In the previous post, I involved the imagination in the defense of free will. It was more of a sideline premise in supporting my argument; here the imagination takes center stage.
Recall that the hard determinist's metaphysical argument against free will is, roughly summarized, that because things in the universe can only be caused or random (or maybe some combination thereof), free will is an incoherent notion. My reply is that causation and randomness are both concepts created by the mind in order to understand the universe; while they may have a basis in reality, "cause" is a narrative created by an observer to "explain" an event. The first argument I posted attempted to posit a third way things can exist, that is to say, in a state of "fixed arbitration" which is somehow neither caused nor random. The second argument I posted argues that free will seems metaphysically possible from the fact that it is imaginable, regardless of our status as free or unfree. My argument here is that, as a method of understanding the world, the logic of hard determinism, while generally valid, becomes problematic when applied to the function of human thought in a draconic fashion. It is generally a good precept to assume that there is a logical reason for phenomenon in the universe, but this precept is one used for apprehension of the ostensibly non-conscious universe. For consciousness to work, logic must be assumed to work. However, if we are to join the hard determinist in attempting to explain conscious thought in a formula such as theirs against free will, then the logic which they use to disprove free will is as much available for philosophical attack as free will itself.
So, then, why should our beliefs be logical? A "logical" reason is not enough. We could say that the reason beliefs should be logical is that is what rational beings do; they use logic. But "rational" has the word logic hidden in it. Indeed, it seems difficult to answer the question, "Why should beliefs be logical?" without sneaking in the word logic somewhere. Certainly, the logician can reply, well, logic is to be augmented by the senses and emotion, and this is to be agreed. But why should we believe that this pairing is to be trusted? After all, the senses and logic have, when working together, failed human beings in the past. And, if we are going to let the senses enter into this philosophical conversation, we could possibly suggest that I "sense" that my actions are free; should not our logic admit the truth of that perception?
However, the logicians attempt to answer that beliefs should be logical ultimately pushes us either into a circle, or admit that there is another sort of faculty which we must look to. "Experience" which shows us that logic is reliable is not a good enough explanation, for it takes logic to show us that experience is valuable, much the same as it takes logic for repeated exposure to phenomenon to ever become induction. Without logic, any senses are simply inarticulate blobs of experience which cannot admit knowledge; but why does belief seem more trustworthy when it is supported with logic than not? There is no way getting around this fact: beliefs which are shown to be logical to the mind are more believable. But the belief, "Beliefs are better if logical," cannot come from logic, for circular reasoning is forbidden by logic. And sensory experience, as well as cultural experience, cannot supply the answer, because without logic these are all merely amorphous, unconnected feelings that have no "logic" to them - that we are so convinced that these disparate experiences can be bound up in logic suggests a faith which, in some sense, goes beyond logic. I propose this belief, "Beliefs should be logical," comes not from a principle of logic (or it would be circular) but from a different sort of belief-forming principle or faculty, the imagination.
Now, it may seem too quick to assume that there is a whole faculty from the discovery of a single principle which is not strictly logical. Again, some exchange between reason and the senses could be argued to create this principle, but I believe that position devolves into incoherence, as I hope I have sufficiently shown above. In case not, let me repeat it in another way: Should we say that belief in logic's place in belief forming comes from the senses, we are pre-supposing the role of the senses as supplying fuel for logic to work with, thus implicitly admitting logic into our answer. We need to fully abolish logic for a brief moment to satisfy the logician's demands of non-circular reasoning, and the only way to do so is to suppose a mental faculty which is non-rational. This faculty must, in some ways, be sort of like reason and sort of like the senses. It is like reason in that it is not experienced as part of the world as the senses are; we do not "sense" mathematics in the world, strictly speaking, much as we do not "sense" the fact that "beliefs should be logical." However, like the senses, this faculty has the inability to disagree with what it experiences. So, while rationally someone may posit that not all beliefs need be logical, whether they believe this is controlled by this other faculty. Reason is, in some ways, more at our disposal, because we can let it move out of the realm of our actual beliefs. This faculty, in a strange way, is out of our control (though not completely), but is at least difficult for us to manage, as the senses are difficult for us to manage, because we cannot argue with what it tells us to belief very easily. So when we are told, "Beliefs should be logical," it comes with a force which is so powerful, even asking the question seems preposterous, although we cannot clearly articulate why.
Further, I argue that since this faculty exists, we should suspect that it will be involved in other belief forming activities. It may be the case that "Beliefs should be logical" is the only use of this faculty, but that would be odd, and once admitting to the existence of the faculty, ruling out its use in other cognition seems baseless. After all, if I can prove to you that only one unicorn exists, or only one Hittite, then you will be less skeptical that other unicorns or other Hittites do in fact exist. As it stands, I have no unicorns, but Hittites have been found, so it will be easy to convince you that Hittites other than thee ones we exactly know about have been around; as for unicorns, it's hard to convince you of the third and twentieth unicorns if I haven't proven the first. Should the role of the imaginative faculty in "Beliefs should be logical" draw any support from my reader, then it should be agreed easily that the imaginative faculty must have a role in other belief forming principles. I argue, then, that free will is one of these beliefs. Free will is a belief which we may disagree with rationally, and yet even the hard determinist thinks about things to make decisions on them. They may not want to call this free will, but if a hard determinist is thinking, "Should I turn off the television and go to bed, or watch one more episode?" the hard determinist has the experience that either option is possible. He may not rationally belief this to be free, but that experience is, indeed, the definition of freedom: that two different options are actually possible at one moment. And indeed, the hard determinist does, I think, experience that both are possible, even if he would rationally tell us that he believes this experience to be an illusion. This demonstrates, I think, that the free will belief is like the "Beliefs should be logical belief," and other beliefs which arise out of the Romantic imagination proposed by Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake. Should we have come this far, to admit the existence of the imagination and admit its role in the premise of logical beliefs, to reject its validity in its role in the belief of free will would undermine its role in the belief of logical beliefs. I submit, therefore, that free will is a power of the mind discovered by the imagination, which makes sense why the hard determinist, in attempting to explain decision making through logic alone, must necessarily fail.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
The Nature of Experience
Alright, I just think it is time to slap up another one of my free will arguments. I've been away for way too long at this point, and my philosophy is rustier than the Platonic Form of Rust. So forgive me if I am a little convoluted or am just spewing nonsense!
This is the argument from Number 1: The Nature of Experience. My argument here is that it is in the nature of feeling free that demonstrates the metaphysical possibility of free will, regardless of whether we are actually free. Unlike my previous post, I am not here arguing against the specific tenets of hard determinism; that is to say, I am not arguing against the premise that our choices are either caused or random. I am merely positing that there is something about the experience which makes it true.
Now, we can reasonably assume that many things we experience make something metaphysically possible, but not nomologically possible.. If I believe that I am stronger than a lion, my experience of this belief does not change anything. I can believe this wholeheartedly, but that does not alter whether I am actually stronger than a lion. However, in terms of pure possibility, I could be stronger than a lion. Seeing as though I never work out and have poor eating habits, and am of a species which is generally weaker than a lion, the possibility of my strength surpassing such a creature is pretty small. However, it seems that it is logically possible that we could live in a world where I am stronger than a lion, or a person very much like me is stronger than a lion. Circumstances of environment, evolution, habit, and so forth prevent this from being the case, but insofar as it can be imagined, it is theoretically possible.
