of those sessions and was capable of managing at least some of these rituals by bringing them under the control of reason.
However, the therapy stopped (for diverse reasons, including but not limited to financial). Some of the OCD behviours that had been under X's control returned, new rituals also started to be engaged in. When X is questioned why, since X clearly has the rational capacities to control OCD rituals, X no longer does so, it is at this point that the reply along the lines "I have a disease like diabetes, the symptoms of which I cannot control" is given. When it is pointed out that X certainly could control them with weekly "hand-holding" sessions, which makes it at least curious that X is unable to continue to do so in the absence of those sessions, the response is "I cannot control the fact that I need therapeutic support in order to control my OCD".
Do you mean that we all engage in OCD rituals, or do you mean that we all have psychological hang ups of one kind or another? If the former, I don' think you are right, if the latter, you probably are.
That might depend on the severity of the OCD. I think "reason" can help, but being as aspiring Stoic I suppose that's to be expected. The Stoic maxim that we shouldn't let things beyond our control disturb us is, I think, useful in these cases if practiced. CBT seems heavily influenced by Stoicism, and may be helpful. Medication can help as well, I would think. I think reason can help, but may not be able to eliminate OCD in itself.
Yes, I think patient X is right. Even if he could understand why he is acting the way he is acting, if for wild example it evolved from his bed wetting as a child and the subsequent and sever parental admonitions that he received, that would not stop him from acting the way he is acting. There is no direct method I am aware of for solving the problem of this sort, it takes time and a lot of talking with a trained analyst, one who can help guide patient X into unraveling the knot he has gotten himself into.
OCD is based in fear, I understand, the compulsions designed to basically control life which is really all but out of our control, and reason such as CBT can help but may not be a total solution. Actually, the same approach to treating and possibly curing type 2 diabetes (controlled diet, exercise, and stress reduction) could be effective in treating OCD.
I have a small OCD tick: when I pick up a clean glass in my own kitchen, or in someone else's kitchen, I always rinse it before I drink from it. I don't have to rinse it, but I generally do. I'm happiest if the outside of the glass is wet, as well as the inside. If I am at a restaurant or someone's dining room, I feel no need to rinse the glass.
Wild animals in captivity and domestic animals (i.e., dogs) also develop OCD behaviors: They lick, for example: their paws, your feet, the couch, the floor... there is always something available. If you interrupt the behavior, they will generally stop, maybe for hours, before they resume.
Many animals will pace along a barrier fence, even if they have quite a lot of room to roam in.
Habit or OCD? Don't know. Some drugs help suppress severe OCD, which seems to be more than a habit.
I sometimes feel fear when I find myself in a dark, unfamiliar street. It isn't a phobia, it's just "what kind of dangers lurk around here" kind of thing. I respond with an effort to find a more familiar, more brightly lit up area.
That is true! I didn't mean to give the impression that we should contradict the patient. I was more just trying to focus on how the particularities of each case are important in assessing the truth -- so even if this guy is right, the next may be wrong, and there is no reason to believe the cases are related in spite of using the same name for similar behaviors.
Quoting unenlightened
Good points.
I should also say that just because the patient may be wrong, that does not then mean that the analyst is in a better position than the patient to make that judgment.
I disagree and I agree.
No amount of understanding will enable patient X to escape his compunction, it is not so much that he is avoiding a cure but rather that in order for someone like this to be cured, it has to be of his/her own doing. The knot that they have wrought, only they can undo, but rarely can this be done alone, which is why there is group therapy where the power dynamic of the group may help a patient see their problem for what it is, to help them unravel it.
And, I agree that removal of the symptom is not a cure, which is why I find CBT problematical.
I'm no psychologist but OCD is apparently classified as an anxiety disorder, and indeed CBT for OCD utilizes exposure therapy.
Being anxiety based, in my opinion the first step of treatment should be diet, exercise, and stress reduction. But I suppose that's too much work and people would rather take a pill, and big pharma would rather like to make a lot of money selling drugs. :sad:
Of course! Good diet, reasonable exercise, and practical stress reduction are good things and help people. So does getting 8 hours of quality sleep. So does having supportive friends. It isn't reasonable to expect good habits to cure everything (and you weren't saying it would).
Medication isn't appropriate for mild conditions, because people can deal with them on their own -- or with brief professional guidance. Where medication comes in is for conditions that are severe, where people's lives are seriously impaired by OCD, depression, anxiety, or whatever. Bi-polar people, for instance, generally have to use medication to maintain enough equilibrium to remain employed and/or out of the hospital.
In some cases, conditions don't have to be treated at all. Mild phobias, mild obsessive-compulsive trains, a little anxiety, a bad temper, etc. are tolerable. People who like to count steps, for instance, can get away with doing that. People who are afraid of snakes can usually avoid them, almost all the time, especially if they live in northern cities. I haven't seen a snake in years.
Is it getting 'good habits' or is it discontinuing the bad habits (sugar, caffeine, processed food, sedentary and stressful lifestyle, etc.) that were directly causal in the condition to begin with? I've come to understand recently that our emotional life is intimately linked to our body. That probably sounds obvious. What I mean is more like that our emotions exist to help regulate our metabolism appropriately for the environment. We didn't evolve to consume the amount of sugar, fat, etc. that people normally do today, or to be as sedentary. It's a wonder that we aren't crazier than they are.
We're pretty crazy!
I don't know whether it was bad food that led to all this crazy behavior, or not. I wouldn't be surprised. Something is causing a lot of problems. The problem of diagnosis our social ills is that there are multiple causations going on all the time. Everyone (OK -- 99.4%) have grown up with extensive media exposure: radio, television, film, recorded sound, print, internet. Up until the mid 50s at the latest, a lot of people ate much more "organic" food because the smorgasbord of pesticides and herbicides didn't become iniquitous (not a spelling error) until a bit later. Since the mid 60s (at least) more and more chemicals have been distributed as fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, medications, cosmetics, cleaning agents, and so on. A lot of these chemicals are "endocrine disruptors" -- their molecules are quite similar in effect to hormones and screw things up in our bodies.
Then there is the absurd diet that many people are eating -- too much protein, carbohydrate, salt, fat, etc. and way too little fiber, too few micronutrients, and too many calories. That just can't be good.
Then there are antibiotics and the microbiome -- we know that ordinary antibiotics taken appropriately to quell bacterial infections often cause diarrhea--loose stools, because the normal host of bacteria are greatly reduced. Food just isn't getting processed normally. If the antibiotic regimen is long and strong enough, one may suddenly have a totally different colony of flora and fauna in one's gut. "Gastro-psychologists" (just invented new specialty) think that bacteria may have quite a bit of effect on our emotions. Hasn't been proven, but... again, I wouldn't be surprised.
Funny you should mention that, just this week I started a regiment of probiotics as a treatment for social anxiety. I’ve planned to try it for at least 30 days before assessing. I have noticed a general increase in energy so far, which may not be coincidental.
I don't think anyone has perceived the mechanism for HOW the biome affects mood, except that how food is digested and absorbed is largely due to the efforts of all those various organisms. There is a slightly more understood relationship between the biome and the immune system -- the biome helps train the immune system in self/not self.
It's a very intriguing area. Were I a young biologist, I might dive into it, figuratively.
I think this is spot on. Norman Malcolm's paper "The Conceivability of Mechanism" and Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment" come to mind as relevant here. Obviously, doing philosophy isn't going to cure X in and of itself, but my feeling is that X is being dishonest with himself and giving himself bad reasons for giving up the (no doubt, for him, difficult) struggle involved in simply being human and doing a little philosophy might help him see that, which may in turn motivate him to pick up the struggle again on his own terms.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
As usual, it's a question of identity; who is X? We philosopher-therapists identify X as a being extended through time that has short-term and long-term interests, and point out that his therapeutic self-calming rituals are consuming his life. But this identity theory is in conflict with the immediacy of anxiety, an identity that imposes itself on him. but not on us.
This conflicted identity, known to poets as the Ant and the Grasshopper, afflicts us all, and one can lose one's life as the ant always looking to the future just as well as one can lose it by taking no thought for tomorrow as the grasshopper. But it is not the case that X is really an ant or really a grasshopper; nor is it the case that ants are honest and moral, and grasshoppers are feckless liars.
Control is an interesting concept. It depends on feedback and cannot be complete. Ants control, and grasshoppers are free. But behaviour modifies physiology, and hence there is habit and addiction on both sides. Grasshoppers suffer from OCD because they are really ants, whereas ants suffer from an excess of control -anorexia, for example - because they are really grasshoppers.
Well, on empirical grounds he has already established that it is within his control.
But on more philosophical grounds the framework of the argument would be along the lines:
If OCD is beyond X's control because X's ritualistic behaviour is determined by physiologically abnormal conditions, then by consistency of reasoning all behaviour (not just X's) is determined by physiology.
If all behaviour is determined by physiology, no one has any control over any of their actions.
It is false that no one has any control over any of their actions.
Therefore, not all behaviour is determined by physiology.
Therefore it is not the case that OC is beyond X's control because X's ritualistic behaviour is determined by physiologically abnoral conditions.
The argument is logically valid. It's soundness, I grant you, is up for dispute - which is precisely what this forum is for.
So if my use of a wheelchair is determined by my lack of legs, no one has any control over any of their actions?
I have two points here. The first is that I think your conditional is false.
If my heart beats at a certain rate because of physiological conditions then it does not follow that all behavior is determined by physiology. The same goes for abnormal physiology -- so in such and such a case of physiological abnormality I may not have control over this or that behavior, but I may still have control over others.
In fact the normal human is still limited by their physiology in this sense, while also having control over some things too.
There are some things in our control and some things which are not. If we lack control due to some physiological characteristic that wouldn't mean that everything is determined by physiology.
The second point I want to make has to do with the first statement in your conditional: "OCD is beyond X's control because X's ritualistic behavior is determined by physiologically abnormal conditions"
Suppose that it is not the case that OCD is beyond X's control because of physiology. Suppose he is incorrect in his explanation, that there is some other cause or reason for him not being in control. Regardless it would make sense to believe him that he is not in control when he so says, especially in the context of him asking for help as we've presumed he is doing by seeking out treatment of some sort.
He may be wrong about the cause, but he's in a much better position to be able to tell us what he is and is not in control of. And, what's more, it would seem that if we agree with the diagnosis of OCD that we would concur that this particular thing is out of his immediate control.
I was following you up to this point. Grasshoppers really being ants makes sense to me in this way: that the grasshopper feels more in control by focusing on the immediate, thinking that the future cannot be controlled. But the ant being a grasshopper eludes me. Care to say a little more on that?
Consider anorexia. It's the most dangerous form of obsession to the individual, and it's obsessive self-control. No one is an ant or a grasshopper, everyone resides in the conflict. The urge to indulge (in eating, in this case or in ritual in X's case) is the grasshopper, and the urge to control is the ant. Ritual controls anxiety, anorexia controls appetite. There is always the controller, and the controlled resisting it.
The anorexic feels in control, but their controlling is out of control. The ant is a grasshopper.
But most everyone can see the evils of indulgence, and almost none see the greater evil of indulging in self-control. No one seems to notice that with mastery over the environment, we have lost control of the environment, and that the same thing happens psychologically, because our behaviour in relation to the world is a projection of the inner conflict. "You can control yourself, you must control yourself" is the mantra of the divided mind, oft recited to other divided minds.
Your use of a wheel chair is not determined by your lack of legs. Certainly the actions you can choose between for getting from one place to another might be delimited by your lack of legs, but as per my brief reply to Moliere, it is your action of using the wheelchair to get from A to B that is in question. All kinds of things determine what actions I can choose between, including the number of limbs I have at my disposal, but X's point is that the entire element of choice is nullified by physiological abnormality.
Ok, then just as I say I cannot choose to walk because I lack legs, X says he cannot choose to refrain from his rituals because he lacks something or has something that prevents it. Now we might want to call it 'reason', or 'honesty', or 'willpower' that he lacks, or we might want to call it 'global anxiety' or 'OCD', or something else, that he has. But he wants to be free of ritual and is not.
So I have to choose what to have to drink in the morning from a menu of tea, coffee, juice, water or nothing. I invariably choose coffee, but do not claim that I want to choose tea but cannot, because if I chose tea my wife would die of shock. I have to choose, and in choosing I have to believe that I am free to choose what I want. And then we do not call my consistent choices 'compulsive'.
