Sunday, July 31, 2011

Will and Creativity

Creativity is often conceived to occur 'ex nihilo'. However, it is the process of producing something new, and newness is always relative to antecedent conditions. For example, the universe created according to Genesis has God as its antecedent condition, and even 'nothing' is indefinite homogeneity with respect to which 'something' is a novelty. Likewise, personal creativity entails a diversification of givenness. In other words, personal creativity entails Will.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Will and Emotion

The conventional notion of 'emotion' is a passively endured state, like a color that an object bears. In contrast, Sartre conceives it as vicarious action in response to circumstances, e. g. 'anger' is an imaginary obliteration of its object, not a heated affect. The model of Experience here follows Sartre, by analyzing Emotion as a combination of Will and unsettled Formal Causality, i. e. of nascent Motility that remains unfocused, resulting in underdetermined action. Hence, Emotion is an intrinsically unstable condition which can be resolved either by a more effective organization and directing of generated energy, or by a more decisive detachment of Will from preceding circumstances. On the other hand, the popular glorification of 'emotion' only cultivates passivity, ineffectiveness, and frustration.

Friday, July 29, 2011

Will and Memory

As previously discussed, according to the model of Experience being presented here, the immediate object of Consciousness is always Will, i. e. one's Motility, and perceptual activity is a species of Motility. Hence, for example, the 'consciousness of visual image X' is, more properly, 'the consciousness of looking at X'. Similarly, the immediate object of Memory is always Motility, e. g. what one remembers is not the visual image X, but one's looking at X. Furthermore, according to this model, Experience is cumulative, so that one's remembering of one's looking at X is also one's remembering of oneself at previous stage of one's current self, a stage which itself similarly incorporates its antecedents. On this basis, Bergson's theory of pure Memory is erroneous in two respects--that different memory images are independent of one another, and that even when not being applied to current activity, a memory image is detached from one's current Self.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Will, Writing, Thinking

It seems uncontroversial that an act of writing on a sheet of paper involves Will, i. e. Motility. Now, perhaps the most significant of Derrida's innovative theses is that thinking 'in one's head' is a species of writing, which overturns the dogma that writing is a mere replication of thinking. This thesis entails, in particular, that the mental appearance of a symbol is accomplished by the mind's producing of it, rather than, as tradition has it, by an uncanny visitation. Thus, just as Motility is involved in the producing of a symbol on a piece of paper, Will is implicated in even the most abstract thought processes.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Will, Habit, Passion

Two of Hume's most influential theses are--'Causality consists in a constant conjunction' and 'Reason is the slave of Passion'. Rarely recognized is how further analyses of the two demonstrates how the former undermines the latter. For, the more precise formulation of 'constant conjunction' is the 'habit of constantly conjoining', and, as Deleuze argues, a 'habit' is itself a constant conjunction. In other words, Hume's own thesis prescribes how Reason, i. e. analysis, can expose a habit as breakable. Furthermore, since 'Passion' is habitual response to some stimulus, on that prescription, Reason can effect detachment from Passion, and, so, is not its slave. For Schopenhauer, such an appreciation of the power of Reason informs his Quietism, leaving unexplored the principle that has been developed here--Will, which not only can initiate motion in the absence of some stimulus, but is that psychological component which, more precisely, gets 'enslaved', i. e. when it becomes the conditioned response to some stimulus in the original formation of a habit.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Will and Deliberation

As previously discussed, Will is indefinite Motility, requiring specification from another source before it eventuates in determinate action. That process of specification often entails more or less explicit phases of deliberation and selection. In other words, Deliberation can casually be characterized as determining Will, which, however, does not mean, as it does for some systems, that the former is the efficient cause of the latter. Rather, here it means, more precisely, that Will is the Material Cause of Action, the Formal Causality of which often entails a deliberative phase.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Will and Freedom of Choice

Diversification is, in itself, an indefinite process that requires specification to become determinate. For example, 'pluralization', in itself, does not distinguish between 'doubling', 'tripling', etc. Similarly, Will, the principle of Diversification in Experience, is, in itself, indefinite Motility that requires specification via, e. g. the positing of an Intention by Consciousness, to eventuate in concrete doing. Thus, conversely, the situation often characterized as a 'freedom of choice between X and Y' presupposes a more fundamental 'freedom', namely that from precondition C, an indefinite 'freedom', which X or Y can make determinate. In other words, the so-called 'freedom of choice' presupposes Will, which is the occasion of any specific selection process.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Will and Atomization