On the other hand, there are some things which are theoretically impossible. It is impossible for a shape to be both square and triangle at the same time, and truly be those shapes. It is impossible for 2+2 to come out with anything other than 4, provided that we are thinking about the meaning of the signs and not the signs themselves. These tend to be mathematical, I suppose. I cannot think of any logical impossibilities which are not definitional or mathematical. A bachelor cannot be married, you cannot divide by zero. Things which seem contradictory in our world are often not in this loose realm of possibility: I could run faster than myself if I go back to when I am a baby and run around my earlier self as an older, faster self. But there are still certain things which can't happen: I can't be in two places at once as the same myself (the present and past mes are not actually the same self). The question is, does the nature of choice fall into these kinds of possibility? Is free will logically impossible?
Well, let's see. I can imagine myself eating a bowl of cereal, or not eating a bowl of cereal. Both scenarios are equally imaginable, whereas the concept of something really being two and another thing really being two and really adding them together and getting five is simply not imaginable. Perhaps, in fact, I am just fooled. I mean, I can imagine the earth being flat, but that doesn't make the earth flat. However, the flatness of the earth is not the same as possibility. The imagination can fool us into thinking something is real when it is not if it is logically possible; but logical impossibilities do not seem imaginable. Even with the hard determinist's argument in line, I can consistently imagine myself choosing to eat a bowl of cereal or to, say, hang-glide, instead. (Note that I am using imagination in the most basic sense, not the more loaded Romantic sense I will employ later for another blog. Also note that while I am using possibility in multiple blogs, the logic is not circular since these are separate arguments).
Perhaps we do not understand what we are imagining. I may not understand my mental faculties, may not understand the ways in which social norms, evolution, biology and other factors are influencing my choices. Perhaps if I did understand myself and the universe perfectly, imagining two possible actions would be impossible. These, unfortunately, are bad examples, though, because they are all arguments which proceed from things which operate in a realm of post-nomological possibility. That is to say, those things influencing my decision are not due to the metaphysical nature of choice, but to circumstances which may or may not impede my ability to choose. For example, if we say that I have the ability to walk, and then tie my legs to a chair, I still, in a sense, have the ability to walk. Circumstances have prevented me from being able to use that ability, but it is still a present ability. This too is a miss analogy, since it is still looking at the problem within post-nomological possibility. So we will remove it further: Let us say that my legs are cut off. We can still say that, if I had legs, I would be able to walk, since logically the metaphysical concept of walking is acceptable. So any arguments which say that we do not have free will because of fate, social construction, or other nomological and post-nomological circumstances, fail to appreciate the question of free will in terms of a pure metaphysics.
The argument of hard determinism operates in a pure logic world, and attempts to establish free will as false because actions can only either be caused or random. It is metaphysically in the nature of a person's choice, they say, that those choices be caused or random. My response to this is that metaphysical impossibilities cannot be imagined, and free will can be imagined. This is sort of like hunger. If I experience hunger, then I know that hunger is a real thing to experience. Even if a scientist is tweaking a brain in a vat that thinks it is Anthony, that mental state is experiencing something which really exists. More precisely phrased, feeling hungry makes you hungry. If I am physically satisfied, but have a disorder which makes me hungry when I have eaten enough, it is not that I am fooled into thinking I am hungry when I am not. It is in the nature of feeling hungry that makes one hungry; feeling as though you are in pain makes you actually in pain, even if what you think is causing you pain is actually not, and it is only your perception that it hurts which is making you hurt. I submit that free will is of this category of experience, that the sensation of freeness is what makes one free. Now, a scientist may learn to make a brain in a vat feel free, and so we can say, ah, but free will could still merely be an illusion! Here is where it gets tricky.
It is simpler with hunger, because the experience of hunger makes you hungry. On the other hand, one might experience no freedom and yet have free will, ostensibly, and one might experience freedom in a situation where one is not really free. The qualia of freeness does not mean that you are able to act upon your freedom: it is simply the imaginable experience of freedom which makes freedom possible. In other words, if I am sitting here feeling unfree, I can still imagine a situation where I do feel free, and so in a sense am still experiencing myself as the kind of being who COULD have free will. Essentially, the experience of this concept of freedom, not the experience of freedom itself, is much like experiencing hunger. Having experienced the concept of free will, I know that it is a possible state, because logical impossibilities cannot be admitted into the imagination. This is a sort of Cartesian argument, I suppose, and the strongest argument against it remains that we could be fooled that something is possible, when it is not. I reply that if this is the case, then we must come to question a great many other things which we deem possible. Furthermore, if we can be fooled that something is logically possible, then we could also be fooled whether something is logically impossible. If that is the case, and whether something can be imagined as impossible is not a valid test, then the concept of logical impossibility falls apart, and we are left in a world of total possibility, where even logic provides no impossibilities. If this happens then the hard determinist argument fails, since they use logic to disprove free will. So, logical impossibilities are needed because nomological and post-nomological arguments cannot disprove free will, but the fact that it is simply a person's judgment which renders a concept as logically impossible or possible which further makes it possible that I could choose to do A or B. I can consistently imagine myself doing either A or B; in other words, I experience myself as a free being whose freedom may be limited, or not limited, by circumstances. The hard determinist argument may cause me to say, "I cannot explain how a choice can be neither caused nor random," however, I can still hold this in view and experience myself as a being who can do A or B. Because their argument does not render this capability void, because when I go to make a choice I still see myself as being able to make a choice, the nature of this experience of freedom indicates that I am actually free.
This is the argument from Number 1: The Nature of Experience. My argument here is that it is in the nature of feeling free that demonstrates the metaphysical possibility of free will, regardless of whether we are actually free. Unlike my previous post, I am not here arguing against the specific tenets of hard determinism; that is to say, I am not arguing against the premise that our choices are either caused or random. I am merely positing that there is something about the experience which makes it true.
Now, we can reasonably assume that many things we experience make something metaphysically possible, but not nomologically possible.. If I believe that I am stronger than a lion, my experience of this belief does not change anything. I can believe this wholeheartedly, but that does not alter whether I am actually stronger than a lion. However, in terms of pure possibility, I could be stronger than a lion. Seeing as though I never work out and have poor eating habits, and am of a species which is generally weaker than a lion, the possibility of my strength surpassing such a creature is pretty small. However, it seems that it is logically possible that we could live in a world where I am stronger than a lion, or a person very much like me is stronger than a lion. Circumstances of environment, evolution, habit, and so forth prevent this from being the case, but insofar as it can be imagined, it is theoretically possible.
On the other hand, there are some things which are theoretically impossible. It is impossible for a shape to be both square and triangle at the same time, and truly be those shapes. It is impossible for 2+2 to come out with anything other than 4, provided that we are thinking about the meaning of the signs and not the signs themselves. These tend to be mathematical, I suppose. I cannot think of any logical impossibilities which are not definitional or mathematical. A bachelor cannot be married, you cannot divide by zero. Things which seem contradictory in our world are often not in this loose realm of possibility: I could run faster than myself if I go back to when I am a baby and run around my earlier self as an older, faster self. But there are still certain things which can't happen: I can't be in two places at once as the same myself (the present and past mes are not actually the same self). The question is, does the nature of choice fall into these kinds of possibility? Is free will logically impossible?
