Exertion and Freedom

As can be discovered upon close examination, if there is any aspect of Experience over which one has complete control, it is Exertion, i. e. a successful attempt at even the simplest physiological motions depends on muscular and neurological health, each of which is susceptible to disease or injury, to which the attempt is immune. Hence, even the simplest Motility, let alone complicated Action, requires more than 'individual freedom', i. e. requires cooperation from factors other than itself. Still, some Atomists might argue that the source of Exertion is the 'individual Soul'. But, if so, absent a compelling explanation of Soul-Body Causality, which, e. g. neither Descartes nor Kant provides, their thesis has no actual, i. e. Political or Economic, implications. In contrast, a different dualism--the function-argument relation of Mathematics--avoids such familiar difficulties. On that model, Exertion always operates on something else that is given, e. g. on a physiological network. So, the absolute 'freedom' of action ascribed by Individualists to 'individuals', has no obvious correlate in actual experience.