But suppose my wife (or my therapist) convinces me that I ought to give up coffee, then I am conflicted; I love to drink coffee in the mornings, but I want not to drink coffee because bla bla. Every evening, I decide to have juice tomorrow, and every morning, I have coffee again. The bla bla reasons not to drink coffee are convincing, but do not make me want to drink no coffee, and to choose is to believe I can make the choice of what I want.
In order to stop drinking coffee, I need either to stop wanting coffee, or take it off the menu. If I come to believe that terrible things will happen if I drink coffee, it will be off the menu, and I cannot choose it. Or if I come to believe that I don't really like coffee, but have just got into a silly habit to look grown up or something, I will choose something else.
X is not saying 'that the entire element of choice is nullified by physiological abnormality'. 'I can go out whenever I want', he says, 'but I have to check the front door three times and not step on the cracks.' Those options are off the menu, because something terrible would happen, and thus it is not a choice but a compulsion.
I think Metaphysics now is trying to suggest that even if X is not explicitly saying this, what X is saying does entail this. That to me is the import of the first premise of the sketch argument given. Not sure how the implication holds, but then it's not my argument. My guess is that there's somekind of "being consistent with explanations of actions" principle lying behind it, but maybe not.
I want to note that you're modifying your premise. You did say behavior originally, and not action.
Look at how your definition of action plugs into the premise --
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
to...
"If OCD is beyond X's control because X's ritualistic action is determined by physiologically abnormal conditions, then by consistency of reasoning all action is determined by physiology"
Where action is defined as something within his control. You're sort of begging the question there, to a point where your friend cannot even say that something is out of his control. He might respond "Well, this isn't an action, since action is within our control", and what would you say then?
Regardless, though, the premise remains false. Just because one thing is beyond my control (regardless of the reasoning why we think this is so -- from physical abnormality to evil spirits in the wind to the devil tempting me) that does not then indicate that everything is beyond my control.
I cannot hit a home run. It is something I am physically incapable of. Those who are abnormal -- above par -- can do so. Regardless, I am still quite able to choose -- to use @unenlightened's exampe -- what to drink in the morning.
What this demonstrates is that deciding to do something, what we call "choosing" something, is not the same as actually willing oneself to do it. There is a division here, between choice and willing, which allows you to choose something (not to have coffee), but then not proceed with your choice (to end up actually having coffee). This disconnect between rational choice and the motivator for action is why breaking bad habits is so difficult. The rational choice comes from somewhere other than where the motivator for action comes from, and a further capacity must enable the individual to exercise control over the motivator, because it is not the rational choice itself which exercises control. That further capacity is "will power".
This is the issue which Augustine grappled with in his expose on free will. Socrates and Plato had produced arguments claiming that virtue was knowledge. But this was proven to be a deficient position, because one can know what is right yet still proceed to do what is wrong. Because of this issue, Augustine proposed a separation between intellect and will. This separation you have very adeptly demonstrated with your example. It is a very important separation and one which is often overlooked in philosophical discussions of "will", as people tend to associate "will" with choice and decision, rather than properly associating it with refraining from action.
But we would be much better served to associate "will" with the power to refrain from acting, rather than as the motivator, or source of action. "Control", as it is used in this thread, represents this capacity to refrain from acting. And this is "will", it is not the capacity to proceed, to act, according to one's choices or decisions, it is the capacity to prevent oneself from acting. In your example then, your inability to refrain from drinking coffee, after you've decided to do such, demonstrates a lack of will power.
I like your differentiation between the Will and Intellect.
As an aside:
Socrates argues against this in the Protagoras.
“No one,” he declared, “who either knows or believes that there is another possible course of action, better than the one he is following, will ever continue on his present course” (Protagoras 358b-c) The problem of akrasia is still being discussed, but most recent thought seems to side with a version Socrates thought.
I agree. In Plato's work, Socrates laid out these arguments, that virtue is knowledge, as what was professed by the sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias. For Socrates it was a matter of contesting and analysing the sophists' claims that virtue could be taught. The difficulties taken up by Augustine, the issue of one knowing what is right yet doing what is wrong, were those exposed by Plato's dialectics. This is the grounds for true freedom of the will. Not only is the will free from physical determinism (determined by physical causes), it is also free from intellectual determinism (determined by decisions of reason).
I see it differently. I can decide in the evening not to have coffee in the morning because the decision is theoretical and so, cheap - it requires no action and incurs no cost, it is a declaration of intent by the evening person who does not want coffee anyway, because it is nearly bedtime. It is the morning person who has to fulfil the declared intent and incur the cost, or not. The evening ant tries to decide for the morning grasshopper, and the elixir of willpower isn't even on the menu. If the evening ant can sufficiently scare the morning grasshopper about the dire consequences for his heart of coffee, then we call that 'willpower' and 'rationality', and feel smug about it.
You know, the "evening person", and the "morning person" are one and the same person don't you? The ant surveys the future, while the grasshopper acts at the present, but they are one and the same person. This is why it is necessary to assume the division between intellect and will, which I referred to. The ant is making the decisions, prior to the time to act, but when it is time to act, the grasshopper must carry out what the ant has decided. The ant doesn't need to, and ought not, scare the grasshopper at all, because such antics are not conducive to a happy union. The person, who is the unity of the ant and grasshopper, simply requires will power to be successful in maintaining a stable union.
Well it becomes necessary to assume the division of your second sentence when you have assumed the unity of your first sentence. The former is an act of identification which the ant makes and the grasshopper does not. Which kind of illustrates that they are not one and the same, just as their opposed decision/choices does.
If the grasshopper does not identify, then the grasshopper does not make any choices or decisions either. But this does not mean that the ant and grasshopper are not one and the same person. I do not make choices or decisions in my sleep, but the sleeping me is one and the same person as the wakened me.
Sure you are, and sure the ant is the grasshopper, and the morning person is the evening person. And also not the the same. People are conflicted, and though one can rightly say that both sides of the conflict are the same person, one can also, and more usefully say that they are not. If there is no conflict, one is single-minded, and there is no choice. Juice is the best for breakfast - inevitably I have juice. It is only when there is a conflict, juice has virtues, and coffee has other virtues, that there is a choice. Choice is the resolution of conflict.
That's right - although @Moliere is on the mark insofar as I'm not being clear enough about what it is that I think X is saying:
In the first place, then, I need to define action in such a way that it distinguishes what I am talking about from "involuntary" physiological behaviour, like heart beating, whilst at the same time including OCD ritualistic behaviour, along with so-called "normal" behaviour, and avoiding the confounding of will power and control that @Metaphysician Undercover talks about in his reply to @unenlightened - (although I'm not certain that in the end there will be any real distinction there, at least to begin with it will be useful to assume that there is).
Perhaps one neutral way to begin would be to say that actions are behaviours that lend themselves to rationalizations in terms of reasons. X gives reasons to himself and to others for his behaviour, even if the superficial reasons he gives ("a catastrophe will occur if I do not do it, and I want not to be the cause a catastrophe") are unfounded or conceal deeper motivations. The fact that X's heart is beating doesn't lend itself to that kind of rationalization at all. This definition of action doesn't seem to beg any questions about control/will power.
Now that action is defined generally in terms of rationalizations, let's take some imaginary case, where the action is a specific instance of some person, A, closing and opening the door 10 times before leaving his house. Here are some possible rationalizations:
1) A did this because he wanted to win a bet, and the bet was that he would not open and close the door 10 times before leaving (a stupid bet, perhaps, but not all bets are sensible, and if necessary some background context could make it sound more sensible).
2) A did this because he believes he can avert a catastrophe by doing so, and there are independent reasons for thinking that he is right about this (some crazed killer is holding a gun to the head of his child, for instance, and has told him that he will shoot if A does not open and close the door 10 times before leaving).
3) A did this because he believes he can avert a catastrophe by doing so, but there are no independent reasons for thinking that he is right about this - the catastrophe to be avoided is not even well defined.
4) A did this because electromagnetic impulses in his nervous and muscular system entered into a repetitive loop that was broken only after the 10th closing of the door.
Explanations (1) and (2) seem to make sense - A's rationality/powers of control/will power are not called into question, and there is no need to subject the explanations to any further rational scrutiny which would negate the rationalization.
Explanation (3) is analogous to X's initial explanations of X's OCD rituals. These are the kinds of explanations that invite further rational scrutiny and which, after the process of reasoning terminates, would negate the initial reasons proposed. It is simply not rational to believe that unspecified catastrophes can be avoided by opening and closing a door 10 times (well, you could invent a context in which it would, but then you would be describing either an instance of case 1 or 2). Pushing the rational scrutiny further would reveal that were A to invoke his "will power" he ought to have been able to have abstained from opening and closing the door 10 times (even if the effort involved in doing so is non-neglible).
Explanation (4) is the kind of response that A might fall back to when the rational scrutiny applied to (3) reaches the point at which it looks as if A is giving up on the effort required to abstain from opening and closing the door 10 times. Explanation (4) is to me what X's claim about his ritualistic activity being caused by abnormal physiology basically amounts to. In accepting explanation (4), though, we are regarding action (neutrally defined) quite generally as caused by electromagnetic impulses of the muscular/nervous system. Why "quite generally"? Well, as jkg20 points out, it has to do with consistency of reasoning, plus the fact that actions (neutrally defined) can also be described neutrally as bodily motions of such and such a sort. If opening and closing a door 10 times, qua bodily motion, has its ultimate explanation in terms of (4) when the rationalization in (3) is initially given, why not also in cases (1) and (2)? After all, in all three cases precisely the same bodily motions are occuring, and if those bodily motions have their ultimate explanation in terms of neural/muscular occurences for case (3), then the same neural/muscular occurences will also be available for explaining the bodily motions in (2) and (1).
Now the point about control/will power disappearing completely from all human action comes into play, because if (4) does ultimately provide explanations for all actions, and is what takes away any element of will power or self-control being available for the action described in (3), it presumably also takes away any element of will power or self-control being available for the actions described in (2) and (1).
I hope that goes some way to making a little clearer what I'm getting at with the first conditional of my sketched out argument. This is still a work in progress, I hasten to add, and it is not my intention to pull the wool over anybody's eyes by equivocating between the use of terminology, or to move goal posts in order to score points.
I don't understand why you think it is more useful to think of them as two distinct persons rather than to think of them as two distinct parts of one unified person.
Quoting unenlightened
But choice is not the resolution of the problem in this instance. That's the issue, choice is more like the cause of the problem. The conscious mind, (being represented as the ant), makes a choice which the acting body, (being represented as the grasshopper), for some reason or other cannot uphold. From the perspective of the unified person, the ant is engaged in faulty decision making, making resolutions which cannot be kept. The resolution which cannot be kept is the cause of the conflicted state, it's not a real resolution of conflict..
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
This, 4), doesn't really qualify as an explanation because there is no reason given why the loop would repeat ten times then stop, rather than six, eight, or some other number of times. In the other possible explanations X has a reason for the ten times, but here there is no reason for the ten times, so it is not an explanation.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Since 4) is not a real explanation, this is not a point to be considered.
But my point is that the point you are trying to make here is unacceptable and must be rejected. There is no reason to believe that the reason for the repetitive behaviour is neurophysiological at all. Introducing this assumption just forces upon us the so-called hard problem of consciousness, directing us to look for a neurological solution for a psychological problem, when this is most likely not even possible. So unless it can be demonstrated that there is a specific "neurophysiological cause" for the behaviour, to assume that there is, is a mistaken assumption. And such a demonstration will not be produced because the assumed "cause" is really a complex thing which involves a multiplicity of factors. It's not just a simple neurological issue.
In this example, I think it makes more sense to talk about evening and morning than mind and body, because the conflict is more clearly delineated. There is a sense that the body makes coffee in the morning before the mind has got it's act together, but I'd rather talk about time.
In a hotel, if I order breakfast in bed, I order it in the evening, and get whatever I ordered last night in the morning. So the choice in the evening is the decision. But at home, the choice in the evening is not the decision, because that happens in the morning when I go get my breakfast, just as it would at the hotel if I came down for breakfast.
The act of ordering, or the act of cooking is the decision and that resolves the problem one way or the other. One might say 'the decision acts'. The choice in the evening at home is not decisive, but is a plan of action that I decide to follow or ignore in the morning. I think this coincides with the attitude of Alcoholics Anonymous - 'one day at a time'. Every day perhaps, every minute, the decision to abstain or relapse now has to be made, and prior commitments to oneself or to another are only a factor that might influence the decision, as might prior habits.