Hume's theory of Atomistic Impressionism, i. e. that all experience is derived from discrete sensory moments, has typically been criticized as entailing an abstraction--for example, from physiological causality, according to Lockeians, and from successiveness, according to Kantians. Formaterialism further develops the latter challenges, by holding that experience is cumulative, so that every new impression incorporates the entire sequence that precedes it. But also, the system pursues a different vulnerability, one that Whitehead suggests, but lacks the conceptual resources to fully explore. What Hume also abstracts from is any process of atomization that might produce the atoms that he takes as given. Whitehead's contention that experience atomizes the world is difficult to explain in terms of Concrescence alone, i.e . without a recognition of Discrescence. In contrast, in Formaterialism, Will, as exceeding the given, introduces discrete novelty into experience, a process which can not completely inaccurately be characterized as 'atomization', though any novelty is always with respect to what proceeds it. However, such an accommodation of atomization offers little help to an Impressionist such as Hume, i. e. to a theory in which cognition has priority over volition.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Will and Propriation

Kant observes that each and every perception in the 'bundle' that for Hume constitutes the 'self' is 'my' perception. It follows that the process of becoming conscious in a perception can be characterized as a 'taking possession' of it. Accordingly, Consciousness has here been called 'Propriation', i. e. Consciousness, as a process of interiorizing its object, takes possession of it. As has been previously discussed, one significant departure here from the Humean and Kantian theories of cognition is that the immediate object of Consciousness is not some external item, but Will, i. e. one's Motility, including not only walking, etc., but looking at, listening to, etc., as well. So, on this model of Experience, 'one's ownmost' is neither one's death, as Heidegger has it, nor one's choosing, as Sartre asserts, but one's past, i. e. what one has hitherto done.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Will, Autonomy, Heteronomy

Hume defines Self as 'a bundle of perceptions', to which Kant's best-known response is that Hume fails to explore the notion of 'bundle', thereby missing its origin in an 'I'. However, Kant also appreciates the Spinozistic criticism that the content of the Humean bundle is heteronomous, i. e. a collection only of affections with external sources, and, hence, is not at all an expression of Selfhood. So, his theory of Autonomy counters with a concept of Selfhood in which an 'I' gives itself the principle of pure practical reason. But, as Jaspers observes, in the locating of Selfhood in what amounts to an impersonal I, the details of one's own past experience become irrelevant to the Self. In contrast, Idionomy, as presented here, consists in the process of Will as introducing a novel variation on what one has previously become, thereby defining a Self that is neither heteronomous nor impersonal.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Will and Imagination

Kant's phrase 'productive imagination' does not do justice to the significance of his discovery to which it refers. That formulation suggests that what the denoted process generates is a type of image, not, as Kant himself further explains, a procedural rule. Similarly, the common notion of 'intention' is a pre-vision of some potential object of attainment, rather than an outline of a potential course of action. For example, a thirsty person does not merely entertain an image of a cup of water, but projects the process of their picking up the cup and drinking from it, and, perhaps, that of holding the cup under a tap, turning the faucet, etc. In other words, one, and perhaps the most fundamental, contribution of Imagination to Experience is as the Formal Cause of Will, i. e. as the supplier of an Intention that structures and directs Motility.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Will and Spinozism

Spinozism rejects the concept of Will that is being presented here, seemingly on the grounds that setting oneself in motion is an illusory process. However, on closer examination, the apparent personal freedom that Spinoza targets as illusory is, specifically, teleological motility, on the grounds that an intention that seems to initiate action is itself the effect of a prior cause, a diagnosis that does not apply to a non-teleological process such as Will. What Spinozism does reject is the violation of its Parallelism, i. e. that Will originates in Mind and eventuates in Body. However, that Parallelism entails the simultaneity of the idea of a physical movement and its object, which is disproved by more recent physiological analysis, i. e. by the discovery of a time-lapse between a cerebral signal and its corresponding motor activity. Furthermore, Spinoza's recognition of only Efficient Causality precludes any appreciation of a process, such as Will, that is categorized as a Material Cause. So, at best, Spinozism offers no compelling argument against this concept of Will.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Will and Epiphenomenalism

