Ascent To Volitional
Consciousness
(Originally appeared in
Objectivity, Volume 1, Number 2)
by John Enright
I would like to begin with a basic sketch of my argument,
so that its structure stands
out clearly. I will then return
and review my steps,
attempting to place each one in its proper
context of intellectual
controversy.
I. Basic Argument
An animal -- a dog, a cat, even a fly -- has a kind of
awareness.
This awareness guides the animal's action.
A fly uses its sense of smell to find food. A fly uses its
sense of sight to avoid my
swats.
An animal -- a bird, a fish, even an earthworm -- is
equipped to travel under its
own power, under its own
control.
A moving animal selects among possible courses -- it
navigates -- and its
awareness is its navigator.
A nightcrawler, as it burrows through the earth, constantly
determines which way to go
next.
An animal's actions are limited by its range of awareness.
A dog's actions with regard to doorknobs are severely
limited by the fact that a
dog cannot figure out how the darn
things work. After all, a large dog is physically capable
of
clamping its teeth on the
doorknob and giving it a turn and a
pull. But such a course of action never occurs to
a dog --even
after it has watched humans
pull the same stunt over and over
again. The dog will push the door, bark at the
door, scratch
at the door, and maybe try
to dig under the door. But it will
not solve the riddle of the
doorknob.
Higher animals often pause to contemplate the possibilities
placed before them. A cheetah lurks in the bush and studies
the herd of antelope on the
plain. It identifies which of its
potential prey aren't moving
very well -- which ones are sick,
lame, or very young. It picks just one, and then it attacks.
As humans, we routinely
contemplate possibilities beyond
any other animal's
awareness. We do it with concepts -- a
fancy mental trick which
involves giving names to abstractions
and imagining them as
things. A trick, with big consequences,
that no other species can
follow.
As humans, we are self-aware.
An ape may be sufficiently self-aware to know, when it
looks in the mirror, that it
is looking at its own image.
It can be aware of itself as a body. But as humans we are
aware of our own awareness,
aware of ourselves as minds.
Again, we do it with
concepts, fixing the whirling patterns of
our mental processes with
names and definitions.
As humans, we are aware of our own habits. All animals
form habits. Habits are formed, after all, simply by
selecting
some sort of action
repeatedly, over time. But no other
animal
is capable of understanding
this process or its implications.
A dog may form habits analogous to human cowardice, but it
will never be aware of the
process by which it happened. It
may still be aware, when it
encounters an enemy, that fighting
is one of its options. Indeed, if it has nowhere to run, it
may still choose to fight,
and this may in turn be the
beginning of a new
habit. But a dog will never grasp the
overall pattern.
As humans, we are capable of grasping our own intellectual
habits, capable of grasping
their crucial importance to our
well-being, and capable of
changing them.
A dog, in its way, has something akin to human intellectual
habits. A dog can be habitually alert, or habitually
oblivious
to its surroundings. A dog can be trained, to some extent, to
either attitude -- trained
by presenting it with situations in
which one or the other
attitude is rewarded. If the dog acts
as the trainer wishes, the
dog will change its habits in the
direction the trainer
desires. In so doing, the dog will be
shaping its own habitual
level of mental alertness. But the
dog will never be aware of
doing so.
Does this mean that dogs have free will?
Well, I think they have
something. Their awareness detects
alternatives and selects
actions. An awareness that couldn't
do this, that was just along
for the ride as an observant
passenger, would be an
awareness without survival value.
Compared to our own wide-ranging and reflective powers of
choice, a dog's power to
choose is profoundly constrained. So
the term "free
choice" does not seem to fit. But
a dog's
choices do seem freer than
those available to a flat-worm.
It is not so much that other animals are un-free. Rather,
we have far more freedom
than any other animal could dream of.
Human beings face many choices. Among these, is the choice
of whether or not to think
-- whether or not to apply and
cultivate one's cognitive
capabilities.
Is this choice different than other choices?
In some ways yes. It is
a more important choice than most
others, and it is a choice
that expands or curtails our own
future range of choices.
Choosing whether to think is important because thinking is
the key to human
survival. This puts it on a par,
long-term,
with choosing whether to
stay alive.