Rather than neurobabble, one might talk in an old-fashioned way about character, as something that is both the condition one is in and that which is developed by the decisions one makes. If I am inclined to be too impulsive, or on the other side too rigid, perhaps I can resist the tendency sometimes, and perhaps I cannot at others.
But isn't having or not having will-power also a matter of character? And what of X, obsessively following the rules of his existence; is it his stubborn will that insists on following his plan even when it is shown to be foolish, or is he impulsively indulging against the plan to change the plan?
This is the idea that I think is wrong, and what I was trying to steer us away from, the idea that there is ever a direct and necessary relationship between the decision and the act. It doesn't matter if you decide the night before, or in the morning just prior to the act, the decision never necessitates the act, as there is always the possibility that you will not do what you've decided to do.
That's the problem which I referred to, which creates the need for a division between the intellect and the will. If the will is what motivates the act to begin, and the intellect is what decides the act, we need this separation because even after deciding I will do such and such, I might for some reason or another, proceed in a contrary way. It doesn't matter if the decision concerns next week, tomorrow, next hour, or even the next moment, sometimes we make decisions which we are incapable of following through with.
So we cannot say that it is the decision which brings about the act. This is most evident when we decide such and such is wrong, and ought not be done, yet we do it anyway. I might be fully aware that I am carrying out the activity which I have decided I ought not do, and even rationalize reasons for doing what I have decided not to do, as I am doing it, but I may in many cases proceed into this act without ever deciding to do it. So I am doing the act which I decided not to do, having never actually decided to do it this time, but as I am doing it, and realize that I am doing what I decided not to do, I rationalize it such that I carry on with it.
This is why the decision to abstain must be renewed at every moment, as you say with AA. Certain actions will lead one into the forbidden act, without one ever deciding to do it. So we must recognize that we have ventured into this act, which will lead to the forbidden act, without even deciding to do the forbidden act, and instead of rationalizing to proceed into the forbidden act, we renew the vow of abstinence and therefore not continue onward.
Quoting unenlightened
That's what I think, having or not having will power is a matter of character, and if it's not an inherited feature it must be cultured at a very young age. Impulsively indulging and stubbornly following one's plan which has been shown to be foolish, are both, opposing examples of lack of will power. Each is a case of an individual not being capable of doing what one knows oneself ought to do. The complexity involves recognizing and establishing one's own limitations, or even devising a mechanism for changing one's limitations. So as much as we might think that will power only involves making oneself adhere to one's decisions, it also involves constraining one's own mind to only make decisions which one is physically capable of carrying out.
I think this is just a dispute about terminology.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And this may be too, but it seems to me that you are defining will power as doing what is right and not accounting for ill-will. And this is problematic for X. We know, by hypothesis, that X's rituals are pointless, but X is conflicted about that. His will is divided, and he does not know whether it is right to be cautious and follow his superstition or right to resist it.
It's not necessarily right or wrong, in the sense of being ethical, it is just a matter of what one determines should or should not be done. In the op, X realizes that his behaviour is irrational. So I don't think that there is any conflict in the sense of X not knowing whether his behaviour is right or wrong, he recognizes it as irrational and therefore not called for.
If X did not recognize his behaviour as irrational, that would be another issue. Then perhaps his will would be divided, not knowing whether he should continue with the behaviour or not. But that is not the case X knows the behaviour is irrational, but it is not an important enough issue for X to find the will to take the necessary steps to cure the irrational behaviour.
Is this what you meant when you referred to the ant scaring the grasshopper? When the problem is perceived as important, this import acts to scare up the nerve, the will power to proceed with restraint.
I was thinking of my own fear of dentists. I go, stressed and fearful, because I have rationalised that the discomfort of wild toothache is far worse that the pain and humiliation the dentist inflicts. Or how health scares can make people give up smoking. But for X, the comfort of ritual has very little cost, so rationally, it is an effective palliative and should be indulged, even though it is a mere placebo. Just as I like to grow flowers, though they have little use. It is not rational, but there is no stronger reason not to.
Well, someone might propose that one reason for doing so is that OCD activity cannot be explained rationally. In fact the whole "mental illness is physical illness" brigade presumably will propose this. They might be wrong about that, but they do have reasons. Perhaps one could try motivating the idea thus: any action can be described, at least from a third person perspective, as just so much bodily interaction with the environment. The bodily motions involved in the action can then be described in neurophysiological terms. Any neurophysiological event that occcurs within the body has either another neurophysiological event within the body as its cause, or is caused by some environmental stimuli external to the body. Given all this, repetitive behavioiur must have neurophysiological reasons. Sure, there are assumptions being made here - at some point we all make assumptions of some kind or another - and there is some conflation between what is a reason and what is a cause, but those assumptions and conflations certainly do provide reasons for believing that repetive behaviour (indeed all behaviour) has a neurophysiologial explanation.
This seems wrong. The proposal that mental illness has physiological causes is presumably to be taken as a hypothesis for scientific and philosophical investigation. If your suggestion is that no proposal should be investigated unless it has already been established as true, then scientific and philosophical investigation serve no purpose at all.
Please do not misunderstand me, I am certainly not saying that I agree that OCD behaviour has a neurophysiological cause. What I do believe, and what I am trying to work out in this thread, is that if you do believe that, then there are consequences that follow for how we should understand notions such as "will power", "free will", "decisions" and even "action". It may be that the consequences are that those notions are ultimately empty, that there really is no such thing as "will power" or "free will".
The problem with separating the intellect and the will, though, is that it then becomes a problem to establish how they ever get to work together, other than by mere accident.
There was a nice program on the box, where they sent OCD cleaners and tidyers to help OCD hoarders and livers in squalor. They helped each other to find some balance. There is a strong sense in which OCD simply is a loss of balance, which is a loss of freedom - hence the 'compulsive'.
So I'm on the right track with "importance" then. For me, it is important that I have teeth to chew my steaks, so I overcome my fear of the dentist. Notice that the fear is of the dentist, and the fear is overcome by means of the importance. The importance is a rational principle which renders the fear as irrational. The fear must be overcome because of Z, where Z is something of importance. The importance inspires the will power. In the case of X, there is no perceived importance which would be required for the will power to overcome the irrational behaviour.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
But physical illness is not necessarily neurological though. That is the problem, there are many possibly factors, diet, hormones, etc., and you are trying in that example, to reduce this illness to neurology. So even if the mental illness is a physical illness, it is wrong to reduce it to simply neurological.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I do see where you are headed But I think it is a foregone conclusion that those who think behaviour can be explained completely with neurophysiology are already determinists who deny free will and will power anyway.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Of course this is a problem. But isn't the unity of life in general, a problem? How did the lungs and the heart ever get together to work together? Was a brain required? How could a brain get built without blood and oxygen? There is the very same problem with separating the heart from the lungs from the brain, because how could they ever get to work together. Yet we seem to have no problem separating these things. Why should it be a problem to separate the intellect from the will, if this is what is required to understand the mind? Are you against separating the memory from the calculative acts of the mind?
You are wondering how such a unity could happen by "accident", when the accepted theory of evolution subscribes to accident.
One of my mother's wedding presents was to have all her teeth extracted and replaced by lovely new rot-proof dentures. This was quite common at the time and probably considered rational - solve the problem once and for all. I call it rationality gone mad. Again you want to call one side 'important', but you can manage without teeth - people do. Desire to eat steaks is not rational, as opposed to irrational fear of toothache. I'd say that what is rational at any one time depends on the state of one's teeth. One day, it might become rational to give up on steak.
Importance is very subjective. What is important to you is not the same as what is important to me. I think that we rationalize and produce our rational principles around what is important to us, so the distinction between what is rational and what is irrational is not really objective, it's subjective. This is why, as you say, what is rational is dependent on the state that one is in.
As for X, and his odd behaviour, which some might label as OCD and irrational, perhaps for X the behaviour is not really irrational at all. This is the state that X is in, and his behaviour might be completely rational for that state. If we could change X, bring X to another state, then whatever it is that is important to X would have to change accordingly, just like if I lost my teeth I would have to give up on steak, and I'd be forced to relinquish that importance.
Some of the things we do are in our control.
Some of the things we do are not in our control.
That which is and is not in our control varies from person to person and through time.
Do you agree with or disagree with these statements?
Your rationalization number 4 seems to me the sort of thing you say when something is out of your control. It's not so much a reason in the same way that the other three examples are reasons. So as you object to a heartbeat counting as an action you would also object, I think, to this kind of reason for anything qualified as an action. It seems to remove agency. choice, or control from the behavior. In fact that seems to be your objection to the reason provided, if I read you right -- that it denies agency.
What I'm trying to drive at is -- what if it really is out of his control? How do you respond to that scenario?
To some extent yes - is it in my control to blink when someone throws a dummy punch at my face? Probably not. However, you home in on the point that those kinds of instinctive reactions are things that I want to rule out of the domain of discourse. I get the feeling you might still suspect that there is no non-question begging way to do that.
I think where I want to head with this ultimately is an argument along the following lines:
1) If there is a coherent way that actions involved with mental illness can be argued to be beyond the control of the patient, that way could only be found by falling back from explanations of type (3) to explanations of type (4).
2) Giving explanations of type (4) has as a consequence the removal of all agency from all human behaviour.
3) Removing all agency from human behaviour renders incoherent even the notion of giving any kind of argument for any kind of claim.
Therefore there is no coherent way that actions involved with mental illness can be argued to be beyond the control of the patient.
Now, even if the argument is sound, it might be thrown back at me that all I've done is to establish an epistemological point that one cannot coherently argue that actions are beyond the control of agents, I have not actually established the metaphysical claim that actions cannot be beyond the control of agents. That's certainly something I need to address. All this reminds me of the Donald Davidson stance on these issues. His view (if I remember correctly) is that any human action is at root an event that can be described in two sorts of ways - one which subsumes it under the deterministic laws of nature, one which positions it in the rational realm of agency, and he kind of left things at that. I suppose I want to try to push things further, but maybe they cannot be. Anyway, thanks (and thanks also to @Metaphysician Undercover) for engaging in this - it's helping to clarify my thoughts and reveal the weaknesses in them.
Where I see the weakness is in how you define "agency", and how you define "agent" in your classification of actions as beyond the control of the agent, and within the control of the agent. You limit "agent", and "agency" to the conscious intellect which is making decisions about what to do. But the conscious mind is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, when we're talking about the motivators for human activities.
So I would say that you ought to define "the agent" as the entire united human being, and do not try to restrict "the agent" to the conscious part. This allows that all internal activities of the human body, as well as outward activities which are instinctual, unconscious, and habitual, are all classed together as requiring agency, despite the fact that it is not the decisions of the conscious intellect which motivates these acts.
When we observe that an individual may consciously decide to do one thing, but actually proceed to do a contrary thing, we have to allow a separation between the conscious intellect which decides, and whatever it is (called the will), which motivates particular activities. Then the source of agency is not to be equated with the conscious mind at all. The conscious mind is more like a conditioner, having some power of influence over the activities of the human body, especially outward acts, but it is just the tip of the iceberg because the vast majority of the activities of the human body are activities of internal parts and systems, which, though they are clearly under the control of the agent (the individual human being), they are not under the control of the conscious mind.
Davidson is very congenial, isn't he? It might be worth considering how the appropriate description can change through time. A car crash that is my own fault, and within my control (I should have slowed down, but didn't) proceeds from that moment when I was in control, to one where I have lost control. Perhaps one can lose one's mind the way one loses control of a car, and the therapist is trying to deal with a slow-motion car-crash.
I suppose I'm a little reticent just to accept that someone can consciously decide to do one thing but proceed to do the contrary (short of mundance cases where people simply forget about promises etc). After all, what is it to decide to do something? Sure, I can tell myself "I won't eat any M&Ms tonight" in the morning, and then in the evening I go ahead and eat a whole packet (perhaps telling myself, one more evening on the M&Ms won't hurt, and tomorrow I really will forego the pleasure) but does my simply having told myself that in the morning really consitute a decision not to eat M&Ms, or does the fact that I eat M&Ms in the evening really undermine the very idea that I even made such a decision in the first place? ( I do get the contrary problem as well - i.e. that it looks like I might be saying that nobody makes a decision until they actually act on it ). There is presumably some difference between making a decision and simply saying something to yourself. If that presumption is correct, then what is that difference, and is it compatible with deciding to do X and then proceding to do not-X?