Epiphenomenalism holds that mental phenomena are no more than signs of physiological processes, and, therefore, exercise no causal efficacy with respect to them. It follows from such a thesis that Will is either a non-mental or a non-causal process. However, the doctrine is based on three arbitrary premises--that all Causality is of the Efficient variety, that the function of Mind is exclusively representational, and that Mind and Body are fundamentally separated. Thus, it arbitrarily precludes that Will effects Material Causality; that Will, as distinguished from Consciousness, is a non-representational process, originating in Mind, of setting an organism in motion; and that Will is a transition from mentality to physicality. Hence, despite the ambitions of Epiphenomenalism, Will is neither non-mental nor non-causal.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Will and Repetition

On the model of Experience being developed here, Will introduces novelty into Experience. On that basis, a repetition is the outcome of an effort to reproduce as closely as possible an object of a previous representation. In other words, as Deleuze argues, Repetition is a mode of Difference, the ground of which has been suppressed by the pervasive chronic Parmenidean interpretation of it. Furthermore, since 'to will a recurrence' is only one way of formulating 'to Will a repetition', the interpretation of the theory of Eternal Recurrence, regardless of how Nietzsche intends it, as positing the perpetual repetition of identical events, suppresses Will just as much as the Parmenidean tradition does.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Will, Education, Political Theory

As Dewey shows, a theory of Education is systematically related to a political doctrine. For example, his pedagogical Experimentalism promotes political Progressivism, just as pedagogical Dogmatism promotes political Conservativism. In turn, a theory of Education presupposes a model of Experience. For example, Experimentalism recognizes, as has been previously discussed, that Will is the immediate object of Consciousness, i. e. that the introduction of uncertainty and novelty is intrinsic to Experience. In contrast, Dogmatism, which consists in the inter-generational transmission of established, and perhaps eternal, 'truths', presupposes that Consciousness is fundamentally a not necessarily embodied processor of information. Furthermore, the locus of cultivation for Experimentalism is the public dimension of personal activity, whereas, dogmatism privileges privacy. Hence, the contemporary Progressive-Conservative political polarity expresses an opposition of models of Experience, the sharpness of which calls into question the soundness of any 'centrist' compromise.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Will and Education

According to one prevalent pedagogical theory, the aim of education is the transmission of established 'truths', often presumably 'eternal' ones. Such a theory presupposes that the primary function of Consciousness is data-processing, one which, especially in the case of eternal truths, is not necessarily an embodied process. However, if, as proposed here, the immediate object of Consciousness is always Will, i. e. some motile process, then what is primarily learned in the transmission of information is how to receive, store, and retrieve data. In contrast, in a pedagogical theory which respects the fundamentality of Will in Experience, the substance of education is not information, but method. Still, the inculcation of a universal method always threatens to degenerate into impersonal dogmatism, as most major doctrines have proven over the centuries. One exception is Experimentalism, as pioneered by Dewey, which not only appreciates that every new exercise of Will challenges previously established truths. but draws its validity from such novelty.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Will and Uncertainty

Will consists in an effort that exceeds the given, with the outcome of the effort always indeterminable in advance. This indeterminability is usually glossed over by probabilistic expectation, without which efficient everyday experience would be difficult, and which is validated by regularity of outcome. Nevertheless, in principle, Will introduces irreducible uncertainty into Experience, thereby rendering the latter as fundamentally a process of ongoing trial-and-error, i. e. as an ongoing experiment. The etymological synonymy of 'experience' and 'experiment' has already been discussed.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Will, Appearing, Agoraphobia

As previously argued, 'will to power' is a misleading characterization of Will, because it suggests that the exercise of power emerges at a terminal phase of the process, whereas Will, from the outset, is already an expression of strength, i. e. with respect to the antecedent conditions that it surpasses. A more accurate formulation with that structure is 'will to appear', since Will consists in a transition from inner to outer. Thus, agoraphobia is a failure of Will, though not a 'weakness' of it, as has been previously discussed.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Will and Relaxation

In Formaterialism, Will initiates motions, and Consciousness terminates them. The transition in Experience characterized as 'relaxation' often combines Will and Consciousness, and, so, in such cases, does not entail a termination of Motility, e. g. the graceful motions of an artist or athlete can be described as 'relaxed acceleration'. Conversely, activities commonly describable as 'slowing down' or 'stopping' are not necessarily to be classified as 'relaxation'. As Newtonian Physics shows, and as is exemplified in the use of brakes in a vehicle, slowing down and stopping can be effected by Motility exerted in a direction opposite to that of given motions. Likewise, the experiential transition from a sprint to sitting down in a chair is not necessarily an act of relaxation.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Will and Doing Nothing