Choosing whether to think expands or curtails our future
range of choices by
expanding or curtailing our awareness of
available alternatives. The man of practiced intelligence sees
possibilities that are not
apparent to the man of stagnant
mindset.
We have arrived, please note, at a theory of man as a being
of volitional consciousness,
with some simplifying explanations
in hand.
The power of volition is derived from the power of
concepts. As concepts expand man's range of awareness
they
expand his range of
choice. As concepts of consciousness
allow
a man to reflect on the
workings of his own soul, he gains new
control over that soul.
The primacy of the choice to think is derived from its
peculiar impact on man's
awareness of alternatives. Expanded
awareness means expanded
power of choice and expanded chance of
success.
These explanations account for qualitative differences in
somewhat quantitative
terms. Nonetheless, I do not mean to
belittle these
differences. Mortimer Adler was wrong
to
hold that human freedom and
dignity must depend on a difference
that is inexplicable in
terms of degree. (Adler, 3-18) As
Stephen Boydstun recently
put it in these pages, "Quantity
makes all the difference in
the world." (Boydstun, 21)
II.
Reviewing The Steps
Let us go back over the steps now, exploring the arguments,
and evidence, along the way.
Step 1 : Animals have a kind of awareness, which guides
their actions, particularly
their locomotion.
I use the term awareness here, in my opening statement,
in preference to the term
consciousness. In ordinary usage,
the two terms are nearly
synonymous, with various subtle
differences (Dennett
114-131) but in academic usage
consciousness seems to carry
more connotation of self-
consciousness, which is
precisely what I do not wish to
attribute to animals.
Among philosophers, this has been a matter of dispute since
Descartes. The Cartesian case against animal awareness
depends
on the premise that true
awareness requires a capacity to
reflect upon its own
contents. This case can plausibly be
made
by asking whether a cat is
ever conscious of seeing a ball.
The Cartesians answer that
there is some sense in which it
sees, but no sense in which
it is conscious of seeing, and
hence that it is not
properly conscious. (Radner and Radner,
19-36)
Writing
to Plempius for Fromondus (3 October 1637),
Descartes
criticizes the latter for supposing "that I think
that
animals see just as we do, i.e. feeling or thinking
that
they see." It should be evident
from the Discourse
"that
my view is that animals do not see as we do when we
are
aware that we see, but only as we do when our mind is
elsewhere. In such a case the images of external
objects
are
depicted on our retinas, and perhaps the impressions
they
leave in the optic nerves cause our limbs to make
various
movements, although we are quite unaware of them.
In
such a case we too move just like automata..."
(Radner
and Radner, 64, quoting Descartes, 1970, 36)
Descartes
defines "thought" in the Principles and in the
Second
Replies to the Meditations. In both
places the
definition
is followed by a list of the sorts of
operations
that count as thinking. Here is the passage from
the
first part of the Principles: "By the term thought I
understand
all those things which, we being conscious,
occur
in us, insofar as the consciousness of them is in us.
So
not only understanding, willing and imagining, but also
sensing,
are the same here as thinking"....
He puts it
thus
in the Second Replies: "Thought is a word that covers
everything
that exists in us in such a way that we are
immediately
conscious of it. Thus all the
operations of
will,
intellect, imagination, and the senses are thoughts"
(Radner
and Radner, 22, quoting Descartes 1978, 179 and
Descartes
1955, 222)
Awareness, for Descartes, is thus very much an all-or-
nothing phenomena. Either one is aware in a fully human, fully
focused way, or one is
simply an automaton -- a machine. This
seems to follow from his
metaphysical program, which posits
mind as a distinct
substance, the typical activity of which is
the contemplation of its own
ideas. If animals do not have the
capacity to contemplate
innate ideas, then they are not
possessed by mind. But if they are not possessed by mind, then
they must be regarded as
purely mechanical beings.
In philosophy, the discussion has focused on whether
animals are conscious in the
way humans are. In psychology, on
the other hand, there has
been a tendency to assume that animal
capacities are very much
like ours, but to question whether
there really was such a
thing as consciousness, or whether it
played any significant role
in behavior.
One early turning point in this debate arose from the study
of rats in mazes. E.C. Tolman, who classified himself as a
behaviorist, proposed in
1932 that rats possess "cognitive
maps" that enable them
to find their way about experimental
mazes as well as they
do. Clark Hull, a stricter behaviorist,
proposed a competing theory
of "habit family hierarchies."