I suspect so, but it's not my primary concern I'm trying to relate. My primary concern is more like this: People need to be able to say that they are not in control, and they need to be believed when they say it. It's not a matter of honesty -- in fact admitting that you're not in control can be one of the most honest things you can say to yourself. It allows you to be able to say, hey, I can't do this alone, I need help. I am not in control. This is especially the case with respect to mental illness -- it's easy to think you have control over things you do not have control over. It's hard to ask for help.
I would say that regardless of the truth of type (4) explanations that one thing still remains reasonable to believe -- that whatever action is being rationalized is beyond the agent's control. We are justified in believing this because our friend is taking on the role of the patient, asking for help, and telling us that it is so. We are very much the sorts of creatures who have this blend of control and lack of it. And we have the ability to lose control over things which others have control over -- we can become hurt and unable where once we were able. This is especially important to know with respect to mental illness, but we don't need to rely upon notions of mental illness either. Even people who fall within the domain of relatively normal and stable persons lack control over things they would like to have control over -- smoking, eating, exercise all come to mind as struggles people have with; these are things which are quite often beyond control.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
This is the main premise I disagree with in your argument. We may not be able to control whether we open and close a door 10 times, but still have control over what I'm going to do after that condition has been satisfied. We can retain control over parts of ourselves while losing or not having control over other parts.
This is even true in a mundane sense. We have neither total control nor are we entirely out of control of ourselves. To deny either of these would be to miss something important about the human mind.
Sorry to interrupt here, but MetaphysicsNow gave an argument for that premise in terms of consistency of reasoning:
I suppose you disagree with that argument, but it's not clear to me on what grounds you do not believe it to be sound.
No worries. The more the merrier.
Quoting jkg20
We can give type (4) explanations in some cases and not give them in others, because this is a more true description of the human mind.
Type (4) explanations more or less amount to saying that it is out of our control. The exact causal specifications aren't really spelled out; it's just a vague hand-wavey sort of thing to say when you want to express that some action is outside of your willpower or control.
But then there are times when someone might not want to explain their behavior in that frame. And if it is true that some things are in our control, and some things are not, then it would be appropriate to change how we are framing human action to fit the facts.
That's why I asked if we were in agreement on whether or not some things are in our control and some not. It seemed to me that was the crux of our disagreement. If one were to believe that either one of these propositions is true of the mind tout court, rather than both being true contingently, then what @MetaphysicsNow says makes sense to me. But I'd say that they are both contingently true -- and as such not only do we have the ability to vary which kind of explanation we might give for human action depending on the action and the person and the time, but we should do so because these things vary with action, person, and time.
Let's see if we can agree on some principles.
1) Making a conscious decision and acting on a decision are not the same thing. This is evident from the fact that we decide all sorts of future actions, often thinking ahead. Action only sometimes follows immediately from a conscious decision, it doesn't necessarily follow from a decision, because much of conscious thought concerns things other than one's current activity. This is what is commonly called contemplation, and all judgements are decisions, even solving a mathematical problem is a decision.
2) Human beings can proceed with actions without having to consciously decide to make that action. This is evident in habitual, instinctual, and reflex actions. If you are walking, for example, you do not need to consciously decide to lift one foot and move it ahead of the next.
So the argument to be made is that the part of the human being which initiates activity is not the same part of the human being which makes conscious decisions. Do you see that this is likely? Many conscious decisions are made which do not initiate actions, and many actions are made which do not derive directly from conscious decisions. There is an overlapping though, where many actions follow immediately from conscious decisions, and this creates the illusion that actions and conscious decisions are somehow tied together by some necessity.
The issue you seem to have difficulty with is how one can decide to do one thing, yet actually proceed with a contrary action. And you are right to bring up memory, and forgetfulness. As unenlightened mentioned, members of AA are urged to remind themselves over and over again, of their commitment. Without reminding oneself of one's decisions, an individual could slip into the habitual activity without deciding to proceed in this activity. But if they remind themselves of their commitment they will be diligent in preventing the activity from starting.
If we're on the same page here, we can proceed to the further complication which is the more common instance of doing what is contrary to what you decided, and this is changing your mind. Changing your mind requires a second decision. And the reality of mind changing allows that one can switch back and forth. The switching back and forth may develop into indecisiveness. An individual who knows oneself as being prone to switching back and forth may get into the habit of not even deciding. What's the point of even making a decision concerning something tomorrow, if I know that I am likely to change my mind by the time tomorrow comes? So I don't decide at all. But the habit of being indecisive is not good for one who is involved in fast moving situations, because this would put you at the mercy of reflexes and instincts.
We may not be able to say exactly what making a conscious decision is. It is similar to saying it to yourself, but it must be said with conviction, and repeated so as to be remembered, or else followed immediately with action, if it is to be of any value. Perhaps we could distinguish two types of conscious decisions, one theoretical, producing no immediate call for action, just a general principle to be applied, and the other, a practical decision, dealing with immediate actions. Intermediate decisions, concerning actions of tomorrow, next week, or some definite point of time in the future would be a mixing of the theoretical and the practical. So I could resolve to follow some general principle, in theory, but find that this resolution does not always work for me in practise. This is when we talk about exceptions to the rule.
I suppose my position is that all or our actions are within our control, although I do agree that in some cases bringing them under control can be immensely challenging and benefit from support and encouragement. What I also believe is that if one tries to put OCD rituals into that group of actions that are "out of control" by means of giving type-4 explanations (and I agree, they are "hand-wavy" explanations for the most part) then the consequence is (through the consistency of reasoning argument) that all human behaviour falls outside of agents' control, and so the very idea of agency/action and so on makes no sense at all. So, I'm denying that one can simply pick and choose when type-4 explanations can be appealed to - either that type of explanation accounts for all human behaviour, or it is irrelevant in accounting for human action.
Perhaps there is a way of placing OCD ritualistic behaviour out of the control of the sufferers of mental illness, without falling back onto type-4 explanations, e.g. an explanation that operates within the context of concepts such as agency and action? But I'm not sure how one would go about that.
I think here we might have some disagreement, since whilst I agree that making a decision and acting on one are not one and the same thing, I'm inclined to think that the connection between them is logical and not just causal. Perhaps I'm thinking of a decision as something extended over time, with a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning may well be something along the lines of saying something to yourself, with the end being the corresponding action. My worry is that in disconnecting decision making from action in principle is that it would then make sense to say something like: John decided to vote "Yes" but John voted "No", but without giving some story in which in becomes clear that John changed his mind.
Agreed, and here is a curious thing: an action which is intentional and conscious (such as walking to the bank to cash a check) can, when broken down into parts in the way sketched in your comment, look like it has parts all of which are entirely non-intentional/non-conscious. I think perhaps that this kind of breaking things down into parts is to give an action a description in non-rational terms, whereas human actions are - by definition - things that also have descriptions that locate them in the rational realm of reasons/decisions/intentions and so on. The difficulty (for me at least) is to account for the connection between these descriptions without falling into the position that the rational description is illusion (eliminative materialism) or just some kind of "stance" (cf Dennett).
I feel like your two statements here are in conflict with one another. If all of our actions are within our control, then how do you account for the cases that are not yet brought under control? The ones where it would be immensely challenging to do so? Do you just mean that all actions are potentially within our control?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I think it more important to simply accept the explanation for what it is and infer that something is out of control. Regardless of the grand explanation of action there is still a truth being expressed there. That's what I'm trying to get at. There has to be some way for someone to express that -- and with your four categories, while the 4th one is under attack, there is no way for someone to express there is something out of their control. At least not in the manner of an explanation, which is often how people express these things. Obviously they could just say "I do not have control over this", but it would appear queer to say so, I think, with the four explanations you give for action where the fourth one should be rejected.
Yes, I should have been more precise. I mean that I'm trying to work with the idea that actions are such that they are in principle things within the rational control of the agent. At the same time I obviously need to allow that the practice of aligning actions with that principle (i.e. bringing them under control) can be more or less difficult - perhaps very difficult in extreme cases. However, what I want to insist on is that it is never impossible. Those who would fall back to type-4 explanations seem to me to be driving at the idea that there are actions which are in principle beyond rational control, but - if my arguments concerning consistency of reasoning in giving explanations are sound - that comes at the cost of putting all actions as in principle beyond rational control (which means that there are no such things as actions at all).
If the truth behind the claims that "its out of my control" is along the lines "its very difficult to bring under control and I need support and help to do it", that's fine, because then discussions can begin about what sort of support is required and why.
I don't think I understand what you mean here when you say that the connection between the decision and the act, is logical. Let's say that deciding to do X does not force the logical conclusion that X occurs. Also, if we see that Z has occurred, there is no necessity for a decision to do Z. This is how the will is free, there may be a causal relation between a decision and an act, but that causal relation is not a necessary one. So no matter how you look at the relationship between the decision and the act, forward in time from the decision looking onward for an act, or backward, from the act, looking for a decision which caused the act, we cannot make a relationship of logical necessity, therefore the will is free.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I don't see that this is a problem. There are many instances where John might decide to vote "Yes", but actually vote "No". He might change his mind, as you mentioned, he might forget, as we already talked about, or he might just make a mistake in marking the ballot. Notice that even a mistaken action is a very real possibility and must be accounted for. This is another reason why we need the separation between what one decides to do, and what one actually does. And again, it's a demonstration as to why there cannot be a logical relation between the decision and the act. Whenever an individual decides to do something which one does not have the capacity to do, there will be a failure, a mistake, and the intended act will not be accomplished. The act will be other than the act decided upon. So we cannot judge from an observation of the act which occurred, to make a logical conclusion about the act which was intended. Though when the failure is an obvious failure, we can speculate about what the intended act actually was.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
This is where I was leading with the distinction between a theoretical decision and a practical decision, the theoretical being of a general nature, and the practical being of the particular. The general decision is an overall principle which is often decided by the conscious mind, but may be instinctual, and generally refers to occurrences more distant in the future, or it may just be a guiding feature of one's personality. So going to the bank is something you decide as necessary, as a somewhat general goal. You are not necessarily going to the bank right away, it is just something you know needs to be done. At some point you decide, now is the time, and this decision is more in the practical realm, it is related to your present activities, you have time now so you decide to go. Now, all the little actions involved in this practise, going to the bank, can be designated as being carried out without conscious decision. So all these little practical decisions which involve your daily activity are not really conscious decisions at all, they are done by instincts, habits and such, though you still need to refer to guiding principles along the way. We can reduce a whole large portion of practical decisions (decisions involving your present activity) to something other than conscious decisions. This includes most communication and also most OCD activity.
So let's say that OCD activity is activity which is not really conscious decision making, but is of this lower realm of practical decisions, simple habits or something like that, which we just sort of carry out as we go along, without really thinking about them to make a decision of whether or not we should do this. If this is the case, then we ought to be able to identify the overall, general principle, the conscious decision, or instinctual tendency which all of these little parts are subservient to. In the case of going to the bank, the decision to go to the bank was the general principle. We need to consider the possibility that the general principle was never made as a conscious decision, it may be something instinctual, which is guiding these little activities. So if I am a hoarder for example, it may be my instinct (not a conscious decision) that every existing thing has a proper place. The garbage is not a proper place for anything but garbage. So if I am cleaning up, or going through things, I will habitually put each thing on a shelf, or beside another thing, in a pile, etc.. I could be doing this without questioning, or even recognizing or determining the guiding principle, that each thing has a place and the garbage is not a place for anything but garbage. That general principle, the guiding principle may be completely hidden, not evident at all, but until it is determined and addressed, the individual has no hope of preventing the practical decisions which flow from it. It's like trying to tell your feet not to walk to the bank while still having your mind made up that you are walking to the bank. That's why the OCD activity cannot be stopped simply by the person wanting to stop those particular instances of activity, the general principle which brings these particular instances on must be addressed.
What I had in mind was the sort of responses you hear from people unsympathetic to the mentally ill -- a sort of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" which often people with mental illnesses will adopt, as well, to their detriment.
Although now you're also introducing a term here that I'd say needs fleshed out -- "rational". It seems to me that something does not need to be rational for it to be in our control, but I suppose it depends on what you mean by rational too. The thing I have in mind is habit -- we are creatures of habit, and it can be said that our habits are in control. But is it really rational? Or is rational here just the same sort of thing as healthy, so that a rational habit would be a healthy habit?