The characterization of Will as 'setting oneself in motion' is not meant to imply that 'doing nothing' is its precondition. Each of the following is an example of the functioning of Will--standing up; starting to walk; breaking into a trot; and, accelerating to a sprint. Even what precedes standing up, i. e. being seated, is not doing nothing, despite the long history that tends to treat a sedentary person as disembodied. Sitting and daydreaming is still doing something, and is always preceded by some other activity. The lacunae in Experience are introduced by Will as it surpasses the previous situation, which always has positive content of some sort.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Will, Effort, Motility

The example of a paralyzed person seems to challenge the equation proposed here of Will and Motility, i. e. the example entails a distinction between attempting to set oneself in motion and successfully setting oneself in motion. However, on this model, Will is, in itself, indefinite effort, receiving determination only from the Formal Causality of Consciousness, e. g. through the positing of an intention. Hence, any inadequacy of effort is only relative to some posited end, i. e. is not intrinsic to Will itself. In other words, even the futile exertion of a paralyzed person trying to move a limb constitutes Motility, just not enough for that particular purpose.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Will and Weakness

Aristotle's notion 'weakness of will' characterizes a failure to act in accordance with what one believes is best. In other words, it attributes to will an absolute deficiency. Nietzsche vacillates between diagnosing such weakness as relative to the strength of another will, and as the product of an internal deterioration. In contrast with both, for Formaterialism, Will, as exceeding given conditions, always entails strength, independently of any subsequent constraints, or of any retrospective judgment that an Excession was less robust than it might have been. Hence, on this model, Will, in itself, is never 'weak'.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Will and Responsibility

On the model being presented here, Experience is cumulative, so that one is always the accumulation of what one has done. Furthermore, specific actions are always constituted by a variable combination of personal creativity and the weight of circumstances. So, not merely is this model inhospitable to any easy quantification of 'responsibility', that concept is extrinsic to it, and, ultimately, is arbitrary, as well. Its synonymy with 'answerable' expresses the impersonality of the source of the notion of 'responsible', as well as its usual equivalence to 'blameable'. In turn, the prevalent notion of 'blameworthiness' suppresses three arbitrary premises--the Atomism of actions, the absolutism of 'Evil', and the inattributability of 'Evil' to an omnipotent Deity. That is, the notion presupposes the clear determinability of some human as the unique sufficient cause of an event that is unequivocally harmful to someone. How the implicit exoneration of an omnipotent Deity from evil-doing conditions the standard 'free will vs. determinism' debate has already been discussed--it necessitates the blameworthiness of humans for any ill or misfortune. So, to deny that 'responsibility' is extrinsic to personal Experience is not to reject the potential value and legitimacy of some jurisprudential measures. It is, rather, to challenge the a priori equivalence of 'will' and 'responsibility' that many influential systems raise to a metaphysical principle.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Will and Idionomy

A conditioned response to an external stimulus is heteronomic behavior. The neutralization of a potential stimulus by impersonal Reason is the basis of Kantian 'autonomy'. Whether or not that Reason further suffices to initiate a positive course action is unclear. In contrast, Will, i. e. the process of setting oneself in motion, can neutralize a potential external influence, and can initiate a positive course of action, without the intervention of Reason. Hence, the personal creative conduct that it helps generate can be characterized as 'idionomous', to be distinguished from impersonal self-constraining 'autonomous' conduct. That personal creative conduct consists in a process of self-cultivation, in which in every new experiential episode, one varies what one has hitherto achieved. So, for example, even an encounter with an external threat or temptation is an opportunity for personal growth in idionomic experience.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Will and Empowerment

The thesis that has been proposed here--that the immediate object of Consciousness is always Will--might be construed as a perhaps insightful alternative to some traditional theories. But, it can also be taken as a potentially effective discovery. For, it reveals, as a stratum of even cognitive experience, a moment of setting oneself in motion. Thus, it exposes, in even a presumed passive relation, an active ground the discernment of which potentially transforms Experience. That transformation can occur when some physiological motion ensues upon the perception of some external object, i. e. in the context of a response to a stimulus, which, given the presumed passivity of perception, is never more than reactive. But, if every awareness of an outer object is a Consciousness of one's extending oneself towards it, e. g. looking at it, listening to it, etc., and if any subsequent motion is self-activated, then reactive behavior is transformed into active conduct. In other words, that Will is the immediate object of Consciousness is not only potentially insightful, but potentially empowering, as well.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Will and Perception