Well, let's see. I can imagine myself eating a bowl of cereal, or not eating a bowl of cereal. Both scenarios are equally imaginable, whereas the concept of something really being two and another thing really being two and really adding them together and getting five is simply not imaginable. Perhaps, in fact, I am just fooled. I mean, I can imagine the earth being flat, but that doesn't make the earth flat. However, the flatness of the earth is not the same as possibility. The imagination can fool us into thinking something is real when it is not if it is logically possible; but logical impossibilities do not seem imaginable. Even with the hard determinist's argument in line, I can consistently imagine myself choosing to eat a bowl of cereal or to, say, hang-glide, instead. (Note that I am using imagination in the most basic sense, not the more loaded Romantic sense I will employ later for another blog. Also note that while I am using possibility in multiple blogs, the logic is not circular since these are separate arguments).
Perhaps we do not understand what we are imagining. I may not understand my mental faculties, may not understand the ways in which social norms, evolution, biology and other factors are influencing my choices. Perhaps if I did understand myself and the universe perfectly, imagining two possible actions would be impossible. These, unfortunately, are bad examples, though, because they are all arguments which proceed from things which operate in a realm of post-nomological possibility. That is to say, those things influencing my decision are not due to the metaphysical nature of choice, but to circumstances which may or may not impede my ability to choose. For example, if we say that I have the ability to walk, and then tie my legs to a chair, I still, in a sense, have the ability to walk. Circumstances have prevented me from being able to use that ability, but it is still a present ability. This too is a miss analogy, since it is still looking at the problem within post-nomological possibility. So we will remove it further: Let us say that my legs are cut off. We can still say that, if I had legs, I would be able to walk, since logically the metaphysical concept of walking is acceptable. So any arguments which say that we do not have free will because of fate, social construction, or other nomological and post-nomological circumstances, fail to appreciate the question of free will in terms of a pure metaphysics.
The argument of hard determinism operates in a pure logic world, and attempts to establish free will as false because actions can only either be caused or random. It is metaphysically in the nature of a person's choice, they say, that those choices be caused or random. My response to this is that metaphysical impossibilities cannot be imagined, and free will can be imagined. This is sort of like hunger. If I experience hunger, then I know that hunger is a real thing to experience. Even if a scientist is tweaking a brain in a vat that thinks it is Anthony, that mental state is experiencing something which really exists. More precisely phrased, feeling hungry makes you hungry. If I am physically satisfied, but have a disorder which makes me hungry when I have eaten enough, it is not that I am fooled into thinking I am hungry when I am not. It is in the nature of feeling hungry that makes one hungry; feeling as though you are in pain makes you actually in pain, even if what you think is causing you pain is actually not, and it is only your perception that it hurts which is making you hurt. I submit that free will is of this category of experience, that the sensation of freeness is what makes one free. Now, a scientist may learn to make a brain in a vat feel free, and so we can say, ah, but free will could still merely be an illusion! Here is where it gets tricky.
It is simpler with hunger, because the experience of hunger makes you hungry. On the other hand, one might experience no freedom and yet have free will, ostensibly, and one might experience freedom in a situation where one is not really free. The qualia of freeness does not mean that you are able to act upon your freedom: it is simply the imaginable experience of freedom which makes freedom possible. In other words, if I am sitting here feeling unfree, I can still imagine a situation where I do feel free, and so in a sense am still experiencing myself as the kind of being who COULD have free will. Essentially, the experience of this concept of freedom, not the experience of freedom itself, is much like experiencing hunger. Having experienced the concept of free will, I know that it is a possible state, because logical impossibilities cannot be admitted into the imagination. This is a sort of Cartesian argument, I suppose, and the strongest argument against it remains that we could be fooled that something is possible, when it is not. I reply that if this is the case, then we must come to question a great many other things which we deem possible. Furthermore, if we can be fooled that something is logically possible, then we could also be fooled whether something is logically impossible. If that is the case, and whether something can be imagined as impossible is not a valid test, then the concept of logical impossibility falls apart, and we are left in a world of total possibility, where even logic provides no impossibilities. If this happens then the hard determinist argument fails, since they use logic to disprove free will. So, logical impossibilities are needed because nomological and post-nomological arguments cannot disprove free will, but the fact that it is simply a person's judgment which renders a concept as logically impossible or possible which further makes it possible that I could choose to do A or B. I can consistently imagine myself doing either A or B; in other words, I experience myself as a free being whose freedom may be limited, or not limited, by circumstances. The hard determinist argument may cause me to say, "I cannot explain how a choice can be neither caused nor random," however, I can still hold this in view and experience myself as a being who can do A or B. Because their argument does not render this capability void, because when I go to make a choice I still see myself as being able to make a choice, the nature of this experience of freedom indicates that I am actually free.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Free Will, “Fixed Arbitration” and Property Dualism
Free Will, “Fixed Arbitration” and Property Dualism
I will let the previous section stand as an introduction for what I am trying to do here, and just jump right into the discussion. This is the argument listed in the introduction as 2. The Argument from Qualia: This is what blue feels like, though I hope to be expanding it simply from the concept of qualia.
Mental states, as with words, can be considered to be a fixed arbitration. Now, fixed is not so simple as “permanent” – there is the concept of connection here, a relationship that is steady but not unchangeable. When we agree on the meaning of “cat,” this word is fixed to the idea of the actual animal. This connection is arbitrary insofar as there is no real reason for “cat” to mean cat, other than we have fixed it there. But even somehow our fixing it there does not explain the real relationship between the three letters and the feline, for even had we never chosen to use “cat” for cat, “cat” could always mean cat. There is no reason for it not to mean cat, and there is no reason for it to mean cat – but in terms of possibility “cat” always possibly means cat and also always possibly does not. It is a fixed possibility, but not a necessary one, and therefore it is arbitrary. That is to say, in whatever world we imagine “cat” to mean or not to mean cat, it is always fixed and it is always arbitrary.
I am tempted to say that the fixed, in this sense, may always needs be arbitrary, but I will back off from that, as I am not yet certain. But we can say that language is fixed in two senses: one, that any linguistic unit could or could not mean any relationship, and two, that it is made to represent or not by the culture using it. In both stages the relationship is arbitrary, but fixed.
Now, we can say that the relationship between a person’s physical arrangement and mental state is, in fact, similar if not identical to this notion of fixed arbitration. In terms of symbolic cognition one could simply argue that since words are fixed arbitrations (by words here I mean a perception of a thing where the mind is aware that it is perceiving that thing, a very broad definition I realize), and we think in words, our minds operate with fixed arbitrations. But this would only involve the tools, and not our minds (by minds I mean minds, not brains). What I seek here is to say that, minimally, mental states are fixed arbitrations – that perhaps, furthermore, we as human persons are fixed arbitrations.
But I must slow down and carefully how why I would dare say such a thing. I begin with David Chalmers and his concept of property dualism. He argues, effectively I believe, that the experience of a thing cannot be reduced to the physical nature of that same experience. In other words, he would say that the experience of pain is not fully contingent upon its physical companion. This is so because we can imagine: 1. A different physical structure having the same felt mental state. 2. A mind comprehending the full physical structure but not the experience itself. So the physical structure does in fact explain one sense of why its qualitative mental impression exists: because that is the relationship which, in this universe, exists. When things are arranged for something to appear blue to an eye, it does so. And that arrangement is incredibly precise and beautiful in its own right. But in terms of a pure logic, there is no reason for the thing to be blue with that arrangement other than, that qualitative state and that physical state are in relationship in this world, but not necessarily in others. This is my understanding of property dualism.