I can understand wanting to paint a picture where there may be hope for a cure. But I also think it's wise to keep with the analogy of diabetes -- while a cure would be preferable, not all mental illness has cures as much as it has habits which help alleviate and manage the condition. Would that still count, in your view, as rational control?
Even if you are correct about the connection between decision and action not being logical, I don't see how freedom of the will follows. But in any case I'm still not convinced that the connection is not a logical one. Obviously, one can decide to do something and then when the time comes to do it, you do not, but where that happens there must be a reason why, it cannot simply be that the will did not "get in on the act". That is to say that the following kind of statement is something I regard as necessarily true:
If X decided to do A at time t and if at t there are no intervening factors preventing X from doing A, then X will do A.
Intervening factors are things such as physical impediments (e.g. being tied up), forgetfulness, clumsiness, changes of mind...
If I understand you correctly you, on the other hand, are inclined to think that that this kind of proposition is always going to be contingent, no matter how broadly "intervening factors" is filled out, since at time t the will, as some kind of separate faculty, has to "muscle in" and initiate the act, and since the will is free, that needn't happen. (Of course, even if the will did initiate the act, there is probably still room for clumsiness and perhaps other factors to intervene and prevent the act from happening.) Is that a fair summary of our principal disagreement, or am I riding roughshod over some more subtle difference?
Yes, having reread some of what I was saying, it could seem as if I was suggesting that the mentally ill can just "snap out of it". But I'm not that hard of heart :wink: Point taken, also, about the need to say more about what counts as rational. As for the analogy with diabetes, provided that it is recognised that the analogy gives way at an important point, I can see that it could be useful. For many with OCD, the OCD itself is just a symptom of depression, and the OCD rituals can be helpful in keeping the depression from manifesting in more harmful ways. Getting the rituals under control may always be possible (as I am suggesting) but it clearly might not always be the best thing to do - it's complicated, and just dealing with the symptoms without concern for the underlying reasons for their existence does not make sense.
Freedom of the will follows, because if there is no logical connection between the human action and anything which could serve as the cause of the action, then there is no cause, and the will is free. The relation between cause and effect is a logical relation. If there is no logical relation, there is no cause/effect relation.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I agree with all this, but the point is the need for a separation between the decision to act, and the cause of the act. None of this dispenses that need. If "the will" refers to the cause of the action, then the will is separate from the decision, because the decision does not necessarily lead to the action, regardless of the reason. If you can show that there is always a reason, then the will is not free, but I think this is a futile adventure. It is futile, because we can demonstrate many instances when the act follows the decision immediately. In these instances, there is no other reason except the decision. However, we've already demonstrated the separation between the decision and the will, such that the act does not necessarily follow the decision immediately. So the decision is not the cause of the act because the act doesn't necessarily immediately follow the decision, yet in the case of immediate action, there is no other reason for the act but the decision.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Yes, what I am saying is that there is a separation between 'the intellect" which decides the course of action, and "the will" which initiates the action, as the cause of the action. This allows that habitual actions which do not need to be decided on, are still willed actions. The issue of "clumsiness", and mistake is actually quite complicated because we have only the decided act, and the observed act, to go by. If we separate the will from the decision making, then the will doesn't necessarily follow the decisions. Therefore I may decide to do something which I cannot physically do, jump across the creek, when I don't make the other side. The intended act is a jump to the other side. The observed act is a jump part way. According to the separation, "the willed act" is the jump part way. However, now we must look to the internal mechanisms of the human being, and the real willed act, is the acts of the internal mechanisms of the human body, which cause the physical jump. So the jump part way is really just the effect of the acts of internal mechanisms, and the movement of the mechanisms is the effect of the will.
Here's something to consider though. There is always internal activity. The various different mechanisms are active and inactive, in different ways, at different times. The internal activity acts as efficient cause. "The will", as I described earlier is principally "will power", and this is the will to prevent activity. So the will itself is active preventing internal activity, and in this way the activity is focused toward the desired activity. So when I decide to jump across the creek, the will must prevent any unnecessary activity, to focus all the internal activity on the requirement for the efficient cause to make the jump. Technically, the will is not really the cause of the physical jump, in the sense of "efficient cause" all that internal activity is the efficient, cause of the jump. The will is just doing as much as it can to make the decided act a successful act, and this is to direct the available efficient causation. The will cannot guarantee success though, as in the example of failure. Therefore the will doesn't really "cause" the act itself, in the sense of efficient cause, it just influences the success or failure of the act.
Here you are going against the grain of all empiricist philosophy. Rationalists like Spinoza certainly believed that the relation between cause and effect is a logical one, and he may have been right. On the other hand, that kind of position needs to be argued for, since the general presumption in the empirical tradition of philosophy at least is that the causal relation is very definitely not a logical relation.
That aside, let me ask a question. If at time t the will does indeed initiate the action (or indeed prevent the initiation) your idea is that the will need not have initiated/prevented the action. So, for what kind of reason does the will do one or the other in any given case? Is it itself caused to do so? Presumably not, since then it would not, for you, be free. Is it simply inexplicable as to why the will initiates action in any given case? Then you come bang up against the principle of sufficient reason, and leave a gaping explanatory hole in accounting for any kind of intentional action. Maybe there is a third way to respond?
The division between one event and another within a causal relation is artificial, made by a mind and arbitrary. Therefore to divide an event into cause and effect in any principled way, is a division based on logic. The arguments of empiricists such as Hume, do not produce a sound conclusion that cause and effect is not a logical relation, because they just start with the assumption that an event is naturally divided into two events, one labeled "cause" and the other labeled "effect". But such dividing and labeling is just a product of the human description, so the empiricists are just begging the question.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
That's a good question, and I think it will remain unknown, at least into the immediate future. The will is not itself caused to do what it does, or else it would not be free. The will starts a physical event, so it is not a matter of dividing an event, one part from another, as cause and effect, it is the matter of a physical event coming into being from a non-physical source. Exactly why the will does what it does is unknown.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Just because the answer to a specific question remains unknown, does not mean that there is not an answer for. So we do not necessarily bang up against the principle of sufficient reason, we just bang up against a question which human beings cannot answer. You ought not be surprised by this, and it shouldn't make you think that we are necessarily on the wrong track. There are mysteries of life which have not yet been solved.
Absolutely, but where there are mysteries we usually have the wherewithal to formulate ways of going about trying to find an explanation. How are we to do that with this thing you are calling "will" which, if you are correct, is ubiquitous in all human action? Your hypothesis is that (i) there is a thing called the will, (ii) the will is not subject to causal laws (iii) the will causes human action. This is a substantive hypothesis, it is not an apriori truth by any way shape or form. The question, then, is in any given case what leads up to the will causing a given human action or prevention of human action (nb, there is also the question how the causal mechanism between will and action works, but that is a different question). You are saying that there is no causal account for that, and given your hypothesis there cannot be since then the will would not be free (in the sense, "not subject to causal laws"). You also seem to be implying that there is no rational account for that either. That seems to rule out any kind of research program into how the will is supposed to get in on the act.
It's pretty simple. What I claim is that if your "causal laws" exclude the will as a cause of human action, then your causal laws are incorrect. So if your process of analysis which seeks to understand human activity according to your causal laws proves to be deficient, then this is evidence that my claim is correct. Therefore a procedure which changes the applied causal laws and approaches with different causal laws may be of assistance.
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Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Why is this a relevant question? If the will is a start of physical action, and not a continuity of physical action, then what point is there in considering the physical conditions prior to the actions of the will? Further, we have already dwelled on the psychological, and determined that there is no necessary connection between the intelligible decision, and the act of the will. We ought to be stymied right here.
However, I propose we look at the realm of the unintelligible, which is related to the intelligible, as opposed to it, but still within the same category, as hot and cold are within the same category. So we are in the category of the psychological rather than the physical, but the "decisions", the cause of action are not conscious decisions at all, and therefore not intelligible. The unintelligible is characterized by an inapplicability of the laws of logic. So for example, "possibility" refers to something in which the fundamental law of excluded middle does not apply, and is therefore unintelligible. Do you see that? So as much as we try to make possibility intelligible through probabilities and modal logic, there is something about it which remains inherently unintelligible.
Now let's approach your question. Let's say that there is a relationship between will, and possibility, and this is what "leads up to the will causing a given human action". This is why we cannot go to "physical conditions", because a possibility is non-physical, and we cannot refer to conscious decisions of the intellect which utilize "causal laws" because these are laws of necessity, based in physical observations, so they do not apply.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Does what I have said above, qualify as a rational account? I have not ruled out "research", but directed the research in a particular way, and that is toward the nature of "possibility". Do you think that this is the right direction? The conscious intellect wants to understand the world in terms of logical necessity, and produces concepts like cause and effect. It wants to know with certainty. However, the world keeps giving the human being possibilities, and forcing the will to act, in a way which the intellect cannot keep up with. Actions are required very rapidly as time passes, and the intellect is not capable of keeping up to, and making a decision for every act which is required. So the will may act in a way which is unintelligible to us. This is made necessary by the existence of so many millions or billions of miniscule possibilities which the conscious mind cannot even fathom.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
This is an interesting question, because it approaches the question of what type of thing the will is, and this goes to the heart of the mystery of life, what is the soul. But as you say, it is a different question, and I don't think we even have a way to approach it without an understanding possibility. In Aristotle's biology the forms of life are described according to their capacities, and the capacities are described as potencies which are based in possibilities, potential. This is a different perspective from modern biology which tends to proceed through physical descriptions. I think there is a need to unite these two perspectives, i.e., such and such physical description corresponds with such and such capacity, which corresponds with such and such possibilities.
Motivation is a relationship of attraction between a person's biological drives such as sex, hunger, companionship e.t.c, and the person's environment that triggers or suppresses the person's drives and that as a consequence compels or inhibits the person's behaviour in pursuit of satisfaction.
To my mind there is no such thing as "self-motivation". What we call self-motivation is more accurately described as being in a state of psychological momentum towards a goal-state when one's drives are already awoken. The likelihood and extent to which an individual achieves his goal-state is a function of "self-control", which refers to the extent to which the individual can ignore competing reward signals that threaten to divert his actions towards less rewarding behaviour.
To my mind "self-control" should really be called "partial-self control", since it not only consists of an individual's partially learned neurological abilities and habits, but also the degree of social support the individual receives as well as the quality of environmental feedback he receives. Together they keep the individual's productive behaviour on track, by determining the extent to which the individual continues to anticipate future rewards as a consequence of his actions, and the extent to which the individual finds working towards the goal satisfying in and of itself, before the goal state is reached.
It's not about considering physical conditions, perhaps the conditions are not physical. The point is that at some time t, the will intiates something (or prevents something from initiating), but - if you are right - the will need not have done. The question then is why it did behave in that way rather than not behave in that way. Why is that question relevant? It is relevant because answering that question is the only way we will discover more about what this thing called "will" you are talking about actually is.
No I do not see that, because it is a contentious position you cannot just help yourself to. Maybe you are right that we need a metaphysics of modality, but most people who have worked on the metaphysics of modality believe that possibility is constrained by the laws of classical logic - including the law of excluded middle, but more specifically the law of non-contradiction. Perhaps we can do without the law of excluded middle (intuitionist logics for instance) but the law of non-contradiction is a great deal more difficult to do without and provided that the law of non-contradiction holds, possibilities are always going to be intelligible.
An anti-realist who identifies the concept of necessity not as a description of nature "in itself" but with what we [I]think[/I] ought to happen or what we [I]intend will[/I] happen, will generally be a "free will compatiblist" with respect to causality, since he will view causality as purely a language for describing past orderings of events.
It should be clear that for both the realist and the anti-realist, knowing more physical facts cannot force either to change their position.