As the fundamental principles of Experience, Will and Consciousness combine to constitute it in an infinite variety of different ways, often with one or the other predominating, but not to the absolute exclusion of the subordinate factor. Now, Will is self-exteriorization, and Consciousness is self-interiorization. So, experiences that tend to extroversion are expressions of the predominance of Will, while Consciousness predominates in the more introspective experiences. Thus, Perception, i. e. the awareness of an external object, is, on this model, constituted by a predominance of Will over Consciousness, despite the efforts of many systems to gloss over the Motility entailed in it. By attempting to characterize Perception as a direct relation between incorporeal mind and the external world, they neglect to explain how an inward-directed process such as Consciousness becomes everted.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Will, Consciousness, Self-Consciousness

On the model of Experience being proposed here, the immediate object of Consciousness is always Will, i. e. what one has been doing. Hence, Consciousness is always, properly, Self-Consciousness, in terms of which standard concepts of 'consciousness' and of 'self-consciousness' often express greater fidelity to dogmatic commitments than to the features of Experience itself. 'Consciousness' is frequently conceived as a relation between mind and an external object, while 'self-consciousness' as relation of mind to itself, each thus abstracting from corporeality, thereby supporting, wittingly or otherwise, doctrines that assert the independent reality of an incorporeal realm of existence. In contrast, the object of Self-Consciousness, as conceived here, is always, irreducibly, one's walking, one's looking at, one's sitting, etc., all modes of Will, all entailing a physiological dimension.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Will and Sense Experience

As previously discussed, Will entails interaction with one's environment, i. e. the physiological motions that it initiates are not merely intra-organistic. For example, walking entails the ground's support for and the resistance to the exertions of one's legs. Similar examples of such Motility include the interaction between one's eyes and light waves, and that between one's ears and sound waves. In other words, sensory activity is a mode of Will, from which traditional concepts of passive 'sense experience' are abstractions.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Will and Environment

Physiological motions are often treated as merely intra-organistic, but, as Dewey argues, they are actually constituted by the interaction between an organism and its environment. For example, walking involves the resistance of the ground to the exertion of the legs, not merely the latter alone. Similarly, the effect of the air pressure that constantly surrounds one's body tends to be ignored until a heavy wind makes even lifting one's arm difficult. In other words, Will, the setting oneself in motion, is both a venture into Exteriority and an engagement with Alteriority. So, Levinas fails to recognize that one's engagement with another person is only a special case of Will-Environment interaction in general.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Will, Reasoning , Animality

On the model of human Experience presented here, Will is the process of setting oneself in motion, into which Reasoning effects a type of connectivity. Now, in the absence of any direct access, the question of whether or not non-human animals are capable of Will and/or of Reasoning is indeterminable, i. e. the abundant empirical evidence of intelligent animal behavior is always susceptible to a reduction to mechanistic explanation. Likewise, both the traditional thesis that Rationality is the defining characteristic of the specifically human animal, and its modification, that humans possess greater Rationality than do other animals, are sheerly speculative. However, humans do evince a greater diversity of motions, as well as a greater diversity of organized motions, than do other animals, from which more comprehensive Reasoning, as the organizer of those motions, can be at least inferred, even if a capacity to perform abstract calculations cannot be. So, even without the speculation that has been its traditional support, there remains sound grounds for the thesis that humanity is a higher species than other fauna.

Friday, July 1, 2011

Will and Reasoning

A stream of utterances can be more or less coherent. In some cases, coherence is a function of the meanings of a sequence of utterances, but in other cases, e. g. rhyming, it is not. 'Reasoning' can be defined as a sequence of utterances the coherence of which is determined by certain rules governing sequences of utterances. Now, uttering is a mode of Motility, and, therefore, of Will. Hence, Reasoning can be defined as a characteristic of Will. Of course, an influential tradition argues that the rules of Reasoning are independent of utterances, and, likewise, that Reason exists even where there are no utterances. Instead, according to that tradition, Reasoning is a process of unpacking what already implicitly exists, with respect to which a novel utterance is extrinsic. However, that interpretation leaves unexamined the meaning of 'implicit', likely because it recognizes the difficulty in proving, without making it explicit, that something implicitly exists. In other words, that interpretation has difficulty denying that even 'pure' Reasoning does not consist in the issuance of a new proposition. Until it surmounts that difficulty, that interpretation remains vulnerable to the counter-thesis that Reasoning is primarily the process of generating new utterances, i. e. is fundamentally a characteristic of Will.