Excession and Freedom

According to Sartre, Freedom consists in a spontaneous upsurge of choosing how one will comport oneself under given conditions. More specifically, choosing is an act of Consciousness that can be either reflective or unreflective, e. g. even being-thirsty is freely chosen, according to Sartre. However, there are three weaknesses in his analysis. First, even if choice is spontaneous, it still arises only as a response to the exigencies of circumstances--none of Sartre's examples are of purely random behavior--so, to that extent, Freedom is still conditioned. Second, his account is susceptible to the Epiphenomenalist challenge that the upsurge that results in a conscious choice may itself have a non-conscious, e. g. organic, origin. Finally, his analysis both misses and cannot explain a closely related phenomenon. Even granted that Consciousness is a spontaneous upsurge that produces a choice, a further lacuna usually transpires as well--one between the conscious resolution to act and the subsequent action. This gap between thought and action is so familiar, and so chronically inexplicable, that it is probably a main evidential basis of many Mind-Body dualisms. Yet, since this Nothingness is produced by an upsurge of physical motion away from Consciousness, attributing it to Consciousness seems difficult. Hence, Sartre's theory of Nothingness cannot accommodate this most common of phenomena. In contrast, the transition from a formulated conscious intention to the intended act is, for Formaterialism, the prototype of Excession, and the fundamental moment of experiential Freedom. Furthermore, unlike Sartre's concept of Freedom, Excession is fundamentally de trop, and, hence, not intrinsically a response to circumstances. Plus, while it does not refute Epiphenomenalism, it puts the onus on the latter to explain how a transition, such as that from intending to raise one's arm to actually raising it, is illusory or coincidental. Finally, and perhaps most important, in contrast with all of Sartre's varying models and examples, Excession satisfies both conditions of Freedom--Spontaneity and Efficacy.