No, that's the problem, the exact opposite is the case. So long as we allow that possibilities are real things, there will always be something inherently unintelligible about them. Do you recognize that you cannot comprehend a possibility by referring to the logical categories of what is and what is not? How would you class possibility, neither is nor is not, or both is and is not?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
How is this a contentious issue? Clearly the real existence of possibility violates at least the law of excluded middle, if not the law of non-contradiction and the law of identity itself. Where is the contention?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
The problem is that the three fundamental laws of logic are all tied together. So if the real existence of possibility causes a problem for these laws, there is also potentially a number of different ways to deal with this problem. One individual might say that possibility is accounted for by allowing an exception to the law of excluded middle. What is possible neither is nor it is not. However, another person might argue that possibility is accounted for by allowing an exception to the law of non-contradiction. What is possible both is and is not. Are you familiar with dialetheism, and dialectical materialism, which is derived from Hegel's dialectics of being? Whether one takes the position that we ought to allow exceptions to the law of excluded middle, or we ought to allow exceptions to the law of non-contradiction, to deal with the reality of possibility, makes a huge difference metaphysically. There is an even more metaphysically radical position which holds that things within this realm of possibility cannot even be identified (they cannot enter into the realm of logic because they cannot pass the law of identity), so we ought not, or "cannot" even talk about them.
There are a number of logics that do without the law of excluded middle but retain the law of non-contradiction (intuitionist logic, as I previously indicated). There are logics that also work with the idea that there can be true contradictions (paraconsistent logics). So-called classical logic retains both.
How? Are you confusing actuality with reality? They are different notions - indeed it is precisely the difference between them that modal realists like Lewis take advantage of.
But possibility isn't thus constrained, this is demonstrated by the fact that mathematics always leads to infinity. That's the problem. You can produce a logical system which deals only with constrained possibilities, that is not a problem, but this logical system may not be operating with an accurate representation of possibility, because possibility may be infinite as mathematicians assume.
Here's the issue. For the sake of argument, let's assume that possibility is real. It appears to be inherently infinite, as demonstrated by mathematical principles. We could create a logic which would constrain possibility, but unless the logic is based in some true premises, these principles of constraint would be purely arbitrary. Therefore these constraints on possibility would not be real constraints on real possibility. So we must seek to represent real constraints on possibility, and this requires that we assume that there are real constraints on possibility, and we seek them for our premises. This means that the possibility which appears to us in mathematics, as infinite, cannot be considered to be real, because we have now assumed that there are real constraints on possibility.
If you want to proceed in this way, to argue against mathematical principles which accept infinite possibility, then you must do so from a principled position. We need to state some acceptable principles which would demonstrate that possibility is not infinite. This requires that we create a real, true description of "possibility", and utilize this to produce our premises. The description, if it is correct, and accurate, would indicate what possibility really is, thus constraining it to the terms of the description. Mathematics has no description of possibility, so possibility can be absolutely anything.
What I propose, as a description of real possibility, is that it is a function of time. Things in the past cannot be changed, but with respect to the future, there is real possibility. From this, we can proceed to produce a relation between future and past, whereby the possibilities of the future are constrained by the actualities of the past, thus providing the foundation for real constraint on possibility. Do you agree with this approach, or would you prefer a different description of possibility?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
No, I distinctly said "real existence of possibility", so I did not mean the "actual existence of possibility", which could quite possibly be interpreted as contradictory. For example, consider there is a chair in the other room, and I say to you that it is possible that the chair is red, and it is possible that the chair is green. These are not real possibilities, they are fictitious possibilities, made up by my mind, because there is a real description of that chair, which would exclude all other possibilities as false, unreal possibilities. There are no real possibilities concerning that chair, just an actuality, because the chair itself is an actuality These unreal possibilities are the type of possibilities which mathematics deals with, and that's why they allow infinity. They allow whatever fictitious, unreal possibilities that the mind can come up with.
An example of a real possibility is when we reference a future event which requires a human decision to bring about that event, like Aristotle's famous example of the possible sea battle tomorrow. As he describes, there cannot be any truth or falsity to that statement that there will be a sea battle tomorrow, because it hasn't been decided yet. Further, when tomorrow passes, and the event occurs, or fails to occur, we cannot look back, and say that at that prior time, one or the other was true. There simply is no truth or falsity to the statement that there will be a sea battle tomorrow. With this as a description of "real possibility", do you see how the law of excluded middle is violated? With respect to a future event, which may or may not occur, and this is the basis for my description of "real possibility", it is neither true nor false that it will occur. The dialetheists, dialectical materialists, might argue that it is both true and false, that the event will occur.
You can have a fully consistent theory of modality that retains the law of excluded middle. You can also have one that rejects the law of excluded middle, but retains the law of non-contradiction. Let's call the former kind of modal thinker a BigEndian and the latter a LittleEndian Concerning the example for Aristotle, BigEndian and LItteEndian are totally in agreement that we cannot know or decide which of the statements "There will be a sea battle tomorrow" or "There will not be a sea battle tommorrow" is true the day before the event. The BigEndian will simply insist that this is only an epistemological fact, and does not entail that neither one nor the other is in fact true. Certainly, this requires a particular brand of realism about future events, but then BigEndians (and generally speaking everyone who favours classical logic) will be a realist about most things. The LittleEndian has a (perhaps more sophisticated) view of the interplay between epistemology and metaphysics that ties together in some way what can be known/decided and what exists. There is no simple way to decide whether the BigEndian or LittleEndian is correct.
In all cases, a modal realist is not going to allow the existence of non-real possibilities: all possbilities for a modal realist are equally real, although they might not all be equally likely. This includes possibilities concerning the past (the German's might have won the Second World War) as well as the present and the future. It includes farflung fancies - for instance possibilities that I come up with on the spur of the moment like there could be a cow on the moon right now eating grass - and possibilities that are more closely anchored to actuality - the structure of benzene might not have been discovered by Kekule. Now, any modal realism is going to have an interest in making distinctions between possibilities on the grounds of their relevance to specific cases, but the basic thing they have to go on regarding what possibilities are real is the logic they accept. Modal realists who subscribe to either intuitionist or classical logic will both fall back on the law of non-contradiction. Modal realists who subscribe to paraconsistent logics might not (it depends how expansive they take the idea of a true contradiction to be).
Your points about infinity and possibility are not clear to me - modal realists of any kind can quite happily accept the idea that there are an infinite number of possibilities and that does not render possibilities unintelligible.
This is the ontological difference which I alluded to. The "fully consistent theory of modality that retains the law of excluded middle, also excludes what I call "real possibility". The theory of modality accepts only epistemic possibility, logical possibility. But as mathematics demonstrates these possibilities are infinite, and this give us no means for differentiating between what is physically possible, and what is physically impossible. So we have here a problem because many things which are logically possible are physically impossible. We need a way to deny this designation of "possible" to those things which are physically impossible, because they are really impossible.
From my ontology, the BigEndian 's position is based in a false premise. The BigEndian would allow that things which are physically impossible are really possible, simply because they are logically possible. I argue that there is no truth or falsity to the statement "there will be a sea battle tomorrow", because this is an ontological reality, a physical fact, rather than an epistemological fact.
The difference being that the BigEndian is committed to determinism, I am not. If it's simply a matter of us not being able to know the outcome, what will happen tomorrow, but there is a truth or falsity to it, then it is necessarily predetermined. The LittleEndian, will argue that there is no truth or falsity to this matter because it has not yet been decided, and it could go one way or the other. Of course there is no simple way to decide which is correct, that's why metaphysics is not a simple subject of study, it is extremely complicated. However, as I've demonstrated in a most basic way, the BigEndian's position is based in a false premise, allowing that impossible things are possible.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
This is just a matter of how you define "real". I explained what I consider as a real possibility. If a modal realist premises that all logical possibilities are real possibilities, I think that this is a false premise. I think that many logical possibilities are physically impossible. Therefore it is only by changing the definition of "possible", such that it is no longer opposed to "impossible", that one can label something as "possible" which is also impossible, without contradiction. My definition of "real possibility" avoids this contradiction without resorting to such nonsense.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
But that's exactly the point, infinite possibility is unconstrained possibility, and this is unintelligible. So if modal realists allow infinite possibilities, then this leaves "possibility" itself as something unintelligible. Possibility is something which is infinite, and an infinite thing is unintelligible.
There seems to be some element of talking past each other here between you and MetaphysicsNow. Perhaps you are right that because there are infinite possibilities we (as finite beings) cannot survey all of them at once. However, I think MetaphysicsNow is suggesting that this is to some extent irrelevant because it does not impact our abilities to entertain any specific possibility. "Possibility" is ambiguous between your two usages. For you it appears to be the sum of all possibilities. For MetaphysicsNow it appears to be just that which defines something as being a member of that group of infinite things. MetaphysicsNow is perfectly correct that possibility is intelligible if he means by "possibility" what I believe he means. You might be right that possibility is unintelligible if you mean by that that we cannot survey all possibilities at the same time. Metaphysicsnow is using the term "possibility" in one of its perhaps more usual senses, but that doesn't mean that you cannot use the term in your sense. However, in order to avoid misunderstanding, I suggest that where it is important to make the distinction between your two meanings, that you use distinct terms. So that neither one of you calls "foul" I suggest that MetaphysicsNow use the phrase "the notion of possibility" instead of "possibility" and that you use "the sum of all possibilities" instead of "possibility". You can both still use the word "possibility" to say things like "it is a possibility that I will win the lottery tomorrow, since I bought a ticket" or "there are possibilities no one has thought about yet" without risk of ambiguity, but where the claims start becoming metaphysically significant, it would help clarify both positions and all your arguments if you use the terminology I suggest. Would you both agree with that?
The issue though, is what type of thing is a possibility. If we cannot produce a description of what a possibility is, then we cannot distinguish between a true possibility and a false possibility, therefore whether or not a thing actually is a possibility is unintelligible. I will use "true" and "false" instead of "real" because there seems to be ambiguity with "real".
Quoting jkg20
I think that what is ambiguous between us is the use of "real possibility". MetaphysicsNow seems to believe that if something is logically possible, then it is a real possibility. My argument is that logical possibilities are necessarily derived from premises, and if these are false premises, then they are not true possibilities.
Further, I argue that the assumption that there are infinite possibilities is itself a false premise. And, it is this premise, which is derived from mathematics, that defines "possibility" in such a way so as to exclude "impossible". If there are an infinite number of possibilities, then nothing is impossible because an impossible thing would limit the amount of possibilities. This move excludes "falsity", because the false thing is the impossible thing. Something which is false is something which is impossible. Following this move, we now have no basis for a distinction between true and false, because the possibility of falsity has been removed. But this is itself inherently contradictory because to remove the possibility of impossibility is to remove a possibility, and leave possibilities as less than infinite. Therefore the idea of infinite possibilities is inherently contradictory, and unintelligible, because it would require excluding the possibility of impossibility, which would leave it less than infinite. So if this is really what MetaphysicsNow is arguing, it is impossible that "possibility" is what defines something as being a member of an infinite group, because this is self-contradictory, a contradictory definition.
Quoting jkg20
No, if MetaphysicsNow is saying what you claim, this is not perfectly correct, it is unintelligible because "infinite possibilities" is self-contradictory, so we ought to stop talking in this way. In mathematics we have infinite numbers. But when a logician takes the concept of "infinite", and applies this to the concept of "possibility" to create the premise that there are an infinite number of possibilities, the logician creates a contradiction because "impossible", by definition already limits "possible", so the logician is trying to make unlimited that which is already, by accepted definition, limited. To avoid the contradiction, the logician must give "possible" a new definition which is not opposed to "impossible". But now the logician has excluded "impossible" from the allowable lexicon, leaving us without a true definition for "possible", and without the capacity to designate something as false, impossible. This definition of "possible" is itself unintelligible because it is not opposed to impossible. It really has no meaning. being simply an undefined term.
Quoting jkg20
I do not agree to those terms because I think that MetaphysicsNow's use of "possible" is completely unacceptable. My argument is to demonstrate that this is an unacceptable use of the term. You propose that we each go on using the term each in our own way, with some indication to separate them, but this is a proposal to continue talking past each other. The whole point we are trying to work out, is that we need a description of what a "possibility" is, in order that we have something intelligible to work with. If we cannot agree on a description, then we continue talking past each other. If we continue talking past each other, then "possibility", therefore what qualifies as "a possibility" remains unintelligible to us.
But if you think that possibility is completely unintelligible, then given that what is unintelligible cannot be meaningfully talked about, you seem to be commiting yourself to have been talking nonsense whenever you discuss modality.
I'll have to leave you and MetaphysicsNow to fight it out, I'm afraid, and find a more classically coherent thread to follow.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
You made nice points. Possibilities are real to the degree that some logic, some principle of intelligibility, constrains an unformed potency. And logics suggest increasingly restrictive constraints, reaching their strongest form in possibilities that obey the LEM.