In other words, we can say that the qualitative experience of pain is only connected to its quantitative (physical) counterpart through fixed arbitration. Like in language, X nerves experiencing Y stimulus causes Z pain is in terms of pure biological possibility fixed, for it is always possible that pinching my arm hurts or not, and therefore arbitrary. So we could see the structure of pain-feeling nerves like the “words,” and the qualitative experience of pain like the meaning the words imply.
Now it may be objected that how we reach these experiences is not arbitrary. How a nervous system came to be able to experience pain (God or evolution or both), caused it to be so, how I came to be pinched was for teasing my sister, etc. But this argument has missed the point. Certainly an etymologist can chart the path of how “cat” has come to mean cat, but this does not make, in terms of pure possibility, it any less fixed or arbitrary when “cat” in fact means cat. It is the same, then, with the mental experiences of a physical brain. A scientist has the pleasure of exploring how a physical brain and a mental experience do in fact match up, but that a scientist can do so with excruciating detail does not change the fact that the relationship could have been different. So I submit mental states of humans to be fixed abstractions.
Here is the crucial piece. Let us agree for now that mental states are fixed abstractions. Let us say that hard determinism holds cause is not free, and that randomness is not free. Is the word “cat” random or caused? Well in a sense its use is caused by society, but as I have demonstrated above this sort of cause does not change its arbitrary nature. It is also not random, for it is fixed in both possibility and actuality. Sure we could use a new word, but “Cat” exists through fixed arbitration first, not causal relationship, not caused because it is arbitrary, and not random, because it is fixed. So too with mental states – they are a fixed arbitration, a way of existing similar to all words.
So when I choose to eat a sandwich, you can give physicalist diagrams about it, but the why of it, my mental state, my state of choosing, exists alongside the physical state as a fixed arbitration. That is to say, simply, it exists freely – in principle neither causally nor randomly.
Whew. Please leave objections or comments in the comment section, and I will make a new post in reply. Four more to go!
Monday, May 18, 2009
The Free Will Cycle
Okay, here we go.
I have been planning, since I started this blog, to write out my five arguments showing that free will is possible. I have been putting this off because of the last semester, which was crazy-busy . . . Which you can tell from my utter dearth of posts throughout April. So, to make up for it, over the next few days I am going to write my long-awaited Free Will Cycle.
In this post, I am just going to lay some groundwork concerning the issue of free will. There is no doubt that free will is a big deal, whether it exists or not. Whether we should be held accountable for our actions is a huge, fuzzy bear-question grumbling over the heads of our judicial system every day. Do we see people as in control, and therefore punishable for what they do? Or do we see them as programmed by society, genetics, chance, whatever . . . and if not, therefore, in control of the persons they are, then do we find some means other than punishment, or notions of responsibility? If there is free will, there is responsibility. If there is no free will, we must figure out how to preserve justice without it.
This political dilemma is not my goal to solve. As I see it, to err on the side of caution we should probably always treat people as if they are badly-caused when they do something wrong, and not assume they are freely acting badly - and that when someone does something good, we should treat them as freely acting well. This may seem paradoxical, but I believe this not because of my direct beliefs about free will. I believe this because I think it promotes a healthy social environment. For running a society, the question of free will offers little in terms of personal satisfaction or whatever; the problem of free will for society is basically, how do we mete out justice fairly? For me, we should always treat mistakes as if they were resulting from bad causation (or at least almost always), and we should probably always treat people as accountable for the good they do. This seems reasonable. But I am not offering a real, solid philosophical argument here - just what I think will be practical and less likely to cause problems in the grander scheme of things.
Instead, my question of free will is not starting at the social level, but the intensely personal level. Do I have free will? I am asking this for all of us, in a sense. Do all of us, personally, privately, have free will? Is this concept possible? We must admit that as humans, it doesn't seem that we are completely free. Things seem to impinge our "wills" all the time - whatever a "will" is. If what we want is so often difficult to obtain, even sometimes against ourselves, then we can't possibly be completely free. So, we must decide whether we think free will is at all possible.
Personally, I find individual responsibility to be extremely important. I feel very responsible, and it seems too deeply rooted, to common sensical a position to relinquish on the grounds of any philosophical argument. The feeling of responsibility I get at having made a mistake is simply too overwhelming for me to dismiss as an illusion of poorly understood causation. I will assume, therefore, that my feeling of responsibility is pointing towards something real. If responsibility is real, then I can be held accountable; if I can be held accountable, then somehow I am acting in a way determined by me, not by outside forces, bad upbringing, bad circumstances, etc. Somehow, some way, I act freely.
Here is the argument against free will:
1. If we are completely caused, we cannot be free. If one hundred million different factors go into causing my actions, then all of those different variables make me act. It is not me who acts, as it were, but my causes which form me into myself. My genetics, my environment, my imbedded beliefs, and so forth. Therefore, to be wholly caused is to be wholly unfree.
2. If we are partially random, we are still not free. The part of us that is caused is not free because it was determined by circumstances prior; the part of us that is not caused and happens sporadically is not free because by definition randomness means 'lack of control.' If I act randomly, without my own consent, I am not responsible. Imagine, for example, if suddenly your body started ignoring your mental commands and started killing people against your will. This would be random, perhaps, but not free in any sense. Therefore, randomness is in no sense more free than causation.
This, I admit, is a forceful, amazingly succinct argument, probably the cleanest philosophical point ever made. But, it stands so diametrically opposed to our experience. Whenever I act according to my will, I feel that I am doing so freely. Sometimes, I act against my will; sometimes I act because of forces within me I that make me feel unfree, but I feel as if my freedom is being impinged by my own nature, not that I do not have freedom in those moments. Somehow, we must reconcile our intense perception of freedom with our rational argument above. Our options are to either say that "free will" is an illusion caused by our lack of understanding of causation, and perhaps randomness, which goes into our behavior, or that somehow, inspite of our understanding of causation and randomness, we are still free.
Our challenge, then, is to, somehow, show that free will is neither caused nor random. This is an almost ridiculous challenge. How can anything, at all, be neither caused nor random? I believe I have an answer, though it will come later. All I will do in this blog is list, in order, the arguments for free will I will be presenting here.
1. The Nature of Experience Argument: "That hurt!" "No, it didn't!"
2. The Nature of Qualia Argument: "This is what blue feels like."
3. The Romantic Argument: Coleridge's Imagination
4. The God Argument (Not what you think, I promise!)
5. The Metaphysical Argument: Possibility, Probability, Actuality
With these five arguments, I hope to prove that the case against free will has been weakened. I feel that all of these arguments have valid points and make it so that the idea of hard determinism is perhaps less certain than it is usually presented as. Generally forms of #1 and #4 are highlighted by Free Will Defenders, though my form is slightly different than what you're probably used to. Anyway, I hope they will be enjoyable.
Quickly, I want to mention that there are other kinds of arguments for free will. None of them satisfy me, and so I will not be going into depth on them here. The most interesting, perhaps, is the "cognitively closed" argument: that perhaps our minds can't graps HOW we are free, even though we can grasp that we ARE free, just like we can't grasp the WHOLE of infinity, but we can grasp the IDEA of infinity. Another is the idea that it is impossible to, while making a choice, also believe that we are not free: "Hmm, what choice shall I make? Butter, or margarine? Of course, what I will choose is determined by causal forces, but, still . . . Hmmm . . . Which shall I choose?" These arguments are interesting, so far as they go, but they are really only variants of #1 and do not at all tackle the main argument presented by hard determinists. My five arguments, at least some of them, intend to do so, or at least to prove that such a thing is not necessary to defend free will.
I will be posting #1 soon, probably in the next day or so. Take care!