Over the years, as more
experiments were done, the "cognitive
maps" theory emerged as
much the simpler explanation. (Walker,
79-81) One physical substrate of the map has been
located in
the brain: the firing
pattern of hippocampal neurons faithfully
record, topographically, the
animal's position in its
environment (O'Keefe and
Nadel, 1978).
Still, it is not an accepted idea that an animal's
awareness guides its
actions. Indeed, in the world of
academic
psychology, it is not
readily granted that human awareness
guides human action. According to Walker, "Shallice (1972)
has
provided one of the few
theories which identify consciousness
with a distinct
behaviour-controlling function in addition to
functions related to speech:
the selection of actions."
(Walker, 384).
It is accepted that sensory input and cognitive mapping
guide an animal's
action. What is at issue is whether
sensory
input and cognitive mapping
deserve to be described as forms of
consciousness. In an odd twist of contemporary semantics,
"Cognitive psychology
has rehabilitated mind but not
consciousness." (Radner
and Radner, 9) Jackendoff, for example
maintains "the Hypothesis
of the Nonefficacy of Consciousness"
(Jackendoff, 25). Klatzky, on the other hand, approvingly
cites James' view "that
consciousness was 'efficacious' by
virtue of its being a
'selecting agency.'" (Klatzky, 138)
My own usage follows the Aristotelian tradition, which
seems less confusing. "...Aristotle's notion of consciousness
covers all the higher
animals, that is, all the animals
possessing the full
contingent of five senses, phantasia, and
memory." (Modrak,
151) (Phantasia is typically translated
as
"imagination.")
Emphasis on locomotion, as a major feature of animal
nature, also goes back to
Aristotle.
Hence we must consider that
in On The Soul II (413b 10) he
established four levels of
living things. The first are
those which have merely the
nutritive part of the soul by
which they live, such as,
e.g., plants. Others, beside
this, also have sensation,
but without progressive motion,
as is true of the imperfect
animals, e.g., shellfish.
Still others possess
progressive locomotion, as do the
perfect animals, e.g., the
horse and the cow. Yet others
have intellect also, e.g.,
men. (Aquinas 1972, 228,
Commentary on Sensation, I,
lect. 1)
This emphasis persists in contemporary thinking:
Trees
and shrubs are nonmotile and many rely on seed
dispersal
for their continued successful existence.
Animals
disperse by their own locomotion, be it walking,
swimming,
or flying. But this power of movement
does more
than
provide a mechanism of dispersal: it
also provides
them
with numerous other advantages. They
can forage,
chase
prey, run away from predators; they can move away
from
the sun when it is too hot, and move into it when they
are
chilled. (Bonner, 68)
From a modern perspective, it is worth noting that
immobility is not simply an
imperfection. The sessile animals
evolved from mobile
ancestors, demonstrating that there are
some circumstances in which
a plant-like existence of passive
feeding affords greater odds
of survival than the energetic
activity of locomotion. (Bonner, 68-71).
The use of the navigator metaphor for awareness is not
meant to suggest the sort of
physical independence that exists
between a ship and its
navigator. It is meant here to indicate
a tight relationship between
awareness and action, not a loose
relationship between mind
and body. Its ancestry on the mind-
body problem goes back at
least to "the notorious pilot passage
(De An. 413a8-9)"
(Modrak, 42; citing Aristotle, 556)
Navigation, one of the most basic functions of awareness,
is not a one-time choice
between two simple alternatives. It
is an ongoing process of
route-selection confronting a three-
dimensional world. Paradigms of choice that focus narrowly on
single forks in the road,
risk losing touch with the sheer
variety of alternatives that
typically confront an animal.
Step 2 : An animal's actions are limited by its range of
awareness.
In a sense, this is simply the negative side of Bacon's
dictum that "knowledge
is power." Lack of knowledge is
also
lack of power. The notion of "range of awareness"
is taken
here from Rand (Rand 1990,
63, 31-37).
This point isn't usually put quite this way, especially as
it concerns animals.
More typically, it is simply observed that animals "act
stupid." Thorndike, one of the founders of
experimental animal
psychology, strongly favored
this view:
Thorndike's
PhD thesis was published in 1898, under the
title
of Animal Intelligence ... Although he
adopted the
conventional
title for his thesis, he pointed out that
previous
authors had paid much more attention to animal
intelligence
than to animal stupidity. Thorndike's
tone
throughout
is that of a man who is going to remedy this
omission. (Walker, 61)
The example of dogs and doorknobs was taken from a cartoon
with the following
caption: "Knowing how it could
change the
lives of canines everywhere,
the dog scientists struggled
diligently to understand the
Doorknob Principle." (Larson)
Step 3 : Higher animals contemplate possibilities.
I take the cheetah example from repeated viewings of
wildlife shows on
television.
In written accounts, the emphasis is often on cognition
rather than selection. For example: "Predators also monitor
the behavior of potential
prey. Hyenas are especially alert
for slight differences in an
individual's locomotion or other
behavior that may indicate
that it is vulnerable and can be
captured more easily."
(Griffin, 82)
The connection between cognition and selection is most
likely to be noted in an
evolutionary context:
The
evolving cortex expressed another important trend, a
greater
and greater stress on inhibition, on the art of not
doing
things. This is implicit in the
multiplicity of
alternatives
confronting advanced species. Choosing
a
course
of action demands the ruling out of many
possibilities. (Pfeiffer, 40)
In portraying animals as contemplating possibilities, I
pass over a number of
controversies:
It
seems a safe enough assumption that this process of
deliberation
has no point unless the situation confronting
the
deliberator is in some sense "open" - that is, unless
there
are genuine alternative possibilities.
What, then,
are
we to make of this notion of 'genuine possibilities?'
Philosophers
can be bothered on two scores when confronted
with
this notion. Some believe that there
are no
contingencies
in nature because everything that happens has
a
necessitating cause. Others believe
that everything
which
exists is a concrete actuality, and that the notion
of
a "possibility" is an abstract idea which should be
eliminated." (Morgenbesser and Walsh, 2-3)
Of course, possibility cannot be merely an abstract idea if
it is true that
possibilities are contemplated by animals that
lack the capacity for
grasping abstract ideas. The study of
animal cognition is a corrective
for some philosophical errors.
(Bartley 1987b, 7-45) Darwin went so far as to say that "He
who understands a baboon
would do more toward metaphysics than
Locke." (quoted at
Bartley 1987b, 7)
Some philosophers have denied that animals can make
judgments about what did
happen in the past (Bennett, 116), or
about what might happen in
the future (Heil, 205-210). The
sense in which they do make
such judgments can be brought out
by borrowing from
Leibniz: "For instance, if we show
dogs a
stick, they remember the
pain it has caused them and whine and
run." (Leibniz, quoted by Copleston, 315) There is a strong
sense in which such dogs are
judging both that they have been
hit in the past, and that
they might be hit in the very near
future. Of course, we should not exaggerate here,
but the dog
seems to be capable of a
little more than "here now stick
(ouch!)," which is the
sort of representation suggested by Rand
of animal mentality (Rand
1990, 57). It's mentality would be
more accurately captured by
"Here now stick. Hit before, ouch!
Maybe hit again!" I include the maybe, which is a kind of
modal expression, to
indicate the animal's ability to react
differently according to
what the behaviorists termed different
frequencies of
reinforcement. A dog, for instance,
reacts
differently to the man with
the stick depending upon whether
the man always hits him or
only occasionally hits him with the
stick. In the latter case, the dog may simply
become more
wary, but not immediately
flee the scene.
The issue of necessitating causes, and how they coexist
with genuine alternatives,
is a very broad one. In recent
years, the case for the
existence of genuine alternatives has
been reviewed at some length
by Antony Flew, who concludes that
"the thesis of universal
physical determinism could not even be
understood by anyone who had
not, in their own experience of
agency, had reason to know
that it is false." (Flew & Vesey,
152)
Step 4 : Concepts - abstractions reified by symbols -- open
a vast set of possibilities
for humans.
In drawing this line, on these terms, we are very close to
the views of John Locke:
The
"perfect distinction" between man and beast in Locke's
theory
lies in the faculty of abstraction, which is tied to
the
use of words to represent ideas... In
order to prevent
the
growth of an endless list of names for all particular
ideas,
the mind extracts general features from specific
ideas,
which serve to identify mental representations of
things
independently of real existence. The
mind then
gives
general names to these general features -- 'and thus
universals,
whether ideas or terms, are made.' (Walker, 23-
24;
citing Locke, 206-208)
Ayn Rand's account of concept-formation runs along similar
lines, but lays more stress
on the quantitative power of
extending a naturally
limited range of awareness:
Since
consciousness is a specific faculty, it has a
specific
nature or identity and, therefore, its range is
limited:
it cannot perceive everything at once... The
essence,
therefore, of man's incomparable cognitive power
is
the ability to reduce a vast amount of information to a
minimal
number of units --which is the task performed by
his
conceptual faculty... A concept
substitutes one symbol
(one
word) for the enormity of the perceptual aggregate of
the
concretes it subsumes. (Rand 1990,
63-64)
Walker focuses on the human brain's ability to make such a
substitution, and sees it as
an extension of the animal brain's
general ability to
internally map the world:
We
can say then that the human and non-human species may in
the
first place perceive and remember, without the
assistance
of language, in a roughly similar way.
In
addition
we humans may perceive, remember and reproduce
words,
instead of things. It is important that
words can
serve
as labels for things, but perhaps even more important
that
words become alternatives to things, so that we
perceive
and remember relationships between words, as if
the
words were themselves things. According
to this view
the
human brain is able to accommodate mental organisation
in
the form of relationships between and within perceptual
schemata. Language can be internalised in the human
brain
because
the vertebrate brain in general and the mammalian
brain
in particular serves to construct internal
representations
as a means of adapting to external
realities. (Walker, 381)
Step 5 : Humans are far more self-aware than any other
animal.
Here is what our closest relatives can do:
Gallup
(1977) has conducted ingenious experiments in which
chimpanzees
are first given an opportunity to familiarize
themselves
with mirrors and then, when they are under deep
anesthesia,
their foreheads or ear lobes are marked with a
conspicuous
spot of rouge or similar material.
Chimpanzees
lacking
experience with mirrors pay no attention to such
marks,
but those that are accustomed to looking at
themselves
in mirrors reach directly for the new spot.
This
seems clear evidence that they recognize the mirror
image
as representing their own bodies.
Efforts to induce
monkeys
and even gibbons to use mirrors in this way have so
far
failed consistently, and Gallup concludes that only the
great
apes share with us the capacity for self-awareness.
(Griffin,
74-75)
Of course, the great apes share other distinctive mental
abilities with us, including
very notably the ability to use
tools (van Lawick-Goodall
283-286), the ability to devise
constructive solutions to
physical problems (Kohler 99-172),
and the ability to
communicate using abstract symbols to stand
for categories (Premack and
Premack 15-34). These abilities
are small compared to our
own. The "tools" used by
chimps in
the wild, discussed by van
Lawick-Goodall, consist of such
things as sticks, stones,
and leaves. The "constructive
solutions" which chimps
discovered in Kohler's classic
experiments, consisted of
such breakthroughs as boxes piled up
to reach bananas. The "abstract symbols standing for
categories" which the
Premacks taught to their chimps consisted
of using a blue plastic
triangle to stand for "apple."
These
are vast accomplishments
compared to what the rest of the
animal kingdom can do.
So
far, however, no chimpanzee has succeeded in using one
tool
to make another. Even with tuition one
chimpanzee,
the
subject of exhaustive tests, was not able to use a
stone
hand ax to break a piece of wood into splinters
suitable
for obtaining food from a narrow pipe.
She could
do
this when the material was suitable for her to break off
pieces
with her teeth but, although she was shown how to
use
the hand ax on tougher wood many times, she never even
attempted
to make use of it when trying to solve the
problem.
(van Lawick-Goodall, 245)
This particular inability corresponds with their inability
to grasp what Rand describes
as "abstractions from
abstractions." The correspondence seems particularly direct
if
we view abstractions as a
kind of mental tool.
Lest the ability to use a blue triangle as a symbol for
apple seem unimpressive,
consider the plight of the parrot,
whose purely vocal abilities
are probably superior to our own:
Not
even the cleverest "talking" birds which, as we have
seen,
are certainly capable of connecting their sound-
expressions
with particular occurrences, learn to make
practical
use of their powers, to achieve purposefully
even
the simplest object. Professor Koehler,
who can
boast
of the greatest successes in the science of
training
animals, and who succeeded in teaching pigeons
to
count up to six, tried to teach the above-mentioned,
talented
grey parrot "Geier" to say "food" when he was
hungry
and "water" when he was dry.
This attempt did not
succeed,
nor, so far, has it been achieved by anybody
else. In itself, the failure is remarkable."
Lorenz,
(104-105)
Human language is of another order completely, and plays
a vital role in human
self-understanding:
...human descriptive language differs from
all animal
language in being also argumentative, and that is
human
argumentative
language which makes criticism possible, and
with
it science.
There is a world of difference between
holding a
belief,
or expecting something, and using human language to
say
so. The difference is that only if
spoken out, and
thus
objectivized, does a belief become criticizable.
Before
it is formulated in language, I may be one with my
belief:
the belief is part of my acting, part of my
behavior. If formulated, it may be criticized and
found to
erroneous;
in which case I may be able to discard it.
(Popper,
120)
Once one has acquired descriptive language, one becomes not
only a subject but also an object for oneself: an object
about which one can reflect, which one may criticize and
change. (Bartley, 437a)
The question has been raised whether self-awareness, in the
human sense, depends on
concepts or vice-versa. Perhaps the
relationship should be
viewed as reciprocal. On the one hand,
any sophisticated
self-understanding requires the use of
conceptual categories. On the other hand, the use of concepts
is a use of "mental
entities," and our ability to focus on them
in the first place is itself
a kind of inward attending.
When we describe our own mental processes, we typically
do so in terms suggesting a
kind of "inner space":
Subjective
conscious mind is an analog of what is called
the
real world. It is built up with a
vocabulary or
lexical
field whose terms are all metaphors or analogs of
behavior
in the physical world....
Consider
the language we use to describe conscious
processes. The most prominent group of words used to
describe
mental events are visual. We 'see'
solutions to
problems,
the best of which may be 'brilliant', and the
person
'brighter' and 'clear-headed'... These
words are
all
metaphors and the mind-space to which they apply is a
metaphor
of actual space. In it we can
'approach' a
problem,
perhaps from some 'viewpoint', and 'grapple' with
its
difficulties, or seize together and 'com-prehend' parts
of
a problem, and so on, using metaphors of behavior to
invent
things to do in this metaphored mind-space. (Jaynes,
55)
Thus, we take our ability to map the world, and map
ourselves in linguistic
terms of an inner world.
Recently, cognitive psychologists have focused on the fact
that self-understanding is
always framed in terms of some
theory of human psychology,
and that such understanding it is
not immune to error. (Churchland, 73-81)
The
point of all this, for our purposes, is as follows. At
life's
opening. the mind/brain finds itself as confusing
and
unintelligible as it finds the external world... It
must
set about to learn the structure and activities of its
inner
states no less than it must set about to learn the
structure
and activities of the external world.
With time,
it
does learn about itself, but through a process of
conceptual
development and learned discrimination that
parallels
exactly the process by which it apprehends the
world
outside of it. (Churchland, 80)
Ayn Rand offered the opinion that introspection was
actually more susceptible to
error than awareness of the
external world:
If
men identified introspectively their inner states one
tenth
as correctly as they identify objective reality, we
would
be a race of ideal giants. (Rand 1990 227)
This view of introspection as inductive and error-prone
stands in sharp contrast to
an older view:
The view that the mind knows
itself first, in a unique way,
and far better than it can
ever know the external world,
has dominated Western
thought for over three centuries.
(Churchland 76)
This kind of "primacy of consciousness" is the
starting
point of Descartes, who
treated self-awareness as the necessary
base for all awareness. This pointed the way to his conclusion
that animals lack all
awareness.
Ayn Rand, on the other hand, was ready to grant animals a
form of consciousness that
did not involve concepts or self-
awareness:
The
whole difference between a human type of
consciousness
and an animal is exactly this. The
ability
to be self-conscious and to identify the fact
of
one's own consciousness, one's "I."
And then to
apply
introspection to the processes of one's own
consciousness
and check them. (Rand 1990 255-256)
The
simplest way to begin an answer is to point out
that
animals, who do perceive reality or existence,
have
absolutely no concept of their own consciousness.
The
enormous distinction between man and animals here
is
self-consciousness. An animal does not
have the
capacity
to isolate critically the fact that there is
something
and he is conscious of it. (Rand 1990 246)
Step 6 : Our understanding of our own habits allows us to
control them, and hence
control the development of our own
characters.
Harry G. Frankfurt, in an influential essay, presented a
strongly parallel line of
argument:
Human
beings are not alone in having desires and motives,
or
in making choices. They share these things
with the
members
of certain other species, some of whom even appear
to
engage in deliberation and to make decisions based upon
prior
thought. It seems to be peculiarly
characteristic of
humans,
however, that... they are capable of wanting to be
different,
in their preferences and purposes, from what
they
are.... No animal other than man,
however, appears to
have
the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is
manifested
in the formation of second-order desires.
(Frankfurt,
82-83)
Now
freedom of action is (roughly, at least) the freedom to
do
what one wants to do. Analogously,
then, the statement
that
a person enjoys freedom of the will means (also
roughly)
that he is free to will what he wants to will, or
to
have the will he wants. (Frankfurt, 90)
My own stress on cognition and habit, as opposed to desire,
is meant to focus on the
particular means of implementing
desired changes in
character.
In my discussion of dog training I follow Aristotle's
analysis of bravery and
cowardice: "...by doing acts that
we
do in the presence of
danger, and being habituated to feel fear
or confidence, we become
brave or cowardly." (Aristotle 1941,
953, N.Eth. III 1103b 15-20)
My discussion also follows Koehler's method of guard dog
training (Koehler, Section
1, 95-123). Koehler, a successful
and influential trainer,
went so far as to declare:
Remember
this -- the decision to 'do right' that most
helps
a dog's character is the decision that he makes
himself. (Koehler, Section 2, 73)
The closest thing I know of to training a dog to be in
something resembling an
"unfocused" mental state was that
done by Seligman, wherein
dogs were first conditioned to feel
"helpless," after
which they exhibited markedly reduced
learning ability. (Seligman,
21-44)
My remark that habits are formed simply by selecting an
action repeatedly deserves
some qualification: "...repeated
acts cause a habit to grow.
--If, however, the act falls
proportionately short of the
intensity of the habit, such an
act does not dispose to an
increase of that habit, but rather
to its lessening."
(Aquinas 1945, 399, Sum.Th. Q52 A3)
Even the behaviorists, who generally denied the importance
of mind and volition, were
in the somewhat paradoxical position
of urging the study of habit
as a means to master behavior and
achieve new goals. B.F. Skinner himself concluded Beyond
Freedom And Dignity with
these words:
...a
new theory may change what can be done with its
subject
matter. A scientific view of man offers
exciting
possibilities. We have not yet seen
what man
can
make of man. (Skinner, 206)
Step 7 : The choice to think is more important than most
others.
The classical tradition on free will would never have
framed this issue in this
way, because classical philosophy did
not normally regard
unfocused, undisciplined mental processes
as non-thinking, but as
inferior thinking. The classical
tradition (particularly
Aristotle and Aquinas) spoke of
developing intellectual
virtues - or vices.
However, modern usage favors this formulation, as shown by
Hannah Arendt's well-known
observations concerning the man who
oversaw the Nazi's
mass-murder operations:
There
was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or
of
specific evil motives, and the only notable
characteristic
one could detect in his past behavior as
well
as his behavior during the trial and throughout the
pre-trial
police examination was something entirely
negative:
it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness.
(Arendt,
4)
Peter Bertocci argued for the pre-eminence of the choice to
think:
When
I am conscious of alternatives, I am free at least to
think
about them. Since I do not have to go
on thinking
about
them, and since I frequently do not want to continue
thinking
about them, the first act of will is the willing
to
think or not think about any alternatives.
(Bertocci,
22)
Of course, nobody was more emphatic on this subject than
Ayn Rand: "...that
which you call 'free will' is your mind's
freedom to think or not...
the choice that controls all the
choices you make and
determines your life and character." (Rand
1957, 1017; see also
Branden, 34-59)
III.
Closing Summary
Animals choose among the alternatives they know. So do we.
We just know more.
For thus did our primate ancestors evolve, to eat the fruit
of the tree of
knowledge. And now we are as gods,
understanding our own souls,
knowing good and evil.
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