But my issue with modal realism is that it does reduce the real to the accidental. Every option that could be taken, does get taken. Probability - as some certain propensity or likelihood - is now some kind of illusion. In the infinite multiverse, we have no grounds for treating different outcomes as reflecting different propensities.
So there is a problem. Logic provides a formal structuring. It constrains an unbounded potential, a vagueness, so that it has to be - in the strongest logical form - a bivalent case of either/or. But modal realism then wants to make all accidents real. They each have their own world, or world branch.
Likelihood seems preserved in that many more of some outcomes are found than others. But that then raises the question of who actually knows this to be the case so that the events of any one world can rightfully be seen as probabilistic - actually a play of possibilities? A God’s eye view from nowhere is being smuggled in to secure this further metaphysical fact.
So while logic - as intelligible structure - does lie over events as an ultimate formal cause, we need to go a step further and throw in a finality as well. Some even higher kind of constraint must be real to complete the modal job.
And this is routinely suggested in physics. There is the principle of least action, or sum over histories, which collapses the many logically possible worlds back towards the one. Propensity becomes real because while all alternatives are real, they add or subtract in ways that further constrain the actualised outcome. We wind up back in just the one world because finality closes things. By necessity, the accidental winds up actually being restricted in its open, and even infinite, variety.
Concerning modal realism, and specifically the kind that David Lewis propounds, if I understand you correctly you regard a central problem with it as being its account of probability? I'm not a modal realist, but I would imagine that they would try to adopt some Bayseian notion of probability in which the beliefs concerned would be beliefs about which of the many possible worlds one is located in. Not sure whether this would work or not, however. Although it would take more argument to make a direct identification between Lewisian modal realism and quantum mechanics "many-world"ism, I believe that some have also argued that under a many-worlds interpretation, probabilities just disappear because (to paraphrase you) "everything that can happen does happen". I think I've read somewhere that a Bayseian approach combined with some kind of idea of self-locating beliefs (i.e. beliefs about which world you are in) can help with this, but I've not dug into it in too much detail. In any case, going Bayseian to save a metaphysical position certainly does invite the question about who's beliefs are concerned here, and I think you might be right that there is a tendency to smuggle in a God's eye-view hoping to pull the wool over our eyes that there is not an implicit commitment to idealism (of some kind or another).
I don't see your problem. We mention the unintelligible commonly, it is thought of as the unknown. We don't know if it's apparent unintelligible nature is due to deficiencies in our capacities, or it is inherently unintelligible itself, but we apprehend it as the unknown, and approach it as if it is for some reason unintelligible, that's why it's unknown. This does not mean that we cannot speak of it.
I outlined to metaphysicsNow, three different approaches to this sort of unknown, which we call the possible. One is to assume that the possible violates the law of excluded middle. The second is to assume that the possible violates the law of non contradiction. The third, which I called a radical metaphysics is to assume that the possible violates the law of identity, and therefore we cannot even speak of it. You have chosen this radical position.
Quoting apokrisis
We seem to actually have some agreement on this point. As I argued, the only "real" possibilities, what I now call "true" possibilities, are constrained possibilities, therefore "infinite possibilities" does not refer to something real, and cannot be part of a true premise.
A little like @jkg20, I'm beginning to get a little lost, since what is unknown is not commonly what is unintelligible. Supposing I don't know what my birthday present is because it is wrapped in paper. Suppose that what is wrapped in that paper is the latest iPhone. That I do not know that my birthday present is an iPhone does not make either the iPhone nor the fact that it might be my birthday present unintelligible to me (indeed I may even hope or imagine that my birthday present is an iPhone) .
Anyway, let's get back to modality:
jkg20 said of me, more or less, that when I use the word "possibility" in the abstract, it just stands for "criteria for what is possible". That's pretty much correct, and I do not see how it commits me to the unintelligibility of possibility or possibilities. The criteria will vary in varying circumstances - sometimes we will be interested only in what is physically possible (i.e. the criteria will include the idea that whatever is possible has to conform with the known laws of nature). At other times, perhaps when writing science fiction, we may want to think beyond those constraints, but still wish to insist that what we are imagining is a possible future, and in that case our criteria would be limited to excluding only logical contradictions (at least, to exclude obvious logical contradictions, some logical contradictions can be deeply buried). In both kinds of cases, laying down the criteria of possibility allows for an indefinite number of perfectly intelligible possibilities. Perhaps it also allows for an infinite number of possibilities, I don't know, it doesn't seem to me to matter much one way or another.
Yeah. My distant memory is that Lewis relies eventually on counterpart theory and resemblances. So each of us is individual in our own world. And then there are all the other worlds where I am living a life that is only insignificantly different.
There is no actual identity - as we each represent at least one counterfactual difference in existing in a different world. But we would tend to formulate the same (Bayseian) laws of probability through sharing the near enough identical experiences.
Coin tossing would best be explained by a rule of chance, for instance. We would not resemble the selves that lived in the worlds where every coin toss ever experienced always came up heads.
So causation can be reduced to a subjective ascription. Nothing is either objectively chance or determined, you just happen to be located in a world that either looks that way or it doesn't.
But that's why I prefer a constraints-based ontology where both material spontaneity, and its formal limitation, are real things. It does require then a "weird" view of causality. But physics already has had to accept just that with the finality embedded in the principle of least action. Nature does sum over all of its possible histories to tend towards some optimal trajectory. The alternatives have to really exist, in some sense, so that they can count as that which is (mostly) the actually unactualised.
It's no wonder you're getting lost, you're inverting what I said. What I meant is that we speak of the unintelligible as an unknown. This implies that the unintelligible is an instance of the unknown, it does not mean that all unknowns are unintelligible. Therefore, that you provide an example of an unknown which is not an unintelligible, is really irrelevant, it just means that you misunderstood what I said.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
What you describe as the "criteria for what is possible", I find to be unintelligible. It seems completely arbitrary. You seem to be saying, that with varying circumstances, the criteria for what is possible also varies. How can this be the case? We've identified a type of thing which is "a possibility" and we want to know how to recognize a possibility when we apprehend one, so we need some clear criteria for recognition, and identification. You say, depending on the circumstances, the criteria varies. How is this any sort of realistic way to recognize or identify something, to say that it always appears differently, it fulfills different criteria, in different circumstances? What kind of criteria is this? Can't we find something consistent from one instance of possibility to the next, such that we know we are dealing with the same type of thing, a possibility? Or do we just make up the criteria, however we wish, according to what we want from the circumstances? That doesn't make sense, because we would be very likely to designate something which is really impossible, as possible, if we do not have the proper criteria. Since it is possible that we could confuse the impossible with the possible, then it is impossible that the criteria is arbitrary, as you seem to imply. Therefore there must be some real principles which could be used to distinguish the possible from the impossible in each and every circumstance. Don't you agree?
I suggest we start with very simple and straight forward criteria. Whatever is not impossible is possible. Do you agree? If something, for whatever reason, is determined as impossible we know that it is not possible. Likewise, if we know that something is not impossible then we know that it is possible. If we do not know whether or not it is impossible, then we do not know whether or not it is possible. Do you agree?
This is precisely the issue in reverse though - what are the criteria for impossibility? Are we talking about physical impossibility, logical impossibility.... Each will have different criteria presumably, just like "possibility" under my contention.
And just to be fair to myself, you did identify the unintelligible with the unknown in this comment:
I don't know who thinks of it as the unknown, but not me, and I gave you a reason why. You may have meant to say that being unknown is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being unintelligible, but thinking of one thing as another is (in usual parlance) to equate the two things in thought, which in this case would be to take being unknown as a necessary and sufficient condition for being unintelligible.
I think we are largely in agreement on many points, although I do have a couple of questions for you.
One of the "possible" positions that niggles at me is that the principle of least action may simply be a heurestic device for balancing energy equations, and thus has no real ontological commitments. My response to that is that there are no grounds for treating the PLA any more or less heuristically than any other law of nature, so that there is probably some question begging going on behind the reply, but that seems a little limp-wristed. Perhaps you have a better line of response?
As regards the constraints based ontology you talk about, could you expand a little on this and specifically what you mean by "material sponaneity" and "formal limitation"? Examples always help me, but granted examples can sometimes be misleading and fail to capture nuances. Do you regard the formal limitations as capable of evolution, or are they fixed and immutable?
I think the motivation behind my position is that where the condition involves action, it is always possible to reason through it (even if doing so requires emotional support etc). That being so I'd be committed to saying that there are no conditions of the type we are discussing that cannot be reasoned through.
Hard to say. There are some conditions that are hard to address through therapy alone. OCD seems to be one of them that is best treated with psychotherapy and medication, from what I surmise.
Well, we can be prejudiced against antidepressant drugs or we don't have to. I see no issue taking antidepressant drugs if there is a clinical need that needs addressing Do you?
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Well, I tend to believe that medication in combination with therapy leads to the best prognosis of remission. If one so chooses to not take medication, then that is a personal choice, though I don't understand the issue with taking medication, if there is a need.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Well, yes. Ideally, if we could we would want to start therapy first instead of medicating an individual. However, due to the issue of cost and the powerful pharmaceutical lobby (at least here in the US), people are referred to psychiatrists instead of psychologists. Do I think that needs to change? Sure, just that the politicians in power assume in part your position in that depression, anxiety, phobias are individual problems, not social ones.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I don't think self-control will solve the issues a schizophrenic or bipolar individual might experience. To say that would be idiotic.
Why would it be idiotic? I'm certainly not suggesting that people with schizophrenia or bipolar syndrome can just "snap out of it" all by themselves: that would be idiotic.
Well, I have heard of only one case in my lifetime for whom their schizophrenia was treated via psychotherapy. Some people decide to live with their condition. But, the important thing is that they know that their thoughts are disorganized or in a constant state of paranoia. Keep in mind that these people we are talking about feel very strongly about what they're experiencing. In other words, it's very easy to get lost in the void of turmoil and chaos of an (I wince using the following word) "ill" mind.
Schizophrenia, which I can pontificate about here since I was once diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is primarily an anxiety disorder gone wild. That is to say that the schizophrenic (in most cases of the paranoid subtype) lives in a constant state of fear. Now, the issue is that the desire to control oneself is imbued by persecutory beliefs and the whole list of other disorganized thinking that a schizophrenic experiences. In other words, self control mandates an objective view of oneself in relation to the world, which in most cases can only be provided through a therapist or (yes) trough self therapy or put more bluntly "reality-testing". However, if the world of a schizophrenic or similarly any other disorder by extension is disorganized or twisted by said disorder, then the effort for self control will be mostly futile (I'm talking about people who authentically believe the voices they hear, which are 90% of the homeless population for your information). Therefore, the absolute need for medication to balance the 'flux' and then proceed with therapy.
In many cases people with disorders (read distress) shut off from the world and don't want to have to do anything with it. To be quite honest, as a person who has suffered, I completely understand the desire to cut oneself off from the world and fantasize or indulge in bad habits or obsessing over trifle stuff. Even people without mental disorders live in a manner that shuts themselves off from the concerns of the world or their neighbors and friends. It's just easier that way to live in our modern society.
It's off topic, so I'll keep it short, even though it is the topic I'm focused on currently.
Even if all laws are heuristic, the PLA is a principle and so distinct in being foundational to laws generally. There seem to be three such guiding principles - the PLA, the cosmological principle, and the principle of locality. My particular interest here is how they fit together.
The PLA becomes truly mysterious and non-local in quantum physics. The path integral or sum over histories formalism suggests events take the least action path over all their possible states. Quantum gravity would (likely) have to see even time and space as emergent in this manner.
A nice intro is Metaphysics of the Principle of Least Action, Vladislav Terekhovich - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.03429.pdf
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Again, keeping it short, I am arguing for a holistic metaphysics in opposition to the usual reductionist story. So I am arguing for an Aristotelian "four causes" or hylomorphic understanding of Being. As well as the bottom-up constructing causes of efficient/material causality, there is the top-down constraining causes of form/finality.
This is a systems science or hierarchy theory approach. And with CS Peirce, it becomes a semiotic approach where the top-down becomes understood as the informational aspect of reality, the bottom-up as the material or dynamical aspect of reality.
Peirce added the further critical logical wrinkle of understanding reality as a process of rational development - what we would call today, order from chaos or self-organising criticality. The thermodynamic or condensed matter approach to physical structure. So Peirce added Vagueness as a category of logic, a ground of being. A system crisply organised according to the four causes could have the appropriate kind of "nothingness" from which it could actually arise.