I have been planning, since I started this blog, to write out my five arguments showing that free will is possible. I have been putting this off because of the last semester, which was crazy-busy . . . Which you can tell from my utter dearth of posts throughout April. So, to make up for it, over the next few days I am going to write my long-awaited Free Will Cycle.
In this post, I am just going to lay some groundwork concerning the issue of free will. There is no doubt that free will is a big deal, whether it exists or not. Whether we should be held accountable for our actions is a huge, fuzzy bear-question grumbling over the heads of our judicial system every day. Do we see people as in control, and therefore punishable for what they do? Or do we see them as programmed by society, genetics, chance, whatever . . . and if not, therefore, in control of the persons they are, then do we find some means other than punishment, or notions of responsibility? If there is free will, there is responsibility. If there is no free will, we must figure out how to preserve justice without it.
This political dilemma is not my goal to solve. As I see it, to err on the side of caution we should probably always treat people as if they are badly-caused when they do something wrong, and not assume they are freely acting badly - and that when someone does something good, we should treat them as freely acting well. This may seem paradoxical, but I believe this not because of my direct beliefs about free will. I believe this because I think it promotes a healthy social environment. For running a society, the question of free will offers little in terms of personal satisfaction or whatever; the problem of free will for society is basically, how do we mete out justice fairly? For me, we should always treat mistakes as if they were resulting from bad causation (or at least almost always), and we should probably always treat people as accountable for the good they do. This seems reasonable. But I am not offering a real, solid philosophical argument here - just what I think will be practical and less likely to cause problems in the grander scheme of things.
Instead, my question of free will is not starting at the social level, but the intensely personal level. Do I have free will? I am asking this for all of us, in a sense. Do all of us, personally, privately, have free will? Is this concept possible? We must admit that as humans, it doesn't seem that we are completely free. Things seem to impinge our "wills" all the time - whatever a "will" is. If what we want is so often difficult to obtain, even sometimes against ourselves, then we can't possibly be completely free. So, we must decide whether we think free will is at all possible.
Personally, I find individual responsibility to be extremely important. I feel very responsible, and it seems too deeply rooted, to common sensical a position to relinquish on the grounds of any philosophical argument. The feeling of responsibility I get at having made a mistake is simply too overwhelming for me to dismiss as an illusion of poorly understood causation. I will assume, therefore, that my feeling of responsibility is pointing towards something real. If responsibility is real, then I can be held accountable; if I can be held accountable, then somehow I am acting in a way determined by me, not by outside forces, bad upbringing, bad circumstances, etc. Somehow, some way, I act freely.
Here is the argument against free will:
1. If we are completely caused, we cannot be free. If one hundred million different factors go into causing my actions, then all of those different variables make me act. It is not me who acts, as it were, but my causes which form me into myself. My genetics, my environment, my imbedded beliefs, and so forth. Therefore, to be wholly caused is to be wholly unfree.
2. If we are partially random, we are still not free. The part of us that is caused is not free because it was determined by circumstances prior; the part of us that is not caused and happens sporadically is not free because by definition randomness means 'lack of control.' If I act randomly, without my own consent, I am not responsible. Imagine, for example, if suddenly your body started ignoring your mental commands and started killing people against your will. This would be random, perhaps, but not free in any sense. Therefore, randomness is in no sense more free than causation.
This, I admit, is a forceful, amazingly succinct argument, probably the cleanest philosophical point ever made. But, it stands so diametrically opposed to our experience. Whenever I act according to my will, I feel that I am doing so freely. Sometimes, I act against my will; sometimes I act because of forces within me I that make me feel unfree, but I feel as if my freedom is being impinged by my own nature, not that I do not have freedom in those moments. Somehow, we must reconcile our intense perception of freedom with our rational argument above. Our options are to either say that "free will" is an illusion caused by our lack of understanding of causation, and perhaps randomness, which goes into our behavior, or that somehow, inspite of our understanding of causation and randomness, we are still free.
Our challenge, then, is to, somehow, show that free will is neither caused nor random. This is an almost ridiculous challenge. How can anything, at all, be neither caused nor random? I believe I have an answer, though it will come later. All I will do in this blog is list, in order, the arguments for free will I will be presenting here.
1. The Nature of Experience Argument: "That hurt!" "No, it didn't!"
2. The Nature of Qualia Argument: "This is what blue feels like."
3. The Romantic Argument: Coleridge's Imagination
4. The God Argument (Not what you think, I promise!)
5. The Metaphysical Argument: Possibility, Probability, Actuality
With these five arguments, I hope to prove that the case against free will has been weakened. I feel that all of these arguments have valid points and make it so that the idea of hard determinism is perhaps less certain than it is usually presented as. Generally forms of #1 and #4 are highlighted by Free Will Defenders, though my form is slightly different than what you're probably used to. Anyway, I hope they will be enjoyable.
Quickly, I want to mention that there are other kinds of arguments for free will. None of them satisfy me, and so I will not be going into depth on them here. The most interesting, perhaps, is the "cognitively closed" argument: that perhaps our minds can't graps HOW we are free, even though we can grasp that we ARE free, just like we can't grasp the WHOLE of infinity, but we can grasp the IDEA of infinity. Another is the idea that it is impossible to, while making a choice, also believe that we are not free: "Hmm, what choice shall I make? Butter, or margarine? Of course, what I will choose is determined by causal forces, but, still . . . Hmmm . . . Which shall I choose?" These arguments are interesting, so far as they go, but they are really only variants of #1 and do not at all tackle the main argument presented by hard determinists. My five arguments, at least some of them, intend to do so, or at least to prove that such a thing is not necessary to defend free will.
I will be posting #1 soon, probably in the next day or so. Take care!
The Four-Lettered Word
Should you smilingly tell even a casual friend to f-off, he will probably smirk and let it slide. Flip a co-worker the bird in a joking context, as long as no manager sees you, you're fine. But if you have made a good friend, and you use this four-lettered word, watch out.
The word is "love." I do not understand why a word so essential to the human experience, to who we are and what we do, has become anathema. I believe ardently in the Greek word for love among all humans, "agape." And yet, it is more acceptable to swear in public than to tell a friend that you love him or her. This seems like a heinous crime to me.
I spend my days reading the words of the greatest minds in the world, who in many cases ostensibly wrote out of love. The sole purpose for their agonistic endeavors, I would imagine, even if they wouldn't phrase it in such a way, is that they loved humanity and felt they should share what insights they had found. To be a student of literature is to dedicate yourself to the echoes of love; to be an academic is to try and peer into the hearts of brilliant minds. That love that should be shared between all people, that should warm us inside, that should make us feel connected even to the random stranger on the other side of the world, that is a love we all acknowledge in private, when we sit and watch people walking on a sunny day.
But to actually say it, to form the words to another person, is maybe "too intimate" for them to handle. Why? I just want to know: Why can't humans express that basic, unmotivated compassion without it being turned into something grotesque? I remember once telling my stepfather over the phone that I loved him, and my coworker acted as if I had done something bizarre, even wrong. It's an attitude that catches me off guard because, well, isn't that the point of being on this planet? Aren't we supposed to seek a sort of intimacy with our human family? Isn't that what makes us beautiful, more than just animals, that makes the dark and painful halls of life bearable, worth it?
Emersonian discourse demands that we be open, that we speak ourselves. I've found it dangerous to be Emersonian in my lifetime. Being open leaves you vulnerable, and when people get a good glimpse into an open person, they are scared that they, too, might have to be open. I could take one route, and stop being Emersonian, stop being open to others with my honest perceptions. I could. But "the doctrine of hate must counteract the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." Well, the doctrine of love is puling and whining: Love, it is saying, just don't have the balls to say it.
Well, screw that. I will not be a coward. I will not be afraid to tell someone I care about them. This is not a sin, not a travesty. This is why we're here. This is part and parcel of the reason God made us, I believe, and if you don't believe in God, well, all the more reason to find sanctity in love. Real love, not eros, not familia, but agape: the love for each other's humanity, that is the key to a better world. If you're reading this, I challenge you: let others know you care. They might not like it at first, but if they're willing to be brave and open up, take them by the hand and show them a world that isn't calloused and cold, but real and filled with compassion.
Love is not a swear word.
The word is "love." I do not understand why a word so essential to the human experience, to who we are and what we do, has become anathema. I believe ardently in the Greek word for love among all humans, "agape." And yet, it is more acceptable to swear in public than to tell a friend that you love him or her. This seems like a heinous crime to me.
I spend my days reading the words of the greatest minds in the world, who in many cases ostensibly wrote out of love. The sole purpose for their agonistic endeavors, I would imagine, even if they wouldn't phrase it in such a way, is that they loved humanity and felt they should share what insights they had found. To be a student of literature is to dedicate yourself to the echoes of love; to be an academic is to try and peer into the hearts of brilliant minds. That love that should be shared between all people, that should warm us inside, that should make us feel connected even to the random stranger on the other side of the world, that is a love we all acknowledge in private, when we sit and watch people walking on a sunny day.
But to actually say it, to form the words to another person, is maybe "too intimate" for them to handle. Why? I just want to know: Why can't humans express that basic, unmotivated compassion without it being turned into something grotesque? I remember once telling my stepfather over the phone that I loved him, and my coworker acted as if I had done something bizarre, even wrong. It's an attitude that catches me off guard because, well, isn't that the point of being on this planet? Aren't we supposed to seek a sort of intimacy with our human family? Isn't that what makes us beautiful, more than just animals, that makes the dark and painful halls of life bearable, worth it?
Emersonian discourse demands that we be open, that we speak ourselves. I've found it dangerous to be Emersonian in my lifetime. Being open leaves you vulnerable, and when people get a good glimpse into an open person, they are scared that they, too, might have to be open. I could take one route, and stop being Emersonian, stop being open to others with my honest perceptions. I could. But "the doctrine of hate must counteract the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." Well, the doctrine of love is puling and whining: Love, it is saying, just don't have the balls to say it.
Well, screw that. I will not be a coward. I will not be afraid to tell someone I care about them. This is not a sin, not a travesty. This is why we're here. This is part and parcel of the reason God made us, I believe, and if you don't believe in God, well, all the more reason to find sanctity in love. Real love, not eros, not familia, but agape: the love for each other's humanity, that is the key to a better world. If you're reading this, I challenge you: let others know you care. They might not like it at first, but if they're willing to be brave and open up, take them by the hand and show them a world that isn't calloused and cold, but real and filled with compassion.
Love is not a swear word.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Past
We recreate the past as something new: in novels, plays, video games. Sometimes it is a literal recreation of the past, sometimes it is an imagined future modeled on the past. We judge today against a pretended yesterday, and wish for good old days. Spenser took his world, one of Calvinists and Catholics, dressed it up in knights and dragons and casltes, and called it history. Virgil looked to a fallen nation to tell the story of a rising empire. One myth about human creation wasn't enough for ovid; he needed two.
The past is not a thing that once was, and its stories are not inflexible because they've already happened. The past is the newest, most important news, and going backwards in time is the smartest place to look for the next step forward. We don't dream up the past arbitrarily; we grow it, water it. The present is not a point on a line, but a branch on a living tree. The roots then bring the substance to flowers now.
Our age is one which mistrusts tradition. It is suspicious of the old and rooted. There is some good to that, for progression cannot have a fixation on the past. But institutions of the past link us to the soil of history that feeds new thought. Look at the most creative, original minds: their brains are fevered, more often than not, with something brilliantly ancient. We cannot discard the past or its influences anymore than our heads can discard our feet and knees. We mustn't stare dumbly at our feet, though, in wonderment of their design. We get new shoes, we go to foot doctors, so that we can better use our body's foundation. Just as we don't ignore our limbs for the sake of better movement, we must never ignore the stories of history, tradition and imagination with the illusion that this will better humanity.
The past is not a thing that once was, and its stories are not inflexible because they've already happened. The past is the newest, most important news, and going backwards in time is the smartest place to look for the next step forward. We don't dream up the past arbitrarily; we grow it, water it. The present is not a point on a line, but a branch on a living tree. The roots then bring the substance to flowers now.
Our age is one which mistrusts tradition. It is suspicious of the old and rooted. There is some good to that, for progression cannot have a fixation on the past. But institutions of the past link us to the soil of history that feeds new thought. Look at the most creative, original minds: their brains are fevered, more often than not, with something brilliantly ancient. We cannot discard the past or its influences anymore than our heads can discard our feet and knees. We mustn't stare dumbly at our feet, though, in wonderment of their design. We get new shoes, we go to foot doctors, so that we can better use our body's foundation. Just as we don't ignore our limbs for the sake of better movement, we must never ignore the stories of history, tradition and imagination with the illusion that this will better humanity.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Mythic Echoes and Disassociation
Mythic Echoes and Disassociation:
The Tower of Babel and the Achaean Wall
“The Deluge and the Golden Age are myth; it is doubtless through an extensive series of modifications that echoes of the myths have become poetry.” Ruth Scodel 50
Opening with this closing remark from Scodel, I hope to highlight the fact that myth is by no means static, but a fluid, ongoing human production still in discourse today. The works of Homer have often been called the “Greek Bible.” Considering the historical importance of these texts, the analogy is not a bad one. However, they are not merely cultural counterparts. Each work has its own unique poise, and while both function as conveyers of myth, they are not identical or wholly equivocal. Through one story of The Iliad, specifically the destruction of the Achaean fortifications, and one of Genesis, the destruction of the tower of Babel. I want to examine this relationship. While these bear thematic relevance to one another, I believe they hint at something crucial to the disparity of the texts. They share a moral impetus: human pride gets no divine favor. They share the perceived result of such pride: their efforts will be scattered. What they do not share, however, is the explanatory impulse more peculiar to, though certainly not isolated to, the Bible. The analogous dialogue of myths with each other is dealt extensively in Laura Slatkin’s The Power of Thetis, a theme highly relevant not only to studies of Homer but also to the Bible: “As with rearrangements of formulas or themes, alternative combinations of the features of a myth are possible and equally legitimate, the choices serving to reveal the framework imposed on its subject matter by traditional genre requirements of heroic epics” (Slatkin 3). Just as myths cognate to Homer within his own culture can be useful to enriching a reading of Homer, Slatkin’s impetus to cross-examine myths thematically can be equally useful when considering mythopoesis across cultures. This premise is a driving factor of the following analysis.
The process of drawing these two bodies of myth together is, of course, already underway. In “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction,” Ruth Scodel examines the very same place in Homer that I am; that is, the anger of Poseidon at the building of the Achaean fortifications. She argues that “The Trojan War functions as a myth of destruction,” tying this to the deluge in Genesis, but also to other myths, such as the flood alluded to in The Epic of Gilgamesh, and some Babylonian myths (Scodel 39-42). She traces nicely this theme of destruction, discussing how the mythic map of Homer fills out and is supplemented by that of the Bible. Of course, her work is not exhaustive, nor is it meant to be; much like Slatkin’s short book, it merely seeks to flesh out similarities and relations of thought between two mythic bodies, in my opinion to encourage further exploration of both texts. Scodel herself notes that while the story of the Achaean wall resonates with the tale of the flood in Genesis, it is not a perfect correlation because “A war, no matter how long and how bitter, does not seem calamitous enough to have been an original form of the myth of destruction; it is, moreover, a normally human and local activity, to be explained historically, rather than a divine visitation. It therefore seems likely that this mythic aspect of the Trojan War is secondary, and that the theme has actually been borrowed from the Deluge” (Scodel 42-43).
I agree entirely that the Deluge myth reverberates strongly in the background of the story; it is the god of the ocean who threatens the wall, after all, and just as Jehovah threatens his world with destruction for its wickedness, so Poseidon is wrathful over the Achaeans’ shortcomings. However, there is a locality, as Scodel notes, which somewhat diminishes the scene in Homer from that in Genesis, so that while the Achaean wall is an echo of the Deluge myth tradition, it is a descendent myth rather than a contemporary one, in terms of mythological narrative. I think that the story of the Tower of Babel, therefore, is a somewhat more analogous story to the invective against the Achaean wall. It, in an even more explicit way, follows after a Deluge myth (indeed, is only a few pages later) and contains echoes of the myth it follows (a similar theme of destruction and punishment). Yet, like the story in Homer, the Tower of Babel’s recounting is given a locality, circumscribing it to a more specific mythic space, whereas the Deluge in both texts is an overwhelming, almost universal presence. In short, I believe that these two stories are in equal debt to Scodel’s conception of the “myth of destruction.”
There is one other, brief point of departure between my aims here and Scodel’s. Her purpose is more exclusively to trace the way in which Biblical myth resonates and echoes with Homer’s. Of course, that interest is very much a driving force in this discussion. She also briefly discusses a disassociation of Homeric myth from Near Eastern roots near the end of her essay, though she does not take this theme very far. It is my hope, however, to take it a step further. Just as cross-examining the myths for relationships of thoughts and themes is important, comprehending disparities in cultural poise is also important. For this reason, I will be concluding with an analysis of where the myths in question seem to come apart.
Doubtlessly, the action of these scenes is easily drawn together. In book seven of The Iliad, the Achaeans build a funeral pyre, and then construct fortifications around it. Poseidon is angered by this, and goes to Zeus demanding to know, “is there any mortal left on the wide earth who will still declare to the immortals his mind and his purpose?” (180). Zeus partially rebukes him for being so concerned about his station as a god, but agrees that the wall must go. And indeed, later in the story this happens. Similarly, in chapter 11 of Genesis we are told that people of Shinar began constructing a wall together. Their rationale for this tower partially has its roots in defense; they build it for fear that “we may be scattered over all the surface of the earth,” but interestingly the primary one they voice is not pragmatic at all: “Let us build ourselves a city and also a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a celebrated name for ourselves” (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, Gen. 11:4). The degree to which this echoes the words of Poseidon is astounding: “Now the fame of this will last as long as dawnlight is scattered” (Iliad 180). It is the fame of their tower that eggs on the people of Shinar, and the potential fame of the Achaeans’ wall which angers Poseidon. Indeed, it is not mere vanity which invokes divine wrath, but the forgetting of one’s place on the part of the humans. The Achaians have not sacrificed to Poseidon, and their work rivals that of the sea god and Apollo. The people of Shinar wish to “reach the heavens,” and as Jehovah says, they think there “is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them” (Genesis 11:6).
The punishment for this transgression of hubris is very similar. Zeus tells Poseidon to “break their wall to pieces and scatter it into the salt sea and pile again the beach deep under the sands and cover it; so let the great wall of the Achaeans go down to destruction” (Iliad 180). Jehovah does not scatter the Tower in the passage in Genesis, but scatters its builders. And his scattering is far deeper: he scatters their ideas by causing their language to become mixed up. It may seem that the Biblical punishment is more severe than the Homeric one, but we must remember too that the people of Shinar were transgressing on a much grander scale, and intentionally, while the act of the Achaians could very well have been mere oversight. Indeed, if we doubt that Zeus would not respond with equal ferocity to mortal transgressions into divine jurisdiction to Jehovah’s, we need only remember his words to the gods during the Trojan battle:
“And anyone I perceive against the gods’ will attempting to go among the Trojans and help them, or among the Danaans, he shall go whipped against his dignity back to Olympos; or I shall take him and dash him down to the murk of Tartaros, far below, where the uttermost depth of the pit lies under earth, where there are gates of iron and a brazen doorstone, as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies. Then he will see how far I am the strongest of all the immortals.” (Iliad 182) Certainly, Zeus does not take kindly to insubordination, and in fact this aggressive assertion of his will follows directly after the transgression of the Achaeans and the supplication of Poseidon.
The similarities and contrasts of these scenes could likely fill many volumes, but I wish to focus on only one disparity. This is the fact that the two gods are in dialogue with each other, whereas Jehovah speaks in dialogue, but seems alone in the text. He uses words like “Look!” and “us”! That the writer chose to use God’s words as dialogue implies a listener: but who is that listener? Angels? Himself? It cannot be another “god” in the Homeric sense. Now, scholars have dealt with this theologically, but in terms of literary analysis, the effect is singular. It brings the reader into the text: God is, in fact, talking to us. The action of the text becomes, therefore, present. And indeed, we get explanations from the story which are pertinent to the present: how we came to be a race of many languages, and the name of the place where it happened, ‘Babel.’ The action of Homer’s tale does not do this. We are told nothing about what effect Zeus’ decree against the wall did to change our lives. The action of Homer’s story, therefore, at least in this moment, serves to further only the action of Homer’s story. This is not to say that his story is not pertinent to the audience; certainly, the moral content could be of great interest either to his contemporaries or to us. And yet, the moral concerns are cast as specific to the moment. Their present-day value is left for the reader or listener to consider, if they do so at all. But for readers of Genesis, the connection of the text to their present day is unavoidable.
Works Cited
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Richard Lattimoore. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1951.
New World Bible Translation Committee. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Pennsylvania: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1984.
Slatkin, Laura. The Power of Thetis. California: University of California Press, 1994.
Scodel, Ruth. “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Vol. 86, pp. 33-50. Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1982.
The Tower of Babel and the Achaean Wall
“The Deluge and the Golden Age are myth; it is doubtless through an extensive series of modifications that echoes of the myths have become poetry.” Ruth Scodel 50
Opening with this closing remark from Scodel, I hope to highlight the fact that myth is by no means static, but a fluid, ongoing human production still in discourse today. The works of Homer have often been called the “Greek Bible.” Considering the historical importance of these texts, the analogy is not a bad one. However, they are not merely cultural counterparts. Each work has its own unique poise, and while both function as conveyers of myth, they are not identical or wholly equivocal. Through one story of The Iliad, specifically the destruction of the Achaean fortifications, and one of Genesis, the destruction of the tower of Babel. I want to examine this relationship. While these bear thematic relevance to one another, I believe they hint at something crucial to the disparity of the texts. They share a moral impetus: human pride gets no divine favor. They share the perceived result of such pride: their efforts will be scattered. What they do not share, however, is the explanatory impulse more peculiar to, though certainly not isolated to, the Bible. The analogous dialogue of myths with each other is dealt extensively in Laura Slatkin’s The Power of Thetis, a theme highly relevant not only to studies of Homer but also to the Bible: “As with rearrangements of formulas or themes, alternative combinations of the features of a myth are possible and equally legitimate, the choices serving to reveal the framework imposed on its subject matter by traditional genre requirements of heroic epics” (Slatkin 3). Just as myths cognate to Homer within his own culture can be useful to enriching a reading of Homer, Slatkin’s impetus to cross-examine myths thematically can be equally useful when considering mythopoesis across cultures. This premise is a driving factor of the following analysis.
The process of drawing these two bodies of myth together is, of course, already underway. In “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction,” Ruth Scodel examines the very same place in Homer that I am; that is, the anger of Poseidon at the building of the Achaean fortifications. She argues that “The Trojan War functions as a myth of destruction,” tying this to the deluge in Genesis, but also to other myths, such as the flood alluded to in The Epic of Gilgamesh, and some Babylonian myths (Scodel 39-42). She traces nicely this theme of destruction, discussing how the mythic map of Homer fills out and is supplemented by that of the Bible. Of course, her work is not exhaustive, nor is it meant to be; much like Slatkin’s short book, it merely seeks to flesh out similarities and relations of thought between two mythic bodies, in my opinion to encourage further exploration of both texts. Scodel herself notes that while the story of the Achaean wall resonates with the tale of the flood in Genesis, it is not a perfect correlation because “A war, no matter how long and how bitter, does not seem calamitous enough to have been an original form of the myth of destruction; it is, moreover, a normally human and local activity, to be explained historically, rather than a divine visitation. It therefore seems likely that this mythic aspect of the Trojan War is secondary, and that the theme has actually been borrowed from the Deluge” (Scodel 42-43).
I agree entirely that the Deluge myth reverberates strongly in the background of the story; it is the god of the ocean who threatens the wall, after all, and just as Jehovah threatens his world with destruction for its wickedness, so Poseidon is wrathful over the Achaeans’ shortcomings. However, there is a locality, as Scodel notes, which somewhat diminishes the scene in Homer from that in Genesis, so that while the Achaean wall is an echo of the Deluge myth tradition, it is a descendent myth rather than a contemporary one, in terms of mythological narrative. I think that the story of the Tower of Babel, therefore, is a somewhat more analogous story to the invective against the Achaean wall. It, in an even more explicit way, follows after a Deluge myth (indeed, is only a few pages later) and contains echoes of the myth it follows (a similar theme of destruction and punishment). Yet, like the story in Homer, the Tower of Babel’s recounting is given a locality, circumscribing it to a more specific mythic space, whereas the Deluge in both texts is an overwhelming, almost universal presence. In short, I believe that these two stories are in equal debt to Scodel’s conception of the “myth of destruction.”
There is one other, brief point of departure between my aims here and Scodel’s. Her purpose is more exclusively to trace the way in which Biblical myth resonates and echoes with Homer’s. Of course, that interest is very much a driving force in this discussion. She also briefly discusses a disassociation of Homeric myth from Near Eastern roots near the end of her essay, though she does not take this theme very far. It is my hope, however, to take it a step further. Just as cross-examining the myths for relationships of thoughts and themes is important, comprehending disparities in cultural poise is also important. For this reason, I will be concluding with an analysis of where the myths in question seem to come apart.
Doubtlessly, the action of these scenes is easily drawn together. In book seven of The Iliad, the Achaeans build a funeral pyre, and then construct fortifications around it. Poseidon is angered by this, and goes to Zeus demanding to know, “is there any mortal left on the wide earth who will still declare to the immortals his mind and his purpose?” (180). Zeus partially rebukes him for being so concerned about his station as a god, but agrees that the wall must go. And indeed, later in the story this happens. Similarly, in chapter 11 of Genesis we are told that people of Shinar began constructing a wall together. Their rationale for this tower partially has its roots in defense; they build it for fear that “we may be scattered over all the surface of the earth,” but interestingly the primary one they voice is not pragmatic at all: “Let us build ourselves a city and also a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a celebrated name for ourselves” (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, Gen. 11:4). The degree to which this echoes the words of Poseidon is astounding: “Now the fame of this will last as long as dawnlight is scattered” (Iliad 180). It is the fame of their tower that eggs on the people of Shinar, and the potential fame of the Achaeans’ wall which angers Poseidon. Indeed, it is not mere vanity which invokes divine wrath, but the forgetting of one’s place on the part of the humans. The Achaians have not sacrificed to Poseidon, and their work rivals that of the sea god and Apollo. The people of Shinar wish to “reach the heavens,” and as Jehovah says, they think there “is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them” (Genesis 11:6).
The punishment for this transgression of hubris is very similar. Zeus tells Poseidon to “break their wall to pieces and scatter it into the salt sea and pile again the beach deep under the sands and cover it; so let the great wall of the Achaeans go down to destruction” (Iliad 180). Jehovah does not scatter the Tower in the passage in Genesis, but scatters its builders. And his scattering is far deeper: he scatters their ideas by causing their language to become mixed up. It may seem that the Biblical punishment is more severe than the Homeric one, but we must remember too that the people of Shinar were transgressing on a much grander scale, and intentionally, while the act of the Achaians could very well have been mere oversight. Indeed, if we doubt that Zeus would not respond with equal ferocity to mortal transgressions into divine jurisdiction to Jehovah’s, we need only remember his words to the gods during the Trojan battle:
“And anyone I perceive against the gods’ will attempting to go among the Trojans and help them, or among the Danaans, he shall go whipped against his dignity back to Olympos; or I shall take him and dash him down to the murk of Tartaros, far below, where the uttermost depth of the pit lies under earth, where there are gates of iron and a brazen doorstone, as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies. Then he will see how far I am the strongest of all the immortals.” (Iliad 182) Certainly, Zeus does not take kindly to insubordination, and in fact this aggressive assertion of his will follows directly after the transgression of the Achaeans and the supplication of Poseidon.
The similarities and contrasts of these scenes could likely fill many volumes, but I wish to focus on only one disparity. This is the fact that the two gods are in dialogue with each other, whereas Jehovah speaks in dialogue, but seems alone in the text. He uses words like “Look!” and “us”! That the writer chose to use God’s words as dialogue implies a listener: but who is that listener? Angels? Himself? It cannot be another “god” in the Homeric sense. Now, scholars have dealt with this theologically, but in terms of literary analysis, the effect is singular. It brings the reader into the text: God is, in fact, talking to us. The action of the text becomes, therefore, present. And indeed, we get explanations from the story which are pertinent to the present: how we came to be a race of many languages, and the name of the place where it happened, ‘Babel.’ The action of Homer’s tale does not do this. We are told nothing about what effect Zeus’ decree against the wall did to change our lives. The action of Homer’s story, therefore, at least in this moment, serves to further only the action of Homer’s story. This is not to say that his story is not pertinent to the audience; certainly, the moral content could be of great interest either to his contemporaries or to us. And yet, the moral concerns are cast as specific to the moment. Their present-day value is left for the reader or listener to consider, if they do so at all. But for readers of Genesis, the connection of the text to their present day is unavoidable.
Works Cited
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Richard Lattimoore. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1951.
New World Bible Translation Committee. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Pennsylvania: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1984.
Slatkin, Laura. The Power of Thetis. California: University of California Press, 1994.
Scodel, Ruth. “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Vol. 86, pp. 33-50. Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1982.
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