So this all cashes out as a general story where reality is the result of the development of constraints that organise a systems degrees of freedoms (and organises them in the precise evolutionary fashion that causes those freedoms, that resulting play of events, to cause the whole system itself to stably persist).
So it is an autopoietic story, a story of ontic structural realism, a story of dissipative structure, to name-check a few of the expressions of the general idea that might be familiar.
To make the contrast with reductionism - and nominalism, atomism, mechanicalism, etc - the systems view does see laws as "merely" the expression of collective behaviour. Peirce called them habits. But then the collective behaviour exerts the constraints that shape the parts making the system. So there is a cybernetic loop. There is feedback that limits the freedoms of the system's events so that they become the kind of thing that are the right stuff to keep the general show going.
From here, it is easy to see why symmetry principles become the governing factor of existence - hence the cosmological principle. At an almost Platonic level, there are logical forms that chaos cannot avoid falling into. For instance, a vortex or whorl is found everywhere in nature where there is dissipation to be done. It is the least action structure. Similarly for fractal branching.
And this is where logic comes in - as an unavoidable form. Logic expresses a least action principle in that is represents a maximal breaking of states of vagueness or uncertainty. It represents the symmetry-breaking which is a binary yes or no, true or false, present or absent.
And quantum interpretations are now picking up on this angle. Wheeler put it nicely with his "it from bit" papers...
So it boils down to the idea that logic - as a Platonic-strength limitation on uncertainty or vagueness - can conjure existence into substantial being simply by applying its PLA-style constraints on naked or chaotic possibility.
Lewis and other nominalists/reductionists take a different view of possibilia in treating them as already definite and crisp degrees of freedom. Reality is a statistical ensemble of already concretely bounded alternatives. That assumption is explicit in modal realism's talk of "worlds". And the ensemble view is also what leads many to a Many Worlds Interpretation of QM.
But I am taking the alternative holistic view where possibility is more basic than that. It starts out as pure unformed potential - an indeterminate and unsubstantial vagueness. Then it starts to develop lawfulness or order as all its unlimited variety gets sieved according to a unifying principle of least action. You get a world that evolves into concrete form as it dissipates its early confusion and erases whole constellations of possibilities with every now definite physical event.
If my eye absorbs that photon from a distant star a billion light years away, then that is it. The event fixes a history. Time has been added to in a concrete fashion that forever limits any alternative result.
So we end up with just the one world creating itself by erasing possibilities. You don't have a modal realism/MWI story of whole new worlds being created every time there is a possible logical fork in the road. Instead, localised events are a non-local or contextual collapse of every other alternative.
The mystery of the PLA is that all the other alternatives did weigh in the balance. They were real in the sense that they really were there in a way that just got eliminated in a systematic and forever fashion. Until my eye did decohere that photon, the Universe was that fraction more uncertain. The alternative outcomes still existed as a fuzzy set of freedoms. And QM gives you a way to measure that kind of concrete possibilia. You can see it as a "block" of unrealised choices - the wavefunction.
Anyway, a short post has grown long. These are exciting times for metaphysics. :)
I don't think this is the case, so long as we stick to customary definitions when determining logical impossibilities. We describe physical things with words, and our definitions are based on those descriptions. So logical impossibility, which is based in contradiction is a derivative of physical impossibility. It is one coherent set of criteria.
When we approach from the other way, "possibility", we have all sorts of random criteria as to what constitutes possibility, allowing for infinite possibility. This is why we must approach from "impossible" rather than "possible". Do you see that one of them "impossible" is a principle of constraint, while "possible" is inherently unconstrained? The unconstrained is unintelligible, while constraints are intelligible. So we proceed in obtaining certainty in knowledge by determining what is impossible, because "possible" can't give certainty but "impossible" does.
No, I don't see this, since as I pointed out, what is going to count as impossible is going to change depending on the circumstances just as much as what is possible.
Firstly, the criteria I mentioned for possibility are not random in the least. One set of criteria constrains the possible within the bounds of the known laws of nature. Another set releases that restriction but applies the laws of classical logic. Those are not random criteria, but clear and precise ones.
Secondly, nothing you say about the impossible rules out their being infinite impossibilities.
"Possible" and "impossible" are terms that come together as a package or not at all.
Right, so knowing what is impossible requires knowing the circumstances. The circumstances dictate what is impossible, and knowing what is impossible allows one to say what is possible. Do you see how impossibility, according to circumstances, makes possibilities true and intelligible rather than infinite and unintelligible?
The criteria for what is possible does not change depending on the circumstances. Nor does the criteria for what is impossible change depending on the circumstances. But particular things which are impossible are determined according to the circumstances, and by determining these impossibilities we can limit what is possible, to less than infinite. Without such limiting, possibility is just meaningless nonsense, unintelligible. So this is the point, we bring possibility into the realm of intelligibility by limiting it with "impossible".
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
Your first set of criteria restricts possibility according to "known" laws. This is ambiguous, and not a true restriction. What is "known" varies from one individual to another, such that what is possible for me is different from what is possible for you, under the same circumstances. And, what is truly possible under those circumstances is completely different from either of these, due to the failings of human knowledge in general.
Your second set is just a more ambiguous form of the first, allowing that an individual when determining possibilities may have disregard for the laws of nature, as known by that individual, and only have respect for the fundamental laws of logic. These possibilities are likely less true than the first.
Those two sets of criteria offer no approach to true possibility.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I don't know what you mean by "infinite impossibilities". That is itself an unintelligible phrase. That something is impossible is a determination made by a mind, a judgement. A mind cannot make an infinite number of judgements. That is the first impossibility which we can determine. It is impossible that there are infinite impossibilities.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
This is not necessarily the case. Logicians who speak of infinite possibilities necessarily imply possibility without impossibility. That is the gist of the point I am making. Possible and impossible do not necessarily come together as a package. We can premise possible without impossible, and this gives the appearance of an acceptable premise. However, it is a false premise so we must deny it and insist that possible cannot come without impossible.
Consider the following schemas:
1) It is possible that P
2) It is impossible that P
3) It is not possible that P
4) It is not impossible that P
Here P stands in for some proposition or other.
Let's suppose for the moment that P is the proposition that "The round copula is square".
Well, since anything that is round is not square, substituting this value for P into 1 and 4 gives you a falsehood, and into 2) and 3) gives you a truth. So, there is at least one impossibility. Here's another P = "An inedible apple is perfectly edible". So that's two impossibilities, and I've only just gotten started.
Now let P="Some grass is red". Under this substitution 1) and 4) gives you truth, whilst 2) and 3) gives you falsehood. Another substitution with the same result: P="There are green swans". So, two possibilities, and I could keep going.
What is the point of all this? Two things:
1) Whatever you think of possibility or impossibility there are indefinitely many specific possibilities and impossibilities.
2) The schemas 1 and 4 are logically equivalent, as are 2 and 3. This means we can define the possible in terms of the impossible and vice versa - the logical equivalence implies that they are two sides of one and the same coin, that coin being the concept of modality.
I remembered this and wanted to report back. It's been over thirty days and I definitely feel more relaxed and confident in social situations. Even with people who typically make me anxious and I can't avoid interacting with, like some family members and people I work with. I can't attribute this entirely to the probiotics, however, as I started a couple of other things at the same time. I've been practicing what I'll call 'non-abiding' meditation with diaphragmatic breathing for at least 45 minutes a day.
So what I can say is that meditation with diaphragmatic breathing and high-quality probiotics is an effective treatment for social anxiety, in my experience. Regarding the placebo effect, I have some experience with hypnosis so I know the power of suggestion. Knowing this, I think it's too soon to tell if placebo is active. I wouldn't be confident it wasn't for at least a few months. We'll see.
Things are going so well I don't want to stop the meditation to see if the probiotics are effective by themselves, but I'll probably try it eventually. That will be interesting.
I know because I have it and deal with it on some level every day or every two or three days.
That being said, I'm essentially cured from that, and it was more just knowing what I am internally, which is a good Human Being.
Confidence is king, just don't go out of your way to be a dick, and if you do, learn from your mistake and move on.
Maybe if I was a super buff stud muffin people would believe me more.
Like patient X, I find it difficult or impossible to avoid obsessive behaviour. But I recognise that patient X suffers differently to me, as your OP describes, so I can't just apply my own experience and call it an answer to your query. Is OCD as intrinsic to the sufferer as diabetes? In my view, the answer is more yes than no, but I feel the qualitative difference between OCD and diabetes leads to some of the uncertainty here.
My own OCD-like behaviour stems from autism, a neurological difference, not a disease like diabetes. Could I learn not to behave obsessively; am I capable of doing that? I'm not sure. My best guess is no.
A couple of follow up questions so I can clarify for myself your post:
What do you mean by a condition being intrinsic to a sufferer?
What specific qualitative differences between OCD and diabetes leads you have some doubts about it being intrinsic?
When you say that your best guess is that you are not capable of learning not to behave obsessively, is that based on some general lack of confidence in your abilities or more based on your previous experiences of having tried?
I'm not trying to trick you or anything - and if the questions seem insensitive, that is not my intent - I'm asking because I am genuinely interested in the philosophical implications that arise from these issues.
No easy questions, then? :wink: Diabetes (setting aside the possibility of a cure) is a degenerative condition that is just there, a sort of part of the diabetic's body. (?) In that sense it's intrinsic to the diabetic. In the same way, I might say that my leg is intrinsic to me.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
OCD is a neurological condition. While some neurological conditions ccan usefully be compared with a disease like diabetes, others are quite different. My own Autism Spectrum Condition is neurological, but it isn't a disease, it's a difference in the way I'm wired. I suppose it is intrinsic, in the sense I'm using it, but it feels quite wrong to me to equate it with a physical disease like diabetes (by using the same term to describe both of them). OCD likewise.
I know I'm not making as much sense here as I would like. I'm struggling to find the most meaningful vocabulary.
Quoting MetaphysicsNow
I think it's mostly based on my reliance on my obsessive routines, despite their downside. I would find it difficult to function without them, so I don't fancy trying! :smile:
I think the reason why none of us perhaps make as much sense as we'd like to concerning this subject, myself included, is that in discussing mental conditions from a philosophical perspective, we come bang up against a fundamental incompatibility between two ways of viewing human action. On the one hand there is the mechanistic view which looks at human action as just so much physiological activity, and I guess that's the kind of view that lies behind your remark that OCD is a neurological condition. It is also a view that some see as gaining corroboration from the fact that drugs can "help" with mental conditions. On the other hand there is the view that looks on human action as purposive and rational, and I have a feeling that there might be something like that lying behind your expression of your reliance on performing your routines - they have a place in your life that takes them beyond the mere motion of bodily parts. There's a temptation to think that we can have it both ways ("two aspects of just one thing") but I'm inclined to suspect that the mechanistic view, taken to its consistent conclusion, just negates the rationalistic one. Eliminative materialists would say something like "too bad for the rationalistic view in that case", and what I'm struggling with is whether that is a coherent position or not.
Some neurological conditions are different. I have MS, which is a neurological condition. But it's just a disease, and might be compared with diabetes, or any other physical illness. But autism, and maybe other neurological conditions too, aren't simple physical illnesses. There's more to them than that, or at least there can be. This is what lead me to comment here initially.
My own repetitive/habitual behaviour is weird (to me). I can see that I do these things. I can see that they bind me quite thoroughly. I feel inside my head that I could over-ride them ... but I never actually do. So maybe I can't. But the compulsion, if that's what it is, is not something so strong that it cannot but be obeyed, or so I feel. If I had no legs, I couldn't walk. This compulsion does not seem as powerful as that. From the inside, the control exercised by this compulsion doesn't seem absolute; from the outside, it probably seems absolute. And I can't even tell which of those two thoughts is the closest to being correct. :meh:
Neurological conditions have the potential to adjust your thinking, at the physical level of your brain. So some of the effects they can have on you are mental or even emotional, not just physical, as most other illnesses are. I think this is the difference I have been struggling to describe.
My best guess is that patient X is correct, and his OCD cannot be cured by reason, if it can be cured at all. But let's remember: if the condition actually is incurable, then we could correctly observe that it cannot be cured by reason, by porridge or by Donald Trump. I'm saying this because I wonder if reason is a useful and contributing part of this discussion, or whether it's a trivial distraction, like porridge and Trump. :chin: